Words of Wisdom

Not our veggies

One of the things we are trying to do in the new year is eat a little healthier. My biggest problem with that (besides the Twinkies and chocolate bars) is the fact that healthy food just costs more. So we looked around and we discovered this rather amazing service called Bountiful Baskets. (No, I'm not plugging this group, I promise!)

I first heard about them from Grandma. She harassed me for a year to try them and I didn't get around to it until a couple of weeks before she passed away. She was always a bargain hunter and this is definitely a bargain. A basket costs $15 and you have to order it on Mondays. Then you pick it up on Saturday.

When we ordered the basket in the summer we decided that our garden was producing the same kinds of things so we really needed to wait until it was snowy and cold and the garden was dead. To make a long story short, we got our first basket a couple of weeks ago. Half fruits and half veggies, we got things like bananas, clementines, apples, grapes, lettuce, and cucumbers. The kids loved having fresh stuff around to snack on and we didn't waste anything. So this week I signed up for TWO baskets.

Dad's Veggie medley!

When my sweetie got back from the pickup time, he just shook his head. "I don't know what we're going to do with some of this stuff!" he complained. We still got bananas and clementines, but also kiwi, watermelon, and pineapple. (The kids were so excited about the watermelon, they ate both of them for lunch yesterday.) The veggies though, were crazy!

There was the obligatory bunch of lettuce, plus cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. And because we had two baskets, we had TWO bags of them! My sweetie scoured the internet, trying to find some sort of recipe the kids might eat. The first bag was turned into a sauteed bunch with little mushrooms cooked in pork grease. Most of the kids tried one and spit them out.

So tonight he cooked the other bag into a medley of vegetables including parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, onions, and the dreaded sprouts. (Yeah, suddenly the veggies weren't so cheap anymore.) I was folding laundry as the kids were setting the table and my sweetie was finishing things up.  Scout poked her head around the corner.

"Mom?" she asked rather timidly. I kept folding. "Yeah." Her little voice quivered. "Can I say the prayer?" I looked up from the shirt I was turning right side out. "Sure," I responded. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "That food looks so darn yucky!" I guess she was thinking that a prayer might fix everything.

And just so you know...she was totally wrong (or maybe her prayer DID help!). The veggies were delicious! Guess we'll get another basket or two this weekend. Don't know what I'll do with rutabaga though...

A Smack and a Crack

Good thing she's so cute!

Since Shell is Pouring out Her Heart today, I thought I might do a little confessing for Princess. So a few days ago I was standing near the toaster, waiting for my toast to pop. My brain was somewhere else or I was snoozing, one or the other, when a loud cr-a-a-a-ck snapped me back to reality. I looked around for the guilty party and Princess was standing about 5 feet away, holding a metal yardstick in her hand. She was snickering, “I always wanted to do that!” “What?” I asked, “Give me a heart attack?”

She was not apologetic. “Well,” she explained, “My teacher loves to give us a jumpstart just to see if we are awake. I thought you might need one too.” I buttered my toast and mumbled, “Next time, don’t hit the cooktop. That thing is made out of ceramic and you could crack it.” I glanced over to where she had smacked. “You DID crack it!” I accused. Suddenly the smile was gone from her face and mine.


Sure enough, right between the two front burners was a crack about the size of a quarter. It wasn’t funny anymore. My sweetie was NOT going to be happy about this. “You get to explain this one to your dad,” I remarked. “I can’t possibly keep you out of trouble this time.” Tears pooled up in her eyes. “I had no idea that could break,” she mumbled.

It took two days before I finally broke down and pointed out the crack to my sweetie. As predicted, he was not amused. But he kept his cool and decided that perhaps we could repair the crack. He bought sandpaper and filler, but while we were at the store, somehow the crack broke through and snaked its way along the cooktop.

We spent an hour at Lowe’s on Saturday, looking through all of the choices and then finally finding one on clearance for $346. “Princess needs a job,” my sweetie commented. We lugged the cooktop home and it spent the rest of the weekend occupying most of the back of my van. Now it rests in a place of honor on my bathtub.


I know, it could have been in by now and I could be cooking again. The problem is that once my sweetie realized he was getting a new cooktop, he suddenly decided that he needed to do something with those awful countertops. During similar crazy episodes, three huge burn marks had singed the laminate. And so we have begun a massive repair project.

Tomorrow I get to move everything off the kitchen counters including a rather large fish tank. My sweetie has already started sanding and puttying. Since we can’t afford real granite, we are going to put a faux finish on the existing countertops. Then and only then will my sweetie replace the cooktop. He promised three days…but then I caught him eyeing the finish on the cabinets…it might be a LONG three days.

Together We Read

Like many families, we try to get together for a few minutes each evening to read from the scriptures and hold a family prayer. This can get a little crazy some nights with all the different schedules. Tonight was one of those nights. You all know it was Curly’s birthday. By the time we finished his party, it was nearly 10:00. I had to enter my Tupperware order before midnight because some of the specials were ending (and I can’t pass up a good deal!), so I shooed everyone downstairs to watch a movie. I got my order done with 4 minutes to spare and then I waited patiently for the movie to end.

At 12:25, my sweetie came upstairs. Behind him was a procession of big kids carrying sleeping little kids to their beds. When they were all settled, those of us who were still somewhat functioning gathered around the kitchen table. I opened the Holy Bible to Leviticus 13. The Drama Queen asked for the number of verses and when the Dog Walker told her there were 59, she suggested that maybe we could just read half a chapter because everyone was so tired. Since I had the book, I had no intentions of short-cutting, so I simply began to read.


For those of you who are not familiar with Leviticus, it appears to be a handbook for the priests. This particular chapter tells the priests how to decide if someone is a leper. I’m not sure who started with the giggles, maybe it was my reading, or maybe it was the Dog Walker, but by the time we were finished, we were laughing so hard the tears were flowing all around. After 38 verses of horrible descriptions of leprosy, it describes a “freckle.” The Drama Queen and Prima Donna doubled over with fits of laughter. The Dog Walker was so amused that he spit on me! That just made it ten times worse!


Verse 40 states, “And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald;” (talk about obvious).  And in 41, “And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, he is forehead bald:” At this point we all looked at my sweetie (who just happens to be ‘forehead bald’).


Then in verse 45 “the leper must put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.” My girls did an excellent job portraying this for us in a visual way just in case we missed it during the reading.


Teach thought maybe we were being just a little too light-hearted about the scriptures, but I believe studying together should be a time for us to learn and enjoy each others’ company. Maybe if we start at 9:00 PM it won’t be as funny as it was at 1:00 AM. And maybe instead of a horrible boil, it will just be a freckle.

Screamin' Deals

I just got back from Kohl’s. It’s my favorite place to look for bargains. With all these kids I have to be a careful shopper, so I am constantly on the lookout. Last week Big Daddy and I spent a couple of hundred dollars on all the clearance toys. That will keep us stocked up for birthdays and even some of Christmas for the next year. But then they had to give me $30.00 in Kohl’s Kash which of course means I had to go back to the store this week. 

I took Bossy with me because she can smell out a bargain anywhere and if she can’t find one, she will ask for one. We left all the kids home but Baby Doll who became extremely heavy somewhere between the 20^th and 25^th clearance racks! Bossy can’t carry the baby because she has to look at every item on every rack. It was about then that I remembered how much I hate shopping with her. 

To her credit she found a nice pair of jeans for Gamer for $2.60. She also rounded up 3 pairs of boys cargo pants for Sport at $5.40 each, and a couple of pairs of earrings for less than a dollar! I found an XXL shirt for the Gym Rat’s birthday for $1.60 and because of a tiny rip in the Levi's I found for him, Bossy talked the cashier into $7.00 instead of $10.00. 

The Prima Donna’s new gym shorts for school cost $1.40. I also snagged a pair of jeans for Dog-Walker and a blue sweater dress for Princess. Two little pairs of stretch pants for Baby Doll and a necklace later we walked out the door for about $35.00. It was a good shopping day.