Yep, the car is scheduled for maintenance and the kidlets and I have all been to the dentist. It's so lovely to have insurance again. I'm not entirely sure why I need four insurance cards but I have them and I carry them proudly.

This was Joy's first trip to the Dentist. She did great and loved seeing the pictures of the inside of her head. Comfort barely stopped talking long enough for the Dentist to brush her teeth. Not a huge surprise. Her cleaning didn't take as long though as she's now lost 8 teeth. A few have begun to grow back but there's a lot of open space in her mouth. My cleaning was just as it usually does. It was a good reminder that even though I haven't been in several years my Oral B electric toothbrush, daily flossing, and good genetics have kept my teeth in great shape.

Here is another item you are going to want to get for yourself and probably another for a friend and another for your daughter or your mom/ cousin/ neighbor/ teacher, etc. Really. Pop on over to Amazon, B&N, or your favorite bookstore of choice and take care of your purchase. I'll wait. .... Okay.

I'd heard about the Totally Together Journal before I ever saw one because I followed Stephanie O'Dea's A Year of Slowcooking.  Then I signed up for the Totally Together emails that followed the next year in which I got a daily email that reminded me to do seasonal things, PROM the kids toys or pile of mail, or to remember to take care of myself. The Totally Together Journal is geared more toward women with families but I don't think women without kids would feel excluded. Heck, we all still have to take out the trash, plan our meals, and do seasonal cleaning around the house no matter what our family situation is.

One of the things I truly appreciate about Stephanie's writing, both on her blogs and in the Totally Together Journal, is that she does a phenomenal job of pulling together a lot of information in one place in order to help us with our daily lives. It might be cooking. It might be cleaning. It might be just remembering to enjoy life. No matter what it is, she writes with clarity and sense of balance. It's not about doing things right - in the way that a woman in white gloves, pillbox hat, and a disapproving scowl is going to come into your house and 'tsk, tsk' when she finds that that you aren't following it precisely. And might I say, Thank Goodness! We all live our own lives and our homes reflect our individuality and our needs. Totally Together Journal respects that, too, and understands that you are going to use it as it fits in with your own life.

I can tell you that I've worked this journal hard in the last few weeks. Not only have we been preparing for the holidays, but I've just gone back to work. This is the first time since both of my kids were born that I've worked outside of the house. Thankfully I have lots of extra hands to help out but it's still been an adjustment. It's still going to take us time to get our feet fully underneath us and thankfully, I have the Totally Together Journal at hand to help keep me on track. And for that I am very, very grateful.

I was provided with a Totally Together Journal for this review. The review and the ideas for the review are my own.  You cannot have this journal, it's mine.

Yep, It's been a couple of weeks, maybe a month, my friends and I've pretty consistently been planning our meals. I know. Quelle Surprise. Believe me, it was a necessity, not a choice. Once again I found the kidlets home from school in the afternoons surrounded by the 20 minutes of homework that they get and yet in that limited time they can go from fully functional to ready to eat a small mastodon. 

This meant there was no time to stare into the fridge and think, "I wonder what I can cook today." I was more like, "I wonder what I can put in their mouths RIGHT NOW." This is especially the case when Joy gets a particular idea in her head. Then that thought becomes a one word litany. "Juice. Juice. Juice. Juice. Juice." Sometimes she stops to breathe. Sometimes she acknowledges that you are speaking to her and letting her know that there is a) juice on it's way or b) there will in fact not be juice for some reason. Sometimes it's just best to make sure that food appears at regular intervals so that this doesn't happen in the first place.

Recently, I've taken and rolled all of my ideas up and I'm using everything I've got. We have a chicken night, a pasta night, a breakfast-for-dinner night, and a crockpot night. There's also usually a 'shopping at Costco night' or leftover night in the rotation each week depended on which week of the month it is. That's the basic structure and I grabbed hold of this with both hands when I saw this outlined in Erin Chase's $5 Dollar Dinner cookbook!

Once I have a structure then I just fill in the blanks with meals. I can usually get about a third of the way done without breaking a sweat. It's the rest that really makes me work. I know that this is probably not a hard thing for most people but trying to find meals that my kids with like and eat one any given day seems to actually cause me stress.

But now my stressful work comes with a shiny new package. I'm talking about Pinterest. If you haven't been over to Pinterest then let me entice you to the land of many pretty and shiny things. It's an Internet corkboard so that as you travel through the blogosphere you can put a 'pin in it' and type a description and it goes on the board. Other people can follow you, you can follow other people, or you can travel Pinterest in solitude. Mostly I've used it to gather ideas for meals to make.

Today I made the luscious garlic knots for fellowship at Church. These have been pinned for quite a while and they turned out exactly as they looked online. I'm not sure this has ever EVER happened to me, especially when I was cooking with the girls. Yep, they helped me make the second batch and they looked exactly the same as the first batch. Delicious, too.

And for dinner tonight we made the one pot macaroni and cheese. It did take a bit longer than expected but that was probably due to the fact that I used rotini and not elbow macaroni. Lesson learned. I can say that Joy was humming while she ate and this is a sign of supreme contentment and enjoyment.

I have several more recipes pulled from Pinterest already and I'll let you know how they turn out. I had definitely recommend Pinterest for brainstorming but if you only have a few minutes at your disposal don't go there. It's full of beautiful, shiny things and you'll never EVER want to leave. I promise.

It's declutter/ Fall Cleaning time at my house and along with that I'm Purging the Plastic! This has been an on-going mission of ours to remove the plastic and BPAs from our home.

First, we got rid of the kiddie plates and started using the small plates in our IKEA dishware set. They're just the right size and, like most IKEA dishes, practically indestructible. Then, over the summer, I made sure all of our water bottles for camp were either stainless steel or BPA-free plastic. The kidlets had new BPA-free plastic bottles for their adventures since they wanted cute colors and something a bit lighter. I already had BPA-free bottles.

Now, the food container drawer is getting the purge. It needed decluttering anyway. I think those plastic tops get up to some funny business when the drawers are closed! So, no more plastic. It's all gone.

We have one set of glass Snapware and I've added another. The new set [THANKFULLY] has been upgraded so that it can go from oven to fridge/ freezer to microwave and it's dishwasher safe. The previous set could not be put in the over. Ridiculous, I know. 

The next cabinet to get the plastic purge was the kids cups. Oh my, the leaning tower of kids cups!! We had a couple of colorful stacks of plastic IKEA kids cups. Yes, it was time to move on. I'd been checking out the Duralex Bistro glasses after seeing a post on someone's blog. I wish I could remember where I saw it because it was a fantastic post about these really fantastic glasses. Well, I priced them on Amazon and thought, sure - they're unlikely to chip or ding and the small glasses are light and are perfect for a kids hand. Let's get them! Then I saw them at Costco and for the price of the 6 Tumblers on Amazon I actually got a set of 18. So, the 12 larger glasses are still in the box in my basement until we need them and the kidlets are doing great with the bistro glasses!!

Not only do I now have three cabinets/ drawers that have less plastic in them but the glass is less cluttery which just helps me feel better. It'll also help us feel better in the long run, too, and that's such a Cool Idea!

Each year we buy our honey at the Virginia State Fair because it gives us the opportunity to taste different varieties and support local apiaries. We've done this for almost a decade now and we've learned which flowers we like our honey to come from and which we don't. This year we decided to try something a little different. After we picked the varietal we wanted we decided to make sure it came from an apiary in a zip code local to us.


Why? Our family suffers from season allergies in varying degrees and our doctors have mentioned that taking a teaspoon of local honey a day can help build immunity to our local pollens - which in central Virginia are many.  We've only just started this but I've already seen an improvement in Comfort's seasonal allergy issues and for that I am very grateful.

There are other medicinal uses for honey, of course. When I was little I got honey for a sore throat. For some reason Moms stopped doing that when 'better' medicine came out. It turns out that honey is just as good - so say the new docs. And article in last month's Parenting Magazine included this dosage information:

Honey can also help relieve coughing. A study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that honey at bedtime was more effective at quieting coughs than honey-tasting cough medicine (flavored so the kids wouldn't know which they were getting). The AAP recommends half a teaspoon for children 2 to 5 years old, a teaspoon for ages 6-11, and two teaspoons 12 and up. (The brand of honey "doesn't make any difference", says Dr. Fisher, but make sure your child has fluids or brushes her teeth afterwards to avoid letting the honey sit on their teeth). Never give honey to babies less than 1 year old.

So, honey - it's a lovely, tasty treat that has many uses. If you can try to buy local honey so you can explore the flavors from the land around you and take advantage of extra health benefits 'cause I just happen to think this is a super Cool Idea!

Yeah, the hurricane came and she did some real work on us here in Virginia. We were lucky that we only lost power for 24 hours and our street didn't lose any trees. However, the streets behind and beside us still have huge 85 yrs old oak trees blocking the road. And since much of the city, as well as others up the East Coast, is still without power I thought I'd post my thoughts about what to do with the stuff in your fridge that is about to go bad.


First of all, this will be much easier if you or someone in your neighborhood has a gas stove. Really. Then you just start cooking or buddy up and begin bartering with your neighbors. If you don't know them already this will give you a great way to get up to speed really quickly, especially if you bring coffee or wine or bacon.

Speaking of bacon you'll need to cook that first because it's not going to last. Neither are your eggs. Your cheese is going to stay good for a while but if you're going to cook the bacon and eggs you might as well make an omelet:) Double check your fridge for anything else that is raw or a leftover that needs to be eaten and put it into the early rotation.  We were lucky and this was the sum total of the raw ingredients in the fridge. If you have more eggs than can be eaten right away [like us, I'd just bought 2 dozen for some birthday baking] some can be hard-boiled and they'll keep better and be easier to eat that way.

This is a good time for the kidlets to remember it's not the time to get picky about meals. They want a certain item [for example] with their crackers and fruit. Tough. It doesn't exist. Milk might exist in the first day when it has to get drunk by all before it goes bad but after that it's gone. Comfort doesn't like peanut butter but I tell ya, if the power outage had lasted much longer she might've reconsidered as there is tons of it in this house and she saw everyone else begin to enjoy it so much while she ate plain crackers.

I know there are many more lessons that others can relate. Mostly we were lucky. We cooked dinner on our camping stove, cleaned up, put the kidlets to bed and then the power came back on. If we'd gone on another day we'd have done the same until the propane ran out and the stuff would've stayed cold in our cooler for a day or two. We do what we need to do and we hope it won't last long before our normal lives return. For everyone whose lives have been impacted by the storm, I hope it will return to normal for you shortly. In the meantime, have some virtual bacon and eggs with me. I'll be thinking of you.

http://www.poptartsworld.com/nycSo, remember how long it took me to get used to the beginning of the school year. It's taken me nearly that long to get used to the end of the year too. Here are just a few things that have been going on in our lives.

Meal Planning - This lasted longer than I expected. In fact, I think it lasted about 5 weeks. Then I hit the wall. I was tired of figuring what the girls would actually eat. Seasonal food wasn't really keeping up yet and I was just tired. I'll give this another shot soon because this was by far the best option for me.

Summer travel - we're in the midst of all going in different directions and it's hard. Thank goodness for Nana who handled the days when dh and I were both going in different directions and the kidlets got some wonderful inter-generational time.

And speaking of my travels, on my way back from NY I was in Union Station in DC waiting for my train and I saw a brochure for Pop Tart World in NY. I thought - well, I can't repeat it here but it was along the lines of "You have got to be kidding. I was just there!" I didn't have much time outside the conference but I'd have made time to see Pop Tart World!! Today I remembered to look online and it seems that it's no longer open. Whew. I'm sad that it's closed but happy not to have missed on such a wonderful experience. Personally, I think Times Square definitely needs Pop Tart World back it would round out the experience:)

I wasn't emotionally attached to this alarm clock but I'm having a hard time replacing it. Apparently it's hard to find perfection.

I want it all. I want atomic accuracy. I want dual alarms. I want projection. I want....yeah, I've been reading the reviews on Amazon for days and I still don't have a clock.

So I decided to look at the classic alarm clock that I had when I was in high school and college. This was just enough then. It got me up for school and I never overslept unless I knocked the alarm clock off the foot of the bed:)

Surprisingly enough this clock was about $8 the first time I owned one. I think I had at least three over a decade or more. Now it's $32. If I weren't so cheap I might buy it again but now the idea of a $32 alarm clock that does nothing but tell time and wake up seems ridiculous - even if it was designed by Dieter Ram.

If you have an alarm clock that does everything you need - or more - let me know. I don't need it to sing "Rock and Roll Chicken" but there are a few things I'd like [see above].

Fox Network has canceled Chicago Code. Yep, apparently a television show with a good moral center just doesn't work on that network. What a surprise. Go check out the episodes on Hulu and then make sure to watch the remaining episodes in this season. Yes, there is a moderately annoying voice over at the beginning of each episode but it goes away. I promise. I also promise that this is a fantastic show that you won't want to miss.

It's time to try meal planning again.

You're not surprised are you? I usually post something like this every four or five months and my efforts last a few weeks at best. I know this, too. I recognize the pattern.

So, what's different about this attempt? Well - it's a multi-prong focus using tips from Erin Chase's The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare and then populated with recipes from said cookbook, some family favorites, and other internet sites.

What exactly is this two-prong attack? I'll tell you but remember that it sounded better when I called it a 'two-prong focus' or whatever I just wrote. Erin, the $5 Dollar Dinner mom, talks about starting out with each night of the week already dedicated to a specific type of meal. We used this concept for a while when we had Taco Tuesdays, but now I'm expanding it so that my plan looks something like this:

Monday: Pizza
Tuesday: Breakfast for Dinner or Trip to Costco
Wednesday: Crockpot
Thursday: Pasta
Friday: Chicken
Saturday: Leftovers

I took out my blank template, wrote in the theme for the night and then began deciding what to make. I'm taking into consideration seasonal offerings especially since this is the first week of our CSA for the year. I also need to be realistic about what everyone will eat. I'm not about making more than one meal for the family so there needs to be enough available to everyone so that they can each be satisfied.

So far I have two weeks planned out and my hope is that I'll be able to stay a week ahead. I'm also hoping that this will make the remaining few weeks of school easier to handle because life sure isn't going to get simpler on it's own.

There's my plan. We'll see how it goes. If you don't hear anything that might be good news - or it might mean there's a need for another plan. If you have your own meal planning system and have something that really works for you, let me know. I have no trouble incorporating additional aspects into my new plan!

We've been spring cleaning the pantry by eating our way through items that we might have passed up for more sexy items. I admit it was not an intentional choice. It's because our Kroger is undergoing remodeling and I'm tired of the stuff moving around.

Well, that was true at first. Things moved and aisles were over-crowded. Now things seemed to have settled down but in truth the placement of items doesn't seem to make any sense. For instance, the canning jars [an item that might be needed by 2.4 people in my neighborhood maybe twice a year] has prime real estate opposite the nifty canned soup rack. I'm guessing this will not be the final resting place for these items and that makes me not want to get too invested in the store's intermediate setup.

And that's why we're eating our stockpile of pasta and canned fruit and frozen meats. It's actually been a good practice - not only for our budget, for stock rotation, but for space reclamation. No matter why it's definitely a Cool Idea!

Yep, it's that time of the year again and no matter how much I dislike it Spring Cleaning really does serve a purpose.

Last week we started by going through the toys. This was not an overly popular task but the girls helped and it really did go easier this year. While I put away the toys that got a reprieve for another year,  I sorted through the shoe cabinet and pulled out shoes that no longer fit. I hadn't gotten around to this last year so I actually had a full sack to pass along.

Today, while the girls played and watched cartoons - it's pouring rain right now - I went through my emails and deleted the random ones that had drifted along in my Inbox for months and months. I do this a few times a year and still I end up trashing a few hundred emails each time.

Why is this important? For me, it's partly peace of mind. I like to know where things are. Yes, I maximize the filing system that Yahoo allows and at most times I utilize all the folders allowed. The other reason it's good to go through your emails is that you might get a surprise - just like finding money in an old purse or pair of pants. And that's exactly what happened.

I'd done some online shopping a couple of years ago using Bing and gotten a series of cash back advantages. Last summer, they discontinued the Bing program but my account had trouble and it took a while to get it taken care of. In the meantime, I'd totally forgotten about it. The reason this is important is that all cashback requests from the Bing Cash Back program must be requested by July of 2011.

Sometimes spring cleaning really is beneficial to us. My cash back money wasn't a lot but it's now safely tucked away in my paypal account. Just in case you used the bing cash back program and haven't requested your payout - hop on over and take care of that before you lose your money.

So, how is your Spring Cleaning going? Have you found anything surprising along the way?

It's been some time since I've had time to work on surveys. It took a long time to get set after school started and then there was NaNoWriMo. Now, I'm working on the surveys again and I'm beginning to reap some of the fruits of my time.

Most recently I just received a $20 iTunes card from MyOpinionNow. Last week I got a $5 check from Opinion Outpost and I've almost accumulated enough surveys to cash out another $5. Also, I've just put in a request for a payout from Mindfield Online for $18 to my PayPal account. And while I was updating this post I decided to check out Survey Savvy and found I had enough to get a $5 check.

Sure, it's not a lot from one place right now but it'll all add up in bits and pieces and it'll certainly pay for a night at The Byrd and that's a pretty Cool Idea.

I took the time to do something that I desperately needed to do. I went through the stack of recipes that I'd collected and a) tossed the ones that we didn't like or didn't work for us, b) tossed duplicate copies, c) put stray copies in page protectors and d) put the page protectors in my recipe binder.

It didn't take any longer than waiting for the oven to preheat and it no only makes a huge difference in the look of the cabinet but now I don't have stray pieces of paper falling out at me when I open the door.

So, next time you have a few minutes while you're waiting for water to boil or something else that is equally mind-numbing, put it to use by taking on a kitchen chore like culling recipes or tidying a kitchen drawer. It's one of the best ways we can put our time to good use and that's always a Cool Idea!

Finally there are no apples in my house. Whew!! But it took fierce determination and a lot of time, patience, and recipe help from some friends.

So just how many apples met their match? Well, I couldn't rightly tell you except to say that I bought 40 pounds of gala apples from my CSA - which gets them from an organic orchard near Charlottesville. Yep, I needed to debit my account quickly and large purchases like apples are the easiest way to do it.

At first I started out making applesauce and apple butter. I love both of these but Comfort and Joy won't eat either one so I don't make but so much. Some of the applesauce got repurposed into applesauce bread which I then took to a variety of social functions - a party, church, and used for a small group meeting at our house. I'm pretty sure this would freeze well but I haven't tried it yet.

But I still had a LOT of apples. So I made more apple butter and I cut several dozen into slices and flash froze them to store in the freezer for use in our Thanksgiving Apple Pie. I learned last year that a one gallon Ziplock bag of apples works for my recipe.

And yet there were more apples. I put out a call to some friends on an email loop and someone suggested apple cider and I thought they had lost their ever lovin' mind. Then I did some research - mosty confined to a quick Swagbucks search and learned that while you could invest in a press and yada, yada there was way to make apple cider in your kitchen with just items that I had on hand.

I will say that the cider doesn't taste like store bought, or even what you might get at a fair, likely because I only had one type of apple. I'll also tell you that I used the remaining 30 apples and ended up with 1.5L of apple cider. It was a great way to use up the apples and I'm glad that I have a new skill but if you're really interested in doing this you're going to need a LOT of apples. And invest in the cider press. Using the food processor worked for a small batch but if I were going to do this often I might think about something more efficient.

That's our apple adventure from this past month. Do you have interesting ways to get through bountiful produce at your house?

Okay, my mom and my best friend are laughing uncontrolably at this already  [You guys can stop now!!] because to say I love veggies isn't exactly true.

I eat vegetables. Some. I have a few that I prefer over others. I have some I'll only eat cooked and some I'll only eat raw and some I won't even get within the same zip code.

Then there's creamed spinach. This is my absolute favorite vegetable and it has been ever since I was a child. Although I realize for some people it doesn't qualify as a vegetable since it has been changed into something almost unrecognizable from it's original form. However, I will go so far as to continue to call it a veggie since a) the noun here is 'spinach' and b) I'm the one making the rules.

So, growing up we always ate Seabrook Creamed Spinach which by most people's account and my own, again - I make the rules here - is some of the best Creamed Spinach around. In fact, I remember reading an article in the New Yorker to this account, too, so I'm not the only one who thought this. Others just didn't match it - some were more like souffles, or had more butter or were just plain gross.

Then I grew up and moved away from home and my new grocery store didn't carry Seabrook Creamed Spinach so I thought I'd try to cook it for myself. I scoured cookbooks and tried different options and all of them tasted like crap. Well, some of them didn't even make it to the tasting round. Some of them went straight to the trash.

Then Boston Market came to town and I found their creamed spinach and even with the incredible amount of garlic they included I decided it was better than nothing so I learned to like it and about the time that I found I wanted Boston Market's Creamed Spinach more than anything else, the chain of restaurants disappeared from the area.

And then I was back to the beginning, looking for creamed spinach recipes occasionally and testing them out, never with very high hopes until one day I took a chance on a recipe from Jenn at Frugal Upstate and let me just say - Yumm.

So, here's what I did with her recipe... I didn't use cream of celery soup. Why? Because I didn't have any. Because I don't buy any. Because I don't understand why you would want to 'cream celery'. Maybe I'll try it next time. Maybe I'll just make an extra thick white sauce instead.

I did have cream of chicken soup and the thickness of the creamed spinach was absolutely perfect. The taste was great except when I'd find a wee bit of chicken;) Not gross, just unexpected.

As for the amount of garlic... well, if you think your kids are going to eat it this is probably a great amout, however if you're just making it for adults you might think about doubling it.

And let me just say that this is so yummy that I almost ate it all for myself scalding hot right off the stove instead of serving it to my family for dinner. I'm pretty sure this will become a staple of yumminess in our dinner rotation from now on and I can see the creamed spinach also becoming a yummy filling for enchiladas, too, and maybe a filling in wonton wrappers. You see, the spinach is already making me smarter!! Or was that stronger? Maybe it's both but it's definitely a Cool Idea!

If you've ever had a little girl you know how trying it can be to keep Little Girl Hair from getting tangled. Then please imagine Little Girl Hair that has not been allowed to be combed for a month. Notice, I said allowed. Yep, each morning and usually several times a day I try to comb Joy's hair and there are meltdowns that take place. Sometimes there is biting. Yes there are issues.  So I wash it and condition it and hope for the best.

But she has nice curls in her hair. Ringlets in fact in several places and I finally realized that the baby hair conditioner wasn't going to really help me as the mats and tangles kept growing.

We have postponed the required haircut for Joy all thanks to Pantene Pro-V Conditioner. Whew!! And this is after she hadn't let us comb her hair for a month. Yep, I gotta say it was pretty amazing although it still took some work.  The haircut will still need to take place before too long most likely but now it won't need to be one that cuts out the worst of the tangles. Instead it can be a real haircut that makes the most of her beautiful face and is easy to care for.

And in case you think I'm the only one that has thought of this amazing cure for Little Girl Hair I can tell you that I mentioned it to a couple of other mothers and they said they use the same thing for the very same reason so it sounds like a very Cool Idea and one which should be passed along.

Whew!! I fixed my vacuum!!

First of, it would have been fixed long ago if I'd done this earlier so much of my frustration is my own fault. Actually, all of it is.

Second, I have the best vacuum in the world. I bought a Dyson DC14 All-Floors Cyclone Upright Vacuum Cleaner [refurbished] at Big Lots several years ago after I'd gone through 3 vacuums in about 5 years. I immediately loved it. In some ways it's like going from a PC to a Mac because you have to retrain your brain on how to use a vacuum because everything is so intuitive.

And then it stopped working. I should say the upright stopped working. I could still use the extension arm so I did all my cleaning this way. It wasn't perfect since it was slower but it worked and finally now that I'm working my way through my list of things to 'Get Done over the Summer' [yes, I am trying to keep up with  Totally Together Journal as much as humanly possible LOL] I pulled up the online troubleshooting guide on the Dyson website and walked through it.

I was several screens into the guide and on a page that I was definitely going to skip when I found the problem. It wasn't any issue pointed out in the problem solving guide. I had a blockage but it wasn't anywhere that I would've seen unless I had checked out that particular issue on that exact page of the problem solving guide. And the blockage was caused by me - because I had let the canister get too full before I emptied it and all the ick had packed back down toward the roller.

So, many lesson learned here. 1) Empty the canister early and often and 2) never underestimate the online problem-solving guide when dealing with a Dyson. Seriously though it was the process of going through the guide, step-by-step, that brought me to the point where I could fix the vacuum myself.  And now the vacuum takes care of the carpet in half the time, maybe less, and I can scratch one more thing off my list. This was a total win-win situation and I'm glad to have my totally awesome vacuum back and that is amazingly Cool!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! What rituals do you have or do you do something different every year? Did you do something different this year?

Comfort and Joy are still young but we have some traditions that are becoming entrenched in our family. For many it's the fireworks. We're lucky that we live within walking distance of the city's firework display so we leave the house when it gets dark, having put the girls into their pjs, find a spot and have a snack on our blanket while we wait.

Last week my mom sent an email to my brother and I to remind us to make our brownies for the day. Yep, brownies are a 4th of July ritual in my family. Growing up we had a full day on  each July 4th - from parades to be marched to brownies to be baked to family to be rounded up for fireworks. The brownies were our snack as we sat and waited for it to get dark enough for the fireworks to begin, just like they are at our house now.

But why brownies? My guess is that it's because it was something that my brother and I could make together and it didn't take very long to bake. Oh, and it's chocolate. Yum! My brother and I were always in the kitchen when my mom cooked and we were expected to help and being tall ourselves it wasn't long before we could do a lot to help.

Brownies are wonderfully collaborative. There's a little bit of measuring, some stirring, pouring, and then there's the best part - licking the bowl. Comfort and Joy have started helping me with the stirring. Growing up my brother and I got to where we could do it all by ourselves. I think having some activity in the kitchen that your kids can learn to do by themselves is wonderful. As they grow kids can learn to do more and more by themselves, under supervision.

The funny part is that our 4th of July brownies have to be from a box. I know I've blogged about Ina Garten's Outrageous Brownies recipe. It is fabulously rich and well, I'm drooling as I type. However, it's box brownies that bring me back to my childhood and for this day I stick with what the nostalgia.

This is the role of brownies, or whatever the equivalent is in your family. It a traditon on a holiday for sure, but it's also an opportunity for our kids to find a way to be part of the collaborative process of cooking and baking. It's a way for them to learn measuring - which is a great form of math. It's a way for them to learn how to follow instructions. It's a way for them to learn independence and self-worth and isn't definitely a Cool Idea!

Yep, today is Joy's half-birthday and we are up to our elbows in potty training. Still. Again. For REAL. It's not that she doesn't understand the concept or that she can't 'do' it but she chooses not to stop what she's doing to - you know.  This is especially a problem at home with me. At school she's a champ. Even on car trips. Heck, five out of seven nights she'll stay dry.

So I know it's about sticking to it and summer seems to be a great time to run around the house in fewer clothes and make sure we are more about sticking to it. We bought cute underwear - she loves monkeys so she now has Paul Frank monkey undies from Target - and thankfully they came in a 7 pack. Yep, one for everyday of the week. I've done laundry twice in two days!!

Some things were expected. Like accidents. And laundry. And I've cleaned the floor more than I have since we had a puppy. What I hadn't expected was how wonderful it would be that she is wearing her Crocs around the house.

Not only are these shoes easy for her to get on and off on her own but they are super easy to clean. In fact, they even hold some of the 'accident' in their structure. Then I put them in the sink and wash them with anti-bacterial soap and wipe with a Clorox wipe and set to dry and they're ready in an hour or so. This would not be the case with a sneaker or a regular sandal and a flip flop wouldn't help me with containment.

So even in the midst of the drama of potty training I've found a new silver lining and it is the Croc shoe. Which helps remind me that a woman, no matter how young she is, should never underestimate the power of having a shoe for the right occasion.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. Enjoy those purple Crocs!