What a Week!!

Today is the first day where things are feeling a little less frantic.
Sam's first day of school was fantastic. She was so excited and not sad or clingy at all (I think it helped a lot that her teacher was one of the co-op moms last year). After school she was jumping up and down and waving when I came to pick her up. Ben was a little more tired. 4th grade is a tough year. He was a little less thrilled to be back at school, but he has a bunch of buddies in his class this year so that makes it a little better. I just love this pic of them. Ben is such a sweet big brother. He was very protective of Sam and wanted to make sure she was alright on her first day.

Part of my PTA duties yesterday was to put together the annual "BooHoo Breakfast". When Ben was in K there wasn't any kind of welcome for the new parents and moms who were sad had to go cry in their cars. This wasn't okay, so I suggested the PTA do a little welcome reception so that parents could meet each other, get any last minute questions answered and a little needed "there, there, your child will be fine and so will you". This was the third year we have done this and every year we get a few more people. Even though the turn out is always less than I expect it to be, the moms and dads who really seem to need it show up and that makes me glad we are there for them.

Of course with any PTA project I seem to be involved with there was a huge amount of baking. I made 3 batches of cookies (white chocolate macadamia, ranger, PB chip) and planned to make some quick breads (pineapple, zucchini, banana) However, the day before school was a little busier than I thought it would be so I made the executive decision to go and buy some stuff from the QFC bakery. Holy Gouging, Batman. That bakery was spendy. Now the QFC is the closest grocery store and they always have good stuff, but they are expensive. This is going to sound bad, but since it wasn't my money I was spending, I was more okay for spending $6 for 9 mini danish. That's right, they don't even sell things by the dozen. I got a couple of tubs of those and then some mini muffins. (I would really like to add muffin making to my baking skills. It seems the ones I make are good for the first 15 minutes and then after that they get hard. If anyone knows of a way to convert quick breads to muffins, let me know) Anyway, that trip just reaffirmed the fact that baking from scratch it sooooo much cheaper and well worth the 15 minutes of effort.

However the dark side of baking is, of course, the resulting baked goods. The PB chip cookies I made didn't make it to the school. The first few sheets were a little more browned than I wanted and since I hate ugly cookies, they stayed home. Now this wouldn't have been a problem, but the last few sheets I reduced the heat and the cooking time and result was pure evil. E-vell. They were soft and chewy and those PB chips just push them over the top. I can't stop eating them. I guess the good news is that I'm almost out of the "good ones" and I won't eat the ugly ones, so now it is just a waiting game. I think I will pack some in the kids lunches today. The practical side would have packed them up and sent them to work with Joji, but they worked their evil magic and convinced me to keep them home with me. Oh this does not bode well for the diet.



Speaking of "the diet", it has taken some hard hits lately. This past weekend we went to the Melting Pot with the Browns. Have you been there??? It is a fondue restaurant and it was a blast!! For our cheese course we had some type of spinach/artichoke cheesy goodness. It was amazing on Granny Smith apples and of course the crusty bread. For dessert we got the S'mores chocolate and we got rice crispy treats to dip. I'm totally doing that at the Christmas party this year. It was sooo good. Wouldn't it be a wonderful world, if instead of the "Cabbage Soup" diet you could go on the "Fondue Diet"? Oh well, I guess a girl can dream.

So that was some of the craziness that has been my life for the past few days. I have barely had time to read the blogs let alone blog myself. However, now that the kids will be gone for 6 1/2 hours a day every day, I should have a little more free time. Although, I'm a little nervous. That is a lot of time to fill. I suppose if I was one of those girls who hits the ground running with "to-do" list in hand it would be a godsend. Unfortunately, I'm a little more of a slow starter. I'm hoping that my testing will start up soon. I just found out I got a $2 an hour raise. That means I now make twice as much an hour testing as I do for subbing. Hmmmmm, have kids one on one asking them to point to the picture of the school bus, or a class of 25 kindergartners. Tough call. Seriously, the subbing is mainly to get some current class time so when I decide to go back to teaching I will have actually taught in this century. As far as going back to the classroom, I don't see myself going back for a while. Maybe if a K job opened up in a couple years at my kid's school I would think about it. I think I'm about 5 years away from seriously considering going back (much to Joji's chagrins). Right now I'm really enjoying the stay at home mom life.