I'm glad your meatloaf turned out well, Sweetpeama. I do also think it's wonderful your children are getting to enjoy some hands on baking/cooking experiences
Almost 16 year old actually is in charge of cooking meals several times a week and has been since she was about 12/13. She will even make homemade Kroquets which are bite sized stew meat, vegetables like carrots and peas mixed in potatoes that are mashed and then formed into balls and are breaded and fried, and has done things like homemade orange chicken and homemade teryaki stir fry and rice among other things. She still needs to work on rolling enchaladas and getting brave enough to mix a meat loaf-she doesn't like to touch raw meat, but she will fry items in oil in a pan on the stove which I don't like to do-one of the reasons I asked for a deep fryer on my Christmas wish list and am happy I got one. I have a basket to put everything is and it's even nicer than the open style one my mom had growing up as it has a lid.
13 year old still needs a lot of supervision and for safety reasons we don't let her use the stove-she is allowed to make toast or use the microwave. She helps by making microwave scrambled eggs, cooking bacon on a microwave rack, and baked potatoes in the microwave which she does a great job at. We have to at least watch and be close by when she is needing to measure things out to make things like fudge, pineapple upside down cake, and the cheesy white sauce variation for vegetables.
She also makes popcorn using the microwave popcorn bowl-which if you don't put any butter on it is just like air popped popcorn without having to fight the air popper to get it to work (for anyone who had one of those or your parents had one in the 80s)-though she is not good about sharing with her mama. I make some and she is there with a bowl so I can share with her and comes back more than once for more. She eats by the handfull while I am a piece by piece savory it eater of popcorn.
It's only 45 out, but it's not supposed to get much warmer. It'll be lunch today, plus two more meals in the freezer.
.I bought a Switch in October...and I've been playing Animal Crossing.
I lost my first island, because the software glitched, so I'm on my second...and honestly, I am loving it.
If you know, you know
DD#1 miscarried; she is heartbroken.
We have been having tempatures in the mid 40s this week as well. It sure is different from the mid to high 50s that we had last week. This is unusual for us as we normally get excited when we have tempatures in the low 20s around here due to often having sub zero tempatures. The warmer tempatures have been nice but we still need moisture.
A batch of chilli in my house is not going to make lunch plus a couple of freezer meals even when we make it in the 6 quart crockpot or the big stew pot I have. This is just with DH and almost 16 year old eatting as I can't have any due to my tomato allergy-I need to try a couple of recipes I have for a white chicken chilli or else keep watching to see if it's one of the travelers at the soup and salad resturant in my area so I can order some for delivery to my house (they do their own delivery for a minimium of a $12 order which is a much better deal than ordering through a site that uses one of those places like grubhub or uber eats and paying their delivery fee-though those places will do orders from them as well)-and 13 year old will have a bowl and maybe eat part of 2nd one.
Almost 16 year old and 13 year old went together and bought a switch plus a couple of additional games in late January 2020. My oldest mainly plays though 13 year old will play from time to time with her sister-never solo. Almost 16 year old lost her first island to the software glitch as well. If you are interested in adding her as a friend on the game feel free to message me your friend code so she can add you or she says she can sometime give me her code and I can send it to you via a private message. She is always looking to add people to her friend's list.
My condolances for your daughter. I know others who have found comfort in the book Heaven is For Real both having lost a baby to a miscarriage. I can find the facebook live feed from when the author and his son came and talked at my church a while back and send it to you if you want; though I know they normally travel quite a bit sharing about the book and the story at various places so once this covid stuff is all over she might be able to see them in her area.
We gave DH his gifts tonight consisting of a starwars cats calandar, a mini flashlight which we discovered was open on the side of the packaging and had coroded batteries in it-we are going to send it back as defective and ask for an exchange, some clips to keep the bottom sheet on his side of the bed because the head corner on his side keeps coming off all the time and it's starting to annoy him, and a new winter hat with piece that can come up and cover his lower face to use at work in the freezer- the one he has is about 20 years old and starting to get a hole in the back so having a new one will be nice though as a backup we might see if either almost 16 year old can repair it though she might need some guidance from my mom who does quite a bit of knitting. He seemed to like the gifts we picked out and bought online though his hat is not here yet as it is scheduled for delivery by the 21st so we just showed him a picture and told him that 13 year old picked the color which he doesn't care so much about.
We also gave the girls their Feast of Ephiany 3 Kings gifts tonight as we had to wait because 13 year old does not understand that a picture of something means you are getting that but it has not arrived yet and her package did not arrive until after-originally it was supposed to be the 8th by 9 pm but it arrived on the 7th.
We got her a set of 12 Mexican Train Dominoes which I am going to have to find some rules on how to play that version. I did show her how to play regular dominoes but have no idea how to use the little plastic trains other than to set them aside. Having the dots be in different colors for each number 1-12 is a lot easier for her to learn to play with than all of them being white dots on black tiles. We played a simple draw 5 and if you can't play just draw one play until someone runs out with if that person went first your opponate gets to have one final turn until one person is out and the other(s) could not play game. Much easier than the if you can't play you keep drawing till you can variation or one I used to play against the computer on an old card and board games disk I had that ran on windows 93, 95 and XP back in the day that I played where all the ends had to add up to multiples of 5.
The gift I had ordered for almost 16 year old is not scheduled to be here until close to her birthday but if it is not here in time we are giving her a picture since she understands that this is what your getting it is just not here yet. I ordered and did a curbside pickup and got her some artist loft acryllic paints so she now has 6 colors in the 4 oz size instead of the tiny sample kit size that she keeps running out of certain colors and getting frustrated. I told her she could use some of her gift cards she has from before plus the one she got for Christmas to get some of the other colors. Now would be a good time for her to take advantage of that since they are currently buy one get one for half off so she could make a good dent at getting at least some of the remaining 39 colors not including all of the metalic ones which it doesn't sound like she wants to get into dealing with at least for now.
Between all her different art work she has taken over and turned a good portion of the basement into her studio over the past year since she decided to move downstairs. She keeps trying to convience us that she needs a ceramics kiln but honestly if that was in the budget we would purchase an additional piece of land and spend the money to build her a complete arts and ceramics studio so she could put one as they can get complicated depending on if you go with gas or electric and then there is venting them or using a higher votage current that it is just better to build a place from the ground up if your going to go with firing your own ceramics.
I have told her that if we would ever have the money I would help her do that so she could have her studio plus learn to pour molds for ceramics using the slip they are made out of with the understand that some of the big pieces she might need to hire one of her same age or older male cousins to help her. The slip and molds can weigh quite a bit when wet especially if you are doing something like a big flower pot. These have to be binded together to keep the two haves of the mold together until they set and dry which is why there is a shortage of places in a lot of areas to find any-all the ones who used to do it are now in their 70s and 80s so physically can't anymore or their husband's helped with larger pieces and have passed away. There are a few in their 30s and early 40s in my area that I know of who either pour or fire ceramics but places that do both are very few and far between.
There are a number of kids who were doing ceramics in this area through 4-H every year since the mid 80s to currently so if she had a nice place where people could either purchase pieces to do at home or work on them there in a room at the studio, get paints and brushes along with other supplies, and then return them for either free or reduced cost firing especially if she also had other rooms where people could do things like painting and stuff she could have a decent business doing something that she is passionate about.
While DH and almost 16 year old were downstairs watching a movie and doing a let's react video to it and I was in the bathroom a certain 13 year old decided she needed to attempt to make brownies iin the microwave again. She experimented and added some ground coffee to them. We have no brown sugar that goes in the recipe so no idea if she found and used some white sugar or if she remember to melt any butter along with the unsweetened bakers chocolate.
She was in the front room when I came out of the bathroom so we didn't know about this until DH and almost 16 year old came upstairs a little bit ago. I can see we are going to have to add a I want to make brownies button to her communication app on the ipad along with enforcing the rule that you ask before making something which at least for a while I may need to explain to my oldest that she is going to have to do as well just to set the example and help drive that home for her sister or else explain to 13 year old again that sister is allowed to do certain things because she is older and not get into sister can and will tell me if she needs certain ingredients from the store and will even go in and shop for those particular ingredients-give her time and she will eventually be driving to the store to make the purchases but for now she has the mom or dad driving service for that is still in effect.
We watch Dr Pol a lot, too!
and prayers to you Tina for healing, peace, and future fun travel, too.
nothing like doing things together as a family!!
