Bacon/maple cookies

So my future sister in law is apparently making bacon/maple cookies today. Hmmm…I’m intrigued. I think I need this recipe.

Last Day

Today is our last day in Michigan.  This makes me sad.  The children don’t want to leave either, but they have camp next week so off we go.  I suppose we could stay until Sunday, but there is nothing worse than trying to drive from Michigan toward Chicago on a sunday, except maybe driving from the Chicagoland Metropolitan Area to Michigan on Friday.

The applesauce showdown

As you may have surmised, I am in Michigan this week with my sister and her boys.  My sister and I consider this our vacation and so we let our parenting standards slip a bit.

While we are still pretty vigilant about things like safety we tend to let smaller things slide.  Things like how much television is too much, and whether or not Goldfish crackers and lemonade can be considered a nutritious breakfast.

Every once in a while, however the mother guilt kicks in and we decide The Children need to eat something organic.  You should probably consider it a testament to just how far our standards have slipped that we consider applesauce an organic substance in these situations.

So at lunchtime today we made everybody have some applesauce with their lunch, and told them they couldn’t have any potato chips until after their applesauce was gone (we are such good moms).

Well, my middle nephew O was not excited about this plan, and so he said he didn’t want any chips and could be please be excused even though he didn’t eat his applesauce.  My sister said yes, but you can’t have anything else to eat until after you eat this applesauce.

A couple of hours later after some hard swimming O said he was hungry, so my sister pulled out…the applesauce.  Ta da!  O was not pleased.  We then upped the ante by giving his brothers and his cousins giant Tootsie Rolls and told him he couldn’t have his until – you guessed it – the applesauce was gone.

He swore up and down that he had not been informed of this condition when he left the table at lunchtime.  He refused to eat it.  My sister stood firm.  In the end, she managed to up the ante even further by getting him to eat an actual apple that actually grew on an actual tree.  Amazing.

And then he ate the Tootsie Roll.

Cottage of Thieves

This morning my nephew Little J ran into the kitchen while S and I were cooking breakfast threw something into the trash and ran out.  He was throwing out a wrapper from a mini Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup.  The little thief.  He denied it of course, but we could see the offending candy sticking out from his cheek.

This has been the theme of the week so far.  The children are stealing candy like there is no tomorrow.  We have already gone through three pounds of licorice.  Yes, you heard that correctly, three pounds of licorice.  We suspect Little J was just standing at the counter (which is right at his head height) and sucking them down while we weren’t looking.

The best story though, is the story of the Tootsie Rolls.  My mom had put a dish of festively wrapped Tootsie Rolls on a table in the living room.  When we made our first grocery run we glanced at the bowl, and it still looked full so we didn’t get any more.

The bowl was full all right.  Full of empty wrappers.  The sneaky sneaky children were just putting the empty wrappers back in the bowl so we wouldn’t notice that the candy level was dropping.

I swear they are all preparing for careers as petty larcenists.

I just hope they don’t find our 56-ounce bag of Peanut M&Ms.

Tuesday

It’s late, I’m tired.

We took the kids swimming off the boat today.  The sun was warm but the water was freezing.  Even the kids didn’t seem to interested in submerging themselves for long.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cool, so we will probably take them to the park.  Or maybe Meijers.  S and I love going to Meijers.  The kids hate it, but this is our vacation so they can just be quiet for a change.  Hah.

Wild kingdom

Today was a day for bugs.  We’re in Michigan.  There’s a lot of nature here.

First, let me give you a little background.  When we arrived on Friday, we discovered that the storage shed where we keep the buckets and shovels was full of ants.  And I mean full of ants.  We keep meaning to Do Something about that, but we keep forgetting.

Anyway, today S when to get some super-soaker type of squirt gun out of the shed, and yep, you guessed it, ants all over the place.  When she pulled the cardboard the squirt gun was attached to out of the box, the cardboard insert looked like it was moving.  Gross. She threw it in the water to get them off; it worked, but not right away.  And the real tragedy is, the stupid thing didn’t even work.

Now we move on to bug number two.  Your favorite and mine, leeches.  The Princess got out of the water with three stowaways.  Eeew.  Luckily they were very tiny ones, and S pulled them off easily.  She was pretty weirded out by the whole thing but I think she will survive.  However, I suspect she might not venture so far into the weedy part of the lake in the future.

And finally, when we were readying Big Mable for today’s tubing adventure we discovered it was covered with Daddy Longlegs.  That put Miss D right off tubing.  (She doesn’t like spiders).  We flicked them all off and the story has a happy ending.

Speaking of tubing, dad managed to flip Big Mable with both my sister and brother on board.  He does like to do that.  I didn’t go out today, so dad will have to wait until tomorrow to try to chuck me off the tube

Grand Mere

So tired.  So sandy.  So happy.

Today we took the children to Grand Mere State Park.  This is the beach where we used to swim when we were kids.  It is also the home of Devil’s Back.  I have written about Devils Back before.

It’s a really nice sandy beach, with a lot of rocks right at the shoreline.  When we arrived one of my nephews said, “they should really get rid of all these rocks”.  My other favorite comment was “wow, it’s an ocean!”  I’m not sure who said that either.

The plan was to drive down, hang out on the beach, and then meet our old neighbor S at the beach so the C-man could have a sleepover with B, his best friend.  The whole thing was a surprise for B.  His mom and I were expecting a huge reaction.  Something like “Oh my gosh!  What are YOU doing here?” or something like that.  Instead when they walked down the beach B just looked at C-man and said, “Oh hey C-man.”  S and I were like “that’s it?”  It was kind of an anticlimax.

We took the kids to Devil’s Back too. Princess O ran down it three times.  She had to crawl up.  The grown-ups decided not to try it.  We are wimpy and the sand was hot.

So now the C-man is having a sleepover with his friend, and we are all sitting around exhausted and counting down the minutes until the children go to bed.

Shanghai tonight.  (I think)

Fireworks!

We didn’t go to the city fireworks.  The residents of the lake seem to have plenty.  And we always seem to have duelling fireworks displays on either side of the lake.  i don’t know where these people get these things. They must cost a fortune.

The children were loving it.  The C-Man just stood there yelling Woo Hoo!  at the top of his lungs and doing the fist pump thing.  They were all having a fabulous time.

Happy Fourth of July everyone.

Happy Independence Day

Enjoy. Be careful with those sparklers.

We have arrived

Yesterday we drove from our humble abode in Iowa to my parent’s house in Michigan.  It is an eight hour trip more or less, depending on how often you stop and for how long.  For the most part it is a very long and boring trip, and you get to hear a lot of songs on your I-pod that you forgot about.

It is long and boring, that is, until the time comes to run the gauntlet of Interstates 80/294/94.  Then it is a hair-raising adventure worthy of any theme park.   Any of you who have ever driven on that particular patch of highway know what I am talking about.

You will find yourself barreling down the highway, with cars on either side of you, in lanes that are exactly one car width wide.  There is construction all over the place, so if by chance you are not sandwiched between semi trucks doing 80 miles an hour, it is because you are driving next to the safety barrier going 80 miles an hour (I mean, of course, you are going 80 mph, not the barrier).

All this does not leave much time for deep thought. But I did notice as I was hurtling through the god-forsaken stretch of highway that is Indiana that there are a lot of billboards saying “Discover Michigan”.  I really don’t think that was necessary.  I’m pretty sure the entire population of the Chicagoland Metropolitan Area was driving to Michigan with me yesterday.  I don’t think anybody else needs to discover Michigan thankyouverymuch.

Of course it’s all worth it in the end.  When you cross the state line everything gets all gree and Michigan-y.  We stopped for an early dinner at Redamaks.  They have the best hamburgers ever.  They deep fry them.  So delicious.  So bad for you.  It’s a good thing we only stop there a couple times a year.

And now, here we are.  The children have already been fishing about a million times.   We have also been swimming and have watched way too much television.  My sister and I have watched Twilight and consumed almost an entire bag of chocolate licorice.  Ahhh, I love it here.