"Monkey with a sweet tooth!"

So I've been making a lot of cookies recently, and after reading endless recipes, I've concocted my own, delicious recipe, for soft, chocolate-chip-banana cookies, that are fit for any...

          Monkey With a Sweet Tooth!

Ingredients:
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup butter (softened)
1 (3.4 oz) package instant banana cream pudding mix
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet mini chocolate chips

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

-Sift together the flour and baking soda, and set aside.

-In a medium bowl, blend together the brown sugar, white sugar, and softened butter.

-Beat in the instant pudding mix until well blended.

-Add the eggs and vanilla next.

-Blend in the flour mixture.

-Stir in the chocolate chips.

Spoon rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, or baking stone, and bake for 10-12 minutes. Edges (and almost all of surface) will turn golden brown.

*Yields: 4 dozen (depending on your "spoon")

                                   ENJOY!

A day in the life of my brain...

This one is for all those people who have ever poured their heart out to me, only to get the response,
                         

"Oh! Were you talking to ME??"

Sadly, that is a large portion of you, and I apologize. Today I invite you to not be a fly on my wall, but a fly on the wall of my brain, if you will. Maybe if you follow my wandering brain through a fictional day (possibly based on a true story), you will gain some understanding, or at least insite, to the workings of my mind, and the never-ending mess that is my home. Note: Do not feel bad, at all, if you do not make it all the way through to the end. Even I had a hard time making it! In all honesty, this one was probably more of a quest for me, to figure out how on earth I can go for so long without accomplishing so little. :)

     Let's begin mid morning on a day that I've decided to clean the bathrooms, and I begin with the toilet in the main bathroom, and realize the toilet bowl cleaner is in the master bath. As I head that way, I notice how cold my feet are...

...and decide to get my slippers on my way through the bedroom, but then I can only find one slipper, so I start hunting for it's mate. While looking under the bed, I see...

... a shoe box that I can't think of what I would have put inside, and pull it out and start rummaging through the odds and ends, when I come across some pictures from my college days, and see...

... an old friend that I just can not remember the name of! I then start a 30 minute search for my yearbooks, which ends with my discovery that I have them boxed up in storage, so I mozy on over to the computer and get online with good intentions to find the name of this friendly face, when I see that...

... one of my facebook friends has posted new pictures of her kids, and suddenly realize I need to upload some of mine that I took the other day! So, I go to get my camera out of my purse, which I soon realize I left in the car. On my way to the car I see the mail lady leaving and realize...

... I forgot to send off our most recent netflix movie and think "we need to get dressed and run out to get it mailed off in time!". So I run in and drop my camera on the table and go get dressed, but all the while my children are asking to eat, and I realize it's already lunch time, and go to fix lunch. After lunch,

... I lay the kids down for naps with high hopes of spending some time in The Word, working out, and taking a nice long shower. I hunker down with my Bible, and the next thing you know my son is waking me up to tell me he had a good nap, and wants to snuggle. Soon his little sister is awake and also wants some Mommy snuggles before getting down to play. Finally, when they've both had their fill of snuggles, I go to plan supper, and see that...

... I forgot I needed to go to the grocery store to grab a couple of the ingredients and then remember about the Netflix movie too, and go to get the kids dressed to run the errands. After an unorganized trip to the grocery store, I can't wait to get home as the kids' whines and cries seem to be piercing my ear drums as they bounce off the insides of our car and I calm them with promises to play outside for a while when we get home. We get home and I reach over to get my purse to go inside, and see the Netflix lying on the seat beside me, but I've already taken too long to get the kids out, and the noise levels are already on the rise. Kicking myself, I get out, and unload the kids and groceries. I put the groceries away and we spend some time outdoors, until it's time to go in and start supper. While making supper I...

... have to run to respond to a loud crash followed by screaming. After assessing the situation and concluding it wasn't an emergency, I smell something. A dirty diaper. I quickly scoop up the adorable little culprit and take care of the stinky situation, only to smell something else...

... Supper burning! I run to salvage what is still edible, and serve it up to my unsuspecting family, with hopes they don't notice. Next is baths and bed. When the house is calm and the kids are tucked in, I go to use the bathroom. Here are my closing thoughts to the day...

 "Wow. This toilet sure is dirty. I need to clean the bathrooms tomorrow...

    ... My feet are FREEZING! I sure wish I knew where my slippers got to???...

... I can't wait to crawl into bed.... ugh, the bed... I have to clean all that stuff off the bed that I was digging through before I can even get into the bed...

                    ... What was that girl's name again? Oh yah, I never found out.... I'll look it up tomorrow after I post those new pictures of the kids. I love that one I took of them with their Publix balloons...

         ... Speaking of Publix, I totally forgot to get diapers and dog food while I was there... I'll have to run out again tomorrow. Oh! and mail the Netflix too!! grrr...

... I hope my new pan washes up after burning dinner. I'll just soak over night and wash it tomorrow...

MAN! I didn't accomplish ANYTHING today! Oh well... there's always tomorrow..."

I Need Therapy!

Before you all skip to the bottom and start cracking jokes about the seemingly obvious nature of the title, read on.

Now, I will admit it, I am a terrible housekeeper.
I know, I shouldn't have any problem keeping up with the housework, because I'm a stay-at-home-mom, but this is my one biggest down-fall.
   My husband will attest to this.
I may get completely caught up, once every other month, but if I let one thing get behind, I wave the white flag and stare into the growing chaos as if it's my first day on the job. Cleaning and keeping the house as "neat as a pin" (whatever that means), is not my forte.

This is quite painful for me during the winter months, and here is why.

    I need
    DIRT.

I will explain. I need to be outside, working. I will weed, rake, plant, burn, prune, cut, and water until every part of my body hurts. This, my friends, is my happy place.

I literally have to drag myself, KICKING AND SCREAMING, to do dishes, laundry, floors, toilets, etc.
No matter how rewarding it is to get it all done, I still have a difficult time getting myself to do it.

Getting dirt under my fingernails is therapy for me.

Now for those of you who don't know, I currently live in an apartment. I said...

I

live

in

an

APARTMENT.

Let me rephrase that...
I do not have even a single square foot of earth that is my own to do what I please with. Therefore, I am handcuffed. All I can do is buy as much dirt and pots and planters that I can possibly fit onto my front and back porches, which are small, to say the least.

I will make mention here, that this is very high on my list of reasons, for why I need to find a house. Possibly top 3.

Today, however, I found jobs for myself. I didn't realize how desperate I was for some "therapy", until I found myself with an old plastic kitchen utensil in hand (because all gardening tools are in storage), scraping and scooping old, wet, stinky, mildewy and compacted leaves, out from under "our" section of the fence running behind our building, which by the way, has been our cocker spaniel's favorite spot for bladder relief, through the winter. Don't worry, the untensil has now been retired from it's former kitchen duties.

Here is our poor pooch, looking lost as he wandered out to relieve himself, and couldn't find the usual rotting leaves.

I then removed all the little gifts from our grassy areas, that all the resident doggies have left us throughout the last few months. I will refrain myself from being descriptive here, and just let you know that we must be very, very, VERY, loved to have received SO MANY "gifts". Yet another reason I need a house.

So tomorrow, you will probably find me outside again, washing windows, sweeping the porches and walkways, prepping my flower pots and who knows, I may even be asking the property manager if I may plant flowers around our entrance signs, free of charge!

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this woman is in need of therapy!

What roses???

I am one of those people who wants the world to slow down a bit. Enjoy the here and now. Stop and smell the roses... even if they are not in season!


  Let me cut to the chase... This new fast past-paced, money hungry world seems to be forcing us to start celebrating holidays and seasons before they even get here. Sometimes we even find ourselves beginning to celebrate one out of turn, such as Christmas.  I just don't picture people in the days of old (insert your own mental picture and era here) putting up their Christmas tree in the middle of November! Sometimes I feel like we treat Thanksgiving Day, as if we are merely obligated to interrupt our Christmas SEASON, by giving it one day a few hours each year, to appear grateful. But! We've even managed to turn THAT into an oxymoron,
  but
        I
           digress.
This whole thought process, started with the inevitable, and infamous...
      "Spring Fever!"
I regret to inform you, that I, like many of you, have been bitten by the bug. Yes. Me. The woman who vowed she would not remove her large chunky snowflake from the front door, until the first of March, at the soonest! (seeing that Spring doesn't even officially start until March 20th)
   I believe it happened last week sometime, as that is when the symptons started to rear their ugly heads. I remember thinking and dwelling on this very epidemic that we speak of right now as I entered the grocery store... wearing FLIP-FLOPS.
  As I strolled the aisles, I kept thinking of all these silly people that keep saying they have "spring fever", in mid-February, and how they are going to be "so disappointed when we will inevitably get snow next week". I for one, was not going to be one of the disappointed. I would
    "enjoy and embrace winter,
          for as long as it is winter!"
Then I hit the frozen foods section, and started scrutinizing the ice cream. Amid the usual stacks of rich, dark, and evil chocolatey and nutty temptations, I saw it...
frozen.
  peach.
    yogurt.
  Out of no where, I heard birds singing, saw flowers bloom, and felt the sun on my back! And that's when I knew it was happening. I had been forced over to "the dark side". I was one of the sillies! I mean, look at me... I'm wearing flip-flops in february!
  As I flipped and flopped to the check-out with my peachy goodness in hand, I still felt a sense of guilt for betraying myself in my endeavors to finish out winter, but I knew it was only a matter of time.
  That time passed quickly, however, as I found myself throwing open the windows at 8am this morning, I had the uncontrollable urge to dismantle the snowflake and remove all things winter from our decor.

Hello dark side. It's good to be here.

Sonic, snot... SURREAL!

This past Thursday, as I checked the weather forecast, I was pleasantly surprised to see sun, with a high of 72 degrees! I did see something about wind, but who ever worries about wind!?!  I then had a perfect vision of the kids and I running and playing at the park with the sun on our faces, and a story book ending with us picnicing on a blanket in the grass.
Beautiful, right?!
I was quickly running out of time to get to the park, however, so I ended up ditching the picnic part and convinced my 3 year old son that eating at Sonic would be the same, because we could still eat outside!
   The park of course is always magical, so let's fast forward to lunch. By the time we got to Sonic, the wind had picked up to "holy cow!" speeds, and the sun was M.I.A.  Melt downs occured after mentioning taking our Sonic cuisine home with us, so we proceeded to eat outside.
   Despite our jackets and hoods, I was freezing, my daughter was bundled in a blanket, and my son had a constant stream of tears and snot that were strictly wind-induced, running down his face, and yet he repeatedly refused to admit it was COLD! The loud giggles and sweet toothy grins from my children, were the only thing that kept me from paying much attention to the ENTIRE TOWN of Fairview, that seemed to have decided to dine at Sonic today. I would be fibbing if I said I didn't notice them all sitting and eating in their warm cars, circled around us and looking on as if they paid to see this!! (Side note: I don't think I knew, until just now, that Sonic was designed to be a dinner theater!!) Whether they thought me to be a terrible mother, forcing my children to eat outdoors in this chilling wind, or just had a good laugh watching me chase our food and garbage over, under and around our table, while the little ones squealed with laughter, I really don't care.
Though our morning did not pan out, as scripted in my vision, it was still perfect. My kids had fun and that's what mattered most to me. <3