I got up at 6:45 this morning to fulfill my Easter Bunny chores. Pretty early to roll out of bed on a Sunday, but what can you do? While I was outside hiding plastic, candy-filled eggs, Dashiell and Ray tiptoed to the back door to see if they could spot any evidence of EB’s work. Ray couldn’t sleep the night before because he was worried that he might not come for some reason. Sure enough, they saw me skulking around.
They apparently went to bed to discuss matters because I had no idea I’d been spotted. About a half an hour later they confronted me. “We know who the Easter Bunny is and he’s sitting on this bed,” Ray said. I gamely looked behind me to see if there happened to be a long-eared furry rodent curled up in the covers. There wasn’t. “How do you know I wasn’t just checking to see if he had come?” I asked. They weren’t fooled.
Fortunately the lads weren’t the slightest bit traumatized by their discovery. I think they’ve suspected something was up for awhile now but weren’t quite ready to give up their childhood beliefs. We had a nice long discussion in which they also deduced that Santa must not be real either. I was relieved because it had been bothering me. They are nine years old after all and I didn’t feel right about lying to them anymore. It was different when they were gullible little kids but they’re growing up so fast now and becoming more and more sophisticated. I was also getting tired of these mythical strangers getting credit for our hard work and thoughtfulness!
I made these this weekend after seeing these ones here - I liked the idea of pastel colors for easter and I just painted mine. One little family will be going on a trip and hopefully arriving at their destination before Easter. Hazel wanted to play with these so badly, today I varnished them so now she can.
We were not hit by the severe weather on Friday night - we just got a lot of rain. We had planned on going to this on Saturday and decided to wait until Sunday to go instead. We had some scary weather on Sat. afternoon and took cover in a bathroom for a short time. We came out in time to see a crazy hailstorm - biggest hail I have ever seen and it was 74 degrees out before it came down.
Most of the hailstones were spheres that had clear ice on the outside and cloudy ice in the middle, the kids called them eyeballs. But some of them were shaped more like flowers - you might be able to see in this picture. This was about 10 or 15 minutes after they fell and they had melted a bit.
The weather was beautiful today and when we drove through Atlanta we saw a lot of the storm damage. The conference was interesting, lots of people dressed up as video game and manga characters. The boys got to play a round of the new Super Smash Brothers but we spent most of the time in the retro gaming room.
I was joking, “What year is it anyway?” today as I traded a few dozen eggs for some rennet (vegetarian, if you care) for making cheese at home.*
Then later we stopped at the feed store to get chicks. We got 4 Speckled Sussex pullets - that means females, at least in theory. The rooster we have now was purchased as a pullet.
I really don’t think there are many things in the world that are cuter than chicks, especially just hatched. When I hold them I always think about how they weigh exactly the same as an egg, and except for the fluff they aren’t much bigger.
Hazel loves chicks too - as soon as she opened her eyes this morning she said, “Baby chicks!” In this picture she is sitting in her “cage” telling me everything they are doing.
And here is an attempted closeup of Hazel holding one.
*Friday I went to a friend’s house and 5 of us experimented with making mozzarella. It was so much easier than I’d imagined it would be. Most of us there had read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver which sparked the idea.
I’ve made enough changes to this to call it my own now.
It has very little flour in it so I wanted to put it here for the gluten-free folks I know, I think it will work with oat flour or whatever substitution you want to try.
1 cup sugar
1 cup b. sugar (I use 2 cups turbinado sugar instead of the two kinds)
1 cup butter
1/2-3/4 cup natural peanut butter
2 eggs
3 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup whole wheat flour (or oat flour)
1 tsp. b. powder
1 tsp. b. soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups any combination of peanut butter chips and/or chocolate chips
Mix sugar, butter, and peanut butter until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. and continue to mix until the color of the dough lightens considerably. Add remaining ingredients. Bake at 350 for 13-15 minutes on parchment paper.
The boys started biting their nails a few years ago. I know it’s not the end of the world and that someday I’ll probably wish that nail-biting was their worst habit, but it really bothered me. I’ve tried a lot of different things to get them to stop but nothing worked, until sometime in January I said, “If I can cut your nails for one month I’ll buy you a DS.” Although I was hoping it would work, I never expected that they would immediately cease and desist all nail biting completely. I’m talking cold turkey. When I made the offer I was thinking that I’d probably be buying a DS in July, but by February the nails that had been chewed down to nearly nothing were ready to cut, and I cut them weekly through the month. All day yesterday they kept saying, “It’s DS Day tomorrow!” So this morning we went out to fulfill my part of the deal. We were able to get the newest color, cobalt blue, and they had gift cards from xmas, so they bought a couple games (New Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass) also.
Good job guys! And Happy DS Day!
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