Off To School Snack

Our sweet neighbors have a sweet daughter who is near and dear to my little guy's heart.

He says she's his "Best Katie".  To say he's smitten is putting it lightly.  (And who wouldn't be?  Look at her...athletic, smart and beautiful!)

He's shy around her, hugs her, plays Wii with her and generally wants to be around her when she's around.

Now being around Katie will be more difficult than just running across the square.

Katie is leaving for college.

Did you hear me?

COLLEGE!   And it is in another state.  Waaaaa!!!!!

Actually, it is a bunch of states away from us, but we are so excited for the adventure she is about to start.

She and her parents drove her up yesterday to get her settled in and I knew I had to make something to help sustain them on this trek.

I'm made Monster Cookies.  You may know them as Cowboy Cookies or Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies.  We call them Monster Cookies because they are so darn big.

Plus this recipe makes, like, a million cookies.

Well, not a MILLION, but a lot of cookies.  Perfect for snacking on while driving across multiple state lines.

*I'm sharing the recipe, but please forgive the lack of pictures while I'm baking.  Seems I forgot to take pictures until I was almost done.  The recipe is straight forward, so I figure if you all can follow a recipe, we're all good. *

MONSTER COOKIES

1 C butter, softened

2 C sugar

2 C packed brown sugar

3 C creamy peanut butter

6 eggs

1 1/2 tsp corn syrup

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 tsp baking soda

9 C rolled oats

1/2 lb M&M's

1/2 lb chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, cream butter, sugars and peanut butter till smooth.

Beat in eggs, 2 at a time, then corn syrup and vanilla.  

Mix in baking soda and oats until well blended.  

Stir in chocolate chips and M&M's.

See my mixing bowl?  It's still THAT full after 3 or 4 pans of cookies...

Place 2 in balls on cookie sheet.  Flatten slightly with a fork. 

Bake 10-12 minutes, then remove and cool on cookie sheet before removing to a wire rack.

Make these for someone leaving for a fantastic adventure.  Or for a college football team who happens to come to your house for a snack.

We love you, Katie!  

Day 7

On the seventh day, God said to rest.  Isn't that right?

God spent the first 6 days making the Earth, sun, moon, stars, sky, birds, fish, animals, plants,Man and then He took a day to rest.

Today is day 7 of school and I'm  ready for a rest.

Florida beaches in the winter.  There is nothing better.  I'm ready to go rest on a beach right now.  My kids are 12, 9 and 5.  They can take care of themselves for a few days, right?  I'm not a nut...I'm not leaving my children for days on end so I can go to the beach.  Put the phone down.  No need to call DEFACS. :)


When you first have kids, it is fun to think about all the activities your child(ren) will get to participate in.  Dance, sports, musical lessons...there are so many choices for our kids now.  It seems like forever until their chubby little hands can hold a ball, much less catch one.

And then it happens.  They reach the magic age of 4 or 5.  Maybe it is even younger for your kids...but either way, that  birthday comes and goes and you've signed your little darling up for a class/sport/activity.  So starts your love affair with your car seat.  Yes. I said YOUR car seat...because this is where you will be spending countless hours shuttling kids from one thing to another and back.

It is Day 7 of school and I must admit that my after-school calendar is looking a little crowded right now.  Last night I even went so far as to contemplate pulling my kids out of ALL after school stuff just so I wouldn't have to ride in my car all afternoon.  Selfish, I know, but seriously, having to start cooking dinner at 7:30AM so that it will be ready to warm up at 7:30 PM is a bit much.

Look...here they are running on the beach.  Idyllic.  Carefree.  And all mom had to do was open the door to the rental house and say "Run!".  So simple.

I suppose it can't be avoided with three kids.  Even if each is in one activity, that is three different practices, three different game schedules, three different places they need to be at THE SAME TIME.

Did you see that last one?  I know you moms out there are agreeing with me.  It never fails that when you have multiple children in different activities, you will always have overlapping schedules.

God Bless carpooling!

I'm still a little frazzled...

And....

But I keep reminding myself that I only have my 12 year old for a few more years, that my little guy is now 5 (where did that time go?) and my 9 year old is more ready for adventure than I am.

Here's to enjoying this crazy- wacked- out- oh- my- gosh -I -will -use -up- the -college- fund -in- gas schedule.

And thanking God for the days of rest...even when I don't think I'll see one for a few years!

Tales of a Real *Real* Housewife

I don't even know how to start this post other than to say I'm a huge fan of Real Housewives of New York and Real Housewives of New Jersey.  (Hello Kelly Bensimon...I'm not a stalker, but I'd love to meet you!)
Even if you haven't seen the show, unless you've been living under a rock, you get the basic premise...cameras follow these women around filming the trials and tribulations of their lives.  And let me tell you, there are some trials and tribulations!   But don't you wonder if their lives were filled with such angst before the cameras got there?

I tell my husband I'd never make it as a Real Housewife.  I've got no drama in my life --- unless you count my fall after school schedule with the kids --- but really, my life is pretty normal.

Here's the life of  a Real *Real* Housewife...

Drop Off at school for all three kiddos.  Boy, let me tell you that the alarm goes off a lot earlier than I think it should, but somehow I drag myself and the cherubs out the door and get everyone to school by 7:30am.  What you don't see is me praying I don't see anyone I know since I know I've barely brushed my teeth.

The starting point for the Death March I take our rambunctious dog on each morning.  I started this 3.6 mile walk/jog with the pup in hopes it would help get some of her spastic energy out.  So far it is working.  Note here she is sitting patiently waiting to start.  What you don't see is her taking off at a full run, dragging my flailing body behind her.  All of this is going on while crazy teenagers on golf carts are trying to run us over in an effort to get to school.  It's a good time.

After the walk, pup is plum wore out.  She's enjoying the AC in the car.  I'm just thankful I came away from the walk/jog with minimal road rash.

So far my day is amazingly interesting, right?

Riiiiight.

This day I had an errand at the mall.
This is a sight rarely seen by those who are not young moms or moms with kids in school.....the empty mall.  I love an empty mall.  The only other people at the mall at this time of the morning are speed walkers and moms with babies in strollers who are looking to be anywhere other than at home and the mall seems as good an outing as any.  (I've got 3 kids.  I did my share of cruising the mall with baby in tow JUST to get out of my house.  It's called sanity.)

Heading home.  Look, lunch time and NO traffic.  This is something to record on the calendar since the big city near my house has horrible traffic pretty much 24/7/365.

Being a Real *Real* Housewife, I do lunch just like the tv girls do.  It's just that my lunch comes from Sonic in a greasy paper bag and I drink a soda with it while reading my Pilates magazine.  I think on this day I was hoping that by reading the healthy magazine I'd be off-setting my horrible lunch.

That doesn't work, by the way.

Back to car pool for pick up.  Pick up and drop off are like Groundhog's Day.   This time, though, I've come with refreshments.  Most days, when I pick up the younger two kids, we are headed straight from school to the tutor or tennis.  This day it is tennis....

Then there's traffic while I try to get my oldest from school while the 9yo is at tennis.  I hate traffic and many days I wish most of these people would just stay off the road so I could get where I want to go without having to deal with them.  That's not selfish, is it?

I mean, really.  I never ever see the Real Housewives stuck in traffic.  Maybe they are and it gets edited out.  I'd like to edit out this traffic.

Finally I get home and try to throw together dinner because I had forgotten all about dinner.  Who really needs to eat?

Cereal, anyone?

Be amazed at my culinary skill...BBQ sauce and pork chops.  Though you'd never know they were pork chops since it seems I drowned them in sauce.  Sorry little chops.

Then homework, then baths, then bed.  

All of this done with me not having had a shower in, oh, 2 days because I couldn't get everything in and something had to give.

Evidently this week it was personal cleanliness.

I plan on working on that one this week.

Happy Monday to all the Real *Real* Housewives!

Cake In A Pan

This past week I've been getting back into the swing of school and schedules.

I just finished filling in the calendar with the practice times for my girls' sports, various doctor appointments, dentist appointments, vet appointments, yadda yadda yadda.

To say my calendar looks overwhelming after only one week of school is an understatement.

In order to keep myself sane, I decided to put my calendar out of my head for the day.  I'll become an ostrich with my head in the sand, so to speak.

Today I decided to make a cake.  I love cake.  Actually, I love to bake.  It is the one thing I'm pretty okay at doing in the kitchen.

I decided to make Perfect Pound Cake from The Pioneer Woman.

It has 7-UP/Sprite/Sierra Mist in it and it is yummy.

This is what I'm left with after cooking my cake.

My cake is hopelessly stuck in the pan.  And I used cooking spray--to the Nth degree.
Iron Man tried to help un-stick the cake to no avail.  Look at him.  He collapsed.

Hope you all have a great and un-stuck weekend!

What IS that?

I live in a Desperate Housewives-type neighborhood.

No, we're not out stealing husbands or peeking in windows, but any new visitor to my house always makes the same comment...that I live on Wisteria Lane in real life.

We've been in our house for 8 years now and a huge selling point when we were house hunting was the square that is steps from our front door.

It is about the size of a football field.

If you should choose to run around the square, say, four times, you'd have run a mile.

That's pretty handy information to have if you like to run and sweat.  I like to walk and relax.

Recently the trees around the square have been trimmed up (in hopes the grass will start to grow again!) and you'll never guess what showed up soon after the tree trimmers left....

I KNOW!
What IS that thing?

What we DO know is that it is seriously scary looking and even scarier sounding.

They swarm around the freshly cut parts of the trees and if you get anywhere near them they fly around you.

Well, I went out there with my zoom lens  to snap the above pictures so my husband could try to google these crazy creatures.

They are called Eastern Cicada Killers.

Seriously.  I don't make this stuff up.

Luckily it seems they don't go out trying to sting anyone, but they are some wicked looking guys.

Now aren't you glad you popped by for a light read?  You come away with new information.  I'm helpful like that.

Meet The Teacher

When I was growing up,  there was no "Meet The Teacher" Day, per se.  I'd beg my mom and dad starting in the middle of July, to make a drive by school to see if the class rosters were taped to the front doors.

The preceding weeks would find my best friends and me discussing possible teacher/student combinations and what the ramifications would be if *gasp* we were not all in the same class.  They wouldn't actually separate us, would they?  


Now it is my turn to listen with my oh-so-impatient ears about the possibilities for the upcoming school year.  I honestly don't know which is true...if I was as big a pain about teacher assignments as my kids are OR if I kept more stuff quiet and discussed it with my friends.  Because if I was like my kids, I don't know how I didn't drive my mother to drink in the weeks leading up to a new school year.

First Day of School 2009

Today was my kids' day to meet their teachers for the 2011-2012 school year.  (Doesn't that look odd?  I mean, I remember writing 2000 and now we're all the way to 2011.  Where does the time go?)

Luckily our school has gone to almost everything online, so the majority of necessary forms were already filled out (in triplicate, of course, by yours truly) and the {send} button was pushed.  I grabbed my two youngest kiddos and headed over to school.

The church building our school meets in is undergoing renovations and because of the siding being put on the building, it looked like it was snowing when we arrived.  Seriously.  The little Styrofoam flakes (or whatever they were) were falling from the sky, collecting near the door in little drifts.  This has nothing to do with our day, just funny to note.

My little guy is in Kindergarten this year and has the same teacher as my 9 yo daughter and my nieces. She's the best--very gregarious and super organized.  My quiet, play-by-himself little guy will really thrive with her.

My 9 yo has a teacher new to our school this year.  She's precious, highly organized and has long blonde hair.  She looks like Cinderella.  Or more accurately, Cinderella's much more fashionable younger sister.
In the 3 seconds we had to talk to her, I was impressed.

But let me ask you something.  As a parent, do you ever feel like you're being interviewed at Meet the Teacher days?  I do.  I even changed clothes a few times to make sure my outfit was both "fun" and "no nonsense".   No, I don't have a picture of it, just trust me that the right vibe was reached.

As a former teacher, I used to HATE these days.  I was horrible at speaking in front of adults.  Give me a gym full of little kids and I was fine.  Put a parent in the mix and I felt like I was being assessed on all levels.

Was my hair ok?

Were my clothes professional looking? Or did I have the dreaded "teacher" look going on?  You know what I mean...theme sweaters,  pencil necklaces, long skirts...I had it all...and none of it looked good.  My wardrobe  screamed elementary teacher.  I realize that now.

They say the first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem...


Why yes, that is a sweatshirt with a ruler and various school-related items ironed on the front.  Snazzy, right

Fuzzy picrture of me in "sweatshirt" with my first class.

Happy New School Year, Ya'll.

Summer Reads

I love to read.   I can remember when I was younger that I wanted to read the thick books with no pictures. I think I thought that carrying around a thick book would make me look older or smarter or both.  Either way, reading the books didn't make me look older or smarter.  It did, however, cement in me a true love for a great story.  Those were the good 'ol days.
These days are also good days, but I don't get to do much reading for pleasure.   When those moments pop up when everyone in my family is settled and taken care of --- when no one is calling my name or asking for a snack or wondering why I haven't washed their favorite pair of shorts or  generally asking me to come up with world peace -- when those fleeting minutes find me, I'm the one diving head first into a book.  And if I get sucked into the story everyone had better be ready to eat PB&J for dinner because Mama isn't moving.  Last night I was especially enthralled in a story.  The kids were in bed, husband was busy with work and I decided to lay in the tub with my iPad and relax.  I ended up laying in the tub for 3 hours.   I was reading as fast as I could because my iPad was running low on battery power and I wanted to get to the end of the story!!  I stayed in the tub so long that the water was cold, it was almost midnight, my husband was sound asleep and I was honestly contemplating yelling for him to go put a towel in the dryer so I could have something warm to wrap up in.  Pitiful, I know.  (I ended up just sucking it up and getting out of the freezing bathtub myself..I'm not that big a prima-donna!)  But really, I love to read!

Here's the list of my summer reads.  Consider it a buffet of books.  Some are light, some are heavy.  All were enjoyed by me!

I guess I should have prefaced my post by telling you I really enjoy history.  Our trip to Mt. Vernon was one of my favorite things we've done.  I could have spent 2 or 3 days there.  But back to our book.  This book is about Noah Webster, the creator of Webster's Dictionary.  He hung out with Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.  And in addition to creating a spelling book for young children, he was the main guy behind our uniquely "American" culture.  Really interesting read.

Ok.  Everyone and their brother has read this.  I'm really late to the party on this one.  I read it because I wanted to see the movie after I'd read the book and I really want to see the movie.  For those who are even later to the party than me the book is set in Mississippi in the late '50's early '60s.  It is all about the relationships between white middle class women and their black maids.  It is a pretty good read, but for me the ending wasn't the greatest.  I'm wondering if the movie will end differently.

By far, my favorite book this summer.  It is the story of a WWII army solider/Olympic track hopeful/POW.  Amazing.  Read it--now.  I loved it so much that I'm having my 12 year old daughter read it.  It provides great insight into World War II and since it is told from the standpoint of one solider it makes the information much easier to understand.  Truly a great book.

Mary Kay Andrews--the Queen of the quick summer read.   This is the story of a group of girlfriends who rent a cottage on Nags Head.  During the month they are there each of them comes to terms with crazy stuff going on in their lives.  Typical chick-flick-summer read.  Cute guy, bad guy, great girlfriends.  Easy read.  The End.

Ever since St. Elmo's fire, I've had a huge HUGE crush on Rob Lowe.  Then he's in West Wing and I get a bigger crush on "Sam Seaborn".  I had to get this book to read on the airplane. (Sorry honey, but I can't talk to you right now since I'm completely entrhalled in Rob.)  I read this on the flight to Cannes.  One way.  Great stories of his start (did you know he hung out with Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen and Emilio Esteves?  He knew Tom Cruise waaaaay before he was the famous/crazy/weird guy he is today.)

I live in Georgia.  As a resident of this state, I think I'm supposed to hate all things related to the University of Florida.  Especially Tim Tebow.  But really- he's so cute!  And during his college seasons, he'd put Bible verses on the black under his eyes.  And he's cute. (I'm so shallow.)  I had heard a little about his upbringing (parents missionaries, his mom's pregnancy with him was difficult, etc).  This book is a lot of football talk.  LOTS OF FOOTBALL.  So college football fans, you'll love this.  I enjoyed the story of his family and his early years with his brothers.  And I now I'm a bigger fan because of his standards.  I'm hoping my girls find someone with his character.

The Real George Washington.  HUGE book.  Don't be intimidated by this book.  Our first President was quite the interesting man.  Surveyor by age 16.  Family deaths and living abroad with a brother who was ill.  Meeting and marrying Martha Custis.  He was the most reluctant public servant ever.  He served for the good of the country- not for accolades or power, but for the good of our new country.  He rocks and this book will make you want to shout it from the roof tops.

Okay, friends, what have you been reading?