No Trick or Treating, but Who Cares!

Everyone is gearing up for Halloween here. Kyle is going to be a prisoner with the black and white stripes and a plastic ball and chain. Keenan is going to be the grim reaper. What happened to my little boy? I guess it was a gradual descent at least. Two years ago he was a cartoon character, last year he was a punk rocker, and this year the symbol of death! He loves it, though. Thinks he is pretty cool (which of course he is). Gretyl has decided that she is just too old to dress up this year (which of course she isn't).


Each boy has a school party. Keenan's was last night and Kyle's is tomorrow. I managed to find some fun and tasty candies, nuts and drink boxes and fill a goody bag from Whole Foods. So they have their bag of allowable treats for the parties. While everyone else is trick or treating, we are all going to go to the movies. I really thought it would be a hard sell, but they didn't even care about missing the trick or treating. They are excited about the movie.


In other news--I got a new toy for the kitchen!! I'm happy to report that I finally own a Kitchenaid mixer:) And though I would have loved to owned the beautiful cobalt blue one, I ended up with the stunning "gun metal gray". Flashy (not). I bought it used from a lady who swore she "only used it twice". Yeah, sure, whatever. But it did look like new still and I know the model is not one that they have made for long.

It had been on craigslist for several weeks so I called her up and offered her a hundred less than she was asking for it and told her I could come get it immediately. She agreed quickly. Instead of feeling great, however, I started to feel suspicious. She agreed too quickly, why didn't she try to counter-offer? So we will see. Hopefully my effort to save $200 doesn't come around to bite me in the behind. This is my mixer, however, she must have lost the pouring shield during the *two* times that she used it. I really wish I had that pouring shield, though. Adding ingredients while mixing can be difficult.

So far I have made mashed potatoes, two loaves of bread, and two batches of cookies. Batch number one turned out terrible. Tasty, but flat as pancakes. I have come up with three possible reasons:

1. I may have over mixed it with my powerful new mixer!
2. It may be because they are chocoloate chip cookies but have no chocolate chips in them ("not me" ate the entire bag of all natural ghiradelli chocolate chips that I had in the pantry. "not me" is in huge trouble when I see him).
3. It might be because I didn't let the butter soften before I beat it with the sugar.
   

Not really sure if that makes a difference or not. I guess we will find out tonight, though. I made a second batch of cookie dough last night and again, I forgot to leave the butter out to soften. These are sugar cookies to take to school tomorrow. So we will see what they look like when I bake the dough up tonight.


The bread turned out awesome. It looked just like-- a loaf of bread!! I left it out on the counter overnight swaddled in a dish cloth and sliced it when I got home from work the next day. And it sliced--beautifully!! Thin and perfect slices. After failing approximately 20 loaves of bread, I have finally mastered the art of bread making. I had already made a good loaf from scratch without the breadmaker. But it is so much faster and easier to whip up multiple loads at once with the mixer. Now I will have to experiment and figure out different kinds to make.

Catching Up!

Here's a quick bulleted list of what has been going on (actually I can't make the stupid bullets work, so we will go with the rainbow strategy instead):

• Being President of the PTO has been way more time consuming than I thought--so lots of time on that. Between that and trying to get through closing the Q3 books at work, I feel as though I just ran a marathon. Oh yes, which reminds me we are all participating in a walk to benefit Autism research tomorrow morning. Bright and early tomorrow morning. No rest for the wicked!


• Gretyl got her first interem grade reports (not official grades, just the status at the half way point). All A's!! ...okay, 2 A-'s. But that still counts in my book!


• Went with Kyle's class on a field trip to the pumpkin farm on Monday. So much fun. And I discovered that I am a much better photographer outside on a bright and slightly overcast day.


• Gretyl informed us on Wednesday that she was going to attend the homecoming formal dance on Saturday after all. Was so excited but freaked out at the time crunch to get everything around. Her very first formal dance!!
  
• Keenan's bday was Friday. Not much fanfare as everyone was out of town this weekend. But Gretyl and Kyle and I went shopping so he'd have a few things to open and of course we had cake from whole foods. Absolutely to die for. Thank you Keenan for turning the big 13 so we could all have cake!


• Boys had their yearly checkups at the indecent hour of 8:30 this morning. Ugh.. Poor Keenan had to get two shots. Kyle narrowly escaped a needed booster. He hounded them from the second that we got in the door, making sure he didn't have to get any shots this year. They told him no, he was okay. He continued to ask just to be sure..about 20 more times during his physical exam. They assured him, nope, he was in the clear. At the very end they said, oh yeah, he probably should get his booster on the MMR. Kind of hard to do that, though, after they assured him he didn't need one.


• Spent the better part of the day shopping for flowers for Gretyl's hair, getting her hair and nails done, listening to Gretyl beg her friend Jack to reconsider about going to homecoming, and actually getting her ready for homecoming dance. I must say it was all worth it. She was absolutely beautiful. And of course I was such a dork, I even took a picture of her while she was at the salon.

Midnight Snack after the big dance

• Oh yes, and the ice cream social went beautifully. It didn't rain, but no one stepped foot out the back door onto the deck. All 12 of us stayed in the living/dining room area. And only a handful of people actually had ice cream. So we have been eating an awful lot of Breyers Ice Cream (all natural of course!) Kyle thought he had met a celebrity. He took an extra yard sign to hang on his wall and charmed a Kevin Bacon for State Representative T-Shirt out of the sweet young campaign manager. It didn't matter to him that she only had adult sizes and it went down to his ankles. He slept proudly in it. I will admit the first 30 mintues of the event was awkward and made my skin crawl. Everyone kind of congregated near the front door and had their own little conversations going. Chris somehow roped everyone in and got everyone into the living room and in conversation mode. I was amazed at how he handled the small crowd. There was some very good discussion with the state rep and the best part was probably when one man got a little riled up and shouted "The government is putting a gun to my head--And the Goverment is pulling the trigger!". His wife, who was sitting next to me, started to fidget andwhisper to her husband, "I think we should go, the sitter really needs to leave at 8." Well, they didn't leave quite yet, he had more to say. Nothing quite as animated as his opening statement, though. After everyone left, the state rep and his campaign manager stayed for another half-hour or so and talked with us (and Kyle) over coffee and ice cream.