Scam

In preparation for a church event I made 8 dozen mini cupcakes, which really is only 2 cake mixes. As I was putting the first batch in the oven I, in horror, realized that I did NOT ADD ANY EGGS!
Holy cow. I almost threw them out but decided to just bake them and see what happened. It wasn't like was going to waste the ingredients any more by baking them, right? Guess what happened?


Nothing really. It appears that you do NOT actually need eggs when making a boxed cake mix. I had heard this rumor before and am now confirming it. The texture was a little different...I was using a super moist mix and it turned out more 'regular' moist. I even got compliments and requests for the recipe...ummm...buy a cake mix, mix it improperly, top with frosting and serve.Giant scam.

Babysitter

We took a leap Saturday night and let Tyler babysit everyone during dinner and bedtime. We've allowed him to babysit during the day a lot and in the evening a few times...but we either took some youngsters with us or timed our dates to avoid bedtime (going out REALLY early or REALLY late). Saturday night we had a church meeting to attend so we just went with it. Pizza and a movie were on the schedule so it wasn't exactly a difficult dinner...and we made sure everyone was in their jammies before we left. Really all he had to do was push 'play', throw away the pizza boxes, and tuck them all in their beds. When we walked in the door the middle three were in their beds-sound asleep-and the bookends were like this.

Tyler just looked up at me and said, "Wow Mom, this is hard". The next morning he unloaded the dishwasher for me without being asked...

September and October

Okay, so I've been a very poor blogger lately and I'm pretty sure nobody reads this anymore BUT I'll go ahead and post a couple of shutterfly albums to keep people up to date. I'd vow to do better in the future but let's be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with technology and I'm just not sure when I'll cycle through to 'love' my blog again. Even though I catch myself thinking in blog posts sometimes...you know...an event happens and you immediately compose a witty paragraph to describe it to your multitude of 'followers'. Seriously, the weather is finally nice enough to enjoy the park that is one street over from our house...I will be on the computer even less than I have been...which is pretty much never. Enjoy the pics...some of them are really random, respond to my blog and I'll explain them. ;-)

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Seriously?

We've had the weirdest dental month...I'll fill you in later. (My first mistake was scheduling cleanings for the week BEFORE Halloween...genius at its peak). My main question of the day is this: How much does the tooth fairy pay if the lost tooth has a bracket on it? Does she pay more for the scrap metal? Yes, we had to make an emergency trip to the orthodontist so the dangling tooth could be cut loose from the line...lovely.

First Day of School!

I will pretend that this guy,
is the reason I took so long to post first day of school pics...not that I've been too lazy to get it done.

Today my Aaron started preschool. He's SO. EXCITED. His backpack has been packed for several days and he has been packing lunches for 2 weeks straight. He faithfully gets up with the big kids, packs a lunch, sends them off to school, and eats his "lunch" around 9:00...he just can't wait any longer than that! A few friends from church have joined forces to do a home preschool with each Momma being the teacher for 2 weeks at a time. He was dressed and ready to go to Jack's house at 7:20 a.m. which is good because school starts at 9:30 and we didn't want to be late.
Can you tell how sad she is to be home all alone with just Mom? Rough life for this one.

Kyle is loving the 2nd grade so far. The new school was a bit of an adjustment the first day but he seems to be making friends and fitting in just fine. He misses some things about the old school but likes some things at the new school better...all in all he's doing great!

Miss K LOVES 4th grade. She has had no trouble at all with the transition and pops out of bed ready to go every morning. If she could change one thing about the new school it would be to have more days of art and music and less days of P.E.--ask her Daddy how he feels about that.

Here they are together on Day #1 of a new adventure. I was all set and ready to go take them to the school. AND THEY TOTALLY DIDN'T WANT ME TO! They insisted on riding the bus the first day!!! I took them to meet the teacher the week before school started and they figured that was good enough. It's not like they are kindergarten babies and need someone to walk them in, Geez Mom. When did they grow up?

Speaking of growing up...

Starting middle school is tough enough but when your parents up and move the family 5 whole miles down the road it pretty much ruins your entire life. Good thing this boy is resiliant. Here's Mr T ready to tackle intermediate school. Big time 6th grader. The move has been hardest on him, he really misses his friends from the other school and is taking longer to adjust but I think he's starting to warm up to the idea that we live here and we're not moving back. The good news is we have some church friends in the neighborhood so at least he knew a few people before school started. The first day was rough...they didn't give him P.E.!!! That would have been AWESOME for his sister, but was devastating for him. I got it fixed and he's much happier. He's getting involved in some groups at school and finding his niche. He's really looking forward to 7th grade when he can compete in sports but all in all is doing great. We love you T-Hop!

Disposable?

Certain things are okay to purchase at Wal-Mart...diapers, graham crackers, paper towels, etc. Certain things are, generally speaking, not okay to purchase at Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure pets fall into the later category. We live on the edge. For $0.28 each we went crazy and bought one for each kid. The 'pet' guy at Wal-Mart accidentally gave us 6...I pointed out his mistake but he was too lazy to either remove one fish from the bag and/or rewrite the sales ticket so we scored a free fish (SWEET). Meet 'Popcorn', 'Captain Crunch', 'Nemo', 'Fred', 'Seafood', and 'Little Mikey'. I am also aware that 6 fish is too many for that little bowl, thank you for your concern. I am simply taking bets on how long until all 6 are floaters.

Palm Beach

So we decided to take advantage of another 'nothing going on day' and use our free coupons for Moody Gardens 'Palm Beach' area. FUN! They recently remodeled so there was more to do than we remembered. We didn't get a lot of pictures of the really fun stuff because I didn't want my camera to get wet, but it was a blast! They have added a 'lazy river', some water slides, and a wave pool since our last visit. Kyle was disappointed that the 'good' water slides required you to be 48 inches tall...he's almost there so it was very sad. He managed to have a great time on the 'baby' water slides and loved the wave pool. I have very few photos of Katherine because she spent almost the whole time on the big slide. Again, we got up and moving and beat the day care crowd to the park. We enjoyed over 2 hours of fun in the sun and then we finished off the day with a picnic next to one of their playgrounds. I consider this by far the best free day we've had yet! Woohoo!!!