Pancakes!!! For Lunch!!!

Grandma G, Ji, and Grandma V:  3 generations bonding with Bisquick!

      My mom came for a visit last week. She was mostly here to see grandkids, but I did get to hang out with her some too. On Saturday she came over with my oldest niece and nephew. M and I had been talking about making pancakes for lunch (after deciding that we should pioneer bagel smoothies: "It's Not Nearly as Bad as it Sounds"), and I thought this would be a fun thing to do with the kiddos. Just as I set the Bisquick down on the counter, Ji materialized next to me and pronounced his desire to help. His first step was scoot a chair to the front of the fridge so that he could reach the freezer, where he knew that there were frozen strawberries. (This kid knows where we keep the good stuff.) I partially defrosted some and let him at them with a butter knife. (I did stress that he could only use a knife if an adult was supervising.) Turns out even the blunt side of the blade can cut through partially frozen strawberries. K was much more interested in making signs for our restaurant. They have their own restaurant, Rosie Rose's, at home. Ji is the cook in their play kitchen and K manages and markets the restaurant. I have eaten many a plastic fruit and vegetable soup there. I am occasionally employed to work in the office at Rosie Rose's, where I take internet orders and balance the books.

      Reader's Digest (which keeps coming in the mail even though Grandma stopped subscribing) had some ideas to liven up pancakes: dividing up the batter and making each a different color with food coloring, using a squeeze bottle to make lacy shapes; that I thought would be fun to try. Instead of just using food coloring, though, I thought we could also use different ingredients. So we made one batch with peanut butter, dyed yellow, and one with strawberries, dyed pink.

      I had gotten a Tolovo Pancake Pen as a gift, and M (check out his new haircut) was the master of pancake creation. He went beyond just letters to pictures using both colors of batter! Notice the lion face on the left below:

      We all enjoyed a hearty lunch of pancakes and scrabbled eggs. Although Ji's request to have ketchup on his pancakes went unanswered. The best part was that Mom volunteered to do all the dishes and cleanup :).

Hanging with the horses while the pancakes cooked. Notice Dell, Ji's nephew.

All I Wanted for Christmas...

      This Christmas was the first one that I haven't spent with immediate family members, since more than half of them were in India for a wedding. It was also the first time that I haven't taken off most of the week between Christmas and New Year's. Somehow I decided that this meant I was taking Christmas off--I only bought presents for my oldest niece and nephew (I figured that the youngest 2, both under 3 months, wouldn't care if I didn't get them anything.), I didn't make treats for anyone, I only sent out 7 cards.

     My aunt invited me to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with her family. Since they live around the corner & I love to hang out with them, this seemed like the best idea. She said that they would make a stocking for me, and even get me presents. She asked what I wanted. 
     I have a habit of asking for very practical presents. I think this may be because I try very hard not to want things, so that I won't spend too much money. "I want my own toilet plunger," I told her. This was the first thing that had come to mind. "The kind with the accordion bellows." (This request may seem a little less strange if you know that I live in a house with 6 other people. There are 3 bathrooms, and only one toilet plunger, which is kept in a storage room in the basement. I don't need to use it that often, but when I do need it, running downstairs to get it is no fun.) I did manage to think of a few other things, including these:

A sandwich-shaped case and dinosaur sandwich cutter.

I've enjoyed many grilled cheese sandwiches shaped liked dinosaurs this last month. :)

Needed: Rubber Chicken

I was hired by a neighbor to take an extended family photo for her 86th birthday. There were around 30 people, 10 of whom were under the age of 15. I had watched how the light would be at that time of day, scouted out a location, thought about how to arrange that many people together. I even brought my tripod so that I could have the camera set up and then go make adjustments to the grouping.

What I did not think about was unhappy children. There was a baby and a toddler that pretty much cried the whole time. It was hard to keep the other kid's attention. This is why photographers have rubber chickens, I realized. I have the technical skills, now I need the shtick. It wouldn't have been that hard to bring some small stickers, and maybe that would have helped the toddler. Oh well. Hopefully next time I do something like this I will remember to take some stickers and a puppet or small toy to grab attention.

Game Night

For my brother J's birthday, his wife N got him a new board game, 7 Wonders. I was staying over the night of his birthday, so we decided to try it out. It was a little complicated to figure out, but after the first game, which took about an hour, we were all 3 hooked.

We played Sunday night for the first time, and then again Monday afternoon. My niece K came home from school & wanted to join in, so we played a second game after dinner for our FHE activity. The three of us took turns helping her with her turn.

Ji, my nephew who is not quite two, was content for awhile to climb into his high chair with an issue of Baby Bug and look for pictures of dogs. While we played at the table. Then he climbed onto J's lap and played with the extra tokens for awhile. We knew that we had gotten too absorbed in the game, however, when we realized that Ji had wandered over to the clean, unfolded laundry, pulled out his blanket, and was ready to fall asleep.

One fish, two fish...

Remember the bag of eyes? Here's what I am doing with them!

I hope they fit!

I started this post a long time ago, but never published it. So here it is now!

I found this pattern in a knitting book & thought that they'd be perfect for my friend's little girl. It took me awhile to finish them, though, so I hope that they aren't too small!

Adoration

 I started substitute teaching to fill in the gaps in my work schedule. So far I've mostly been at elementary schools, often in 2nd grade. (My niece keeps asking me to sub for her class.) Although the pay isn't that great, there are some great benefits, as you can see by these fan notes.

I did write a quick note back to her before school ended. Aren't kids great? It's nice to know that 7 year old girls think I'm pretty.