Before I Begin Halloween Recovery

Unlike previous Halloweens, we went for easy this Halloween.

Even so, after making six costumes last week, my house is a wreck.

After splitting an entire warehouse size bag of candy with my husband last week (and having to replace it before Halloween trick-or-treaters came), my stomach is a wreck, too.

Finally, after getting my first cold of the season last week, my to-do list is also a wreck.

So I have a lot of reconstruction this week, I guess I'll see you later.

We all went for things from space this year. Originally I thought we could each choose a planet (since the loss of Pluto's status as a planet, there are eight of them), but the kids had other ideas. I let them go with their own choices. Yes, my kids were geeky to come up with these ideas on their own. Even Matthew. It does a mother proud.

From left to right:

• A Comet (Elise-13) Elise made her own costume this year, which was really nice.
• A Quasar (Ryan- 12) If you don't know what a quasar is, look here. Or see one here.
• An Alien (Ethan- 9) The writing on the side of his control panel says
  "Earth Takeover Handled by Alien Nations"
• An Astronaut, in pink (Kirsti- 8) Her writing says
  "Keep Intergalactic Rogue Spacemen Terrestrially Interdicted"
• Jupiter (Joseph- 6) He wanted all 63 moons, but I couldn't figure out how to do it easily. We settles for the 4 Galilean ones, but 2 fell off at the Trunk-or-treat before we took the picture.
• The Asteroid Belt (Matthew- 4) For some reason this has always been his favorite part of the Solar System. And yes, we have favorite Solar System parts in this household.

Teddy Bear into an Elephant. (In cake surgery)

I've decided to take up surgery as a hobby. To be more specific, Species Changing Surgery. I have all I need: knives, prosthesis, frosting. No training needed, on the job experience is enough.  Did I mention that the animals I'm working on are made of cake? That's right, I recently turned a teddy bear into an elephant.  (Or as my friend called it, an teddyphant)

I've shown before my transformation of this same teddy bear into a monkey.  In case you missed it, here is the before/ after.

For Joseph's birthday I transformed the same teddy bear into an elephant.  I actually got the idea from the pan maker's site (Wilton Stand Up Cuddly Bear) He had wanted one for at least the last 7 months. Here is the process

1- Make cake. I use a recipe called WASC (White Almond Sour Cream), which uses a box mix and tastes yummy while adding density.

2- Cut out elephant ears from cardboard.  Wrap in aluminum foil.  Tape dowel rods to back.  Add dowel rods to marshmallow for arms and trunk.  (I put 4 for the trunk, but cut one off at the end because it was too long.)

3- Make buttercream frosting and use Wilton gel dyes to color.  I needed white, black, pink and LOTS of gray.

4- Frost front of ears pink.  The edges don't matter as they will be covered by gray.

5- Cut off bear ears.  Add elephant ears, arms, and trunk by inserting dowels into cake.  Frost bottom of feet pink.  Frost eyes following (more or less) shape of cake.

6- Start adding gray.  Continue adding gray until you think there is nothing left in life but making tiny gray stars.  Then take a break for a couple minutes to regain sanity and continue. (see how the trunk it too long?  Looks much better in the final picture with just three marshmallows).

7- Add finishing touches like outlining the eyes, adding small white tusks, making gray frosting dots along hands and feet for toes, and writing "Happy Birthday."

8- Make a wish and blow out candles.

A 4-year-old Birthday Party Under the Sea

Doesn't it seem like I'm doing this a lot? With my once every 4 years rule, this is the last "friends' party" I obligated to throw for two entire years; it might take me that long to recover! So, what does one do for a 4-year-old's party when he has requested a 3-D turtle cake for the last 11 months? Make it an "Under the Sea" theme, of course!

We decorated with lots and lots of fish cut outs. There were fish everywhere! Thankfully, I found them all at the party store so I didn't have to trace them all with my projector. Did I mention the use of fish cut outs in decorating?

Given the attention span of most four-year-olds, we provided plenty of short activities:

• 
  
  magnetic fishing with activites printed on the back (that would explain the crab-walking, fish-face-making kids)
• decorating cardboard fish to glue on gift bags
• creating octopi from paper cups and streamers
• reading the Rainbow Fish
• playing "minnow, minnow, SHARK"
• pinning fins on the fish
• breaking shark pinatas
• and (of course) eating cake and opening presents.

And, at least until we move in a few months, no party at our house would be complete without playing on the beach. Especially appropriate for the theme, too.

It was plenty of fun, even if the wind made it so Matthew only pretended to blow out candles. There was always the fun adrenaline rush from hearing helium filled balloons and/or those 4/$1 punching balloons randomly popping. Thanks to everyone for coming, especially Matthew's special request for his awesome primary teacher to attend. Also, thanks to my friend, VT, (whose blog is private) for taking all the pictures: they're great!

A 12-year-old Boy's Birthday Party

Throwing a twelve-year-old's party is not the same as an eight-year-old's. Especially when that twelve-year-old is a boy. For some reason the thought of pin the tale on anything wasn't appealing to him. I didn't even try suggesting crafts.

After weeks of prodding and disappointment over a *slight* overestimating of my cake making abilities (a stand up 3D version of Super Smash Brothers is not something I could do), he finally decided on a golf cake.  Well, he wanted the clubs and the ball and it was the least I could do after denying him his first option.

Instead of a big couple hour party, he opted for a sleep over with just a few friends.


We started the night with Monster Mingolf. I think we hit a record for most balls hit out of play in one round.

Then it was home for pizza and beach. They would have stayed out in the water longer, if they didn't have to share the water with jellyfish.

And then video games and more video games and finally threats if they didn't stop playing video games and go to bed.

Most of the evening we had the cake out and ready, but only a couple boys ate a piece. When I woke up the next morning, however, the entire thing was GONE. As was most of the 4 large pizzas. Sleep was no match for the bottomless stomachs of boys!

They interrupted their morning playing of games long enough to scarf down some pancakes and then the party was over.

I'm pretty sure they all had fun. Repeated calls of "That game is sick!" is a good sign, right?

A jungle birthday party and my idea of slightly overboard.

So Kirsti's party was today and was a huge hit.  I had 12 kids (plus my 6 for 18).  I thought I would give you an overview of what I consider "a slight bit overboard" on birthday parties.  If you look closely at the background, you can also see what happens to a house when mom is busy planning a birthday party for two weeks.

First of all, the cake.  She wanted a 3D monkey cake and she got it!  I had extra cake mix so she had some cupcakes, too.  Good thing, because I had to write happy birthday somewhere!
This cake was made from a 3D Wilton Teddy Bear cake pan with the ears cut off and reattached lower and hand molded Rice Crispie Treats for the hands, feet, and tail.  I came close to just adopting it and making it part of the family; I loved the outcome that much. Also, it took nearly as long as my labors to get it here.  Especially since the first go around fell apart.  When in doubt, use this recipe for 3D cakes, I guess, because that is what made it  work.

Next came the goodie bags.

• I designed and made the actual bags myself.  Fabric stores now sell gorcery bag material and mine carried it in zebra stripes.  Awesome!!  
• I also designed and made all the monkey masks.  This site has great blank templates for masks.  I'll be coming back later in the summer for crafts.   
• The foam puppets were bought in bulk and separated out.  
• The monkey keychains were the craft.   I judge age appropriate craft by my kids' ability to do it, forgetting they have extra practice in crafts, but it turned out okay and the kids liked them. You can make your own with this pattern.  Due to a lack of brown beads in all three local craft stores, I special ordered the beads. Kwik crafts had a fantastic deal and they arrived 2 days after the order was made.

Then there were the decorations.

• I printed out coloring pages of animals and enlarged them onto poster board with my tracer.  What?  You don't own a tracer projector?  I'm on my second already.  Then I traced over the lines with a sharpie, colored them all, and cut them out.  
• I filled 23 balloons with helium, 5 of which survived till the end of the party.  
• I also bought animal birthday hats, animal shaped paper plates with matching cups, some table covers.  
• God provided the rest of the decor, it was lovely.  I wrapped all our presents to her in brown paper with animal print ribbon and thought it looked fantastic!

And finally, the party itself, where I forgot to take pictures until lunch time).

• We began with coloring bookmarks backed with animal print that I laminated during the party, added a hole and some hemp rope.  
• Then we played pin the tail of the Zebra (I was particularly proud of the zebra I made, almost wanted to adopt her, too).  Then onto the beach for an elephant race. Basically you reach between your legs and take the hand of the person behind you who does the same until there is a long chain and then race.  
• We settled down for the keychain craft and then headed onto the beach/sandbar for several minutes of play.  
• Then pizza, pinata, cake, & presents.  (Sadly I could not think of a word for cake that started with "P".) 

Was that as exhausting for you as it was for me?  Probably not.

Too many hours to admit to prepare, 2 hours set up in the morning, 3 hour party, 1 hour clean up.  Four more years till her next friend party.

Here is a picture of the birthday girl opening our family presents because we ran out of time before the party ended.  Happy birthday Kirsti!!

My Mind is Fixated on Making Birthday Cakes

My kids get a friend birthday party every 4 years, but my timing of children means every other year half the kids get a party.  This year two of those kids get them in a row, starting next week.  So I have birthday party planning on my brain.  So anyway, I thought I would post something relevant.

My birthday cake making skills didn't really start until midway through my husband's medical school.  That is when I took a class the taught how to turn any coloring page into a cake.  It is so EASY!! {I found a link to a tutorial}  This is how I did cakes for years.  Then last year I found a website with video of step by step instructions for easy dimensional cakes.  So I made a train cake for Matthew's birthday and then a pirate for Joseph's.  Suddenly all the kids wanted 3D cakes, culminating in the disaster of Elise's 13th birthday.  Still, we've recovered and I will be making a  monkey cake next week.  Hopefully it doesn't explode!

It does take time to figure out how to make the shapes and a bit of time to decorate, but my kids put their plans in months ahead and look forward to my creations.  I'm not perfect, but I'm good enough to make happy memories for the kids.

Below are some of my favorite cakes from years past.  You'll notice even Peter asks for special designs.

If you're interested in stepping up your cake making skills, but are not ready for fondant or Cake Boss, these are some sites with (easy-ish) but fun ideas:

Betty Crocker  (with videos and great tips!)
Coolest Homemade Birthday Cakes
Family Fun
Parenting

Sometimes the kids are quite specific with their wishes, but google has yet to not give me at least a starting place for how to do it!

Again, I found someone who already did a tutorial for the coloring page technique and it turns out I had forgotten some steps over time, so I'm glad I found it!

Birthday Cake . . . The Rest of the Story

I'd asked Elise for a couple weeks what she wanted for a birthday cake.  I've noticed my kids are getting more daring with their cake ideas, and knew I would need time to make whatever she choose.  So far I've been able to make whatever they've thought up, but Elise took the cake (HaHa!) when she finally chose her design.  I really shouldn't let them watch Cake Boss anymore.

She wanted a topsy turvey cake.  That was by far more difficult than anything I'd yet attempted, so I started googling.  I spent at least 2-3 hours looking up the right way to make the cake, how to make a box cake mix dense enough to carve, and the best way to make a smooth frosting (since I am not ready to try fondant yet).  Then I bought the supplies: 3 cake mixes (with the dense rich recipe made it more like 6 mixes) and 3.5 batches of frosting (2 lbs powdered sugar each), 2 cake pans each of three sizes.

And then I started baking.  9 layers baked, frozen, stacked, carved, frosted, re-frozen, stacked again, frozen again, frosted again and then decorated.  I made it early (just in case I couldn't do it and needed an alternative cake).Oh hubris, I even took pictures as I went.  I knew from the beginning it would be either spectacular or spectacularly disastrous and thought the documented journey would be fun either way. 

It was spectacular!  Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm the next cake decorating diva.  What I mean is that it was the hardest cake I'd ever made and it turned out better than I expected.  Elise loved it, I loved it, and that made it spectacular.

Without further ado, here is the cake:

And here is how it looked the next morning:
(2 days before I needed it)

I guess the boxed cake with extra dense additions wasn't strong enough.  Or I moved it too often trying to get pictures, or I should have kept it frozen until we ate it.  You can see the dowel sticks stuck in for support.  They failed.

This is the first time I've had a cake that was both spectacular and a spectacular disaster.

I'm thinking I might smack the candles on top of the mess and still use it (no friends party just our family).  What do you think?

_____________

I can't believe I forgot to do the beautiful blogger last post!  The next person on my list is Jane at Seagull Fountain.  Jane writes beautifully and thoughtfully.  She is able to give her opinions directly without being offensive (I don't always agree with her but never feel attacked), probably because her ideas are always so well thought out.  Her writing is a wonderful mix of the angst and joy involved in motherhood and life in general.  She also twitters as @SeagullFountain

I must confess I have extra love for her blog because she was my first.  That's right, back when I was checking friend's side bars trying to find long lost friends I clicked over to her blog.  Back then I would usually move on if I didn't know the person, but her writing drew me in and I read and read.  I found I was always searching for her blog on that side bar to check for new postings and finally added her to google reader.  About 6 months later I finally had the courage to comment on her blog. I still get excited to open google reader and see that she has posted.  I'm excited to meet her in May.


Please note I am not some sycophant stalker, I just believe in giving credit where credit is due.

Happy Halloween

There is something about autumn that wakes up the craftiness in me.  I may only use my sewing machine and glue gun for Halloween and Christmas, but it often totals the entire 3 months.  And then the craftiness in me hibernates another 9 months.  I always think I will keep it going; I do, after all, enjoy it, but it takes that long to recover from the late nights of those last months of the year.

This year we went with a more loosely held theme for Halloween.  We had everyone choose someone from history.  After Ethan chose an obscure Japanese ruler from a PS3 game called Civilization Revolution, we limited it to Western history.  I made a total of 5 tunics without a pattern.  I had no idea how easy they were. May need to figure out how to always use tunics in my costumes.

I made spider cookies and our traditional Dinner in a Pumpkin.  Peter and the kids carved a couple pumpkins.  But mostly I sewed, measured, glued, and painted.  Here is the breakdown:

Peter was Caesar.  I was particularly proud of his costume because I made it all without a pattern.  The laurel wreath took some thinking, but gold spray paint, hot glue, old fake leaves a I already had, and pipe cleaners did the trick.

I was Cleopatra.  A little but of a frumpy Cleo, but I can't complain.  Also made up the costume without a pattern. 

Elise was Amelia Earhart.  This costume was chosen before knowing about the movie.  Her costume was store bought and she has been wearing the jacket for over a week again.

Ryan was King Tut.  My sister helped me with ideas for the headpiece.  The snake was a rubber one that  I cut the head off and spray painted.

Ethan was Leif Ericson.  Another costume I made up completely.  The shield is a pizza pan and the helmet was a cheap plastic one I fancied up.

Kirsti was Queen Elizabeth.  When we went trick or treating, she was every one's favorite.  I bought the dress (I have made princess dresses before and knew what a pain they were), but added the white collar.  After looking all over town for a red wig, I gave up and spray painted a blond one.

Joseph was Abraham Lincoln.  His was the first pattern I used.  Couldn't think of another way to get the old fashioned coat.  The beard was left over of Ethan's cape and a cut up sock.  The hat was foam.

Matthew was Joseph and the multicolored coat.  Made up that one, too.  He hurt his leg a few days before Halloween and wouldn't put any weight on it.  So we carried him the near mile around the block.

Where I Admit I Never Intended to Be the Halloween Family

Some of our family traditions are holdovers from my youth, while others were purposely introduced and tweaked to fit our family. But there are other traditions, too. Just as important are the the accidental traditions (and also the every day, barely realized traditions, but that is a whole other post).

We were once a normal family.  Well, at least we were normal as far as our Halloween celebration.  We threw something together sometime before Halloween either buying something new, making something, or recycling previous costumes.  Just like everyone else.  I even have some photo proof:

But then we unwittingly became some other type of family.  The first year past Peter's residency we I decided to have some fun with Halloween.  After all, we could finally afford it.  Star Wars was big that year, so we all dressed up as different Star Wars characters.  I didn't account that this was our first year in North Carolina, so no one had seen our more regular costuming traditions.  We were suddenly THE over the top Halloween family.  It wasn't just in the neighborhood and church.  Peter worked Halloween evening and somehow I convinced him to go in costume.  We came up to show his coworkers all our costumes.

The next year people started asking Peter and me in September what our theme would be.

Accidental traditions are often born this way.  Something done on a whim finds a comfortable fit and becomes a permanent fixture in a family's fabric.  It turns out Peter and I enjoy dressing up.  Even the kids like going with a theme.  They start coming up with ideas in November.  By August we've decided on a theme and in September final individual costumes are decided.  Then I think, shop, sew, glue, tape, paint, and google.

I was worried Elise might be getting a little old to think dressing in a family theme was cool.  I  was wrong.  This year she has convinced several friends to dress up and come to the elementary Halloween festival with their younger siblings. 

Anyway, this is why I disappeared from the cybersphere this week.  I knew what everyone was going to be and had bought most of the supplies, but hadn't started putting everything together yet.  Monday I realized the school party was Saturday and it took a solid 5 days to make the costumes.  I finished this afternoon (a whole day early!) and will have pictures tomorrow.

Something that has worked for me: Special Days

It all started 5 or 6 years ago. I had 4 kids and noticed I was always buying things to do together with the kids, but never did them. It was always "when I have time." Something about 4 kids and a husband in residency (if my memory is correct I was incubating #5 at the time) prevented there ever being that time. My solution to this problem was something I called "Special Days with Mom." Each child got a set aside time to spend with Mom. No interruptions or other children allowed. The kids loved it and I kept it up for a couple months.

I revived the tradition my first summer in North Carolina (almost) 4 years ago. This time we had long term goals. I remember that Elise and I made a quilt and Ryan and I made a volcano. Kirsti and Ethan did more one day craft things. We lasted through the end of summer, but things tapered off when school started.

But the idea stuck. I was periodically asked when we were starting special days again. We would occasionally do it here or there, but not regularly. But the kids were persistent, so at the beginning of this year I restarted the tradition. I assigned each kid a specific day and they get 30-45 minutes alone with mom. It is interesting to see the kids choices: Elise prefers crafts, Ethan games, Ryan and Kirsti love to cook things, and Joseph and Matthew will do anything- as long as they get to yell "You can't help, it's my special day!" to anyone who dares enter their line of sight.

30 minutes may not seem like a lot, but the little "What my mom does for me" fill in the blanks the kids filled out at school for Mother's Day were about 1/2 filled with special day activities. When I went to my grandmother's funeral and was gone a week, I thought the kids hardly noticed, till they all produced their list of things they wanted to do on their special days the next week.

The children look forward to their days and spend a lot of time deciding their activities. One kid (not one of the little ones) burst into tears when I forgot to pick up the ingredients for pumpkin pie and he had to wait an extra week to make it. Some weeks we have a theme: crafts, puzzle or learning activities, card games, etc. But more often than not I let them decide whatever their heart desires (as long as it is under an hour and we have the products on hand).

Here are some things that work for me:

1. Don't let it take too long. There is limited time after school and if I take too long, I am tempted to start skipping.
2. Assign days. I double up 2 each on Tues., Wed., & Fri. If our schedule gets messed up I make up on Saturday or Sunday.
3. Make themes sometimes. If there is something I want to do, we go with my choice that week (but I let them know before hand). Usually they get to pick but for sanity sometimes I get my choice.
4. Listen for things they mention would be fun or they show interest in when the other kids choose it. That way if they can't decide you have ideas ready.
5. Enjoy the time. Don't worry about what isn't getting done, what you are getting done is far more important.

Obviously I have stopped and started this over and over. The kids still love it, even if I only keep it up for a couple months. My goal is to keep it going this time, but if I fail, they still have the memory. And, like I said, they'll keep asking to do it again. What better testimonial to effectiveness is there?

Birthday Parties

If I happened to have a child born on leap day, they could have a birthday party on their actual birth day every time. Which is my roundabout way of stating my strict once every 4 years birthday party policy. Since Elise turned 12, she was able to throw party #3 (and they said you'd never use math in everyday life).

She decided on a sleepover party, which means my chief responsibility was to sit in the corner and pretend to be invisible. I overheard more girl talk than can possibly be healthy for someone past the age of 25. Luckily, the talk had a damper from the incessant texting (this texting also doused any consideration for ever buying my poor daughter a cell phone). Anyway, the girls had a lot of fun, I got prime uninterrupted laptop time, and the other kids got to go to a movie with Dad.

The cake is my attempt at an iPod. I was running late, so didn't have time to make it perfect. I was trying to make it the color of Elise's nano, but it didn't work as well as I'd hoped. If you're interested, click here for a better looking example and instructions.

Adventures of the Winter Vacation (DC)

The Drive

Last month my children had winter vacation. What is winter vacation? A bizarre north east tradition where “they” attempt to make mothers insane by keeping children out of school for an entire week in the middle of winter. This might make sense somewhere where the temperature occasionally rises above freezing, but here it means a week trapped indoors with stir crazy kids. Don’t we pay teachers big bucks to do that?

Anyway, my dear husband had the last half of the week off and we decided to do something fun, like lay around the house or see who could put on the most amount of weight in the least amount of time. Finally, Friday morning, we decided to actually attempt at creating happy memories for the kids. (Not to imply that memories of your parents staring entranced, at various electronic screens aren’t happy ones.) We would drive up to Boston, get a hotel room for the night, and take turns going to our temple. We threw clothes and toiletries into a couple bags for an overnight trip and loaded up the kids. With the Suburban loaded, Peter and I ran in to get some soda and snacks (didn’t want to miss out on the gain-the-most-weight contest) and I told Peter we’d better make sure we both had our temple recommends. You know, before we made the 2 hour drive. We both had them alright; they had both expired 2 weeks before.

What to do? What to do? Well, we didn’t want to waste the whole drive up if we couldn’t go to the temple, but also didn’t want to waste the energy spent loading the kids in the car, so logically we decided to drive 3 times further away to Washington DC and stay an extra night. Of course we ran up and packed for the extra night. NOT!! We decided to stop at the store and buy and extra shirt for everyone. I would tell you how we handled the underwear and socks, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant (or nice smelling) solution.

The drive to DC was not too bad. Except we forgot to take the Pennsylvania route and got trapped in toll road land. When I said we decided all this Friday morning, it was really more like Friday midday. By the time we reached Baltimore, it was pretty late in the evening so we found a hotel just outside of town (thank you GPS) and called it a night.

The Hotel

Turns out children need to eat on a regular basis, even when travelling! Luckily there was a Bob Evan’s restaurant across the parking lot from our hotel. After unloading our bags, we headed over. Unluckily, while we were waiting to be seated, our youngest puked all over himself and the floor in front of the register. Of course everyone in the restaurant choose that exact moment to pay for their meals. And the employees ignored us while I tried to clean it up the best I could with paper towels from the bathroom while Peter rinsed off Matthew. I headed back to the hotel with sicko while Peter fed the non-vomitting children.

Once everyone was fed and settled back at the hotel and Matthew’s jacket had been rinsed and hung to dry, I decided to get ready for bed. Only when I went to take out my contacts, I realized I had forgotten solution. My 1st solution to no solution was to wear my contacts to bed. Unfortunately, they already felt dried up and suctioned onto my eyes. Removing them after a night’s sleep might feel like ripping a band aide off my eyeballs. My 2nd solution was to pay a fortune to buy some contact solution at the hotel lobby “store”, but the fact that they didn’t have any to buy deterred me. So I drove to a gas station and paid an even greater fortune for the solution to my lack of solution.

Washington DC

That morning we loaded up and headed to a store to buy breakfast and extra clothes. I also remembered to buy a stroller because, even with our in-depth planning, we neglected to pack one. I needed other baby supplies anyway, as I had packed diapers for an ordinary one night trip not a two night stomach flu trip. Any guesses what store we stopped at that had clothes, food, and baby supplies?

We finally arrived in DC and parked near the Washington monument. We then walked and gawked all the way to the Smithsonian museums. Oh, how we love Washington DC! We went through the air and space museum (they have already blacklisted poor Pluto from the list of planets) and the natural history museum (where we spent hours and only finished the 1st floor). We also walked past the capitol building and white house.

We finished the day visiting the Vietnam and Lincoln memorials. By this time it was late and we were all regretting our winter induced out-of-shapeness.

Gettysburg
We left DC and headed north to Gettysburg, stopping at a hotel just outside the town. With all the wonderful things we saw on our trip, it should come as no surprise that the highlight for the kids was the indoor pool and all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Gettysburg was awesome (as always), although a little cold and windy. And by little I mean we left the car once and didn’t freeze only because we were moving quickly so we wouldn’t get blown away. As we left, Joseph was upset because he thought we had promised to show him a real battle. Poor kid wanted to see actual fighting. You’d think his brothers and sisters in the car would have fulfilled that dream enough already.

We drove home through Pennsylvania and arrived early enough for the kids to get a good night’s rest before school started again. At least that is my claim (just in case one of their teachers happens to read this!). And that was our impromptu trip to Washington DC. All in all, it was a great trip and one we will make again. Someday maybe we will plan something farther ahead than an hour. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.

P.S. I couldn't help but include a picture of one of the exhibits that gave us the most enjoyment. We laughed and laughed. You mean the climate CHANGES over time?!?

If I post Peter's birthday cake... *pictures fixed so it makes sense*

If my kids have the whole week off for winter break, I will celebrate by spending the whole first morning on the computer.

If I spend all morning on the computer (and the kids are all home ), my housework will double.

If I have double my usual housework, I will convince myself I would rather do it myself then spend twice the time convincing the kids they "want" to do it.

If I am trying to keep the kids out from under my feet why I clean, I will let them watch Star Wars all afternoon.

If I let them watch Star Wars all afternoon, they will pull out their play light sabers and quickly spiral from pretending to actually trying to kill each other.

If they try to kill each other while fighting over who will be Darth Vader, I will remember I never posted a picture of Peter's Vader birthday cake.

If I take the time to post a picture of Peter's cake, I will go to bed late.

If I go to bed late, I will want to sleep in late.

And chance are, if I want to sleep in late, I will be glad my kids have the week off school.

A New Tradition I Can Love

I have always held that if Peter wants better dinners the only way he would get them was if he started cooking himself. After 13 years, he finally realized I wasn't bluffing. Actually, for Christmas this year he gave me a very thoughtful gift: 3 cookbooks. From which he would choose dinners to make. The first week he took Elise with him to the store. After 5 calls home asking if we owned ingredients I had never heard of, he came home and they made a delicious dinner and dessert (on a sidenote, notice the 3 boxes of soda stacked next to Elise).

Thus was born a new tradition in our home. Once a week, more or less (sometimes less, never more), Peter and one of the kids choose a recipe and a dessert, go out and buy the ingredients and make it for the family. I get a break, the kids get one on one time with Dad, and Peter gets a meal that requires more than 3 ingredients to make. It is a win-win for everyone.

He's done it 2 times so far and they have both been excellent (and I now know some nonalcoholic substitutions for rice wine, have cinnamon sticks in my spice cabinet, and spinach has made its first appearance in my fridge).