Pizza Night

I stayed up far too late last night, but I finished the costume. I was really tired all day but the regular responsibilities wait for no one, so I plugged along. As is my habit, once Topher went down for a nap I mixed up a double batch of pizza crust and set it aside to rise. At that point I finally let myself park on the couch and close my eyes for a bit.

Later in the afternoon, as it was getting closer to when I needed to build the pizzas, I remembered that the crust recipe said to let the oven preheat for an hour at the highest temperature it will go. I've been using this recipe since June but had never followed that particular step. We're continually trying to improve the crisp of our pizza crusts, so I figured this might be a missing piece to that puzzle. I turned on the oven to 550 degrees then went back to tidying other parts of the house.

About ten minutes after I turned on the oven the house started to get warm as well. Since the oven was so hot and it was in the sixties outside, I decided to open some windows. I was upstairs heading for the girls' window when Bryan came to the main floor from the basement. "Hey, what's that smell?" Cooper had asked the same just a few minutes before. I told Bryan the same thing I'd told Cooper.

"It's just the oven heating up."

"Are you sure? Is something in the oven? It smells like something's cooking?"

As I pulled open the girls' window I called down, "No, there's nothing in the oven."

At that moment I had an image come into my mind and I yelled out, "Oh no! NO NO NO NO NO!!!" And I went flying down the stairs.

As I rounded the corner into the kitchen I saw that Bryan had pulled something out of the oven. What did I remember? That I always let the pizza crust rise, covered in plastic wrap, in the oven when it's off. But I had no memory of pulling it out.

Curious what four rising pizza crusts covered in plastic wrap look like when cooked in a large metal bowl on 550 degrees for ten to twelve minutes?

No, it wasn't edible, thanks to the plastic melted into the top and the still gooey center. I usually start separating the dough and building the pizzas before I remember to turn on the oven. Alas, my memory only served me partway today.

Bryan make a quick dash to the grocery store and saved the day with frozen pizzas.

I think I need more sleep.

One Stitch At a Time

I think it's amazing that even during a year when we aren't trick or treating and most Halloween activities are canceled I still find myself sitting at my sewing machine late at night trying to make sense of a pattern and instructions as I put together a costume.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Listen to the Teacher

On Monday morning I asked Sophie if she wanted to teach Family Home Evening that night. She agreed right away (which is not always her mode of operation) and I directed her toward The Friend magazine to find something she thought we needed to learn about. 

She chose a story about being kind and repenting when we're unkind or make mistakes, which I thought was an excellent choice. She did a great job reading the story and answering the questions that Bryan and I asked as a means to draw out the meaning of her lesson. She even had an activity for us to do that she had found in the same magazine.

Breakfast Buddies

 

Whip, Whip, Whip, Stir *

At the beginning of this school year I told the kids that they'll be taking turns cooking dinner on Thursday nights. They all agreed and it's gone relatively well so far. This last week Cooper took on the ambitious project of preparing homemade macaroni and cheese. He wasn't mentally ready for how much stirring was required to make the cheese sauce, but he stuck with it and the result was delicious.

*A million points to anyone that knows what I'm quoting in the title.

Play With Your Food

 

In Character

 What, you don't watch The Great Muppet Caper while using puppets?

Self Care

When the kids discovered that they didn't have school this last Monday, they made a plan. With great excitement the girls announced they would be having a spa day. Not one to miss out on the action, Cooper declared his intentions to join them. They began with cool face cloths and cucumbers on their eyes, plus some meditation.

Then they took turns using bath bombs and soaking in the tub. Sophie and Cooper added calming music and nature sounds to the mix while Phoebe was in the bath. As I took this picture Sophie said, "Oh Mom, you should do this every night, it's so relaxing."

After they were all fresh and clean and relaxed they had a tea party, because that felt like the right way to end a spa day.

ABC Summer

During the summer of 2018 a friend posted on Facebook that she and her kids were having an ABC Summer, choosing adventures and activities for each letter of the alphabet. I was looking ahead to 2019, the next summer, already gathering ideas for what we might do. I knew that Sophie would be starting kindergarten that fall and I decided that an ABC Summer would be a perfect way to ring in her school career.

Instead of planning things on my own, I enlisted the kids. I printed out a list of all the letters and asked each child to write down an activity they wanted to do for each line. I told them we wouldn't be able to do everything they asked for (no trips to Utah, no elephant riding), but we would do as much as possible. Then I complied a list that we hung on the wall. We spent the summer marking off adventures.

What did we do during the summer of 2019?

• Applebees
• Arcade

• Blue Mountain
• Board Game Day
• Christmas in the summer
• Crafting
• Cake Making
• Dance party
• Engineering day
• Farm visit

• Gardening
• Gaga Ball
• Going to a garden

• Holiday day (This was possibly the best activity we did all summer. We celebrated as many holidays as possible in one day. We started with a New Year's Day sign, then read a book about Martin Luther King Jr while we ate a Valentine's Day breakfast of pink oatmeal. Then we dressed in green for St Patrick's Day and had a treasure hunt instead of an Easter Egg hunt for Easter. I didn't take pictures of our hot dog lunch for the 4th of July, but I did capture our Halloween costumes which we wore to trick or treat to the bedroom doors. We wrapped up the long and fun day with listing what we were thankful for, a variation on Christmas dinner, and a list of New Year's resolutions for the rest of the year.)

• Hide and seek
• Hill Cumorah Pageant

• Happy challenge
• Hiking

• Ice Cream party
• Inside tunnels
• Jacobsburg Park

• K friends
• Kindness challenge
• Library

• Laser Tag
• Movie day
• Museum

• Martin Guitar tour

• Mall
• Mom playdate
• Nickelodeon Watching
• Niagara Falls

• Optometrist
• Ophthalmologist
• Orthodontist
• Park

• Pool
• Queen for a day
• Ropes Course

• Somersault practice
• Shopping
• Swimming
• Sleeping in
• Temple visit

• Train

• Treasure Hunt
• Tree climbing
• Up and down jumping
• Ultimate Workbook Party
• Upside-down Pineapple Cake Making (This was Sophie's suggestion, I thought it was a clever use of the letter U.)

• Video Games
• Ventriloquist
• Whitefield Museum

• X-ray (dental)
• X-ray (hand)
• Yummy treats

• YouTube watching
• Zebra (sibling in a costume) riding

It was a full and fun summer.