11/28/2006

Holly Jolly

Am I the only one who is taunted by the creative genius during the holidays? The phrases “Oh I want to make one of those!” and “I could so do that to our living room” are totally permeating my speech this month. So typical. It’s even worse in the last two years since I’ve started reading other peoples blogs. I can see how everyone else is preparing for the holidays and I’m getting so many ideas. The bad news: I have no time. Unless you consider sleep optional (which I don’t) So I’ll just have to file those ideas away for a day when I’m not running at 110 mph. Which will be in oh… 20 years.
I made some seriously good double chocolate cookies yesterday. (The same ones I made for you, Dad. But these didn’t have ¼ cup of salt in them) Here’s the recipe:

1 c. chocolate chips
1 c. flour
¼ c. cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
5 tbs butter
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
(optional – I added about 1 c. chocolate chips to the finished dough – YUM)

1. combine sugar, eggs, vanilla in one bowl, melt chocolate chips, and combine. Let chocolate set up for 30 min.
2. combine cocoa, baking powder, salt in another bowl.
3. slowly add dry ingredients into chocolate mixture. (use a spoon, not a mixer – that’s how I fried my last mixer) It will be tough to stir when you have all the dry ingredients added.
4. roll dough into balls, bake at 350 for 8 min. Let them cool for 10 min before you transfer them, the centers will be soft because of the chocolate.
5. Makes 2 dozen

YUM YUM YUM. That’s all I have to say about that.

So in other news I’m trying to teach my children how to come when they’re called. I never really thought about it, but my children hardly ever respond to me when I call them. When I was visiting my friends over the weekend, there was an instance where Tracey called all of her children, she only said each kids name one time, and they were all off running to see what she wanted. I was so impressed. My kids need to do that. No more of this calling each kid 5 times, then going looking for them when they don’t respond.

11/27/2006

Adventures in Peterson-land

Man what a weekend. Thursday we had a lame little Thanksgiving with just us Petersons. We had our big Thanksgiving with my parents and siblings earlier in the week, so I just threw together some ham and some trimmings. I spent most of Thursday getting out Christmas decorations and cooking.
Friday morning we packed up and headed over to the Cleveland area to visit some of my friends from college. I think I mentioned them earlier – they’re the family with 7 kids. (with my 3 kids = 10 kids – eek!) I hadn’t even met the two youngest yet. It was so cool to sit and watch the family dynamics. The older kids watched the younger kids, no one fought, no disobedience, everyone played together really really well. If my kids turn out like those kids, then my job is done. Had a ball talking with Tracey (the Mama), just comparing notes on motherhood, faith, and every subject in-between. The weather was wonderful all weekend, so we managed to take everyone on a little outing to a nearby nature trail. I did NOT want to leave on Saturday, but I had to come home so we could do the Sunday school thing on Sunday morning.


Here's a pic from our outing. (R - L) Gabe, Annie, Jordyn, Jory & Alex

11/22/2006

A word to the wise.

Don’t turn your back on the cookie dough, especially when there is salt on the kitchen counter. Better yet. Just don’t turn your back on the girls period. You can see where this is going. Dad – I figured out why those cookies were so salty – Annie fessed up.

11/17/2006

Life…

So this morning my daughters decided to make their own breakfast. For some reason they woke up way before me this morning and I told them to just go play (which is usually a bad idea but when I’m 90% asleep, I’d rather clean up the consequences than get up.) Anyway, they got themselves a box of cheerios and a container to eat their breakfast from (Annie had a bowl, Louisa’s was a cup). When I came into the kitchen they were quietly munching on their breakfasts just as happy as can be. They didn’t even make a big mess. I was so impressed. I can’t remember how old Alex was the first time he made his own breakfast, anyone else remember?
Speaking of Alex, he got in BIG trouble last night. That almost never happens. He’s such a responsible, respectful little guy. Normally a stern glance is enough to deter his misbehavior, but not last night! He refused to pick up his toys, so he got sent to bed early. Then he was yelling at me from his bed (because he was mad that Louisa got to watch his favorite movie and he wanted to come out to watch it) so I had to shut his door and lock it. Ohhhhhhhh he was mad. He read me the riot act this morning because I wouldn’t let him say “I’m sorry”. What am I gonna do with that kid.
What else. Ah yes. My cousin Teresa sent me this site: http://www.familywatchdog.us/ it’s a site where you can go and type in your address and it’ll show you a map of all the registered sex offenders in your area. Turns out there’s one between us and the park to our north. Lovely. I don’t know specifically which house it is, but I have a pretty good idea. I guess this means that my kids won’t be riding their bikes to the park by themselves any time soon.
Finally, potty training. It’s killing me. I’ve successfully trained two children, you’d think I’d have a pretty good idea what I’m doing by now. And then there was Annie. I don’t know what to do with that kid. I’ve tried all the obvious techniques and none of them are working. I’ve offered her every reward imaginable, she’s not tempted in the slightest. She throws a tantrum every time I try to just put her up there to see what happens. I’ve tried letting her wear messy diapers around for long periods of time. (Gross, I know – that’s the point). She can, and has successfully used the potty. She just doesn’t want to. I’m thinking about just taking the diapers out of the house. If there aren’t any she obviously won’t be wearing one. But then there’s the night time issue. Both girls would need a diaper at night. As soon as I got out the diapers for bed, my leverage would be gone. At this point I’m shooting for her to be trained by her 3rd bday in January. So anyone have some advice on less than obvious techniques to tempt my extremely stubborn child into using the potty?

11/14/2006

A little blah

I’m feeling a little blah today. A little unproductive. Like “wouldn’t it be fun to sit on this computer and serf the ‘net all morning” blah. But I’m running out of things to look at. So maybe I’ll just ramble on my blog for a while. I’m tired of being productive. Tired of my children. Tired of cutting paper. Just one of those days. Even the stuff that I love sounds boring or dumb.
But I’m sure you don’t really care.
So I’ll share some blogworthy kiddisms: Alex was so funny last night. After I had put the kids to bed, I’d made myself a can of freezer biscuits for supper (very nutritious, I know). Well Alex totally busted me. He came out of his room and says “hey those look good!” So Jory starts to explain to him how when he’s big he can make himself yummy not very nutritious suppers. Alex says “ok I can’t wait until I’m big, I’ll make a whole thing of biscuits and apple butter for supper and not share it! Maybe when I’m six!” Too funny. Of course I had to share a bite with him.
Louisa on the way home from church: She’s copying me! I thought I had a few more years before I was going to hear that one.
In other news, Jory is commuting to Detroit all this week for training on some new software. Yippee. The company offered to let him stay up there, but the very wise Jory decided to commute. There’s no way I could be on kid duty for an entire week strait. Love ya babe! Thanks for driving all the way back so I could maintain my sanity!
Ok, I guess I have to go get stuff done now…

11/09/2006

Filling my ears.

Random kid quotes from this morning:
Annie: “Ow! Mommy, kiss my ouchie.” Then after I kiss it “Ouch! Don’t touch it.”
Louisa: (who was sad because she’d had to give someone else a turn with her toy) “maybe jumping on the bed will make me feel better”

11/06/2006

Just some stuff…

So I was reading through some of my entries from this time last year. I like to do that every month – just to see if how life has changed in a year. I had to chuckle at myself, I was very freaked out about a class at the store that took a lot of time to prep. Like half my posts were about how I was never going to get this project finished. I’m thinking to myself – dude, I do projects of that caliber 2x a month every month. What a wimp I was. Oh and this year my children don’t nap, so my work time is half of what it was this time last year. So no more complaining about work load – ignore my last post about the master to do list. Next year the load will probably be even heavier, and I’ll chuckle about what a wimp I am now.
So my weekend was relatively unexciting. Picked up some stuff to make Christmas gifts with, I haven’t really started shopping for the kids yet. I picked out some stuff for my Dec. class at the store. I found some great reading material at the library (caution: tangent ahead) I seriously need to practice self-control when it comes to that place. I’m seriously thinking about putting myself on a library diet. I go in there to get idea books for my class projects (they have subscriptions to all the major scrapping magazines) – and come out with a huge stack of goodies, all of which seem more exciting than doing chores. Bad girl. But I found a really interesting book about the reality behind the myths of piracy (Black Beard, Long John Silver etc). Random, I know. But way more interesting than cutting paper for yet another class kit.
What else. Oh yeah, my special needs Bible study class got moved from Saturday night to Sunday morning. Which means that I’m no longer working with that group, because I’m already teaching on Sunday morning. Good for me, because it’s one less thing on my list of things to do. But really sad, because I miss working with my autistic boys. It means I’m going to have to choose between the groups when I sign up to teach next year. Kindergarten or special needs – the ability level is pretty similar. Believe it or not, it’s kinda hard to find people who will volunteer to teach these groups.

11/03/2006

Lately…

Just some general quips from my everyday life.
My children seem determined to destroy my house at any given chance. (Since when is this news? I know) Lately, they’ve been pretty good about not just making a mess for the joy of making a mess. But it seems like this week, they’ve fallen off the wagon (or the shelf in Alex’s closet if your name is Annie – don’t ask.) They’re shredding fistfuls of scrap paper every morning, and destroying Alex’s closet in the afternoon (we’re talking all the toys out of the shelf unit, the shoes, the clothes, dumping the puzzles, everything). Yesterday I actually banned them from Alex’s room. That’ll show ‘em.
Miss Annie has a new game. It’s called Squish! To play this game you grab someone around the neck (usually Mom, because the other kids don’t particularly like being squished) and you squish your cheek into the other persons, saying “squishy squishy”. It’s hard not to enjoy a game that involves getting bear hugs from your children. I tried to play with Louisa, she wasn’t impressed.
Speaking of Annie – she’s still determined not to use the toilet. We got her some disposable training pants, to see if they would help the situation. Major flop. Not only does she REFUSE to wear them, Louisa thinks they’re the coolest thing known to man. Which means my potty-trained child is now wearing diapers again. Wonderful.
It’s getting to be that time of year again. The time when I need a master to do list to organize my other to do lists. Anybody else have one of those?
The master list includes:
3 different lists of scrapping projects (store, Christmas related, family album),
Christmas prep,
Thanksgiving prep,
School,
oh and the ever popular cleaning/child care list
I feel like I need to outsource my children for 2 weeks so I can take a bite out of these lists. But no. Stinky diapers, and empty water glasses call my name.

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