Lately I’ve been having a hard time motivating myself to do the Thursday Night posts. I’m so tired on Thursday Nights. I’ve thought, “Hmm, maybe I should switch to another night.” ….Then I remember that I am tired every night! There isn’t a night that would be better. (somebody call the waaambulance)
I know myself though, and these posts are the only way any part of my life is going to get documented/journaled. So I’m forcing myself tonight. I love looking back at past posts and I need to remember that. Especially on nights like tonight when all I want to do is crawl in bed and not stay up late resizing the pictures off my phone and typing.
So here we go.
Tonight for dinner we had baked potatoes with chili, broccoli and cheese. I ate at the church with my women’s group and left food for the family to eat here without me.
I was assigned to take chili to the dinner tonight. I was excited to make some in my new instant pot. I had a great idea to put chunks of sweet potato on top of the chili as it cooked and then I could just take them out and mash them when it was done and mix them into the chili to thicken it.
Well, that didn’t work out so well. This was the first time I used my instant pot and I wasn’t familiar with how hot it cooks. I put in on the “Less” setting because I thought that meant low. Apparently it means warm because when I checked it a few hours later it was only warm and the potatoes were still raw.
So I turned it up, but by then the potatoes didn’t have enough time to cook before I needed the Chili to be done. I ended up boiling them on the stove quickly and mashed them and put them into the chili. It turned out really good.
The chili was the start of a day of “fails” in the kitchen. I’ve been wanting to try making my grandma’s divinity recipe. I attempted it once 9 years ago and it failed. I haven’t tried it again since then, but for some reason I decided to make it today. Failed again! Ugh! The good news is I think I know what I did wrong this time. Now I am on a rampage to make it over and over until I get it right.
When Divinity fails it basically produces a large amount of marshmallow fluff. Nine years ago when it failed the first time, I used all that marshmallow fluff to make fudge to give my neighbors for Christmas. I’ve been wanting to post my Classic Chocolate fudge recipe so I thought, “Why don’t I just make a batch right now, during nap time, and I can use this marshmallow fluff that I have in abundance now that the divinity failed.
Um, I don’t know exactly what happened. The divinity marshmallow fluff must be super sonic, because my fudge that is normally the color of a milk chocolate chip, turned out like this.
So weird. My kids love it and are calling it Hot Chocolate fudge.
So after both of those fails, I am feeling a little deflated in the candy making department.
In other news: Charlotte begged me to make hard boiled eggs today. So random. I threw some on while I was doing all the other cooking/ruining candy. When she came out of her rest time she was so happy. She wanted to peel all the shells off. I told her to only peel the one she was going to eat and one for me.
After she did that and ate hers, she started peeling another one and said she was doing it for Thatcher when he got home from school for a snack. HA! As soon as she was done pealing it, she ate it. She is so funny. She kept begging to eat more and more, I think she ate half a dozen eggs.
She also graciously peeled one for Trever when he woke up. It looks like I need to start boiling eggs more often. Everybody loves them around here.
Almost every Thursday I forget that it’s piano lessons. Good thing they are at our house and the teacher shows up or I would be in real trouble.
Thatcher usually go first and the first words out of his mouth every week are, “Can I get a prize?” Tabor is so patient about it and always opens the book to look at if he has enough points. But in reality he gets a prize about once a month.
I broke down and decided to jump on the Elf on the Shelf bandwagon this year. The kids were talking about it so much.
“I wonder if we will have an elf this year?”
“If we do I hope it tries to drive Charlotte’s Barbie Car.”
“Mom, did you know you can’t touch the elf or it will go away.” (umm, actually I didn’t know that….I think there is a lot I don’t know about this elf thing.)
I couldn’t bring myself to spend the $30 dollars the real Elf on the Shelf costs, but I found this little ornament for $3 dollars at Target and decided for three dollars I could be nice and bring Christmas Cheer to my children.
Last night was the night I had planned to start doing it, so on December 1st they would wake up and find it. As I was going to sleep I realized I forgotten about the elf. Dang it, it’s the first day and I almost forgot. I don’t think this is a good foreshadowing of how this is going to go for the next 24 days. I crawled out of bed to find it and realized that because it was the first night I was going to need to write an explanation of expectations or what not. I was so tired all I could bring myself to write was a basic note about being good and kind so you can be on the nice list. I made up a name for it (Terri) and called it good.
Then I thought, “Since it’s the first night I should leave a little treat or something.” I dug around in the leftover Halloween candy until I found four of the same item (so no one would whine or cry). The only thing I had four of were miniature Hershey bars. I sat them by the note and then thought. “Dang, I should have named the elf Hershey. That would have been perfect.” I was too tired to write a new note so I did my best to turn Terri into Hershey. It actually worked really well.
The kids were SOOOO excited to see Hershey in the morning. Even Trever went all day without touching it even though it was just in the middle of our kitchen table. I was pretty shocked about that. I thought for sure he would try to mess with it. To top it off, Thatcher had written a note to tell Hershey thank you and set two tootsie rolls by it.
I thought for sure Trever would lose his mind about not being able to eat those Tootsie Rolls, but he didn’t.
Wow! I am not sure I can convey what a huge deal that is. This boy is a candyholic and he went all day staring and two tootsie rolls and didn’t even ask for them once.
Maybe these elves really do have magical powers.
I BELIEVE!
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