Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Chaos and Cookies!

 I feel like the hours between 3 and 7:30pm are a whirlwind of noise, busyness, exhaustion and chaos! And that would be specifically, between school pick-up and bedtime!

For example:


While I was preparing dinner (recipe to come!), Eliana, who has discovered the wonderful joy of carrying a stool around and reaching light switches, faucets and other goodies, was going between the kitchen and bathroom turning off the lights.


While she was doing this, Zakkai was trying to read a book for homework and simultaneously, returning on all the lights E was turning off! He tries to "help" but easily frustrates his little sis with his hands-on bossing. To put it nicely:)

Then Samuel comes wandering in and bodily moves Eliana out of the bathroom, stool and all, which caused her to scream and melt down.

Fast forward 5 minutes and you have me trying to chop veggies and finish dinner as quickly as possible, Eliana hanging on my leg crying as loudly as she can for me to pick her up, and Zakkai trying to sound out words over the chaos.

A test in patience, to be sure!

Finally, I dispatched Z to the basement to see if Daddy could listen to his reading since I could not hear a word over Eliana's meltdown and put a quick hold on dinner prep to hold and calm down my wreck of a 2 year old. It did finally come together, thankfully, but it's no wonder that I feel wrung-out by the time we tuck them all in bed!! Usually, there is some homework drama with Samuel thrown in there but today he was actually really good about it. Thankfully!


I made a very delicious soup that I shared the recipe for here except tonight I added another can of beans (kidney), an extra cup of water and some more cabbage to increase the serving size since we eat a lot more now!! I am telling you that this soup is fantastic and everyone just gobbles it up! It's the second time we've had cabbage this week and we just love it! Who knew:)




I don't usually serve dessert during the week to control certain sweet tooths in the house but tonight my sweet tooth over came me and I made some cookies! Everyone got one after dinner (and one is enough to satisfy!) so I took some after cookie pics:)


I love Samuel's smile!



Eliana does love her chocolate:) She doesn't eat really rich sweets or baked goods or at least only small bits but 2 things she will never refuse are chocolate and ice cream!

I made these cookies:

Chocolate Butterscotch Clusters

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
1/2 cup chow mein noodles (or more)
1/2 cup salted peanuts, optional *I actually food processed a handful of mixed nuts into small pieces and added it in instead

1. Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips in the microwave in 30 second increments and stir until melted.

2. Stir in chow mein noodles and nuts, if using, and stir until all is well-coated. You may have to add more noodles in if it's very "wet."

3. Spoon in heaps on a wax paper covered baking sheet and put in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Yum!

1 recipe makes 8 clusters.



2 comments:

Aunt t said...

Soup sounds and looks so good, we like cabbage so much too!
The craziness is so stressful!

When the kids were in sports, I had dinner made by 4:00 and we ate very early. It worked well with our schedule. I wonder if you could feed them early some of the days, so you didn't have to cook during that time?

mommyoflove3 said...

That's a good idea, Aunt Terri. Or at least to have it all ready early? It just gets so crazy in the afternoons!

Followers