Heaven Help Me!

The other day, I bought “Moon Dough”. Today I let the kids play with it. Then, Clare decided to make chocolate chip cookies (very good, by the way!).  I cannot believe that the cookies remain untouched…while the kids continue to say they don’t want cookies, they want to play with MOON DOUGH! They’ve been making little doggies, moon dough bones and steaks for hours! This stuff is an amazing way to entertain them.

*UPDATE* : Oh no!!! Now I know why they were so quiet! (Silence in a house full of young kids is NEVER a good sign.) I walked to the play room and I saw MOON DOUGH EXPLODED EVERYWHERE – Like Mt. Saint Moon Dough erupted and spewed little bits of spongy, mold-able, pink and purple moon stuff EVERYWHERE!!! This stuff sure is fun, but by the time everyone was done cleaning it up, it had completely lost its appeal.

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The first days of summer are among us! It was SUCH a beautiful day yesterday. After dropping Snoop off to get her haircut yesterday (we’ve found this to be a great solution to her seasonal shedding), we stopped by Priory Park, which features a very large play area, 3 soccer fields, 2 baseball diamonds, concession stand, walking path, and public restrooms (the last of these ensures that we don’t have to leave early)! On this glorious day, I had the privilege of being able to sit back and watch my kids play. Every time, I anticipated that one of my younger kids would need help climbing the slide or getting a push on the swing, one of the olders would race in to do it for me without prompting. So, there were “underdog” galores, and much enticement from the olders to get the younger kids to join their adventure exploring the world.

Another beautiful thing was watching my three older kids play. I am always amazed at the unique abilities of children to negotiate amongst themselves. I find their creativity fascinating, as well as humorous. I think they were organizing races amongst themselves in the soccer field located beyond the tree line (this park is HUGE!), all the while taking turns running past their younger sibling and giving her a push on the swing, then returning back to their soccer field home base. Amazingly, today there was no quarreling, no name-calling; just sunshiney love!

I’m glad summer is here.

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Even though we try to live life in our house in such a way where “it is easier to be good”,  squabbles over petty things at our house is inevitable. One such occasion was yesterday, when my two middle girls were fighting over a piece of plastic, of all things!

I received a Dr. Scholl’s insole in the mail as a free sample to try. It was one of those squishy, gel insoles, guaranteed to make feet happy. It seemed to be made of that same gel material that some of my children’s’ favorite toys are made of – that sticky, stretchy gel which makes toys such as  this frog stick to walls and come to life. No wonder the girls found it so appealing!

I explained to the girls that this “toy” was actually just a shoe insole.

It was while the tug of war over this squishy gel insole was going on, that another daughter got involved, asking “hey, what’s that?!”

Gianna fiercely piped up saying with all seriousness (thinking she was pronouncing it absolutely correctly), “that’s an in-SULT”!

Well, that broke the ice and made us realize how silly it was to be fighting over this thing!

We laughed so hard at this, mostly because it sounded so funny that she really thought she was pronouncing the word “insole” correctly! This may be one of those “you had to be there” moments, but I thought I’d write about it because it was was a moment of cohension (through silliness) among us.

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My daughters, Gianna and Catherine, celebrated back-to-back feast days this week. The feast of St. Gianna was on Wednesday, and the feast of  St. Catherine of Siena was today. Besides getting to learn more about the saint after which they were named, the whole house celebrated with CAKE!

Gianna and Catherine’s cake of choice was “Rainbow Cake”. Through the course of preparing it, I came up with a few alternate names for it: “Zeppelin” cake, LSD cake, and ADHD cake. You don’t have to be Einstein to know there is TONS of sugar and LOADS  of artificial food coloring in there. All in the name of fun (& curiosity), the girls and I added extra of each.

Now, to make the cake you simply pour the cake batter into several bowls – however many colors you want to use. I let the girls select the colors to make it more exciting enticing. As you can see, they picked passion fruit purple, chartreuse,  lime green, lots of sunny day yellow, did you say ORANGE?, and perfectly pink!

The above picture is what the cakes looked like after baking.

Then after being frosted…

(“Don’t I look pretty?!” says the cake, “Imagine giving me to some unsuspecting visitor!!! Bakery surprise!” )

Then after being cut up…

And oh, the happy faces it brings!

Mmmmm! I better lick all these psychedelic morsels from in between the tines of the fork as well!

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The kids are very excited with the arrival of a new baby soon. They are having even more fun feeling my stomach and watching the roller coaster style waves.

Just about every day now they are excitedly asking me, “Is Thomas awake???” which basically means they want to get a kick out of him (ha-ha – no pun intended).

A funny conversation ensued after dinner tonight.

Catherine (spinning around with excitement): “Clare! Guess what?! Thomas was T-O-T-A-L-L-Y AWAKE today and Mommy let me feel her stomach! It was SO weird! Like tentacles inside or an alien raging around! A worm! Yeah, that what it’s like! Some other kind of being, but it’s a baby!!! Oh! I can’t wait!” (She uses her hands to demonstrate the alienness of the whole thing.)

She reminds me so much of this enthusiastic girl:   “:)”

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We have two birthday girls in our house this week. Teresa is now three and Gianna is now six! They were really excited to get their own cakes & cupcakes and pick out the special food and activities for the family to celebrate the day they were born.

As I told them, the day they were born was one of the happiest of my life! Thank God for my precious daughters.

Teresa (Look at that face! )

Gianna with the cake she made herself! (Well, sort of...)

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