Summer Summer!

Next week is the end of the school year. Normally, that wouldn’t really affect me because, like most people, I’ve always worked year round. But now that I’m in a school, I get the same days off as the kids. Which mean…summer vacation!! I get to spend all day with my kids for three whole months! We can play and go on walks and go to the pool. They have my undivided attention- and will whine. And drive me crazy. And fight with each other constantly. Hmmmm, maybe I should rethink this…

Anyway, I do think I need to have a plan. A schedule- so we’re not just spending the whole day in our pajamas watching Ninjago. I’ve been researching this a little and there are so many ideas! Pinterest is a black hole from which I’ve emerged several hours later. But my basic outline is this:

7-8am- Wake up. Make and eat breakfast. (Fingers crossed and prayers said that they sleep in till 7am)

8-11am- Play outside. This could mean going to the park, going for a bike ride (if Ezra ever decides he wants to start riding his bike and not just sit on it), playing at the water park/ clubhouse pool, or some combination thereof.

11-1pm- Get back home and clean up. Make and eat lunch. Watch the newest episodes of Blaze and Paw Patrol. (You may wonder why I keep saying make AND eat meals. My kids are very enthusiastic about telling me what they’d like to eat- it’s the actual eating, that’s the challenge. A couple bites and they’re done. I tried telling them they wouldn’t grow big and strong if they didn’t eat. The reply? “But mommy, I thought you wanted me to stay little forever!” Check and mate.)

1-3pm- NAPTIME!!!!! Wonderful, blessed words.

3-5pm- Craft time. This means I have to attempt another visit to Michael’s. The scene of The Dark Incident. I know better than to get a whole huge bag of something to re-use. I tried that with beads when we were going to make necklaces. I’m still finding beads in the couch, in the fridge, in the pantry- wherever Ezra can reach. Lego building is included in this time so I foresee myself building lots of ships and buildings for the boys to totally destroy in five minutes. But they love it and I love them, so I suffer through.

5-8pm- Make and eat dinner. Baths. Clean up. Probably more television, not gonna lie. I’m going to really focus this summer on getting the boys to be more responsible and take on some additional chores. They like to use the hand-vac and broom already, but actually cleaning up toys is like pulling teeth. The little ones get paid quarters when they help and that’s a pretty good incentive, even if Ezra has no idea what to do with the money. He collects it in his backpack and then runs around the house jingling madly.

I’m sure I’ll improve on this schedule as the summer wears on, but if I can just keep to a loose routine, I think we’ll all benefit. I didn’t really include Micah in this because he’s already got his summer lined up. He plans to bounce from one relative to the next, gracing us with his presence for a week or so at a time. If you have any better suggestions for summer schedules, please let me know!

With Love,

Susanne

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m not a fan of cooking. I mean, I can cook. I managed to keep Micah and myself alive when we were on our own for a few years. But it’s not my favorite activity. Chase and I have an agreement. He makes dinner, and I clean up. Before you think he’s getting a raw deal, you should see the number of dishes that man can use for one meal!

Anyway, what I prefer is baking. One year back in high school, I won so many blue ribbons at the fair, I lost count. Fresh bread, pies, cakes, you name it. But my favorite thing to bake is chocolate chip cookies. And mine are the best you will ever have.

 

I learned this delicious skill from my grandma. She was a sweet, southern lady and she could bake anything! She even made fruitcake taste good! I remember sitting in her kitchen when I was little and she’d always have a cookie jar on the counter full to the brim with chocolate chip cookies. And if those ran out, she had bags of them in her freezer. She never used a recipe- she just had it all memorized. That’s how she taught me- and I’ll never reveal what’s in them. I love making cookies for my family and they remind me of those priceless memories in grandma’s kitchen.

She’s up in heaven now, and I guarantee Papa and Jesus are asking her for some of those amazing chocolate chip cookies.

PS- If this post made you hungry, here's a couple of recipes you should try from the judges of my favorite baking show. They're pretty yummy and super easy to make with the kids.

Duff Goldman's Andes Mint Cookies

 

Nancy Fuller's Peanut Butter Blossoms
 

Lorraine Pascale's Cookies and Cream Fudge Brownies
 

With Love,

Susanne

At Least It Wasn't Blood...

Full Disclosure- this paint incident is from a different day, but the result is the same! Paint-covered, messy child!

Have you ever made plans that, for once, you didn’t want to cancel, and then something happens to make you second-guess yourself? That was my situation last evening. I was going out for a crazy girls night with a friend. (It was actually just pedicures and a new ear piercing, but we’re moms and we deserve to sound cool sometimes!) Anyway, I was looking forward to getting out and going all the way to Naples for a couple hours.

But when I told Cayden that big bro was going to watch him and Ezra for a little while, his big brown eyes teared up. He would miss me twenty-hundred and he didn’t want to be left all alone! Obviously, Ezra, Micah, and Dara don’t count. I hesitated. Because I just had a feeling. Spider-Mom? But then I dismissed it- they’d be fine. Cay is super dramatic- no idea where he gets that from. I went over with Micah again the list of things they were not allowed to do. This included ninja fights, sword fights, lightsaber fights, lego fights, dinosaur fights… basically all the fights. I did not, however, mention using the oven or painting, which came back to bite me in the you-know-what.

Blissfully unaware of the chaos to occur, my friend and I merrily headed off to our grown-up date. Everything was just peachy for almost an hour. Almost. Then my phone started ringing. And not the phone call ring- the FaceTime ring. That’s never a good sign. I pressed the button and was confronted with a confusing sight- my back porch. At least, I thought it was my back porch. It certainly held similarities. But it was red. And a mess. And red. Micah calmly showed me the damage. The little boys had found paint and decided their big playhouse on the porch needed an update. They proceeded to paint the entire thing, followed by the patio furniture and cushions. In red paint. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, they covered the row of windows lining the house in chalk drawings of the family. Then scattered the painted patio cushions all over so they wouldn’t touch the ‘hot lava’ of the chalk-covered floor stones. Oh, and they hadn’t forgotten themselves in the painting process! I was literally speechless. It looked like a scene from a horror movie- complete with happy little chalk people/outlines.

I recovered enough to take a deep breath and begin my motherly rant of, “You are in charge! You are supposed to be watching them!! Where were you during all this???” Now let’s keep in mind that Micah, for all his almost teenage-ness, is a wonderfully good kid. The kind of kid who tells on himself regularly because of his tender conscious. So he totally deflated my righteous anger bubble when he told me he had seen cornbread mix in the pantry. Knowing it was my favorite, he had been in the kitchen totally focused on attempting to make cornbread as a surprise for me when I returned home. How do you get mad after that??

I returned home later that evening with much trepidation. I almost got back into my friend’s car and insisted we head over to the brewery for a drink. But I figured they’d had several hours to do their worst, I shouldn’t give them any more time for destruction. I walked inside and there were happy screams of ‘mommy’s home!’ No matter what they’ve done, that is my favorite thing to hear when I’ve been away.

I cautiously looked the boys up and down. Perfectly clean. Down to the pajamas put on correctly. (Cayden has a habit of putting his shirts on backwards and his jammy pants on inside-out.) Micah proudly marched me out to the porch for an inspection. To be fair, it was dark and I didn’t want to look very closely, but it appeared that all the paint had been scrubbed off and the windows sprayed down. We caught a lucky break that Ezra can only reach to the middle drawer and grabbed the washable paint.

 All in all, I was really impressed with Micah. He cleaned the entire mess, lectured and scolded the littles, successfully made delicious cornbread, bathed and dressed the boys, and got them somewhat settled down. He did better than I do most days!

And, in true Micah fashion, he successfully negotiated for a raise and bonus after noting my appreciation of his skills.

With Love,

Susanne