Wordless Wednesday

Munchy Crunchy Cookies

We assembled these cookie jars in MOPS this spring and Ruby and I just mixed them up this morning. The dough that wasn't consumed baked up into delicious cookies in a batch just the right size-- about 2 1/2 dozen.

MUNCHY CRUNCHY COOKIES
(taken from allrecipes.com)

1 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c white sugar
3/4 c brown sugar, packed
1 c cornflakes cereal
2 T coconut
3/4 c semisweet chocolate chips
1 c rolled oats

DIRECTIONS
1. In a 1-L jar, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pack down and add the remaining ingredients in the following order: sugar, brown sugar, cornflake cereal, coconut, chocolate chips, and oatmeal. Pack down after each ingredient.
2. Decorate jar and attach a label with the following:

Munchy Crunchy Cookies
1. Preheat oven to 350F (175C).
2. In a large bowl stir together 1/2 c melted butter, 1 egg, and 1/4 tsp
vanilla. Add entire contents of jar, and mix well. Foll dough into 2 inch balls
and place onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in a
preheated oven. Cool on wire racks.

I wish I had some great photos to show you like Pioneer Woman always does, but I guess you'll have to suffice with a direct quote from Ruby.

"Mommy, my tummy hurts.... I think I ate too much cookie dough."

Enjoy!

Back in the Buggy

The combined effects of warmer weather, only having one vehicle, rising gas prices, and my ever-widening hips has forced me to get the kids into the double stroller a lot more the last few weeks. Jared and I have both been moaning and groaning about how "OUT OF SHAPE" we are. Of course he's still the same shape he ever was--thin as a rail-- and I'm roughly the same shape I've been--ripe pear--but, they're shapes that we're tiring of! We've tossed around the idea of joining the YMCA or some other health club, but when oh when are you supposed to do these things when you have two toddlers? It seems our choices are less family time or else go before the kids wake up or after they go to bed. There's NO WAY that I'm going to go before 6am and there's even less chance I'm going to go at 8:30 or 9pm. Alas, back to the stroller as transportation.

So, today I decided to walk to the hospital to get Ruby's blood drawn for her lead testing. I knew it was going to be difficult, especially now that Max is walking everywhere and a regular wild man, but really couldn't put it off any longer. Anyhoo, as you can see on my shnazzy map below, it wasn't a real intense hike--2 miles round trip with two "quick" stops. The first being at the hospital, the second at the grocery store to return a backlog of cans and bottles. I decided that the best bet would be to leave about Max's nap time at 8:30am. Then, he'd surely fall asleep and be quiet as can be at the hospital so that I could focus on Ruby. Well, turns out he didn't get the memo, so he was uber awake and we were all going to pay for it! As luck would have it (thank you, Murphy!), the wait was quite long. For a simple blood draw we were there for about at hour. During which time Ruby needed to use the bathroom three times in a very upsettingly stinky restroom and Max tried to run out of the hospital a good dozen times. He spent his spare time tripping people, flirting, and inhaling gummy snacks. Ruby played quietly most of the time only asking, "Can we pleeeeaaaase leave this area now!" about five times. The whole time all of the blue hairs were cooing at the kids commenting on how "cute" and "good" they were. I guess they didn't see how soaked with sweat I was under my jacket!


View Larger Map
Once in, Ruby did famously and miraculously I had one more packet of gummies from who knows when in the bag to appease him. I had promised Ruby a treat after her big event, so off we went to the market.
Once to Shaws we headed in to feed our sticky cans into the machine. While were back in the "can cubby" a friendly worker decided to totally trap us in with about 50 shopping carts. Nice. After I shimmied my hips on through and freed the stroller we went in search of sugary rewards under the $1.25 I had in "can cash". With a package of chocolate pudding cups in had we headed to the checkout. Surprise, surprise, surprise... The self check lanes are empty and large enough for us to pass through with the hulking double stroller, but they don't accept the "can cash". UGH! As my eyes scan for other options I quickly note that the only cashier manned lane is rather long and there's absolutely NO WAY the stroller will fit. After some mental gymnastics and stroller rodeo moves, we did manage to check out. This time, though, the blue hairs were commenting, "My you've got your hands full!" Apparently the rings of sweat were starting to show at this point!
Our walk home was lovely. Cool breeze, sun shining, and finally, Max was asleep.

Happy Birthday Ruby!!

This has been a great day so far-- our THREE year old, Miss Ruby Rae, woke up at 6:30am with a smile on her face ready to go! She was totally psyched to get into her birthday loot, so we decided to go with the flow and let her open a few presents while she was still in her jammies...

The Barbie Grand Hotel we found for her at a flea market was a BIG hit! She also got some new Barbie stuff including a car and lots of clothes from her grandparents.

After a pancake breakfast courtesy of Daddy, Ruby's enjoyed the day playing with her Barbies. I have to admit, I've been enjoying playing with her too! Apparently I never really grew out of playing dress up with the dolls.

Ruby has been very creative in her conversation with the dolls and spends a lot of time talking about who's friends with who and who isn't. Typical girl stuff. Looks like my little girl is growing up...