Christmas Cookies - a series of unfortunate events

I was putting my second pan of Mexican Wedding Cakes into the oven when somehow I touched the side of my hand and wrist to the inside of the oven door. Yikes! When I pulled my hand back, all of the cookies rolled off the pan and onto the bottom of the oven. Instantly they started burning, so ignoring the searing pain in my hand, I started to scrape them off the bottom of the oven. Finally I was able to rinse my hand under cool water. Oh, that feels so much better. Wait - now a child is crying. Littlebit wet her pants and created a lake on the bathroom floor. Argh! No more cool water for my burning hand. I clean up the mess, get her changed, start the oven on clean mode, and finally can soothe my burning hand when the smoke detector goes off. Unplug the smoke detector, remove the battery (I know - bad -but it just my oven) and finally I can take care of my hand.

Pumpkin Pie

Today is Littlebit's harvest party at school. She is going to dress up as a horse, so I'll post pictures of that later. First I have to tell you about the pie I made for the class.

Isn't it cute? Okay, it's a little browned on the top, but I haven't used Trader Joe's pie filling and recipe before.

At 6 this morning, I started thinking about my pie and thought maybe I forgot to add something. I went out to the recycle bin to grab the can and check the recipe. Yep, sure enough. I forgot the SUGAR! Hoping that it didn't matter too much (yeah, right like 3/4 cup of brown sugar wouldn't matter) I moved a leave and took a taste. EWWWW! GROSS!

Big Daddy volunteered to leave work and bring me a new can of pumpkin, but I didn't know if I could get it done and to school on time. I called Albertson's and they have pumpkin pie in their bakery. So now we will be making a stop on the way to school and my beautiful pie will go in the organics container. Boo hoo!

An Adventure

In December we had a little bit of snow. It didn't last long, but we had hopes that we would have more snow during the winter. (Last year we had snow in April.) We decided to buy the kids a sled, snow pants and snow boots in early January, but the weather never worked out to go sledding. It was either too warm and the sledding hill we were going to go to was closed or it was raining. I wanted to have fun, not be miserable.

This weekend was forcast to be beautiful and we decided we had one last chance to actually cut the tags off the snowpants and boots and go out to the snow. We decided to go to Mt. Rainier. Everything was perfect. We had lunches packed and managed to get out of the house by 8:30. Our plan was to return home in the early afternoon.

I showed Big Daddy where we were going on the computer and we had been to Mt. Rainier together, twelve years ago and since he refers to himself as a human map, I trusted him to get us there. That was mistake #1. We passed signs that said the highway was closed and I didn't question him. Mistake #2. I assumed that he knew something that I didn't and that he knew what he was doing. Mistake #3. All of these mistakes added up to us driving 2 hours to a road closed sign and needing to turn around. Ugh. We had driven towards Sunrise, which is closed in the winter. Apparently this was the only place at Mt. Rainier that Big Daddy had been to and assumed that it was the same place I was talking about.

There wasn't much we could do, but laugh about it and drive back down. After consulting the map again to show him where we were going, we decided that we would drive back around. We finally reached Paradise at 1:30, a full five hours after we had left our house!

It was beautiful with the clear skies and the sun shining. We all took turns going down the sliding hill in our sled. We had a great time. We spent about two hours sledding before the kids wanted to go home. We went home the correct way and it only took two hours. We were all more tired from sitting in the car than from walking up the hill many times.

I won't show my face there anytime soon

Tantrums. I hate them. Both of my kids can throw great ones. One of the things I hate is that I don't know where they are going to take place. Take today for instance.

We ran to Albertsons on our way home from swimming. I needed french bread for dinner tonight. Littlebit decided that she wanted to carry the french bread. Fine. I saw a box of doughnut holes and being very hungry, I picked them up. Lovey wanted to carry them. Not fine. Littlebit threw the bread and refused to walk toward the checkout. I picked up the bread and she proceeds to run toward the exit. I had to throw the bread on some random stand in the deli so it wouldn't appear I was trying to run out of the store with a $2 loaf of bread. I pick her up as she is flailing and make my way to the checkout. Seeing that all of the check stands have a lot of people I decide to go through self-check. BIG MISTAKE.

I manage to scan my 2 items and get set to pay when Littlebit leans on the bagging area. The screen flashes to remove the last item. Littlebit was barely touching the bagging area. I pick up Littlebit which results in screaming and more flailing. I am doing my best not to drop her and to make matters worse I recognize someone in the next check stand. Great. I look back at the screen to finish paying and see it still says to remove the last item. I removed all of the items and it wouldn't go away. Now, normally there is someone watching the self-check, but today there is not. Littlebit is screaming, people are staring, a line is forming and there are no employees willing to help me. The lady at the self check in front of me went to ask customer service for help. After five minutes, yes I said five minutes, someone finally came over and do you know what she said. She just looked at me rolled her eyes and said, "You know that the whole thing is a scale and if they (said with distaste) touch it, it will register. I guess I can fix it, but they aren't supposed to touch it. I guess I can fix it." I wanted to scream, "I'm not an idiot, you twit, I know they aren't supposed to touch it, but a two year old doesn't and it is at her height and telling me that they aren't supposed to touch it isn't going to fix the problem. The problem is that the screen won't go away after I removed the item (the item being my child). It is your computers problem, not mine or my child's. Now stop being so rude and just fix it and let me pay." Now they were a few other choice words in my head that I won't type here. I actually said, "Yes I know, but the screen won't go away." Throughout all of this Littlebit is thrashing about crying and screaming and people are staring at me. Funny how as I was leaving there were two employees at the self-check. Hmmm...

Ouch... Where has the time gone?

So it has been almost 2 months since my last post and in that time we were told:
-The computer would be a good boat anchor, need to buy a new one. Recycled old PC and should get a Costco card for it.
-The car needs new brakes and still does. Merry Christmas to me?
-We won the dirtiest washer of the year, despite that I clean it weekly. It seems Calypso washers have issues, a class action lawsuit, and are no longer made. Aaaarrggghhh.
-The dishwasher stopped draining completely and the little $15 part that took 2 minutes for the repairman to install cost $200 in labor. Excuse me?
-Noticed I had a flat tire (in my new tires) while getting everyone in the car to take Lovey to school. Learned how to use the air compressor quickly to fill it to drive to school and then to Les Schwaab. ($15 well spent.)
-The kitchen sink leaked, was fixed and leaked again.
Most of these things happened in a 2 week period.

Now I'm back and I have been busy sewing and getting ready for Christmas.


This is a picture Lovey drew of himself. Here is the "dolly" I made for him based on his picture.


And a few things I have made for Christmas:

Christmas pillowcases for Littlebit and Lovey

Pajama pants for Lovey. I'm still working on Littlebit's nightgown.

A taggie blanket for my nephew due in March.

Fabric boxes

and beaded letter ornaments.