Yesterday and today were Jay's annual fishing buddy fishing tournament (I'm not allowed to publish where it is!), so we have had lots of quality girl time! Last night, the other Kim Mauck and her daughter Katelyn, who is six months younger than Claire, along with our friend Kara, came over and we ate pizza and caramel corn and watched New Moon. Delicious! Claire and Katelyn pretty much ran around screaming and yanking out Claire's toys and books, so we really couldn't hear a whole lot--good thing the visuals are really about 75% of that movie anyway!!
Today, we spent an entire day at home. We’re trying to rein in spending, so I didn’t want to go do any of that, and Mom and Ty were in OKC all day for a Quiz Bowl championship. So I baked like crazy: biscuits, bread, corn muffins, and double-chocolate cookies. Claire helped with the biscuits only, but she loved that. She has a little rolling pin in her little kitchen, so she went and got that. At first, she was wearing her Easter dress (just trying it on), and so I told her she needed to take that off if she was going to help me bake. She said, “I just be real careful,” so I suggested she wear her apron (I got it for her for Christmas; it has her name on it and “Mom’s little helper”). She willingly took off her dress then--she loves wearing her apron, and forgets it’s on top of her kitchen a lot of the time. I suppose if she wore it everyday, she wouldn’t be so excited about wearing it though! Anyway, she got her rolling pin and apron and helped make the biscuits: she mashed the dry ingredients into the shortening, poured the milk, helped me roll out the dough, and then used the biscuit-cutter to cut the biscuits out. This was all highly gratifying work to her. After we cut out all the biscuits that would fit on the pan, I let her have the remaining lump of dough to keep playing with. Who would have thought a lump of dough could keep her occupied for 30mins? She rolled it out, pressed almonds into it, rolled it some more, decided they were bad nuts and took them out (that’s what she told me), sprinkled flour, sprinkled cinnamon (she was thrilled when I gave her the cinnamon jar and let her have free rein with it), and rolled some more. She said she was making cinnamon pizza. Sounds good to me!
Diane got me a bunch of baking goods for an early b-day present, too, so I was anxious to use them. She gave me her King Arthur Flour catalog, and I picked out a whole bunch of stuff wanted to order. So she did, and then when it came in and I tried to pay her, she said it was a b-day present!! What a great surprise--She's pretty sneaky!!
Late-breaking fishing tournament update: in the eleventh year of the tournament, Jay faced 35 mph winds and had a terrible day, catching only a 21-lb stringer (that's the biggest five fish that he and his partner catch). The winning team, however, caught a 35-POUND STRINGER!! That's an average of SEVEN POUNDS per bass! Those are some BIG bass. Too bad, hubby! He is sporting some very wind-chapped, sun-burnt cheeks tonight, but of course, still has the super-pale eye region. That's his usual fishing tan!
