HE Can Keep a Secret

Jack admitted to me this morning that he had stolen Ben’s new ball from him while he was at school.

But it was okay, he said, “because Ben’s at school, so he’ll never know.”

“True,” I said, “But you know, and I know, and God knows that you took the ball…”  (A little guilt and self-awareness never hurt anybody.)

Unfortunately, Jack didn’t get quite where I was going with this, as he quickly responded, “That’s okay, mom!  God won’t tell Ben!”

Cherry Crest Farm

This weekend we visited Cherry Crest Farm in Ronks, PA.

This rustic farm straddles the Strasburg Railroad, therefore we were treated to some roaring, tooting train-tertainment every 15 minutes or so!

Everyone’s favorite was the hay maze.  The kids crawled through this solid hay-bale structure, occasionally peeking their heads out of “skylights”.  Here are Maddie and Jack at the exit.

                          

Another favorite was the Mountain Slide.  The payoff must have been terrific, because the kids trudged up this very steep hill at least ten times so they could zoom to the bottom!

                       

Ben’s favorite activity was the Gem Mining.  He found three pieces of (fool’s) gold, and now considers himself a very rich man.  He generously offered to treat everyone to gumballs at the gumball machine to celebrate his good fortune.

Maddie and Jack preferred the baby peeps.  These sweet fuzzy things were good sports, let me tell you.  They must have had some loopy peep nightmares every night after spending their waking hours with hordes of peep-crazed children.

Our final stop was to the Pumpkin Patch for pictures.  Everyone was hyper-vigilant, hoping to be the one to spot The Great Pumpkin.  We never did see him, but mom got some good smiles for the camera!

                

Wolfe Droppings

There's a magical place in my house!

And when I say "magical", I mean "disgusting proliferation of muck".

The most popular place in my house is the breakfast bar. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks are eaten there, homework is done there, pictures are drawn and painted there, play-doh and moon sand are strewn about from there, Lego creations are developed and abandoned there, and board games are played there. When the kids sit there, they tend to drop their shoes off their feet and leave them there. Right now there is one flip-flop, two small tupperwares, an eyeball ring, and a water shooter from the pool under there. And countless crumbs. Hmm, and a few dried macaroni.

The amazing thing, the thing that makes it such a magical place, is that this area gets cleaned at least once a day! Sometimes more (if I know someone is coming over).

Now, the tupperwares, shoes, etc. all appear because of careless children and a mom who is not vigilant enough to notice when it happens. The crumbs are from messy eaters (mostly Jack!), the craft debris is usually from Maddie, the Legos are usually from Ben. And don't get me started on Moon Sand and Play-Doh! AAAAGGGHHH!

So here is a picture of this wondrous area, about to be cleaned for the first time today. And if you ever visit me unexpectedly, please do me a favor and avert your eyes.

Camp Girlfriend

On Friday my good friends Carol, Ellie, Laura and I left for our first (and hopefully annual) Camp Girlfriend weekend!

The three and a half hour drive to Bethany Beach passed quickly with all the talking. Never has a car ride been so enjoyable! And we were not interrupted even once with "Are we there yet?" type questions, requests for snacks, or fist fights.


We actually didn't even make it to the beach house until about 7:30 that evening even though we left Palmyra around 9:30 a.m. The happy reason for this? Outlets! Here is a picture of my new purse (marked down 50%, then 50% more, then 25% more!) I love it.


When we arrived at the beach house we dumped our purchases, pulled out our liquid supplies and kicked up our feet. You can see in the picture that we may have overestimated our supplies, but at least we wouldn't run dry!

We couldn't relax for long, as we were headed to Ocean City, MD to Seacrets, a restaurant/nightclub that had been recommended to us. We had been warned that it was Biker Weekend at Ocean City, and OH WAS IT EVER. We pulled into Seacrets massive parking lot, and we were surrounded by hundreds of Harleys and about twelve sports cars. We parked our Honda Odyssey, slid the doors open, and hurried to separate ourselves from our extremely obvious Symbol of Uncool.

To get into Seacrets, we actually had to wait in line (feeling every inch our lack of tattoos and leather), walk through a metal detector, and finally make our way inside in about 2 inches of sand. The entire place is covered in sand. My lovely new (outlet!) shoes took a beating. Anyway, we were starving by then so we headed to the restaurant area, ate, and chatted for hours. Finally, we took a little tour around Seacrets, found a corner with very few scary looking people and danced! We may be old, but we can still shake our groove thing. Actually, our groove things all shook just a little bit more than they did twenty years ago...

The next day we headed to the beach, had a great Mexican lunch, more shopping (I didn't buy anything this time, Dave, honest!), and a walk on the beach. It was a little too chilly to go in the water, but we enjoyed our walk, especially past the wedding that was being held on the beach. We all decided our next weddings would be beach weddings. (Kidding, honey!)

Unfortunately, after dinner that evening, I had to leave a little early, as Dave was in Germany, and I hated to ask Grandma to give up her whole weekend to babysit the kids. As I drove out of sight, I couldn't help but think how Ellie, Carol, and Laura would wrap up Camp Girlfriend. Here's what I think may have happened:
Carol meets a biker who is a dead ringer for Twilight's Edward. She hops onto the back of his Harley, wraps her arms around his steely abs, and roars around Bethany as the sun sets.

Ellie crashes the beach wedding reception, toasts the happy couple, then befriends and takes the bridesmaids out for some more outlet shopping!

Laura finds a tattoo shop, picks out a tattoo of a minivan with flames painted on its side, and heads back to Seacrets to show all her new biker friends her awesome new artwork.

Well, however it ended, it was an unforgettable weekend. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go." The destination wasn't important (well, except maybe for those outlets), just the fact that we went, and we went with friends we love and had a nice little breather from real life.

Banana Muffins

Back in July I posted my recipe for Zucchini Bread. It really is a great recipe using sour cream that I got from Taste of Home magazine. Whenever I made any other zucchini bread (and I tried lots of recipes) the inside would take so long to bake that the outside would be dark brown and dry. Yuck. This one always bakes perfectly.

Anyway, on Monday a friend gave me a bunch of extremely ripe bananas (so brown and soft, they were almost hairy). She knew she wouldn't have time to use them, so I said I'd take them. I decided to use my Zucchini Bread recipe and substitute four or five ripe bananas for zucchini. I also lowered the sugar amount from two cups to one and a half, figuring the bananas are way sweeter than zucchini, and I probably could have gone down another quarter cup.

I made them into mini muffins and the recipe made A LOT, somewhere between 4 and 5 dozen.

That was yesterday afternoon, and there's only about a dozen and a half left.

Oh yeah, a big hit here.

The kids had them as an after school snack, dessert after supper, and a bedtime snack, for breakfast this morning, and I put them in lunch boxes today. And who knows how many Dave and I snacked on in between. They really were delicious, and so moist.

Give them a try next time you find yourself with a bunch of almost hairy bananas!
(You can click on the Zucchini Bread link above to be taken to my recipe).

Indiana Jack and the Grocery Store Adventure

This afternoon, Jack went with me to the grocery store.

When we got out of the car, he tried to climb up the rails where carts get parked. Then he jumped across the parking lot and into the store... through the exit door, which he timed very well considering it was an automatic-open-from-the-other-side door.

He immediately asked if he'd be getting the free cheese and free cookie they give out (no--too close to dinner time).

He burned his finger on the rotisserie chicken display.

He touched everything as he walked along. He tried to chip off ice from the inside of the refrigerated section for a little snack.

He jumped on the end of the cart and rode across the store to the cracker aisle. He BEGGED for pretzel chips. He BEGGED for Goldfish crackers. He BEGGED for frosted animal crackers. We got Wheat Thins. He's okay with Wheat Thins, but was not thrilled with the decision.

We headed for check-out.

While waiting in line, he fell off the end of the grocery cart then proceeded to rearrange the candy display (and BEGGED for Swedish Fish, peanut butter cups, and Bubble Yum). He climbed the ledge at the window and fell off. He pushed the buttons on the credit card machine and pulled open the little tray under the conveyor belt that catches the dirt (it looks like an ash tray, and I've gone 41 years without noticing this thing until Mr. Nosy found it). Then he climbed on the end of the cart again, head-butted the 12 pack of toilet paper 10 times, and BEGGED for quarters for the gumball machine (NO!).

He tried every gumball machine, hoping for a forgotten gumball, then he swung himself under the railing on the way out the door. He sniffed the chrysanthemums that were for sale outside of the store, then skipped across the parking lot, flung himself into the van through the rear door, and boosted himself over the rear seat.

And then he buckled himself in.

Good News

We received a terrific letter yesterday related to a recent doctor appointment for Maddie's jaw.

To back up a little, in May, 2006, my Maddie leaned against her bedroom window screen and fell from the second floor to the driveway below, miraculously breaking only her jaw. She had jaw surgery performed by a man who's become a true hero of ours, Dr. Donald Mackay, and she's been seeing him yearly along with a team of doctors including orthodontists, prosthodontists, and dentists to watch her growth. At her December '08 visit, he thought he saw something that concerned him on the x-ray our regular dentist took, and he asked us to come back in the summer, with Maddie having a CT-scan before the visit.

At that appointment he talked about a lot of things, but I left remembering only that she may need more surgery, perhaps borrowing bone from her hip to put into her jaw. Dave remembers a lot more, and thought I was dwelling on the negative, but since I am a person who dwells on the negative, that's what I came away with, and I was dreading this appointment.

However, the CT-scan showed excellent growth. It showed that her jaw had deviated from its correct position by only a few degrees, and that there were living cells and blood in the patched-up area of the jaw (he was concerned that there weren't in December).

And he told us at the appointment, and again more formally in the letter we received, "At this time we recommend Madeline be dismissed from team evaluations."

Oh, sweet music to my ears!

There may be bumps ahead in the road, but she's passed a major roadblock, and now she's zooming happily toward braces (she's soooo excited for those) which have only to do with crooked and crowded teeth...not with a broken jaw.

I just can't express my happiness. We are so lucky.