One of my favorite pictures…

11. January 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

This is one of my favorite pictures of Timmy. Taken in NY November 2005, so Timmy was about 10 months old. Once upon a time, he had bright blue eyes. They’ve since darkened to more of a hazel color.

When they were this bright blue, Timmy’s eyes were somewhat of a puzzle to Dave and me; we both have brown eyes. But now we’re pretty sure they’re coming to us from my Dad. Coincidentally, Timmy was named after my Dad, Timothy Fox. Thanks Dad!

Timmy’s also the “white boy” of his generation on my side of the family, as evidenced in this picture of my boys and my sister’s 3 sons. This portrait was a Christmas gift for my parents this past year. We took the picture on December 16th. Timmy’s on the far left.

All Hail the WHOOPIE PIE!

11. January 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

“Whoopie WHAT???”

Whoopie Pie.

A Pa Dutch treat I’ve been exposed to mainly from when I started seeing Dave. I probably saw and had them when I was younger, but I didn’t see them in such volumes until I started going to Lancaster County, PA on an annual basis for Dave’s family reunions.


So we get a note sent home from Jake’s preschool teachers, suggesting the kids bring in “black and white” colored snacks to share with the class in celebration of “Penguin Week” this week. I assumed all the other Moms would be headed straight for the Oreos and black licorice. As you can see on the picture on the left, a chocolate Whoopie Pie is pretty dark. So that’s what I suggested to the masses.

These snacks will be headed into school tomorrow, and between these Whoopie Pies, Oreos, Moon Pies, chocolate/blonde brownies, Penguin gummies, yogurt raisins, etc…these kids are in for one heck of a sugar rush!

Anyway, here’s a brief photo essay on my journey into the world of Whoopie Pie creation. It wasn’t as easy as I thought — my kitchen was TRASHED when I was done. These things are sticky and I used up all my sugar and flour in the process, and you should never turn on a mixer onto dry cocoa powder!

First of all, here’s the recipe I used. It’s just what came up with a Google search on Whoopie Pies, and I didn’t have any buttermilk in the house, so I couldn’t use the first couple hits that came up.

So I mixed the batter — which is the consistency of super-thick cake batter. Stringy.


This is spooned onto a parchment-lined (or greased) cookie sheet…I got nervous when the batter started spreading out immediately. But I guess this is what was supposed to happen.

So after 10 minutes in the oven, they puff up into little stuffed brown drink coasters.


Cool them on a rack. Meanwhile, I made the filling and used a frosting piping bag to put the filling in the Whoopie Pie. Top it off, wrap them in plastic!


They aren’t quite as moist as what I remember from the native version, but still tasty. The kids will enjoy them — Timmy couldn’t get enough of the “factory seconds” that I let him have.

Toilet Humor!

07. January 2008 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,
So today I decided to open up the house and do some cleaning this afternoon while Timmy napped.

One of my tasks was to clean our downstairs 1/2 bathroom. For those who’ve heard my complaints, the toilet in our 1/2 bath has had a strange odor that I’m sure is attributed to having to potty train two little boys. I’ve tried everything — strong air fresheners, strong chemical cleaners, natural cleaners, and even hit up the stain/odor remover section at Petsmart. Many of those products have covered the odor for a little bit, but after a while the smell would come back.

I’ve gone so far as to get on my hands and knees and get my nose down to the caulking between the toilet and the floor and see if that was the problem (it wasn’t). EEEWWW!

Incidentally, the odor arbitrarily disappeared around Thanksgiving…hey…no complaints here!

My motivation today for hitting the downstairs bathroom was mainly to clean up all the dried soap residue from our sink…the boys tend to get overzealous with the soap. In fact, I’ve recently switched from liquid to bar soap after noticing the boys using one container of liquid soap in about a week.

So I clean — the sink, toilet, and floor. Scrub/wipedown with some Mr. Clean solution.

And now the odor is back.

What the hell? Argh!

PS: In the townhouse we rented in Seoul, the bathrooms had a drain in the middle of the floor. I would wipe down everything with Scrubbing Bubbles, then turn on the shower (connected with a hose) and just spray down the whole room: floor to ceiling. That was awesome!

Slowly but surely…

03. January 2008 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

…it took till nearly midnight to convince my laptop that YES I wanted the hard drive formatted! It isn’t as easy as you might think, and I don’t have the wherewithal to go into it here, so I won’t!

I’ll just refer you here, which is one of the many geeky sites I had to refer to to figure this out.

As of this writing, I’ve installed Windows XP (circa 2002, meaning once you get it going, it has to download a billion updates), plus the Service Pack 2 from a CD I have. Then I configured the machine back onto our home wireless network so I can start downloading the anti-virus software — the culprit that got me in trouble in the first place!

So it’s downloading…we’ll see from there.

IN THE MEANTIME —

I got to bed about 12:30am last night after I got the laptop to start formatting the hard drive. I’ve done worse when faced with rebuilding our computers, so I was pleased with that.

2:09am: Jake comes to my room to tell me he got sick. All those cinnamon rolls. Why did I let him have 3??? At least his barf smelled like cinnamon — really, it did.

2:12am: I’m hauling my Bissel Green Machine upstairs to clean up the mess. I’ll give Jake credit: he leaned over and made his mess on the floor, his bed was fine! There’s a couple spots on the SIDE of the bed, which I’m dealing with today, but things were good enough that he could go back to sleep right away.

2:32am: By the time I’m done with all this, Jake had gone back to sleep. Phew!

2:36am: Back in bed. Hard to sleep with computer problems and a sick son on my mind.

6:50am: Timmy’s poking my face to tell me he’s awake.

Jake mainly has an upset stomach, with no other symptoms of illness. He’s staying home from preschool today, tomorrow’s pajama day, so he don’t want to miss that!

Cinnamon Rolls, Mommy! The ones you BAKE!

03. January 2008 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Yeah. The ones I BAKE. You don’t know how badly I want to try the cinnamon roll recipe featured here:

http://www.thepioneerwomancooks.com/2007/06/cinammon_rolls_.html

But that is NOT what the kids mean. THIS is what they mean:

I was at Target today and was looking for the Pillsbury ones, but alas, they were ALL sold out. Even the “Grands” and Reduced Fat versions. I think the orange flavor was available, but that would not have worked with my kids!

So it was Market Pantry Cinnamon Rolls…and here are some pictures of my “home baked” dessert for my boys.

Yum —

Applying the baggie of icing…actually, I like it this way better than Pillsbury’s thick stuff that slides right off the tops.

Don’t these look like Pioneer Woman’s? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

But hey — when you have two happy boys who cares???



PS: This might lead to more posts about how my kids enjoy foods best when they’re quickly prepared out of a box with a cartoon character on the front — Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls featuring the Dough Boy…I rest my case.

"MOMMY! I ‘need’ you."

01. January 2008 · Comments Off on "MOMMY! I ‘need’ you." · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Timmy’s new mantra. He’s my 2-year-old. Starting about a week ago he decided he could say this and I’d pick him up. He’d been on an independent streak until recently — now he wants to be held all the time and I’m just not into that anymore. He’s almost 3 years old (end of January), and he had gone months NOT wanting to be held all the time. I guess I had felt used to it.

What makes it all the more emotional for me is how he actually says “Mommy, I need you.” as he extends his hands out for me.

Things were much easier with convincing Jacob to walk on his own, my ob ordered me to not carry anything over 20 lbs. in my 3rd trimester with Timmy because of sciatica. He said “Especially don’t carry Jake.”. Jacob is from the school of hard knocks.

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