A New Turn in the Road

Well, happy days again -maybe -as today I was finally able to read others blogs and leave comments that were accepted and went through via Blogger! That was a good turn, in my opinion and I'm sure others who experienced similar problems this past week are happy with that too.

It's been a busy week here for me. I finished another "Proud Rooster" tabletopper and matching runner that a friend of my had asked me to do up for her. I needed to have it done by today and got it completed Monday night! Tuesday, was the monthly meeting of our church Women's Group so I was out and about that night but managed to do some work on a set of pillow cases I'd started work on earlier that day.

Wednesday -hotter than hades, for sure -or so it seemed! I have no idea what the temps or humidity factors were but baby it sure was hot! So hot it may have scorched a few brain cells because now I can't really remember what all happened that day! Thursday was almost as hot but I had to make the house a bit warmer by baking cookies!

Yeah - I mixed up three batches of cookies -peanut butter, snickerdoodles and gingersnaps. All were intended to go to our church for the tent the women have erected on the day of the community-wide yard sale in Lanse. I even had two helpers as I mixed up these cookies and got them baked.
Here's Maya, deep in concentration as Amanda (her TSS) helps her get the knack of putting those little criss-crosses on the peanut butter cookies that she had helped to roll into balls just a few minutes earlier.

Maya was so excited, so happy and proud to be helping Gram make these cookies -and also, very, very attentive and well-behaved during the entire process too that it made me one very proud old Grammy to have her there, wanting to be my little helper. (Earlier, she had been grumping to Amanda about not being altogether happy over her being here, why does she have to have a TSS and such. Amanda had told her until such time that Maya doesn't misbehave, listens to and obeys what Mommy and Gram tell her to do, doesn't pick on Kurtis, making him cry, etc., and various other circumstances that aren't exactly considered good social skills, she's going to be stuck with Amanda by her side several hours a day, for 3-4 days of the week so she better snap to or get used to Amanda's presence. We're not sure then if her behavior was because she was trying to make a great impression on her TSS or if she just really wanted to "play" in the kitchen with Gram. I'd like to think it was she really wanted to play and learn all at the same time, in the kitchen with me.

Friday, I drove over to Bellefonte and picked up my older grandson so he could come up and spend last night and today here with us. He's a really good kid and both Maya and Kurtis enjoy when he is here for the extra attention he pays to them and especially when he plays little rough-housing games with them from time to time. They also listen fairly well to him too if he sees them doing something or getting into places he knows are off-limits to them so that makes for a bit of an extra helper then for me or Mandy -whoever happens to be here at the time.

His Mom and her fiance came up then today for supper with us and to take him home. Tomorrow, he will be going to Boy Scout Camp for the next week so we won't have a chance to have him come stay with us for a day or two until next week sometime now. Hope you have a great time at Camp Alex, that all the activities scheduled are fun for you and that you return back home safe and sound -all limbs still attached!

After they left tonight, Maya and Kurt got ready for bed and Maya decided she needed something new to take upstairs with her when she was going to go up to bed.

That item? A flashlight -with batteries! Yes, that was her request -a blue flashlight to be precise, and with batteries so it would work.

This was a new item for her to request so I asked her why she wanted this and it seems she has now decided the time has come for her to be afraid of the dark perhaps. She said she needs the flashlight so as to be able to see to get around upstairs at night, in the dark. When I reminded her that the hall light is always on, plus the tv in her room is turned on when the kids go to bed too -sort of an animated night light for them -but she didn't think that would work to show the way around the upstairs well enough in the dark.

Even when I suggested she go out and hop into my bed, as I pointed out the tv would be on there, as well as light shining into my room from both the dining room light and the living room, in addition to the outside light that would also be on and gives light too into my room, that still wasn't quite enough light for little Princess Maya.

I'm wondering then if I follow through on an idea I've had for sometime now of putting special lights -those low voltage garden lights -if you know what I mean, -around the front of the house and along the sidewalk there, if they would throw enough light back in to my room to satisfy her needs now for more light to see in the dark inside the place!

Boy, kids sure can come up with some off-the-wall requests at times though, can't they? But then I think back to when I was her age and it was about that time of my life I think that I changed from having no fear of the dark at all to being absolutely petrified of being alone upstairs (and there was no such thing as a nightlight in this house back then) at night!

Anyway, to finish this off -remember those cookies my helpers and I baked on Thursday? Well, the peanut butter ones and the snickerdoodles turned out fine and dandy. The gingersnaps though -not so good! Well, they tasted fine and Kurtis absolutely loved them, but they sure didn't look quite like they should have as the batter ran and they baked up as flat as pancakes!

Then, last night, my older grandson had put the container I had the peanut butter cookies stored in on top of the refrigerator but as it turned out, he hadn't pushed the container back quite as far as he needed to do so when I opened the freezer door with an ice cube tray filled with water in my hand, that container of cookies was thrown off balance and it came tumbling to the floor. Fortunately, the lid just came slightly ajar and only a couple of the cookies fell out of the container and they pretty much just broke apart, creating a big mess of cookie crumbs to clean up. Well, so I thought anyway! However, when I later went to bag those cookies for the sale today at the Women's Booth at the yard sale, I saw that about half of the cookies I'd made ended up broken into many smaller pieces in the container so the group kind of got shorted a bit on the number of cookies I had then to donate.

And here's a parting shot too of my little helper that I think pretty much says it all, don't you?


Do you think she'll be another Paula Dean or perhaps Rachel Rae -maybe even the next Julia Child too. Who knows, huh?