D2's Double Digits

D2 turned 10 this month, bringing the whole family into the double digits.

He'd been planning the party for months, a festival of ninja training with a couple dozen activities to be completed in various locations.  We helped him narrow it down to things that would work at home.  He made up the invitations and emailed them out, and even called a couple of people to make sure they had received the invitations.

And then . . . only one friend came.  The boys helped him make a foam-noodle sword, which seems to have become standard party practice here, and they did some dueling.  And they played inside and outside, together and separately, and I think they had a good time.

The cake turned out pretty well, if I may say so myself, thanks to parchment paper, white chocolate chips, a tube of ready-made black icing (not that gel stuff, but real frosting in a tube that fits with decorating tips), and my calligraphy training.  I added lime flavors to the white cake mix, so the cake tasted good, too, and with the friend's mother, we ate the whole thing in one sitting.

There was no cake left for D2's real birthday, but I think a big doughnut for breakfast and ice cream at teatime made it a festive day, anyway.

I crocheted this for him, at his request.  It represents Nadakhan, an antagonistic djinn character in the Lego Ninjago show, which D2 sneakily watches via YouTube.

I don't think my creation looks much like the character on the show, but it does look just like the picture D2 drew for me to work from.  And he likes it, so it's a success.

He's also obsessed with cats, so I thought I'd give him one that wouldn't make me sneeze.  (Come on, genetic engineers, can't you breed some cats with acrylic fur?)

I used Little Bear Crochet's pattern for a stretching cat.  The face reminds me more of a bear, actually, but I'm not sure what I could do about it.  And D2 knows it's a cat, and likes it, too.

He's in fifth grade this year, at the top of the heap now that the sixth graders have gone off to middle school.  It's kind of hard to believe, since he's still my littlest guy.  But he's growing up nicely.

Happy birthday, D2!

We Are Grateful for Electricity

Image from Pixabay

 

Have you ever planned a candlelit dinner for two dozen athletic boys?  We didn't plan it, either.  It just happened that way.

 

Scoot is playing goalie for his school's JV soccer team again this year.  The team has a tradition of meeting for dinner the night before each home game.  Dandelionslayer set up the sign-ups, and put us down to host yesterday.  I did some fretting about space and menu and cleaning and such, but felt I had things pretty much under control by one o'clock.  I'd borrowed an extra rice cooker, the meat was seasoned, and the oven had preheated for a nice slow roast.

 

Then the power went out.

 

It was a calm, sunny day.  What happened?  A telephone pole down the road broke in half.  I'm not sure why.  Repairmen arrived soon, but couldn't fix the problem immediately.  I prayed, made some calls, and took the meat to a friend's house to bake.  And kept praying.  Later I checked the meat and plugged the rice cookers in at the same house.  Dandelionslayer came home, and we tried to think of alternative plans.  And we kept preparing.  But the lights stayed off.

 

The food was ready in time, and the other contributions arrived ready to go, no heating necessary.  Dandelionslayer set up a serving table in the yard, hoping to inspire some of the team to stay outside in the dwindling sunshine.  But they filled their plates and came inside.  Only one dozen actually arrived, so they crowded around our table-for-six.  We set out candles and camping lanterns.  The boys joked about the atmosphere and ate their food, never noticing the unvacuumed carpet or the dust on the piano.  No one could see it.  

 

Nearly twelve hours after the power went out, I woke to the flashing of the alarm clock and the chugging of the washer, resuming its work.  And I was grateful for electricity and candles, for sunshine and helpful friends and family members.

 

 

 

Eggses

Did you have a happy Easter?  We did.  Our choir song went well at church, we took some nice naps afterward, and we had plenty of time for hunting eggs before dinner.

After thinking about it for several years, I finally tried a couple of natural egg-dying methods.  We cooked a few eggs with onion skins, and threw in some carrot peels for good measure.  We tied the eggs up in nylon pieces to secure leaves for resist patterns.

This resulted in the beige color you see in the center here.

The blue color is from purple cabbage, and it worked better than any tablet dye I've ever used.  There are plenty of recipes available for both onion skins and cabbage, but I used the ones from here.

We also used some red and green food coloring, and crayon, and various combinations. 

A sudden downpour kept the egg hunt indoors this year.  It was still quite challenging, but all eggs were found, and a quarter of them were soon given the Angelic treatment, and devoured.

Did you color eggs this year?

Summer Cookin'

Every summer I graciously allow the boys to share in the pleasure of planning and cooking dinners.  Isn't that generous of me?  Here are a few of their menus so far:

The Caterpillar treated us to bacon-wrapped hot dogs with salsa and sauteed onions and peppers.

D2 slow-cooked red beans and rice.

Scoot baked calzones, after we filled them ourselves.

And this evening, Rollo steamed us some oyako donburi.  Oishii!  They are doing a great job, and, hopefully, learning some useful skills.

Rollo is 11!

Rollo turned 11 in April.  It was a good day.  He spent most of his school time playing jazz at a couple of other elementary schools, and went out to lunch with the band.  He had ice cream at lunch, and we went out for more ice cream after dinner.  And in between we gave him a few presents.

Rollo loves the Ranger's Apprentice books, and wanted a "mottled gray-green cloak" like the rangers use.  When Scoot asked for the same thing, I sewed this:

Oh, dear.  Did I never post the Halloween pictures last year? Well, here you go.  Ranger Scoot, in reversible mottled gray and mottled green.

The Caterpillar sewed his own cloak, right before (and during) the Trunk or Treat.  We used McCall's 4139, which turned out to be quite large.

Much too large for Rollo.  But my copy of Simplicity 5512 (sadly out of print) seemed too small.  I used it anyway, increasing the size 8 to something that fits just fine.  I found some mottled gray-green corduroy, but not very much of it.  So I used it for the hood, shoulders, and hem binding, with plain gray for the body of the cloak.  This cloak is reversible, too, with black inside for when Rollo feels Phantomish.

He wore the cloak for his party the next week, where he led his friends in making and dueling with foam swords, archery, and capturing the flag. 

Rollo decorated his lemon-flavored cake himself with a Lego ranger fighting bad guys, Lego foliage, and cake ball boulders (they finally worked!).  I believe a good time was had by most.

Happy Birthday, Rollo!

Oh, Crumb!

I have a hard time with cake.  Baking cake is easy enough, and eating it certainly isn't a problem.  It's the decorating.  First of all, I don't really care for frosting that much.  But the big problem is that I can't do it neatly.  Granted, I've never taken a proper cake decorating class.  But I've tried tricks like freezing the cake layers, or applying a coat of thinned frosting before spreading the real thing, and the result is always the same.  Crumbs mix with the frosting, and leave it looking not so decorative.

by Bakerella

When I first read about cake pops, I thought they might be a perfect solution:  mix the cake with the frosting, and decorate with melted candy.  The experts make them look so smooth and easy.  Dandelionslayer's sister even gave us some supplies for Christmas once.  So when I couldn't find any suitable candies for the ward Easter egg hunt, I decided it was time to try.  I could make some cake balls that fit in the little plastic eggs, and they would be cuter and tastier and more fun and maybe even less expensive than candy, right?

I chose a blue velvet cake mix, which looks a lot like Play-Doh, before and after baking, and especially when mixed with cream cheese frosting.  Should taste better though, right?  D2 and I rolled them up and popped them in the freezer.

But when we tried to roll them in the melted candy, guess what?  Crumbs.  I guess the candy wasn't melted correctly, though I tried both a small amount in the microwave and the whole bag in my makeshift double boiler.  Not only was the coating not smooth, but it wouldn't even stick to the whole cake ball.

Fed up, I just glopped some candy on top of the last ones.  D2 thinks they look best, but I'm not sure they're really stable.

I'm not sure about the stability of the plastic eggs, either, so I wrapped a ball in plastic wrap first, and popped it in--oops, it didn't fit!  Too much gloppy candy. 

It's probably for the best.  If we'd taken them to the hunt, probably half of the cake balls would have been dropped in the parking lot.  Which is better than bright blue cake being ground into the church carpet.  Anyway, we're off to buy some mass-produced candy that has the advantages of size and name recognition.

How do you solve crumb problems?

We Are Grateful for Refrigeration

The week before Thanksgiving, the milk started to taste funny.  Various members of the family blamed each other for leaving it out too long, and choked it down anyway.  But when we sat down to dinner the day Grandpa O arrived, and Rollo's glass of milk came out all curdled, we couldn't ignore it any more.  There was a problem with the refrigerator.

Careful measurement with thermometers of varying reliability revealed that the fridge was 10-15 degrees warmer than it ought to be, even at the coldest setting.  I called repairmen, but none could come for a whole week.  What would become of my Thanksgiving feast supplies?  Then Grandpa O came to the rescue.  He offered to give us a new refrigerator as an early Christmas gift.

We did some research and some shopping.  In the meantime, we relied on our extra freezer.  It kept the turkey safe, and provided buckets of ice to keep the refrigerator a bit cooler.  A couple of things spoiled, but most stayed in good shape.  I took the two and a half gallons of curdled milk and tried my hand at making cheese.  It was mostly done before I poured it out of the jugs, actually, so it was pretty easy.  We were having a sunny cold snap, so I chilled the cheese outside.  I served this Queso Mostly-Fresco with tacos one day, and everyone ate it.

Finally we chose a new fridge, with delivery promised . . . on Wednesday.  The same day the repairman would have come.  We kept drinking juice and buying one gallon of milk at a time, and didn't eat breakfast cereal for over a week.  When D2 came home from school every day, he asked if the new refrigerator had arrived.  When the big day came, he helped me move things out of the old one.  The delivery men had it all set up before lunch time, and said we could use it right away.  It was so beautiful and clean, it almost seemed like a shame to put things inside.  But we did, quickly.  The boys were thrilled to come home to a new refrigerator, to have milk in the house again.  Have you ever heard small children being excited about a major appliance?  While dismaying, this was a good gratitude-building experience.

The feast was a success.  But Rollo still wasn't grateful to eat cereal for breakfast.

Home for the Holiday

On Thanksgiving I was grateful...

that we hadn't made plans to go anywhere.  D2 and I weren't feeling well, so it was nice to relax at home.

The boys hung up the bat house Rollo made at day camp in the summer.  It will be interesting to see if anyone moves in.

Everyone helped prepare the feast.  The Caterpillar likes to shape rolls.  This time, he and Dandelionslayer got out the cookie cutters,

and made these delicious treasures.

I had fun with a cookie cutter, too, decorating this apple-cranberry pie.

The boys provided plenty of help for eating the feast, as well.  I'm so grateful to have all of them!

First Day Birthday

Six years ago, D2 was born on the first day of school.  Very early on the first day of school.  A friend received his brothers in the middle of the night, packed their lunches, and walked them to school the first day. 

This year, his birthday was on the first day of first grade.

Which wasn't a very good day for having company, so D2 invited friends over a couple of days earlier, for a penguin party.

Scoot took them fishing in the real pond.  The koi knew to stay out of the way.

They tried to feed stuffed fish to this penguin.  It wasn't particularly hungry, unless people stood at very close range.  Rollo and D2 painted the penguin, and D2 helped Dandelionslayer build the supports. 

They tried to transport their eggs safely.  I thought it would be fun to see them waddle, but they quickly solved the problem by hopping.

 

 

The Caterpillar led them in an iceberg-hopping game.  The icebergs were very slippery.

 

 



Dandelionslayer taught them a silly penguin song and dance.

We took a break for igloo cake, before the big water balloon battle.  It was a fun party.

After school on D2's real birthday, he was tired and a bit cranky.  "It was boring," he declared when I asked about school, "and too long!" 

But things got better.  Here he is, full of birthday ice cream and energy.  Well past bedtime.  What a fun little boy!

Happy Birthday, Rollo!

Rollo turned nine on a beautiful Saturday. 

It was sunny, and warm! 

In Western Washington, that is an event in itself.

It was a perfect day for baseball,

and baseball cupcakes for the team.

After we madly cleaned the house and yard,

it was a perfect day for a party.

Robert led his friends in dragon-themed games outside.

They ran too fast to pose for pictures. 

But I'd rather have a dozen boys run outside than fidget inside.

Since it was a dragon party, I had to make this dragon cake.

I think I made a similar dinosaur cake

for the Caterpillar many moons ago.

It was fun, but adding the wings and fire

made this one even better.

I suppose a real dragon would light the candles on his own cake.

Rollo just blew them out.

It was a happy day!