Dichotomy

 This just so neatly illustrates the difference in my children's personalities.

And another one bites the dust.

Pumpkin down, pumpkin down!

Ewwww.

P.S.  - I meant to post this a week ago, when I took the picture. Sorry.

What's in a name

So one of my little boys gets on the bus today, looks up at me and says:
"It's not Timothy* anymore, it's just Flash. Flash the kid."
'Nuff said.


*Names changed to protect the innocent, of course.

Oh my, apple pie.

Whew! I am officially worn out.

The kids and I went over to my mom's house at around 10:30 this morning, and we just got home at around 5:45. No, we didn't spend all of the day actively working on the pies, but it did take most of the day. We stopped for lunch and we also ended up going to this really neat little folk art fair on the spur of the moment with some friends of my parents. I'll post about that later.

Back to the pie.

First of all this is my absolute favorite apple pie recipe. Ever. I got the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible, and it is amazing. What makes the flavor of the pie so incredible is that you slice and mix your apples with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, nutmeg, and salt and let them macerate on the counter at room temperature for three hours. This allows the juices to gather in the bottom of the bowl. Now here comes the really wicked part. You strain out all of this juice and boil on the stove with butter to make this syrupy, carmely, deliciousness which keeps the pie from being too wet really concentrates the apple flavor that you get in the pie. Yum.

Here's aaaaaallll of the stuff that I schlepped over to my mom's house.

 

These are my mom's counters, not mine, aren't they nice? Unfortunately you saw mine a couple of posts ago, sorry about that.

Here's all of our apples including my moms. Hmmm, It looks like I underestimated the amount of apples that we had. I think we lost some to attrition and, um, eating.... Mostly eating....

 Apple slicing in progress:

Here's what the apples were mixed in: granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and salt. Yummy.

 Lots and lots of pie crust.

And, here's the finished product. Tada!

Aren't they pretty? I think they turned out really well, I can't wait to taste them. Oh, we also made a quick little tart with some of the leftover pastry and apple mixture, but I forgot to take a picture of it. We threw it in the oven at my mom's house, but it wasn't quite ready when the kids and I left. Before I even got in the door at home, my phone rings.

It was my mom telling me how awesome it turned out and that I probably wouldn't be getting my half of it. 

Gotta love the classics.

In case you're new to this blog (Hi!) or haven't read some of my older posts, I work at a school (which I love, most of the time) and I also have to drive a school bus (which I don't love, most of the time).

This however, is one of those times that I did love driving the bus.

I was down to my last stop and had three boys who were still on, so it was fairly quiet (which is extremely unusual for the bus) when all of a sudden one of my little guys who is in first grade belts out with:

" Take me down to the paradise city
   where the grass is green 
   and the girls are pretty
   Oh won't you please take me hoooome!"

I'm tellin' you he did Axl Rose proud.

Spider!!!

This is what I almost ran into when I went to take the trash out the other night.

I know, I know, the picture is blurry. I really wish that I had gotten a good shot of the thing, it was huge.

The dang thing had strung a web from the edge of our gutter to a tiki torch on the other side of our patio. It must have been ten feet long.

The web, not the spider.

The spider itself was nothing to shake a stick at either though. If I had to guess, I would have to say that the body was about the size of a quarter. Shudder.

It's supposed to be red!

The other night I woke Sarah up to make her use the bathroom when I tucked Alex in. We've been having some, ahem, issues at night this last week.

Nothing serious, probably just her drinking too soon before bed, but I was very tired of stripping a soaking wet child (which I'm sure she was sick of) and bed in the middle of the night and washing all of her bedding, so I thought that I'd hedge my bets by making her get up and use the potty.

Well, when I picked her up out of bed she was apparently dreaming. Really hard.

Sarah: Red!
Me (very startled): What?
Sarah: It's red!
Me: What's red?
Sarah: It's supposed to be red!
Me: What's supposed to be red?
Sarah: It's supposed to be red!!!

At this point I gave up, she was very adamant that whatever it was was supposed to be red. Alex and I both started cracking up, and Sarah used the potty and went back to bed without a peep.

... And She Creeps

Last night Sarah and I were alone because Alex was spending the night at a friends house, and we always make these our 'girl's night.' It's nothing huge, but we hang out, cook, paint our nails, watch a movie Alex wouldn't be caught dead watching, things like that.

We usually have a really good time and enjoy being girly.

Well, I told Sarah to go get ready for bed while I finished some things up, and while I was walking towards her room to tuck her in I noticed that the lights were out.

Perfect. I could play 'And she creeps' with her.

This was a game that my mom used to play with me at bedtime when I was little that always involved lots of squealing and giggling. You hide under the covers while mom slowly creeps towards you saying, "Here she comes... and she turns... and she creeps... and she creeps..." walking as quietly as she can towards the bed until she pounces on you and tickles you. Tons of fun. 

So here I am playing the game and creeping into Sarah's room and she's giggling up a storm, when all of a sudden: 'gigglegiggle fart giggle fartfart giggle', and then of course I started cracking up...

It was priceless. 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Guess what? I just made homemade laundry detergent!
And here it is at home between the toolbox and the toilet paper:

Now this could either work out really well, or it could be a total fiasco, dunno, haven't washed any clothes with it yet, but I will let you know what happens when I do. It's a very simple recipe that uses Borax, Arm & Hammer washing soda, and one bar of soap.

I first came across the basic recipe/idea when I was researching cloth diapers for Sarah and was trying to decide what detergent to wash them in. I've always wanted to try making it, but I couldn't find washing soda anywhere in California, and I wasn't about to buy it online figuring that that would kind of put the kabosh on the money saving aspect of it. Luckily, we're able to get it here in North Carolina, woo hoo!

So anywho, I ran out of detergent today and remembered that old recipe. I actually found another recipe here that I went ahead and tried. I liked this one because it used up the whole box of the ingredients instead of mixing up a bit at a time. For my soap I used lavendar scented Dr. Bronner's castille soap and my detergent smells scrumptious, I can't wait to use it!

*Update* Well, I threw our kitchen towels in the wash to try out the new detergent (they were dirty, c'mon, I'm not that bad) and nothing's blown up yet. They're in the dryer right now and I'll update the update when they're done.

*Update on the Update* The towels came out beautiful! Well, as beautiful as beat-up kitchen towels can be anyways. The detergent worked great, the towels we so soft and clean smelling. I love it!

Oops

... and I just set off the fire alarm making lunch for the kids.

Yes folks, we are back in business.

Woohoo!

I am now officially online y'all!

I finally bit the bullet, broke down and got internet. It's scary that it has become such a necessity, geez. I mean I felt so isolated without it, isn't that sad?

So anyways, I'm back. Yay.

Dirty Business

I changed the oil in my car today.

Yay me.

It was really, really easy. I honestly thought that it would be a lot more difficult. The only sticky wicket I had was trying to get the oil filter out. It was in a really awkward place, but I got it eventually. I'm ridiculously proud of myself, and I feel just a little more self-sufficient than I was before.

The only part of the whole process that really bothered me was the possibility of the car falling on me. Shudder. 

Does that make me weird?


Don't answer that.

No Water

Let's play a game.

It's called, 'What's wrong with this picture?'

Oooh, oooh, I know! There's no water!

Yup, this is what we woke up to this morning. A water outage. Is that what you call it? Well, it's what I'm going to call it.

Oh wait, progress! (This was a couple hours later.)

Houston, we have lift off!

Thank goodness. Just when I had resigned myself to no shower and fuzzy teeth all day... Shudder.

The water pressure's still not 100%, but hey, I'm not gonna complain.