Of Weather, Kids and Even Memes

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm bloody well tired of this winter! The below zero temps between Thursday and yesterday wreaked a good bit of havoc all over the place.

Here, well yesterday morning was pretty much filled up for my son-in-law as he was busy trying to thaw out my Jeep and Mandy's Jetta. While he was trying to do that, a friend of ours who lives over in the back-side of town called, wanting Bill to come by his place to get his car started and then, the next-door neighbor's son asked Bill to see if he could get his car started too. The only one Bill couldn't help was the neighbor's kid as his car wouldn't even turn over.

Mid-way through the afternoon, Maya earned a slot on her mother's "Not-so-good" List by getting into the medicine cabinet and finding a slim bottle there that probably looked to her to be either lip gloss or fingernail polish but in actuality, it really is a little bottle of automotive paint in the exact shade of the hood of my jeep -a nice red shade! That shade then appeared on the edging of the changing table (which by the way is a nice light wood) and a blog of the paint also made its way to land in a big splat on the vanity and a few splotches in the vanity sink too! No, Mandy was not the least bit impressed by this latest artistic display of Maya's! Neither was Grammy for that matter.

That little bottle of paint is now on the very top shelf in the cellar way -which I can hardly reach so I don't think Miss Maya will be able to get to it and get it down for a long, long time now!

My son got home last night around 5 p.m. to a house where the furnace had run out of fuel sometime this week while he was on the road. Lovely, huh? He's just darned lucky he doesn't have hot water heat where the radiators could freeze up and burst on him! He and the son-in-law worked on thawing things out this afternoon and the only problems he ended up having were that the meter thingy had frozen and was leaking so they had to take that apart, weld it and then, put it back together. Then he also discovered there is a problem with the cold water faucet in his bathroom sink so he;ll have to go to the hardware store tomorrow and get a new faucet and fixtures for that I guess. Again, as I said above, he's just darned lucky more pipes didn't freeze and break on him!

Last night, for supper, we took the really easy route -sausage patties and pancakes! But, the fact it was an easy fix wasn't my only reason in making that but also, because I knew both kids would "sit up, shut up and eat" without anyone having to say word one to either one of them to do that! I had buttered one pancake, cut it up and given it to Kurtis and was in the kitchen by the griddle overseeing a couple more pancakes and happened to glance up at the kids. Kurtis was sitting in his chair at the table, with a big old butter knife in hand. I thought I had the butter knife well away from his plate but apparently it was close enough for him to grab and he used it then to nail himself another pancake! There he sat, knife in one hand, pancake in the other and gobbling away at the center of the pancake. It was half finished by the time I got to him and removed the knife from his little hand! Yep, as I said -I knew both kids would eat the pancakes with no coaxing necessary!

Today, I made a meatloaf (half ground beef and half ground venison), flattened it out and sprinkled shredded cheeses -mozzarella and cheddar -on it and then rolled it up -like a jelly roll to bake it -along with a big bowl of home-made scalloped potatoes with slivered onions in it. Broccoli and applesauce rounded out the main menu and for dessert,

While the potatoes were cooking and I was reading blogs here, I heard Bill talking to Maya out in the kitchen, asking her what she was doing. Seems she decided -after watching me peel the potatoes for the scalloped potatoes, that she wanted to help Grammy cook today as she had found the potato peeler and was trying her level best to peel some potatoes! Bill said she had one pared down to about the size of a french fry, but hey, at least she's watching, apparently learning how its done too! Wonder how soon I can turn the kitchen duties over to her now?

I fixed "Tandy Cake" - a recipe I got from Empress Bee's blog post the other day. Ya'll know Empress Bee and how she does love her cake, don't ''cha? Well, let me tell you this -little Kurtis definitely appreciated Bee's Tandy Cake too -very much so, he did, as evidenced in these pictures Mandy and I took of him as he sat, with a hunk of cake in each hand, shoving it in his little mouth and chocolate and peanut butter smeared all over his sweet little face.


After he finished the cake, he then struck this fancy pose -foot up on the table to give a little "down home" look I guess as he proceeded to try to lick any remaining chocolate and/or peanut butter from his fingers, hands, probably from his arms too, for that matter.
In this shot, I think by the look on his face, he was kind of trying to send a signal that we should supply him with another hunk of that cake. Not tonight, baby -but for sure, you can have a piece tomorrow!



After supper though, he gave us one heck of a fright. Bill was working upstairs -spackling on the wall where he and Mandy had changed the doorway to their bedroom and Kurtis was at the foot of the stairs, chattering away at his Dad. I heard him moving around a bit and called to him to get away from the steps and at the same time, his Dad turned around to warn him to get away, and even more specific, to not try climbing up the steps but those little feet can really move quickly when he wants them to and he was by that time, half-way up the stairs when he then lost his footing and came tumbling down in a crash landing at the foot of the steps. I ran to the steps and picked him up just as Bill reached there. Poor little guy! Aside from the fact that I'm sure it was a bit of a painful roll down the stairs, he had also scared the living daylights out of himself too. Screamed bloody-blue murder, he did! Mandy did a once over on him, checking for anything obvious that he may have injured in his fall but found nothing except that we figure he must have bumped his mouth against his teeth as his mouth was bleeding a tiny bit -just enough injury there most likely to upset him a bit more ya know.

And that's what I've been dealing with here over the past two days. Now, on to the other thing I mentioned in the title to this post -Memes!

Normally, I don't do memes. I enjoy reading them when others do them, but the majority of them -particularly those where you are to mention 50 things about yourself that are weird or exciting or whatever and those, I hate. I also tend to ignore them too if someone tags me with one of those cause they immediately tend to make my brain freeze up completely and at my age, I can't deal with any more braindeadness than is already in full bloom, ya know.

However, a Blogger Buddy of mine posted one yesterday and tagged me for it and this one I think I can handle.

Here's the instructions, per Morgan at her place -All I' Have to Say --
All you have to do is list six things that make you happy and then tag three other bloggers. Now that is my kind of meme!

So, here's my six things:

1. Having my three kids -Carrie, Clate and Mandy!
2. Having my grandkids -Alex, Maya and Kurtis.
3. Having my daughter Mandy, her husband, Bill and the two younger grandkids living here with me.
4. Being able to watch Maya and Kurtis as they each are learning so much, so quickly now, and seeming to be responding very nicely thanks to all the therapists they both have had helping them, and the teachers Maya has who work with her at the school she attends. For anyone reading this who isn't aware of this, both these two little grandkids of mine are autistic and to me, they are also just plain, pure and simple, Amazing and Awesome too!
5. Chino - the somewhat simple-minded cat we have! Sweet, cuddly, loveable and also about a silly as any cat can possibly be!
6. Friends -in person, bloggers, old ones, new ones!

And considering what I'm doing most of the time when I'm not playing on the computer, reading blogs, posting here, I have to add a 7th thing that makes me happy -embroidery, or crafts -knitting, sewing, crochet -along with reading, which I haven't really done much of the latter due to the blog stuff and the embroidery!

Now -to take 3 other bloggers huh?

Ok -here goes:

Linda at These Are the Days
Tee at The Diva's Random Thoughts
Jocelyn at O Mighty Crisis
and anyone else who wants to share six things that make them happy too!

Oh -before I forget -remember the issues I was grumping about the other day with respect to my wacky sleep patterns? Well blogger buddy Suldog commented that perhaps I should try melatonin. This is really funny because you see, we have melatonin here and give it to both the kids -religiously, every night to help them to calm down, fall asleep and hopefully for Kurtis, to help him sleep through the night so as not to upset what ever sleep pattern old Grammy might be in every night. Yep -have it here, handy -in the kitchen -and I never even thought of taking it myself! There's a whole lot of braindead space going on in my pea brain, as you can readily see! So last night, I tried it and managed -thanks to the melatonin -to get over 5 1;2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in -felt fairly decent when I woke up this morning except for the fact I was stiff and sore as all get out but hey, that's all part of getting old and much, much grayer, isnt it"

And one more thing -the "Tandy Cake" as recommended by Empress Bee -just bake a yellow cake, slather a layer of peanut butter on top of the cooled cake and then, top that with a batch of chocolate icing! Yep! Pretty doggone good stuff it is! Thanks, Bee, from me -and also, from Kurtis too!