Egg Alternatives for Easter

 I know the high price of eggs is ridiculous but I did notice that the price IS coming down just a smidge.

But if you're still egg price shy when Easter rolls around, consider this.

and for those who DO love chocolate, specifically homemade Cadbury eggs!...

Click for the link HERE.

I've already had my Cadbury egg for March anyway.  Thank GOODNESS April is right around the corner!  But I should probably drop that niggling 5 (shh! 15) pounds before I make these.

I've got the recipe saved for a future reward for weight loss!

Everyone needs incentive, right?

And finally, because... why the heck not?  MARSHMALLOWS!

Getting the grass off them might be a trick.

A Girl's Best Friend

 We came across some beads that Meri had used for Maddy's bachelorette party several years ago. 

Aggie is adoring them!!!  

We make them into earrings.

And she can put them on and take them off all by herself.  Of course we have to untangle them before the next bead party.

And not to worry!  We watch her closely when she's using them.

And then there's the button box!  She likes to pretend they're sand and she's getting buried in them.

Thanks Maddy... :)

So buttons is one of her favorite things to do too.

Dumping them out and picking them up again.

At least she's a TIDY girl!

Caving for the kid

 The St. Patrick's Day feast was a lot smaller this year as the kids didn't want me to have too many leftovers.  But in the process, we didn't have enough leftovers to send to my bestie and her husband, so I've got another corned beef in the IP today and they're getting some shepherds pie that I'd frozen and maybe a fresh loaf of bread.  Ada will get to go home and enjoy it with her husband this weekend. :)

It's spring break this week for the boy!!  So he and I made a trip to Hannibal, MO to visit the Mark Twain caves.  A 4 hour drive, a 4 hour drive...  He was awake until 4am that night, because he can... and then slept most of the way there and back.  To keep me awake, I listened to talk radio and ate almost a half box of mini Reeses puffs cereal.

I won't even tell you how many little bits of it I pulled out of my collar at each rest area we stopped at.

AND he and I should probably never have seen that caving slasher movie a few months back.  I was the last in the line of people on the tour with pure darkness behind us and no lights in the cave except our souvenir flashlights.  I kept turning around to flash it behind us, freaking myself out even more.

Eventually someone with a small child ended up at the rear and I figured if they screamed, it'd be a good warning for me to run. or at least be a slasher buffer.

We got to the grounds JUST as they were loading up for the tour, so there was JUST enough time to use the restrooms and get in on the tour we wanted!  Two more minutes and we'd have to twiddle our thumbs for 1.5 hours until the next tour.

The Cameron cave was beautiful!  I didn't want to spend another $60 for the actual Mark Twain cave, because Leon is now 13...  If he was only 12 still.  sigh. and knew how to lie about his age... sigh.

Besides, he didn't even know who Mark Twain was, much less Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn or Jesse James.

I'm nothing if not a money saver!!!

There was a small tunnel that joined to another passageway and the kids or anyone who wanted to got to crawl through with the guide bringing them back around.  Leon wanted to do it and tried to talk me into it too. 

Um nope - I'm very protective of my knees.  I want to hang onto them long enough to have Medicare pay for bionic ones.

We got back to the gift shop and Leon chose a geode to crack.  Yeah, his shirt and hair are messy, but oh well.  He had just woken up. and no hairbrush in the car. and climbed through a tunnel.

So anyway, MAKING MEMORIES!

We got DQ blizzards for the drive home and he slept 3 hours after he was done eating.

Yay!  More cereal and talk radio for me!!!

Beauty & the Barbie

Because of the additional kids in February, I brought in my girls old Barbie house from the garage.  While they DID play Barbies with it, Aggie liked to "pretend" nap in it mostly.  Check out her little green book pillow that I made her for Christmas! :)  According to her mom, she knows that it's hers.

Here is the house sans kids.  My kids told me that they'd had an obstacle course where you had to shimmy through the Barbie door.  Wow, they must have been little things!

I have a huge box or three of Barbie and her entourage & paraphernalia.  For Maddy's 6th birthday, she'd invited all the girls in her class and had a Barbie, Makeup, Sleepover party.  Every single girl brought a Barbie for her.  She had a stash of them!

 So after we got back to just the two grandkids in March, Jen sorted them out and pulled out just a few Barbies and some furniture for Aggie to play with.  The house is now a permanent (for now) fixture of the livingroom.  She also combed out all their hair but it was still really frizzy on 99.9% of them.

I had read once that you can boil water and fix them so I looked it up and found how.

Easy peasy!

Comb first, check.  Pour boiling water into a shallow bowl and dip their hair in!

Then comb out again.

Now all she needs is a quick trim and she's golden!!

This particular one may have had a pony tail when we got her. oh well. HAIR CUT TIME!

We might have to do this for a few more Barbies.

AND now Aggie loves her dad's old Belle toy more than Barbie anyway.

Silly kids...

Not Your Grandma's!

 Maddy invited me to join her on Tuesday for a paint by number event.  She'd had a PBN done of their two pups from a photo and it was amazing! 

 All in pencil!  It really made me wonder how they did that!

She took a set of paints and I did took a different one and off we went!

Anyway, we had a ball, drinking our ciders (slightly alcoholic...  I had the honey crisp one) and painting away.  Matthew joined us after a while but didn't jump in with a paint brush.

I think it turned out super!  

I had supper with them and then hightailed it home. 

 It's not your grandma's paint by number!!

Weekend Adventures

 It was a quiet weekend!  I am planning a cruise in 2026!!!  with a sister or two around Italy!  With lots of stops and excursions.  So a lot of planning/plotting happened this weekend and phone calls.

And to get myself in the cruise mood, I watched The Poseidon Adventure AND Beyond the Poseidon yesterday afternoon.

Another sister contacted me that she and her daughter were going to be in Des Moines for the girls basketball tournament on Saturday and would I like to join them for lunch and a little shopping. Um yeah!!!  

My household size has changed yet again and I suddenly found that I had time and energy to go out and do things without leaving people in a lurch.  I met them at the Jordan Creek Mall and after some shopping, enjoyed a lunch at Zombie Burger.

Check out the crazy clothes we found!

NO hems on the jeans.  Why do I bother with hem tape?!

lol!  And no we didn't buy anything here.  Everything was super expensive.

And patches with no finished edges.  They would NEVER pass as fair quality!!

But hanging with a sister is pretty awesome no matter what.

I also stopped in to see my mother-in-law while in the area and we did a little shopping too.

When I got back, Ryan and Jen wanted to go take in a movie, so Aggie and I were on our own that evening.  Leon and Meri had gone for a sleepover at Maddy's.  Hanging with Aggie was a lot of fun and after I snuggled with her until she fell asleep, I fell asleep next to her for a couple hours. Woke up in time to go to bed.  Oh I needed it!

It's GUUUURRRRREAT!!!!

 Another kid sick today.  Turns out it's hand, foot and mouth and it's going around.  

MY house apparently.

So I had a visitor in my room last night from 10:30 on with a high temp and wanting to talk about all their bad dreams.  It's been a rough night culminating into having Spongebob on my bedroom tv at 4am so I could at least get another hour or two of sleep.  And then finding out the bed is wet.  

It's going to be a GREAT day!!

The silver lining is fresh sheets ahead of schedule.

Last night was Leon's school concert.  Only Ryan and I could go but it was a good one and for a bit we wondered if Leon was actually IN the band, but then he ran in with his clarinet after everyone was almost seated. :)

Pouring rain and strong winds until around 11ish last night and then it turned into snow and strong winds.  School, work for others and daycare is closed today.  

Yay me for working from home... :\

My poor goose this morning!  

I'm not going out to set it back on the bench, so he's going to stay there until further notice.  The wind is still whipping around the house and he'd just get knocked off again.  I didn't really WANT to sew a parka for him this late in the spring, but if I knew where my sewing machine was, I might.

So I'm upstairs getting hunkered down with work and listening to the fam downstairs getting breakfast and their daily dose of Scooby Doo.

Did I mention that it's going to be a GREAT day?!