When caramel rolls go horribly wrong

Take heed my friend.

Do not try a recipe for the first time when you have company staying with you. I am sure most of you are smart enough to figure this out, I sadly, am not.

This is what happens when you put too many dough rolls out to rise overnight. If I had slept in another hour, I am sure this mess would've been trying to take over the world, as it seems to be making an attempt to take over my kitchen.




But worry not, I am great at trying to pass food off as edible, so after some clever engineering I ended up with caramel rolls that looked and tasted like this (and my hips will agree that I enjoyed most of them all by myself).



The caramel fiasco was the only glitch this holiday weekend. I managed to pull off a somewhat edible turkey dinner and I enjoyed time with my In-Laws (yes, I said "IN-LAWS")...but they only stay a couple days. I think another couple days would've been a little hard on everyone and I may not have used the word "enjoy" then.

Now we try to get back to our normal lives (as normal as possible for us, anyway).

Next on the list- preparing for Christmas! (ha)

Happy Turkey Day!

do NOT try this at home

I am hosting Thanksgiving this year.
Our guests are coming this afternoon.
I still need to get food, take a shower, wash the guest sheets, find my kids, power wash the driveway (well, not really, but you get my drift).

I decided I would also try to clean the house while both girls are here at home with me today. You know, it'll be a piece of cake because I can pop in a movie with the tv babysitter and get stuff done...

Bad idea.

Breakfast of Champions

To me Sundays, usually mean something a little different for breakfast. I give up my Breakfast of Champions (also known as Coca-Cola) and make the girls something that takes more than 30 seconds. As most of our weekday breakfasts consist of something we need to grab on the way out the door to eat in the car without too many crumbs.
So, for fun, I decided to make some donuts.
They are easy peasey to make and they really taste like warm donuts or funnel cake from the fair. But I have it in my weird little head that they are healthier because we make them at home (still working out the logic on that one, but it has something to do with the fact that I know exactly what ingredients are going into these donuts).

So, we made some donuts, ate all of them and then passed out a short while with sugar comas.

Mmmmmmmm, do-nuts.





Miss Ava's attempt at "Smile"!

Mommy confession

Yesterday marked the release of the new Wall-E movie. Bryn and I saw this in the theatres, so I already knew I liked it. (so much that the DVD release date was marked on my calender...in pen).
We just bought it yesterday and I have already watched it 4 times! Soon to be 5 times, as I plan on watching it tonight after the girls go to bed. But it will probably be the first time I actually "hear" the movie with all the 2.5 year old commentary I get during the day.

...and the winner is...

I woke up to find Bryn's new Chutes and Ladders game out with game pieces strewn about the board. It looked like there had been some serious gamin' going on.
When I asked Bryn if she played (as it was 6 am and I was pretty sure she did not play with Lulu the Wondercat, as we all know Lulu prefers cards).

She replied waaaay too enthusiastically- "Yes! And I almost won!"

Ah yes. She is her mother's daughter.

Another one bites the dust

Another weekend has come and gone, bringing us all a little closer to the "Holidays". (insert your choice of scary music here)
As a newer resident to the 2 season lifestyle, I just can not get into this holiday spirit, without a little snow, or least a bone chillin' wind.
On Friday, it was 85 degrees, so Christmas was the last thing on my mind as we played outside.
The girls also learned a new trick.




We finally woke to a good cool day. It was a chilly 60 degrees today.
I have officially turned into a cold weather wuss. 60 degrees here, is certainly not the same 60 degrees I knew up north.
So, with all this cold weather, we decided to do some home organizing. I call it organizing, but both Tom and I get side tracked with other projects so the house ends up looking much worse than we started!
But I managed to sort through the bins of clothes, and the closet of hidden things to find a new places for all this old new-found stuff (and man, does Tom do we ever have a lot of stuff.
It was one of those days, where everything gets tossed into a box labeled giveaway, garbage or ebay (although I am pretty sure I could have interchanged any of the boxes and their stuff).
We can finally see the bed in the guestroom and I feel like I actually got something done today.

I have also learned that Tom and I can not organize the house together ever again. It brings us too close to the brink of divorce (as I reminded him for the umpteenth time that his "Bennett smutt and eggs" picture would NOT be displayed for all to see in our family room).
But at the end of the day, Tom listened to the boss lady we both compromised and found new homes (the garbage can) for much of Tom's our stuff.

heart

...for the Moms who need an extra one today.
(and you know who you are).

just hanging around

when Dad is left to entertain...




No worries, no limbs were damaged in the playing of this game!

So, what did you do this weekend?

We rode bikes, cleaned the garage, and oh yeah, shaved my husbands head! (I'll bet you weren't ready to hear that one!)

Tom was trimming his hair, when I heard the ever dreaded "uh-oh".
I knew he was thinking of shaving his head, so I knew what was coming next...sort of.

Tom actually asked Bryn and Ava to cut his hair before he took the razor to his head. I was terrified of what could happen if we gave Ava scissors, but I figured since we were up to date on our life insurance, it would all work out alright.

It was one of the funniest things ever! Those two girls were having so much fun trimming Tom's hair. Although there were no fatalities, I did notice Ava accidentally giving Tom a poke on the noggin once or twice or twenty times with her scissors.
And as crazy as I thought Tom was for allowing the girlies to cut his hair, I loved him just a bit more because he knew it would make them so happy! (although I don't recommend trying it your home).

Ava-isms

Ava seems to be full of ALOT to say lately. Her vocabulary is truly remarkable (and I think we all know who to blame for that one... Her never speechless father, as her mother is a delicate wall flower)...anyway, today we started to sing a few hundred rounds of Old MacDonald's with Ava and it went a little something like this:
"Old MacDonald's had a farm,
Eeeech I Eeeech I oooooo
and on his farm he had a big white horse with spots
Eeeeech I Eeeeech I oooooo."

Then she proceeded to sing in great descriptive detail about each animal on MacDonald's Farm.
"Big big brown moo cow"
"A Cute Little Baby Pig"

...and you get the drift. Ava seems to think that Old MacDonald has some very interesting animals on his farm too. I think there was a sea serpent, a griffin, and a kimodo dragon too...I'd love to see that farm!

Ava finally has a mispronounciation that will be baby book worthy. What do I mean by this?
When Bryn was little she used to say "baby soup" for her bathing suit. We'd ask her all sorts of questions to hear her say baby soup as we were first time parents and had nothing better to do than to hear our daughter mispronounciate words. We still giggle about "baby soup" to this day.
Well, Ava pronounces 'Firetruck" as, you guessed it "Trirefuck". As horrible as it is, I break a smile every time she does this. I am even tempted to just go drive back and forth by the firehouse (which is 1 minute away) so I can hear her mispronounce firetruck over and over. (again, I realize this is one of those things that will be brought up with Ava and her therapist years from now). But for now, its just one of the daily pleasures I get to enjoy as Mom to these wonderfully goofy little girls.

Mysterious signs return again!

Once again, we were greeted with the mysterious homemade signs that someone has been posting in the median of a busy street.
This time, we were surprised by a three-parter!
I am really not too sure what else to say about the "message" of the whole thing, I just find the whole thing interesting.





Oh yeah, Happy Election Day to all those voting!!

normal children.

...tell me, what's it like to have some?
Because mine are certainly not ordinary. Nor boring. Nor wall flowers.
Nope. I live with the most creative, dramatic lil critters you'll ever met! And it's days like this that I thank my lucky stars for their larger than life personalities.

It was another weekend that we ended taking it easy. SO of course, that means there was frog hunting. But not your average run-of-the-mill hunting, nay! It was dress as a critter and go outside in your costume to embarass your parents in front of the neighbours type of frog hunting!

And sure enough the devil and the cow did not hunt long before they found some new frog friends.
She's actually getting so good that I think the frogs have given up and they just sit on her fingers now awaiting their freedom.

Did I mention that Ava's horns are not costume? (hardy har)






Not too much else happened this weekend. I think we are just starting to come down from our Halloween sugar high. Woohoo! And gained an hour of sleep, which is such a sacred and rare thing around here. Well, at least for anyone taller than 3 feet.
It was a rather enjoyable weekend once again.

Happy Halloween(ish)!!

Once again, a day late and a buck short-
We had a busy Halloween. First, we went to my beloved Y, so I could finish up some challenges for this week. I even sported my Mounty costume. Sending some respect to all my Canadian peeps, eh!
I was surprised to find so many others dressed up as well. Although I'd like to think it was in the spirit of Halloween, I think it was more for the bonus points for the current challenge going on there. It was fun regardless...I even got to see Amy Winehouse.




After those fun festivities, we returned home, carved our pumpkins and got ready for some serious trick or treating!



When flower fairies go wild!!



My lovely "Butterfly Fairy Princess"...or least that was the appropriate title (apparently).



It was a lot of fun this year as both girls understood what Halloween was about.
"Trick or Treat" = candy
And I am happy to report that they usually remembered their manners too.
The girls pretty much ran from one house to the next, and you could hear them for quite a few houses down yelling "Trick or Treat"!
After a good hour of trick or treating, we returned home, gorged on candy and they still managed to fall asleep rather quickly (despite the rather large sugar rush). That includes one tired Mom who also crashed by 9 pm!