Thumbs Up

Aaron has been asking me to teach him how to make meringue cookies for quite a while now. So today was the day. We doubled the recipe and put in 4 egg whites (whipped to stiff peaks), 1 cup Splenda (we wanted them to be sugar-free), and about 1 tsp. almond extract. The recipe called for 2 tsp. some type of extract or flavoring, but we only had about 1 tsp. left in the jar and decided to go for it anyway. We put little spoonfuls of the batter (is it called batter?) on the cookie sheet and baked them for 30 minutes at 300°. I have seen recipes that call for cooking longer at a lower temp, but this seemed to work well for us and the impatient testers. Lauren gave it a "thumbs up"!

Getting Ready for Hawaii

We leave to go to Hawaii in just over a week, so I figured I needed to get some Rashguard swimming shirts for all the kids. Fortunately, Old Navy had some on clearance and I scavenged through the racks and finally found something for each kid. Now hopefully I can keep them from getting burned on the beach! The boys are pretty excited about their shirts, as they think they look like "cool skater dudes" with them on. I'll have to take pictures of them when we're in Hawaii.

Service is Contagious

My kids taught me a great lesson today . . . service is contagious. There was some work that needed to be done today and so I asked the kids to help me out. The boys had some clothes that needed to be sorted and a closet that needed some rearranging, to make room for the sorted clothes. There was laundry in the dryer that needed to be folded and put away. I started helping Mason sort through and rearrange his clothes and asked Aaron to help Bailey put the dryer clothes in the clean clothes hamper for folding. Shortly after we started our assigned tasks, Lauren said she needed to go the bathroom (and being newly potty-trained, she still needs help). I asked Aaron to help her, so I could keep sorting clothes. He disappeared into the bathroom with Lauren.

I quickly got an idea to see if we could secretly "race" Aaron and surprise him. We finished sorting the clothes and getting them put away and then Bailey, Mason and I had a race to see how fast we could fold all the clothes in the hamper. Voila! We finished and Aaron and Lauren still hadn't emerged from the bathroom. So Mason and Bailey decided to quickly put their clothes away before he came out and I grabbed Aaron's clothes and was finishing putting them in his drawers when he came in the room. "You're putting my clothes away for me?" I said "Yep - I was trying to surprise you before you came in." He said thanks. A minute later, he comes in and whispers something to Mason and Bailey and says to me "Don't come downstairs for a little bit, okay Mom?"

A little while later (maybe 1/2 hour?), they called up to me and said I could come down. Aaron had made grilled cheese sandwiches for all the kids for lunch and made a cheddar & bacon salad for me! What a great surprise! We'll have to see if our secret service surprises continue . . .

Oh yeah - and the knitting class yesterday was a big success and Aaron and Mason both decided they wanted to learn. I got Aaron his own knitting needles and yarn last night and taught him to knit and purl . . . He has really gotten the hang of it and is enjoying it! Here's a picture:

Day one, under way

Mark left yesterday to start his new job, so today is my first day officially as a "single mom". So far, so good. I took all the kids to the gym with my this morning, so I could still do my water fit class. I *LOVE* exercising outdoors in the pool - wish I could do that all year long. Now - we're getting ready to grind some wheat and make some homemade bread, since we ran out this morning (making french toast for breakfast). I'm going to try to remind the kids of the story of the Little Red Hen and see if they will help me! I've got a knitting class/group that I'm hoping to go to later this afternoon and we'll see how that goes with all the kids in tow. And, of course, I've got lots of digital scrapbooking projects going on . . . products and books to design . . . illustrations to make . . . busy, busy, busy.

Okay . . . so - we made the bread and all 4 of the kids helped! Yippee! Here are Aaron, Mason, and Bailey posing with the fresh bread just out of the oven. You'll notice that the loaves may not be as tall as you would normally expect . . . well that has a little something to do with all the bread dough that the kids were snitching. I kid you not - they were eating it by the handfuls! No raw eggs . . . so I'm hoping it's okay!

Here we go . . .

I know lots of people have been blogging for a while now and I have enjoyed reading a variety of blogs. But I hadn't yet ventured into the world of blogging. But times are a-changing . . . And now it begins.