All we can do

I interrupt my regularly scheduled sarcasm and bad writing to ask for your prayers on behalf of the good people in San Diego.

Due to the massive and uncontrollable fires, the area where we used to live has been evacuated. Schools have been closed. Good friends and family have been ordered to leave their homes. I can't imagine looking around my house and trying to decide what was important enough to take, and what I felt I could live without should my house burn to the ground.

Please pray that these fires can be contained. And pray that nobody else gets hurt.

Back to reality

I am out of the sick bed. Took the entire day yesterday and did nothing but sleep. It would have been absolutely lovely except for the minor annoyance of feeling like I poured acid down my throat and beat my head with a hammer. You know, except for that.

So I learned a few things taking a sick day; thought I'd share them:

1. Laundry doesn't do itself.
2. Ditto for the dishes, bathrooms, and floors.
3. When I am dying a slow and painful death, I won't care what state my house is in.
4. When I feel slightly better, I will be very annoyed at the mess.
5. I somehow always get sick when the Husband is out of town.
6. There is NOTHING of value on the telly during the daytime. Nothing.
7. Eggo waffles make an excellent breakfast AND dinner for the children. [But then again, I already knew that.]
8. I will only make the mistake of forgetting to turn the phone off once. Pity the poor survey taker who woke me up yesterday afternoon.
9. When opening my bedroom windows for some fresh air, it is a good idea to remember to close them once it starts pouring rain. The soggy carpet will not be a treat.
10. Waking up to a ton of well-wishes on the blog makes me happy. Gracias to you, all my bloggy friends.

P.S. I am NOT, I repeat, NOT pregnant. But thanks for asking.

sick day

I cannot deny it any longer. I am sick.

I am achy, all stuffed up, and have a raw sore throat. As the mother in this family, I NEVER get sick. I am not allowed to be sick.

Today I am declaring myself sick and crawling back under the covers. [Right after I finish blogging about how sick I am, of course.]

See you tomorrow.

[Don't do any great blogging while I'm away.]

Martha Stewart has nothing on me

Halloween is a holiday that gets kind of overlooked in our house. Part of the reason for this is that I am married to Scrooge McScroogey Pants (Yes, that is his legal name on holidays. The man actually told our kids three years ago that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist. For no other reason but that he thinks it's lame to lie about a bunny that brings candy on Easter. I get that. Sort of. But he has been threatened to never see certain parts of my body naked again should he go telling them LIES about a certain someone that DOES come in December. Oh, yes he does. Right down the chimney, reindeer waiting on the roof and everything. Ahem.)

Anyway, we don't do much around here for Halloween. We go trick-or-treating, attend the token church Halloween party, but that's about it. Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween for one simple reason: The candy. I can't keep my hands off it. And it can't keep itself off my thighs. So Halloween and I don't necessarily see eye to eye.

But the one traditional Halloween thing that I do every year is make these spider web cookies (which unfortunately don't help when it comes to the matter of my magnetic thighs). Nevertheless, they are super easy and look really cool.

Here's what you do:

Take your favorite sugar cookie recipe. And instead of spending hours rolling the dough flat, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and essentially having flour all over every crevice in your kitchen, make little dough balls and flatten them with your hands. Shhh. Don't tell Martha. It works just as good and takes half the time.

Then mix up the frosting glaze before you bake your cookies. I cannot stress this enough. The cookies will not work if you don't frost them right out of the oven.

For the glaze:

2 3/4 cup powdered sugar

2 tsp. shortening

3 Tbsp. water

1 Tbsp. corn syrup

1/4 tsp. vanilla

Beat all ingredients well. Separate about 3/4 cup of the glaze into another bowl and add desired food coloring. Put the colored glaze into a pastry bag with a small writing tip.

Now, when your cookies are RIGHT out of the oven - and I mean piping hot - take a few off the tray and begin frosting them with the non-colored glaze (I leave the rest on the tray to keep them warm until I frost them). Pipe the colored glaze in a bulls eye like this:

Then take a toothpick (or BBQ skewer in my case) and start in the center of the bulls eye and lightly draw lines going to the edge of the cookie. Repeat all around for spiderweb effect. [Hint: I never put the next batch of cookies in the oven until I have decorated the first. You HAVE to do this when the cookies are warm, otherwise the glaze doesn't melt on the cookies and they will look dumb. Trust me. I learned that the hard way.]

Stick in a few [hopefully lead-free] plastic spiders and VOILA! A Halloween treat. From my heart to yours. Enjoy.

Gratitude

We've had a neighborhood boy turning up on our doorstep every day after school. The kids are barely off the bus and in the door when David comes knocking.

I have posted before about the minor annoyance that friends can sometimes bring to our family dynamic. How other parents sometimes will dump their kid at your house, leaving you to provide entertainment. And how the new playmate sometimes disrupts the otherwise cohesive sibling playtime.

Well, David is no such kid.

David is a shy, skinny, blond-haired little boy. He does not rifle my pantry in search of treats. When my boys are begging him to play video games or watch TV, he is instead suggesting Legos and pretend play. He does not play with only one of my children at a time, but instead includes all three - even the Princess. (And I'll admit it, there are a lot of days that EVEN I don't want to be bossed around by the Princess). But David takes it all in with a smile. Nobody is odd-man-out when David comes to play.

And my kids just ADORE him. They beg to have him stay for dinner. They hate when it's time for him to go home. They would have him move in permanently, I'm sure. And with his polite manners and quiet demeanor, I just might consider taking him.

I've attributed his enjoyment of our family to the fact that his only sibling is a 15-year-old sister, who is probably not very interested in Legos and scooters. I've thought that my boys and their rambunctious nature must be the big draw for David. And that might be all it is.

But tonight, we learned a little more about our friend David. He was staying for dinner. Asking politely for seconds, waiting his turn, and complimenting me on my fine cooking skills (which let's be honest, very few people in this house ever do). Chase happened to ask him what time his Mom and Dad get home from work every day. David said his Mom gets home at five and his Dad? Well, his Dad passed away.

I could barely keep back the tears as we gently told him how sorry we were.

Cancer. About a year ago is all.

And suddenly, this shy, sweet little boy seemed so much older for his age. He's experienced more than a ten-year-old boy ever should. No child should know the heartache of mortality. He lives every day knowing just how fragile life is. How someone you love can be taken from you, whether you like it or not. My heart just ached for this little boy and what his family has been through.

Later, as I was tucking McKay in bed, he had tears in his eyes as he told me he could not imagine losing his Dad. You know what, Buddy? I can hardly imagine it either.

And so today, we will hug our Dad just a little bit tighter.

And tomorrow, we'll play with David, just like we do every day. Only this time, we'll understand maybe why he's so shy. And we'll not mind that he knocks right after the bus passes. Because his house is probably too quiet.

And ours is everything but.

Our little runner

On your marks, get set...

Go!

And go they did. On Saturday, McKay competed against 250 boys his age in a one-mile run. Only the first 40 finishers received medals.

He was number 160.

He was a little disappointed, but I think he did pretty great. He ran his little heart out, had a fun time, and did something he's never done before.

Good job, kid. You did us all proud.