{SQT}The Closest I’ll Get To Winning On A Game Show
From the depths of the Garden State, it’s Seven Quick Takes!
It’s just as you suspected; now that we’ve got a sweet new ride I’m spending all my free time driving around the block slowly with my windows down, seat laid back and Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’ blasting from the stereo. Don’t worry the kids keep their fingers in their ears the whole time.
1. With a few replacement parts and a hammer, I managed to resurrect our swimming pool…just in time for a huge thunderstorm to pick it up and blow it into an anamorphic shape and fill it with enough water to make it too heavy to move. And it’s been raining again all day here. I’m torn between attempting to drain the pool and move it back to its rightful spot, or just let the kids wallow in the murky shallow goodness right where it is.
2. My uncle was on Wheel of Fortune Wednesday night and won $47,102! He solved the final puzzle and everything! Seriously! I took a quick road trip with four of the kids to Lancaster to watch the show with family. It was great to catch up with all branches of the tree and watch my uncle snuggle up close to Vanna.
3. Less than stellar was that part where I took a road trip with four of the kids by myself. Addie had to stay behind at Nonna’s for play practice (chip off the old block) and Tony couldn’t take off from work. My maiden voyage in the new van without my Captain and First Mate! (I’m usually only the Navigator in these situations.) Every time i plan a trip like this without him, I know that Tony knows I’m going to be a wreck when I get home, but he still lets me go and get all worn out and cranky anyway because keeping me home would only make things worse. So, at a party full of strange people who kept trying to hold and squeeze and talk only inches from their faces, Teddy and Fulton were pretty much inseparable from me. And in these circumstances I just try to be all happy mom, like, I totally can handle this and am not overwhelmed by my children’s needs. Meanwhile, I get back to Jersey less than 24 hours later cursing like a sailor and wondering why can’t I get roadies to help with these things??? And for heaven’s sake stop touching me everyone!!! Why must there be so many needs to be met?!?
4. However staying with my parents did yield the find of the century when I discovered my old Garfield sleeping bag, or ‘nap attack sack’. Sure it was dirty and Tony said he was “getting a bacterial infection just looking at it” but when I ran it through the wash, no mouse bones fell out so it’s all good! I don’t want to write too much, because all that orange goodness is going to require a full post down the road…like after I try to get away with laying it out on our bed.
5. Who can think about cooking after traveling solo with four kids? Not me. That’s why Thursday’s dinner was pizza, but strangely, I did muster enough energy to bake four ingredient gluten-free peanut butter cookies! What, what!
The low down:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
Mix all. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Chocolate chips, Hershey’s kiss, peanut butter cups, etc. are optional but highly recommended. Dark chocolate is very highly recommended.
6. Social media is such a fickle mistress. You start sharing things with it such as, you like bacon or Jagermeister or obstacle courses, and next thing you know, people you haven’t seen in 10 years start posting crazy bacon photos on your wall. You might also get asked to set up an obstacle course and run timed trials for your daughter’s scouting group, cause, you know, after blogging about it and sharing it on Facebook, you’re like an expert now. Even Google knows it; they keep showing me ads for Warrior Dash, various mud runs and the like. Let me tell you, it’s going to be all kinds of awesome when more than a dozen of my daughter’s closest friends get to watch me do a demonstration run of my setup tomorrow. That’s going to be some tween mortification you can take to the bank for the next nine years or so.
7. Gotta wrap it up by asking for some prayers for Dweej. I’m sure most of you are keeping up with her pregnancy, but just in case, please send a few more, okay a lot, of prayers her way.
Now go buy a vowel or bake some cookies, your choice. And spin the wheel back to Jen’s for more _ _ I C_ _A_ _ S.
Love these SQTs (yours will never be 7QTs in my eyes!) Your van really sounds wonderful, even if it did take you on a somewhat stressful (but also somewhat wonderful) road trip.
Yum for PB cookies! I made some easy sweet treats myself this week which involved chocolate chips, cocoa powder, peanut butter + coconut – the recipe was from food52 and they were kind of like truffle balls, no baking required. The theory was that I would dole them out over the course of weeks, keeping the extras frozen. The reality? Gone in 3 days flat.
Those cookies sound great!
My lasted less than 24 hours, while I’d like to say it’s because I shared them….I didn’t.
Kelly, I love you. Will you teach me how to be as awesome as you?
Tony says comments like this are making my head big. Obviously, I still have much work to do on him before I can help you.
Your road trip sounds hectic but well done you for making it. You did well to keep a handle on it 🙂 Looking forward to hearing about the ‘nap attack sack’ – it sounds amazing. Hope you manage to chill out this weekend and find some space and time to rest.
I’m kinda jealous of your uncle. I ROCK at the Wheel. I think I would totally freak out and freeze if I were on in real life, though. Did you know my husband was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? True story. (Answer: Apparently not him. We are not now millionaires.)
I look forward to your tutorial on how to preserve a childhood sleeping bag. Mod Podge, baby!
Fake it ’til you make it, woman. Keep road trippin’ and before you know it, you’ll BE relaxed and all that…..or the kids will be grown up enough that it will be “easier”.
How cool for your Uncle!!!
Those cookies sound AWESOME!!!!
Have a great weekend and get a nap in that sleeping bag!!
Funny, I was just about to make the same cookies (with semi-sweet chocolate chips). And here’s something I found out – you can make GF cookies using masa (corn flour) instead of wheat flour. Masa is NOT the same as cornMEAL, but any store that carries Mexican items probably has masa. The most common brand is called Maseca. It has transformed my (cooking life to realize that I can use masa whenever recipes call for flour (except for recipes with yeast).
I will have to try that out, especially if Masa is cheaper than the GF baking mix I’ve been buying.
It should be, even in the States. It’s dirt cheap down here, because it is THE primary food ingredient of almost every meal. And since it’s corn and not almonds or something else less abundant, that’s in favor of a lower price too.
Oh, and if you want any hints or recipes, email me at bajamanna [at] gmail.
Holy cow, the whole family went to a family reunion one and a half hours away today and by the time we were on our way home I just. didn’t. want. any. of the kids to talk to me. For the love of all that’s holy, please just leave me alone! And I barely had to interact with them at the reunion because of aunts/grandparents/cousins.