Caramellow Crisps

You know how sometimes, a whole is greater than the sum of its parts? This is definitely the case
with these treats. Which I can eat a million of. Thankfully, I had completely forgotten they existed. That is, until a friend recently reminded me of them, and now I can think of little else. I have a half a bag of giant Campfire marshmallows calling to me. I'll let you know how they turn out after I reemerge from the sugar coma.

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Caramello Crisps

1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c. butter
1 bag (8 oz.) caramels
1 bag (10 1/2 oz.) large marshmallows
5 c. Rice Krispies

Melt caramels, butter and sweetened condensed milk in top of double boiler. Dip large marshmallows into mixture (stabbing them with a fork helps, though you could also put a popsicle stick in each one and make a fancier treat) and roll in Rice Krispies. Store in the freezer for extra tastiness.

A short tribute

Dear Maggie's Smile,






Thank you so much.

Love,
Mom

The final Halloween post

Picture heavy post--beware.

For starters, this is not a picture of Chloe's Halloween costume, but it is the only thing I sewed this year. I decided not to make Halloween costumes. I figured I had two that would fit the smaller girls, and Chloe had a pricey dance costume that had only been worn once. However, I did hook Chloe up with a sweet hippie costume for Red Ribbon week at school. What's a former costume designer to do? (But really, School, "Say Peace Out to Drugs?" Irony, much?)
A couple days before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins. Maggie thought this was awesome.
I thought both Chloe and Addie were enjoying it, too.
But something went very, very wrong for Addie.
She tried really hard to pull it back together, though.
Yeah, that's a real smile.
Maybe not. But this one sure is.
And I sure do see that mischievous smile a lot.
The girls had a great time designing their pumpkins. Addie's design got quite intricate and dense.
Chloe kept her face pretty simple, then filled the back of the pumpkin with hidden messages.
And I got to carve them all.
They turned out pretty cute, I think.What a shame we only managed to light them up once. We forgot to do it before heading out to the Trunkless Treat (trick or treating around the church building). And Bracken didn't want to do it Halloween night since we weren't going to be home and he didn't want to mislead trick or treaters and incur their wrath.

Halloween finally arrived! Or, at least, the night of the ward Trunkless Treat arrived. I left early to go decorate my room in the church building. Bracken wrangled the girls into their costumes, and tried to get a picture.

Isn't Maggie to young to be giving us this look when we put her in a silly costume?
Here's Minnie Mouse and Jet the pony. Sort of.
This would have been an awfully cute picture. If it were in focus.
And Maggie's thinking everyone looks a little silly.
And we can't see Addie's face.
They all cooperated for the shot where we can't see their faces.
And then it didn't quite work out when they turned around.

At this point Bracken gave up and brought the girls to the church. I didn't get to see him much--I was till decorating my room with Shauna. I'm awfully glad she signed up to decorate with me because she really had all the cool stuff. Black lights, red lights, skull candelabras, rats, crows. All I really had was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride music on repeat. But together, we made an awesome pirate's lair.
We made the kids dig for treasure, while warning them about the rats.
Here's me and my co-pirate. I'm so glad I have to many piratey items in my costume boxes. And tooth black in my make-up kit. Though I wish I had upped the resolution on my phone before taking pictures. Love our creepy eyes. Glittering with treasure lust perhaps?
And here's my whole family. Even Bracken dressed up. Can you guess what he is?
He's a liberal. IT'S FUNNY!
And to round out the Halloween crazy, here are a few shots taken in negative mode on my phone.


Methinks we should do more teeth brushing after eating all that candy.

True Story

In honor of Halloween and freak accidents, we're now going to play a game of Two Truths and a Lie. Let's see if you can figure out which of these things did not happen to me this week.

• On Friday, as I bent down to get something out of a low cupboard, the power cord that plugs into the Dustbuster brushed my eye. As it is supposed to do, my eye quickly blinked shut. As it was not supposed to do, my eye blinked shut with the plug inside it. Time seemed to stop for a couple seconds as lights started to flash and my eye started to twitch. I couldn't move fast enough to pull that sucker away. There was no lasting damage, other than I kept shaking my head, wondering how that could have happened.
  
• On Sunday, we had dinner with some friends. I turned to throw away some trash Maggie was snacking on, and accidentally tripped over Maggie who had shifted position right under my feet. As I attempted to regain my balance without doing further injury to my child, I started to fall. I caught hold of the wall, but not before I cracked the bridge of my nose and my left cheekbone on the edge of the bar. It didn't turn into a major shiner--I just look like I'm really, really tired in my left eye. And have jaundice across the bridge of my nose.
• And then this morning, I lay in bed, trying to get the motivation to get up and deal with the canning mess I'd left in the kitchen last night (One jar lost its bottom, and another lid came completely unscrewed and spilled all its contents in the canner. How does that happen?). I was also trying to process a dream I'd had where I'd voted for Harry Reid and Bracken came unglued, and I was like, 'But you were the one who marked the sample ballot.' And then, the metal candle holder mounted on the wall above the bed decided that it had had enough of being ignored. It crashed into my right cheekbone. I look forward to watching this new bruise develop--I hope I can now look as tired in my right eye as I do in my left.
  

We were supposed to have family pictures taken this weekend. I was praying for the scabs on two of my daughter's noses to heal in time. But given my recent lack of gracefulness, I'm glad we had to cancel.

Say what?

Here's a few of my favorite things the kids have said lately.

Addie replaces some of her h's with c's. As in, "Mom, we're all cumin beings."
At least we're well seasoned.

Chloe said to me at the table yesterday,"Mom, there are two testaments."
"Yes, there are, in the Bible."
"No, Mom. In our bodies. There are two testaments. The small one, and the large one. For digesting our food."

And Maggie, not to be left behind, has added Addie's name to her vocabulary. The other day she woke up from her nap before Addie, then ran down the hall calling, "Add-nn, Add-nn!" It was pretty cute, and a welcome relief from her enthusiastically inflected, "Uhhhuhuuuhhhuhh," and my personal favorite, "AH AH AH AHH AHHH AHHH!"

Yesterday

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so . . . well, ever present. No matter what I tried, I just couldn't get ahead of my problems. Or, rather, my children.

At 6:30 when I rolled out of my bed, awake all on my own without the help of tears or doors slamming or my name being called loudly, I hoped it was a sign of good things to come. I even had time to say my prayers on my knees before the first of the girls came trotting out to greet me. Maggie didn't wake up until 7:30! We read books for an hour, I made the big girls' beds, I did all the dishes, I really felt good about my day. I didn't even let the "train" of cars, chairs and luggage strewn across my kitchen bother me. I took a shower, got dressed, did all the grooming, got the kids dressed, teeth brushed.

And then, as I stood there, turning in circles, trying to remember what the next needful thing I should be doing was, Maggie brought me her diaper. Full of poop. While I started attempting to clean up that mess before she made it bigger, Chloe burst into tears. She had been eating an apple and knocked her wiggly tooth a bit looser, causing it to bleed. She was inconsolable, with huge crocodile tears pouring down her cheeks and pinkish drool dripping from her mouth.

We got her calmed down, and then I attempted to print up my coupons for the shopping trip I had planned during kindergarten that day. The computer froze up. The computer froze up. The computer froze up. I gave up. I loaded the kids in the car, and then Chloe exclaimed, "Mom! We didn't do my homework!"

I got her out of the car. We did all the handwriting stuff at the table, then I loaded her back in the car with a lap desk and she completed the coloring and glueing as we drove, as Addie yelled, "When are we going to Errands?" repeatedly. Chloe finished her homework in the school parking lot, we found some spare sunglasses for Sunglasses Day, and I sent her in as the bell rang.

I went back home, fed Addie and Maggie, printed my coupons and headed out. Except that I had to stop in the driveway and run back into the house for 1 sympathy card, 1 birthday card, and three thank you cards, plus stamps and addresses. Except I only had 1 thank you card in the house so I added those to the list. We made our first stop, oil change for the car. While we waited, the girls repeatedly emptied the diaper bag while I tried to fill out my cards. We finished the change, I collected the mess and we went to the next stop.

The drugstore was like wrestling buttered monkeys. Addie could not make herself stop grabbing things. Maggie repeatedly attempted to leap out of the cart. I called the shopping trip short and headed for checkout. The cashier thought Maggie was the cutest thing as she emptied the cart, all products now crushed and dented, onto the belt. Then, before the cashier could scan it, Maggie put it all back in the cart. I took it out again, pulled out my coupons, then picked them all back up off the floor after Maggie swiped them to the ground. This repeated several times, though that didn't stop the cashier from spreading them all out in front of Maggie every time.

Meanwhile, Addie found gum. Found gooey, chewed gum stuck to the side of the register and stretched it all over her hands. The cashier noticed and encouraged her to put it back in her mouth. I said it wasn't hers. I cleaned her up, we moved on. The one ray of light was that the cashier couldn't believe I had three kids, and wasn't even thirty. Then again, this was the same cashier who didn't see the big chunk of gum stuck to her register.

We stopped for ice cream which we ate in the car. I had both the girls sit down, gave them each a spoon, and they both decided at the same time to feed me. I immediately had two spoons flying at my mouth at alternating intervals, neither giving me time to swallow or stop the process. Eventually Addie tried to shove a giant glob of neon blue cotton candy ice cream into my mouth and missed. The glob hit my arm, her dress, her leg, her shoe, and then the carpet of the van. Fantastic. Then she decided she no longer wanted to eat her ice cream--she only wanted to eat mine. I then noticed Maggie had some of Addie's special gum all over her spoon. How that happened, I have no idea, but I decided we were all done with ice cream at that point. I buckled them in, then sat in the car and filled out the new cards I had just purchased. By the time we made it to the post office down the street, both Maggie and Addie were asleep. Dang it.

We went to the school and I left the girls in the car while I grabbed Chloe from kindergarten. When I opened the door to let Chloe in, Addie woke up. By the time we got home, Maggie woke up. So that's 15 minutes of nap for Addie, 25 for Maggie. None for me.

Chloe then opened her homework folder to show me the homework notice she'd received. Because after all that rushing, I had neglected to sign one piece of her homework. Stupid rules. I'm going to have to teach her how to sign my name sooner than I'd thought.

I started cooking dinner as my children alternately fought and cried. Dinner ready, our guests called to say they'd be late. Dinner overcooked, we made our guests laugh with stories of our day. Guests left, kids bathed and in bed by 7. I sat on the couch and did this. At 7:45 I got up and got in bed. I was asleep by 9.

Today has been more of the same. More crying, more bleeding, more touching, more fighting. Bring it on.

Catching up

I have been a bad family historian. I was going to say I'd been a bad blogger, but I've been fairly regular on that. What I haven't kept up on is the day to day happenings in our family. Which is not that important to people outside of our family, but it is important to me since I don't scrapbook, this is the only journaling I do, and my memory is getting ever less reliable. So I'm going to try to improve. So, there may be some random, out of chronological order posts showing up here in the next little while. At least until I lose my motivation again.

And so, here is a random collection of pictures. I will caption them, but I will not try to make them cohesive.

This picture seems wrong to me. Everything is green and lush, and then there are pumpkins. Three on the table, and one in the chair. Could her hair be more orange? I have been physically craving this fall, and yet it has not yet been fall. Until today (hooray, rain!)
I set these pumpkins out for decoration, and Addie immediately found them (in her Ariel nightgown) and started acting out some little scenario with them. There is always something going on in that brain of hers.

Unfortunately, for the last couple months, that brain has been set to "Whine." It's like she's totally forgotten there is any other way to talk. And I have not been nearly patient enough with her. Occasionally we see glimpses into a world of sweetness, where she thanks me for making dinner as I sit down to the table, and says cute little prayers without prompting. I just have to hold onto those moments and ride out this 3 year old year.

Here are a couple more pictures from our anniversary trip. We went up to Squaw Valley, and got massages and holed up in our hotel. It was delightful. I loved the rain, and the giant rainbow we saw, but it did put a damper on our plans to visit Tahoe's beaches.


Chloe had a kindergarten hoe-down at school. It was quite the event. There were 8 stations the kids rotated through. I manned the "Dramatic Reading" station where I read the same book for 2 hours straight. But the kids had fun. I have to admit, I've had a hard time adjusting to the whole kindergarten, helicopter parenting thing. I'm not alone, though. The kindergarten teachers had to take a moment to request that parents stay at their assigned stations and not follow their kids from place to place.

Because I was reading Big Pumpkin for hours, I didn't get the chance to snap a picture of Chloe until after she'd been painted like a witch. But I assure you, she was an awfully cute cowgirl.
Here's part of the crowd.
I can't believe this grown up girl is mine.
This one is mine, too.
What a little poser.
Who has mastered the cheesy grin.
But even she realizes it's over the top sometimes.
This girl loves her daddy.
That, my friends, is adoration.