Weekend Productivity

Proof that we had a crazy busy productive weekend? It took me (and the boys) all day Monday to recover from it, which is why I am just now getting around to share a little bit about it. And it doesn't help that this week is also going to be pretty busy, so even once I did manage to get both of the boys to bed Monday night (solo, I might add, since Darrell was at a meeting) I had to spend the rest of the night cleaning and doing dinner prep for the week (which, despite our productivity over the weekend, didn't happen Sunday night because #anniversary. But I'm getting ahead of myself...)

Friday night was nothing remarkable--we grilled, we played, we lounged, we amped ourselves up for the weekend ahead. Saturday was when the real fun got started. After a fairly leisurely morning (minus the 30 minutes I was outside running), my parents picked up William to take him to an event hosted by the YMCA, which was our cue to get busy. Darrell started power-washing the deck, I started planting the garden, and Garrett roamed around in the backyard playing with his toys and trying to "help" me in the garden. Before long it was lunch and nap time for the little one, followed closely by nap time for the bigger one once Grandma and Grandpa brought him home. After a long couple of hours, Darrell finally finished power washing, and I was able to get the rest of my seeds planted. Then it was time to prep for arguably the best part of our weekend: dinner at a nearby state park. The Game, Fish, and Park Association was hosting a free fishing weekend, and while we weren't interested in the fishing aspect, we were all about taking advantage of the fact that entrance fees to the parks were being waived due to the fishing festivities. So, after naps, we loaded up the boys, a cooler, and wood for a fire (which--just because it's too funny not to share--when we were getting the wood and explaining to William that we were going to cook dinner over a fire, he immediately followed it with "and marshmallows?" Definitely my kid) and made the quick drive to the nearest state park (only twenty minutes away, although there are two others that are only about thirty minutes away). We've never actually camped at the park and didn't really know what to expect, but it was just what were hoping for: an open grass area with a playground for playing, fire rings with nearby picnic tables for dinner, and even a trail for a little hiking. Needless to say, the boys loved it--and Darrell loved getting his big-boy camera out for the first time in a long time to document the fun.

It was a pretty quick turnaround to bed time once we got home, and then Darrell and I had quite a bit of clean up to do despite the fact that we'd been gone less than four hours. But it was well worth it.

Sunday was our six year wedding anniversary, and we had a whole day of nothing planned. Which, of course, turned in to us being plenty busy, although Sundays always feel that way. We have a little bit of downtime in the morning, but then church, lunch, and nap go bang, bang, bang, so it feels like all of the sudden it's after one and we have no idea where the day has gone. I escaped to Target during nap time to run some errands by myself (nothing says "happy anniversary" like going to the store alone!) while Darrell wrangled a particular three-year-old who thought he didn't need to take a nap. The rest of the afternoon was spent outside--mowing, more planting, and playing--followed by homemade pizza for dinner, much needed baths and then bedtime for two little boys, and crashing on the couch for some NCIS. There were definitely things that needed to get done to prep for the week (hence yesterday being so busy), but since it was our anniversary we decided to treat ourselves and forego our normal Sunday responsibilities (and yes, apparently we're that old married couple that considers a few TV shows and a bottle of wine "celebrating").

We definitely needed a productive weekend like we had to get our outdoors ready for the summer season, and thankfully we were able to pack enough fun in to still make it feel (a little bit) like we celebrated our anniversary (although we make it a point to celebrate our love/marriage on a regular basis, so we don't hype our actual anniversary up too much #clichébutitstrue). We still have our "real" celebration in the works--our annual winery visit--although looking at our calendars it doesn't look too promising that we'll fit it in anytime soon!

Why Feeding Toddlers is a Joke

Last night for dinner I made a broccoli quiche. I may have over-bought on eggs when they were on sale a few weeks ago, and a quiche seemed like a good way to use some up (plus--turns out they are pretty easy and equally tasty!). William loves eggs, broccoli, and cheese, so I figured it would be a sure-fire win for him. Garrett, on the other hand, is hit or miss with eggs, usually has to be fed his broccoli because he won't eat it on his own, and within the past two weeks has started throwing cheese off his tray when I give it to him for a snack (although I found out that I may have been cutting it wrong, so that may have been the issue).

You've figured out where this is going, right? Garrett straight-up inhaled the quiche (and demanded seconds before he even had his first serving completely finished) and William gingerly tried a few pieces before declaring that he was "full". Seriously? Since we knew William wasn't actually full, we told him that he needed to eat at least four bites of what we served for dinner (standard rule in our house) and then he could have something else. And guess what--we cooked him an egg, fished a few broccoli pieces out of the quiche, sliced up some cheese--and he ate it without complaint.

Of course, the real joke will be when I try serving them some of the leftover quiche for lunch--Garrett will probably refuse to touch it, and William will eat it all. Because why not.

Weekend Redemption

So, after a less-than-stellar Mother's Day weekend, this past weekend was a breath of fresh air. Granted, as is par for the course in this house, Garrett passed his little illness on to William (without completely getting over it himself), so we weren't exactly feeling 100%, but we made the best of it anyway (and truthfully--after a miserable Thursday and Friday, William was feeling exponentially better on Saturday, so it was almost like he was healthy. Minus all his random coughing fits). Since both boys were still feeling a little under the weather (and decided to grace us with extra-early wake-up calls), we took it easy Saturday morning and bummed around the house until it was (finally!) nap time. That was my cue to get out of the house (for the first time in almost two days!) to pick up a few things for the graduation open houses we had that afternoon (nothing like waiting until the last minute). After naps, we headed to Harrisburg to congratulate some of the soccer players I used to coach and a former neighbor on their successful completion of high school. We socialized for a little bit, ate some food (and plenty of desserts!), then rounded up the boys before they got too antsy to make a quick stop at the store to look for summer sandals and a new swimsuit for William (spoiler--we ended up not finding what we were looking for, so I guess that means we'll have to go shopping again!). We made it home in time for dinner round two, baths, and bedtime, followed immediately by Darrell and me crashing on the couch and crossing our fingers for a good night's sleep for both boys.

Although the boys didn't exactly sleep through the night, they did sleep in until 7:30 on Sunday, so I'll still count that as a win. While Darrell made some pancakes, I got the stuff ready for the rest of the (super busy) day, and then headed out on a quick run before church. My parents took the boys home with them after church (freedom!!) so Darrell and I could spend some time at my sister's house answering a million baby related questions (just over a month to her due date and she's definitely feeling anxious!) and then go to a performance of Mary Poppins put on by the Sioux Empire Community Theater (if you are local there are still four more performances to catch this weekend and it was really really good!). And as if our Sunday hadn't been busy enough, it was also the home opener for my brother's amateur baseball team, so we picked up some beer (baseball necessity, in my opinion) and headed out to the game (where we met back up with my parents and the boys). William was actually pretty interested in watching the game--and if he wasn't watching he was usually playing with his baseball stuff--but Garrett could not have cared less. Thankfully, there was a mud puddle and a puppy dog, so he was in heaven.

We were all pretty exhausted when we got home (in fact, the boys were so exhausted that they didn't sleep well at all--funny how that works), and since we had been gone almost all day was that there wasn't much to clean up, so Darrell and I rounded out our weekend with some lounging around on the couch watching NCIS.

 

The biggest "failure" from the weekend was the fact that we didn't get the garden planted like we had wanted to--although not by any fault of our own. Thanks to freezing temperatures Friday night and near-freezing Saturday night, we didn't exactly think it was the best time to get our seeds in the soil. We're hoping to get that done this week--or next weekend at the latest! 

Cake Balls: A Learning Experience

So I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but as much as I loved how William's birthday cake turned out, I hated how much leftover cake I had sitting in my house.

Although the pan I baked the cake on was smaller than the one it is currently on, it was still a rectangular pan (two rectangular pans, actually, because it was a double-layer cake). Which meant I had quite a bit of scraps leftover after cutting the rectangles down to a three

Since most of the scraps were a mess and--in my opinion--not worthy of being served to others, I racked my brain for something to do with them because wasting them seemed like a shame but I certainly didn't need to eat them all myself (or feed them to the boys). So, in a moment of brilliance (or so I thought), the idea to make cake balls (or cake pops or cake truffles or whatever you want to call them) was born. While it was a good idea in theory, the final product was less than stellar (and that's being kind).



I know it is a terrible photograph, but trust me--there was not really anything I could have done with the lighting or staging or anything that would have made those little balls look appetizing. However, they were still very much edible (and reasonably tasty) so I allowed Darrell to take them to work (although I made him promise to tell his new coworkers that these were by no means representative of what I normally bake and that I promised to make something much better to send with him soon). Here's a few things I learned from this "experiment":

• Since I was using homemade cake and frosting, I couldn't really follow the standard recipe of "bake a 9x13 cake, crumble, and mix with a can of frosting". So I kind of kept mixing a little cake with a little frosting until I got a consistency that I could shape into balls. However, I'm pretty sure the frosting to cake ratio was too high because they ended up being a little on the sticky side (even after freezing) and they were definitely plenty sweet. I wish that I would have had some practice making these per an actual recipe so I would have known what consistency to shoot for.
• I stacked the cake layers before I cut out the three, so most of my "scraps" included some of the chocolate frosting that I used between the layers. Crumble that up with the yellow cake and green buttercream icing and you get an ugly mess. And since my cake balls were a little too big to be bite-sized, you were pretty much guaranteed a look at the (pretty unappetizing) inside. Next time I might consider adding some food coloring to the mixture so everything is at least a uniform color.
• In order to make the balls easier to dip, you are supposed to freeze them. And I know that lots of people freeze them with cute little straws so you can do fancy little displays with them to serve. Well, I didn't care about that, so I just went without, thinking that I wouldn't have an issue dipping them because I've been dipping stuff in almond bark for years and have a pretty good system figured out. Except I failed to consider that I'd be dipping cold cake balls into warm almond bark, and that it wouldn't quite work the same as the room temperature stuff I normally dip. As you can see from the picture, the coating is incredibly sloppy and terribly uneven. Next time I'd definitely consider using toothpicks or something similar to aid in the dipping process.
• I had planned to put some fun sprinkles on them to dress them up a little, but the coating was starting to harden almost immediately (see above note on cold cake balls plus warm coating), and I felt bad asking Darrell to stand over my shoulder and put sprinkles on them one at a time as I was taking them out of the coating. I think doing some sort of drizzle on the top would work best to "fancy" them up a little, but with all the headaches I ran into along the way it was well after my bedtime by the time I got them finished so I decided they could go without. And let's be honest, I really didn't need to slop one more thing on top of them after the mess that they already were, because I probably would have screwed that up too.

Overall, it was probably the best way to get rid of all the leftover cake we had, and it's definitely something I'll keep in mind in the future--although maybe next time I'll just be more careful when I'm cutting my shape out so I don't have so many "wasted" pieces!

It Might Have Been Mother's Day Weekend If...

You decided it was a terrible good idea to run a 5k

You spent the majority of the day on Saturday playing tag-team parenting with your husband because you both had multiple places to be.

You spent Saturday night baking your own Mother's Day desserts

Your one-year-old was sick and absolutely refused to sleep for longer than two hours at a time

Your children You got chocolate chip pancakes with sprinkles for breakfast

Your three-year-old refused to take a nap

Your husband decided to give you a break and take the boys for a bike ride

You had carry-out Olive Garden for dinner with your whole fan damily--but had to spend the majority of the evening wrangling two uncooperative boys

Your boys went to bed over an hour past their bedtimes and even though you just wanted to crash yourself you had fun stuff like menu planning to do



Sounds awesome, right? It really wasn't quite as bad as I'm making it sound (although if I'm being honest it definitely could have been a lot better). We finished the 5k just under our goal (30 minutes), so I suppose that could be considered a success. I willingly made the desserts (and got to try out two new recipes!), so I was actually pretty happy about that part (minus the whole miscalculating an ingredient and having to send Darrell to the store at the last minute). Darrell was super helpful getting up in the middle of the night with Garrett all weekend, so at least we were both feeling a lot little sleep deprived. And really, he was super helpful about everything with the boys all weekend--even though they were so out of sorts that it was pretty much impossible for one person to wrangle them, he did everything he could and even did things like make sure I at least got to eat my dinner while it was warm (which I'm sure was not the case with his dinner by the time he got back to the table).
The good news is that they both seem to be in much better moods, which I suppose I would prefer anyway since I don't have Darrell home to help me. And hey--at least I don't have to worry about doing anything too extravagant for Father's Day to top my Mother's Day!