Egg-stravaganza

Easter is in a few days and the kids are on spring break, so we spent the day participating in some fun Easter themed activities. In fact, it was a threefold egg themed activity day. First up was decorating Easter egg pancakes. The pancakes were carrot cake pancakes, one of my springtime favorites, and were topped with an assortment of berries, cream cheese syrup, and whipped cream. It was an egg-ceptionally delicious way to start the day. And we all had a nice serving of veggies for breakfast. 😉

The second phase of today’s egg-tivities was making sunbutter eggs. Think chocolate dipped peanut butter eggs, but sunflower seed butter instead which makes them safe for my nut allergy kids. I made these once years ago thinking Matthew would like them, but when he wouldn’t eat them, I opted not to make them again. I thought they were delightful, but I absolutely did not need to eat an entire recipe all by myself. Last month, Matthew was browsing through my recipes and happened to come across this one. He got egg-cited and wanted to try them. In his defense, he was still really young the last time we tried these, and he is a lot better about trying new foods nowadays, so we gave it a go. Matthew is egg-static about our results. He loves these eggs. Malia doesn’t like the white chocolate dipped ones, but she does like the ones dipped in normal chocolate. Her reasoning is that the sunbutter tastes weird and the normal chocolate covers up the flavor better. But the rest of us enjoy them, so I’m not worried about them not being eaten. 

We finished up our eggs-tra busy day by coloring eggs. Matthew wasn’t interested in joining us, but Malia and I had fun. She was egg-static about some of her results, and had to rotate eggs in the cute egg cups so we could take pictures of all the ones she thought turned out egg-celent. She told me she wished we had more egg cups so she could showcase all her special eggs at one time, but the cups were an impulse purchase in Hobby Lobby just because they were cute which meant that I didn’t give much thought to how many she might want. We rectified the problem by simply rotating the eggs in the cups and taking multiple pictures. And she was nice enough to include my lovely jade green egg with curving stripes in her gallery. 

It has been a super fun day, but I’m a little bit eggs-hausted. I’m looking forward to putting my feet up and watching “Easter Parade” this evening. That hasn’t always been a tradition, but I think it should be. I mean, how is a ritual viewing of a classic starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire not an egg-cellent idea? After such a busy day, it is egg-zactly what the doctor ordered!

And as if we don’t have enough egg in our faces, the kids want to eggs-tend the fun by making Jell-O eggs tomorrow. 😂

Happy Little Catz

The PTA at our elementary school sponsors the Battle of the Books competition (Everyone uses the acronym BOB instead of the actual name) nearly every spring. Although Malia has been old enough to participate for several years, last month was her first opportunity to actually experience the “battle” part. In 2020, the COVID induced shutdown began less than a week before the competition was scheduled to occur. In 2021, the schools were not holding any assemblies or whole school activities due to COVID, so the PTA cancelled the entire thing. After losing those opportunities, Malia was extra excited to participate this year.

All the kids who are interested in participating in BOB are organized into teams of five for the competition. Each team selects a name, draws a team poster, divides up the books so at least one team member reads each of the twenty books, and meets together regularly to prep for the competition. Each member of Malia’s team was assigned to read four books, but I made a deal with Malia. I challenged her to read all twenty books and if she did, I promised to take her out to dinner and a movie. She found that highly motivating and did in fact read all twenty books. While she enjoyed most of the books, there were a few she did not. But I feel like it was a great experience because she was exposed to a variety of genres, some of which she would never have selected on her own.

A week or so before the competition, her team, which had selected the name BOBcats as their name, was informed that another team had chosen the same name. As a result, Malia and her teammates had to come up with a new name. I love the humor of this little group of kids because they named themselves “The BOB Ross Catz.” And yes, they do in fact know who Bob Ross is. (If you don’t, google him. It’s pretty entertaining.) As a part of their competition preparations, they had to create a poster for their team, one that they all worked on together. The competition was a month ago, but the team posters were sent home today. One of Malia’s teammates was supposed to have the honor of keeping the poster, but when he told them he didn’t want it, Malia was more than happy to volunteer to keep it. (Yes, she is a packrat. She tries to keep everything she ever touches, and it contributes to the massive mess that is her bedroom.) I had not seen the poster prior to today, and it made me laugh. Out loud. Those kids are funny.

Oh, and they did great in the competition. They made it to the semi-finals. Woot for their hard work and preparation!

Texas Extras

Sometimes Nathan shares pictures with us that aren’t included in his emails. He’s kind of all about business in his emails and lets his guard down a bit with us, so I though including these “extras” would be fun!

"We exercised this morning. We did a NUTS workout that left us all DEAD today. It took 30 mins and was about a bazillion burpees haha."

Nathan and his companion ate most of the missionary peeps Malia and I made. They did share some with the Hermanas though.

"Look at these fun games we saw in Walmart haha. You are beginning to see why the saying 'only in Texas' is a thing."

Bunny Buns

As I’ve mentioned before, there are things I did when the boys were young that Malia has never done because the boys had outgrown them before she came along. Our once annual bunny buns are one of those. I’ve been working through the past years’ blog books to create digital archives of each and a few weeks ago I happened to come across one of our old bunny making adventures. I asked Malia if she remembered making the bunny buns. Her response was, “What are bunny buns?” That would be a definite no. I immediately decided that we needed to revisit this old favorite.

Today was our bunny bun day. One of the fun parts is that Malia is old enough that she knows how the recipes work and does a lot of the mixing part, not just the fun forming the bunny bums part. She is also creative in her own ways and while the boys liked to put eyeballs on the bunnies even though the buns are a back view, Malia opted for some bitty baby bunnies and several with extra big tails. She also liked adding a bit of coconut with the glaze to make the tails extra fluffy in appearance. We had a good time, as we usually do when fun food is on the menu, and the bunnies were delicious! Now that she has been introduced to these lovely little bunnies, I suspect there will be a request for a repeat appearance next year. And I’m okay with that. I find that I miss some of the fun things I did when my kids were younger.

In and Out of Character

This past week has been performances of the school musical at the middle school. The show was Disney’s “Descendants,” and Matthew was tickled pink to be cast as Jay, Jafar’s son and one of the leads. As he worked through rehearsals though, he really struggled to get into his character. As a black leather wearing, silver stud sporting, rule breaking, thieving hoodlum, Jay is pretty much the polar opposite of Matthew. As such, he had a hard time internalizing the character. To his credit though, by the time I saw the show, I kept forgetting I was watching Matthew and just saw Jay. And that is quite a compliment because 1) he is my son and as a parent it can be hard to look at your child and see someone else and 2) I’ve seen many middle school productions over the years and to be honest, I rarely forget that the characters on stage are being played by a bunch of fourteen-year-old kids. Adding to the success in finding his character, we heard back from a lot of people that they didn’t even realize it was Matthew for a while because he looked and acted so different from his normal self.

One of the funny things about all this is that some of the mannerisms Matthew developed for Jay have starting leaking through into his actual behavior. I guess that’s what happens when you really get into character. The little things can start to feel natural. He isn’t shoplifting or anything like that (“Stealing-it’s like shopping but free.”-Jay), but he has picked up a few gestures and facial expressions that are reminiscent of an 80’s punk rocker. 😂

This is the first time Matthew has done a really dance heavy show and over the past months, he has come home from dance rehearsals physically wiped out. Dancing like that is hard work and I can tell that he put in his very best effort. He has had no dance training prior to this and by the time the show opened, he was really good. He dances with a very graceful strength. In fact, the way he moves reminds me very much of my brother Seth. I guess there is something to be said about genetics. And the fact that he sings, dances, acts and is smart and nice means he has gained a following amongst the middle school girls. There was much girlish cheering during the show and while some teenage boys really like that kind of attention, it just makes Matthew uncomfortable. Kev and I have both encouraged him to just ignore it and leave any situation in which he feels uncomfortable, but this is still all new to him and it kind of stresses him out.

I think Matthew has had a lot of fun but being on the stage crew as well as having a lead in the musical has had a toll on him these past few weeks. In addition to long dress rehearsals with plenty of notes for the cast, he had been designing the lighting for the show. He has been required to reprogram multiple scenes because the choreographer (who is a previous student who has now graduated from high school) would not tell Matthew what he wanted but then didn’t like what Matthew designed and made him do it again. There was a great deal of frustration involved in that. Bronchitis and a nasty stomach bug have been ripping their way through the cast as well, and Matthew has been doubling masking except for the times he is actually running scenes in order to remain healthy. He has enjoyed his experiences but I suspect he is actually really glad the show is over. He needs some sleep.

A Kitchen Upgrade

Kevin and I have been discussing getting new countertops in the kitchen for several years now. Our motivation is the fact that water has a way of seeping under the edge of the sink and is causing damage to the laminate counter behind the sink. Kev has tried to fix it, cleaning with bleach and letting it thoroughly dry before caulking it, but it is a Band-Aid kind of fix. Over time, water is still getting down there with the end result being mold growing underneath the caulk where I can’t clean it. It is bad enough that we have been concerned that the wall behind the sink has water damage. In addition, the pressboard windowsill just above the sink is constantly getting wet. It is kind of unavoidable since the sill is in such close proximity to the faucet. The constant moisture is not only causing the paint to peel up (that gross brown color underneath is the color all the walls were painted when we bought the house) but was causing the wood to slowly disintegrate. We are at a point where we have the funds, so late last year we decided it was time to get serious.

We have a friend down the street who has his own business as a contractor, and he was happy to take on our counters as a small side job. He sent us to a countertop place that he works with often and we selected a first and second choice quartz. (We opted for quartz because natural stone like granite can’t be cleaned the ways we need to in order to keep things safe for our food allergy kiddos.) Our selections were given to our friend, Jake, and the waiting began. Within a week or so, we heard that the stone supplier couldn’t get our first-choice stone. They had our second choice in stock, so we agreed to going with that one. But then we heard that due to the thickness of the slab they had in stock, they couldn’t cut the edge of the stone the way we wanted. And then they told us that they couldn’t curve the overhanging edge the way we wanted. At that point, we felt like we were compromising on everything and decided we needed to look elsewhere. If we were going to spend that much money on an upgrade, we didn’t want to look at it with disappointment every day. So Jake jumped on our request and started making some phone calls. Luckily for us, he was able to find another supplier that could get our first-choice stone, so we started talking details with the new shop.

Unfortunately, communication from the second shop was not good. We had been told the install would be the week of February 7th, but that week came and went with no information. A week and many phone calls later, Jake finally got the information that one of our slabs had broken so they needed to get another one shipped. The new slab was supposed to be there in less than a week, so we waited some more. Several days after the stone was supposed to arrive, we got word that there had been a mix up and the slab was still sitting in the yard in Washington. Yippee. More waiting. Once the slab was finally in the state, we were told that they were in the middle of a big commercial job, and we would be waiting another month for our install. Needless to say, the whole process was slow. So…very…slow. Supply chain issues and transportation troubles contributed to that, but there was also some buffoonery from the shop. 

Two weeks ago, the shop finally came to do the templating for our counters and today, a good four months after we began this whole process, they were finally installed. When our old counters were torn out yesterday, we held our breath the see how bad the damage to the wall would be. It would seem that Kev’s caulk Band-Aid worked though, because the wall was perfectly sound and needed no repair work. Kev and I both gave a big sigh of relief over that one. We were kitchenless for less than two days, another reason for gratitude. We can’t exactly take Matthew out to eat, so we had to do some serious advanced planning to make sure we would have meals for all of us without access to the kitchen. It was inconvenient, but my planning worked well and we managed just fine. I think we are all super excited to have the job done and pleased with how everything turned out.

I’m glad we held out for our first choice of material. Although the wait was long, it looks good and is exactly what we wanted. We raised the backsplash and replaced the windowsill with stone to alleviate the issues with water behind the sink, and with the bottom mounted sink, water won’t pool behind the rear edge like it used to. I’m really grateful that the actual install went so smoothly. I had visions of the install going the same way things had up to that point and was concerned that we would be without a working kitchen for much longer than estimated. But our contractor and the other workers made the whole thing move very efficiently. So yippee for real this time! The upgrade to our little eatery is finally complete!

A Lifelong Learner

As the weather has warmed, the birds have returned to our yard. While most of them are indistinguishable from one another, we have one robin that we always recognize. He is the biggest, fattest robin any of us have ever seen, and he comes back every year. I think he has a nest in one of our backyard neighbors’ trees. When our chubby buddy returns, we know that spring is in full swing.

In celebration of spring and in anticipation of our celebration of Easter in a few weeks, this evening’s FHE treat falls in the category of fun food. I love coconut macaroons and figured this would be the perfect time to create some macaroon nests. I haven’t had macaroons for years, largely due to the fact that most macaroon recipes use egg whites to bind everything together, so I was test driving a new recipe as well. It is a recipe that uses sweetened condensed milk instead of eggs to act as the “glue” in the recipe. While standard sweetened condensed milk is also a no-no around here, I picked up a can of sweetened condensed coconut milk figuring it would be an easy swap. Therein lies my hubris because all things did not go according to plan. 

The dairy version of sweetened condensed milk comes in a 14 ounce can while the coconut one is only 11 ounces. I did some math to make the ratio of ingredients the same and set to work without any second thoughts. Non-dairy substitutes don’t always act the same way their lactose infused counterparts do however, and I did not take that into consideration. I formed my little nests and tucked them into the oven to bake. Eleven minutes later, I opened the oven and discovered with dismay that all my carefully created nests had melted into one giant puddle on the cookie sheet. I pulled them out, already pondering on how things had gone awry. Clearly the mixture was too wet to hold its shape, so I scraped all the nests on the second, unbaked tray back into my mixing bowl, added more flour and coconut in an attempt to save the remainder of the cookies, and popped them into the oven with fingers crossed. While the second batch baked, I did my best to scoop the first ones back into nest shape and stuck them in the fridge to see if they would set up.

When the oven timer went off the second time, my results were much better. The nests looked just as they should, were lightly touched with golden brown, and smelled delicious. The ones in the fridge, however, were still a mess. While they had set up a bit in the cool of the fridge, they were still so gooey that they stuck to the parchment paper they were sitting on. In fact, they were so wet that I began to wonder if I could add the additional ingredients and save the cookies. I figured that they were already a total failure, so doing some mad doctoring wasn’t going to make things any worse and might make them better. I grabbed my bench cutter, scraped the goo back into the bowl, added the additional ingredients, dropped the whole experiment into the oven, and crossed my fingers. 

Fifteen minutes later, I was pleased to discover that my culinary experiment was a complete success. It would seem that baking the sweetened condensed milk only made it a little more condensed and without any leavening in the recipe, it acted just the same as if it had never been in the oven. The twice baked batch looked just like the once baked ones, and they all looked pretty much like the pictures on the internet. 

I had taken careful notes of what I had added and with things working out well, I proceeded to write up the recipe so it could be duplicated in the future. As I compared my final recipe with the original one, I realized that it was nearly identical to the original, the only difference being a slightly smaller can of sweetened condensed coconut milk instead of a standard sized can of the dairy version. 🤦 Apparently, the canned food gods know better than I and taking their differences into consideration, in their sweetened condensed versions 11 ounces of coconut milk acts the same as 14 ounces of normal milk. After fifteen years of dairy and egg free baking, there are clearly still things for me to learn.

Mad scientist impressions aside, the macaroons were incredibly tasty. They are the moist, soft kind of macaroons that I love. With just a touch of melted white chocolate (dairy free, of course) and a few jellybeans, they make darling little nests. My kids loved them too. Kev is not a fan of coconut when it is all that he can taste, so they weren’t his favorite treat ever, but that’s ok. Oh, and of course we had to make one nest of dragon eggs, just for Malia. 😉

Whoops!

Do you ever feel like you are living in a sitcom? In general, I don’t. My life is pretty mellow, reasonably predictable, and now that my kids are a bit older, not nearly so filled with day-to-day chaotic occurrences. My marriage is stable, and my hubby is not a buffoon. I don’t have a stereotypical terrible mother-in-law and I actually like my siblings and get along with them. My kids are all passing their classes in school, and no one has secretly thrown a big beer bust in the absence of parents. So no, for the most part I don’t feel like my life is a sitcom.

But every once in a while, I get those comedy t.v. vibes. This evening was one of those times. It is general conference weekend which means we have spent the past two days being spiritually enlightened. It also means we have spent an awful lot of time sitting in front of the t.v. As such, after the last session this afternoon we all headed out the door for a walk around the neighborhood to get our blood flowing a bit and to enjoy the beautiful weather. Since all of us were leaving the house, I asked Kev if he had his keys and when he responded in the affirmative, I told Malia to lock the door. She did so and we proceeded to meander around the block, stopping to talk with a few neighbors on our way. When we made it back to our house, Kev reached into his pocket for his keys and discovered…no keys. I didn’t have my purse or keys since I had checked with Kev and since we were just at home all day, Matthew didn’t have his keys on him either, although he normally would. We were locked out of the house.

Kev called his parents to see if they had a key and after taking a bit of time to look, his mother responded in the negative. I have never given my parents a key, so calling them was not an option. Daniel has a key, but he is living in Logan so that would be a long wait for us. We did the rounds of the house, considering our options, and finally decided that we were going to need to break into our own house. Breaking a doorknob seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to gain entry to our humble home, so we headed to a neighbor’s house to borrow some tools. We ended up crashing their family gathering, but that meant we got two helpers for the price of one: one who had successfully picked a lock once or twice and another who had a drill and knew how to use it. The less destructive option was the first one we tried, but the screwdriver, bobby pin, and credit card were not successful. Seriously, it’s not as easy as the movies make it look which is actually a good thing. The second option was drilling out the doorknob and after a few minutes, a broken drill bit and a few sparks, we were back in the house. 

In the entire time that we have been married, and that is twenty-three years as of yesterday, this is the first time Kevin and I have locked ourselves out of the house. We feel like that is a pretty good record. And Kev has been considering rekeying the house anyway since the doorknob we bought when we moved in could only be installed upside down. So overall, it was a humorous experience, one created by all of us, and we are laughing rather than cussing about the whole thing. And since only the bottom knob was locked, not the deadbolt, we can still secure the house until Kev can get to Home Depot later this week. An additional perk is the fact that when Nathan calls tomorrow and asks what is happening here, we will actually have something to tell him. 😂