When life hands you ripened produce...

You do the right thing.. and give it away! My mom was given a basket of tomatoes and peppers from her baby brother. She took a whopping 3 and left the rest for me. So I did the good daughter thing and took them.. Directly from her place and to my next door neighbors! Thankfully I was able to leave 3/4 of the peppers there-(there is a birthday coming up which means Italian sausage and Peppers...Happy Birthday A!) So I was still left with more then a half dozen peppers and about 10 tomatoes. I washed everything and stared at them for a while. I decided to seed and chop the peppers for my own future crock pot nights. Since I was on a roll I did the same with the bag of onions I had on my counter. Tossed them in with the peppers.

Now onto the tomatoes... I decided that I would cook them down and make some juice to freeze until needed. So I got to work.. chopped them down and gave them a quick run in the food processor. Tossed them in a pot and set them to cook. About 90m later I turned the heat off and let it cool. After dinner I poured into a fine mesh sieve and used a spatula to push all the juice out. I tossed the pulp and grabbed a freezer quart bag to store the juice in. When I went to pour the juice into the bag the bowl slipped out of my hand and almost all the juice went splashing on the counter and floor... I was so pissed I poured the rest down the drain and finished the dishes!

This morning as I was making coffee I noticed gnats... I hate these things.. They make me miserable because they irritate my husband and when he is crabby.. you get it...
So this morning I found myself peeling and slicing softball sized peaches... They are in the freezer to be used when the house is chilly and I feel the desire to bake! Since Pears do not have the same usability the kids will be eating lots of fresh pears today!

Who needs toys?

My Tastefully Simple order arrived this morning in two boxes. This is important because this means there are many many bags of air and sheets of bubble wrap to be jumped on. Even though we asked them to NOT jump on the bags of air but rather twist them to pop them.. they jumped anyway.. I am sure that half the office ceiling is on the floor downstairs...

After that fun game Maddie and Andrew hit my room and found my roll of raffle tickets. They are playing Thea-TE-er. Tearing the tickets apart and telling each other which room they can go into.

Maybe I can introduce them to Mr. Chlorox Wipe and they can play Hotel-Cleaner?!?

Kid-isms...Things heard in the mama-mobile...

Madeline and Andrew are on week 3 of preschool. I am already seeing/hearing improvement in Andrews speech.. Or that fact that he is actually talking loud enough for me to hear and comprehend. I love that he is speaking up to argue with Maddie about what is happening in class.. or what might happen, or what was said... He cracks me up.

"We painted in class, becaws, we were reading the chick chicka story, becaws the letters climbed the coconut tree. Know why mama? becaws they had to get to the top, becaws they was having to be at the top......" Becaws is the new word around here. Hardly ever used properly it still brings me a chuckle to hear him try to express a complex thought.

I informed them we actually have a children's story collection with a copy of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in it. I said I could find it and we could have Ben read it to us later. Andrew refused. "Becaws if it is the same as Miss.Katera(teacher) book then we already read it, becaws we heard it and it is not the different one."


Both kids are fighting a head cold and are stuffy and congested. I sent them to school because they are not dying and I paid for that time already! I picked them up and could tell Andrew was pretty sluggish so I informed them right away we had to go buy dog food and grab lunch then we would go home and have quiet time on the couches in our special blankets watching a movie. They liked this idea, I figured it would go over much better then saying they had to lie down and rest....
Of course they requested McDonald's Nuggets. I gave in and treated them. After nearly finishing her food Maddie calls to me and questions " Mama, are these the same chicken nuggets that the other McDonald's uses?" I told her that they were and since she had a stuffy head that might be why they taste funny today. I glanced up and saw her little face all twisted up in perplexed look in my rear view mirror.. she then shook her head and said" Nah.. I think they are different because I tasted the fries and they taste the same as the other fries.. They have different nuggets..." Okay then...

Back by popular demand...

NAH! Mainly b/c my mama told me to... and the kids were making me laugh this morning...