7 Quick Takes about Driveway Angels, Turning a Cookie Fail into a Cookie Win, and the Scary World of Middle School Science Fairs

It's been such a busy week. It's been a "the trash is full but there's no time to take it out so tie a new garbage bag to the handle of the dishwasher" busy.

But busy or no, it's 7 Quick Takes Friday!

—1—

Finally, finally we got a dusting of snow. Despite it being the most pathetic snowfall in the history of snowfalls, my kids were so desperate they put on all their winter gear and made snow angels in the driveway anyway.

This is extra-sad considering these pictures (take #4) from just a few winters ago. These are lean times.

—2—

My 7th grader was in the school play, and the parents' job (other than driving their kids to and from one zillion after-school rehearsals) was to bring some concessions to sell at intermission.

So in my infinite wisdom, I thought I'd just whip something up at home even though baking is currently #50 on the list of things I don't have time to do right now.

Once I started, I also realized that grocery shopping must be #49 on the same list, because we were out of everything. After abandoning three separate recipes because we were missing an important ingredient, I used up the very last drop of butter in the house to make cookies and somehow this happened:

This is supposed to be cookies. Plural. As in, more than one giant baking sheet sized cookie decorated like a soccer ball.

I called my confused husband at work in hysterics, but that didn't really help.

You know what did help? When my daughter came home from school, not only was she understanding, but she saw that I'd had a hard day and noticed I needed a hug. She totally made me feel better! Having older kids is so awesome.

She also came up with a great plan, and we were able to swing by the grocery store on the way to her curtain call, grab some bags of Oreos, and set up a last-minute Oreo rolling factory in the parking lot with some Saran wrap from home.

Epilogue: we crumbled the ruined cookies up in some ice cream later, so the night was actually a net win.

—3—

A few random observations from my kids:

I don't know why they were looking this up (clearly they need more chores to occupy their time) but they were Googling the ABC song. The predictive search results included this:

If you Google "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz now I know my abc's, next time won't you sing with me lyrics," doesn't that mean you already know the lyrics? You know, because you just typed them all into Google 2 seconds ago?

Also, my 10-year-old thinks it's hilarious that if Katniss and Peta from The Hunger Games named their baby by mashing their names together, their child would be called Kat Pee.

Just something to think about.

—4—

So this made me feel like I'm in a sitcom for sure.

My middle schooler is starting a science fair project and brought home this insane form for me to sign. I was speechless.

Fresh tissue? Radioactive materials? Nuclear energy? Recombinant DNA?

All I can say is, if you're 12 years old and your project idea involves molecular cloning to create new genome sequences, you've probably gotten all that you're going to get out of 7th grade science class.

—5—

My calling (or job) at church right now requires the planning of activities for the adult women, and let me tell you it's a challenge sometimes.

For our Christmas dinner I was desperately hoping someone else would take over the decorating, but it falls to me, and I'm just not a crafty person. I'm more likely to burn spare pallets for firewood than build a set of reclaimed bookshelves with them.

Anyway, I finally had an idea for some centerpieces and emailed out a request for mason jars. Someone responded, "I don't have mason jars, but I have ball jars."

My first thought was, There's a difference?

My second thought was, I'm screwed.

—6—

A friend called the other night because she ran out of gas just a few minutes from my house. Fortunately I was home and willing to help; unfortunately our gas can is for the lawnmower (not the car) and doesn't have a long enough nozzle.

I wasn't sure what to do but my friend MacGyvered a funnel out of a Cumberland Farms cup she had in her car... and I was like, "Can you design the centerpieces for the Christmas dinner?"

—7—

We're going to get family pictures taken, and since I pull from our closets rather than spend hundreds of dollars on matchy-matchy outfits, it gets tricky.

After gaining a new respect for people who lay out clothes for catalogues all pretty-like (because it's harder than it looks), I assembled two choices and I need your opinions.

I really like the first option, but even though I think it's more interesting I question whether it's wise to put orange and maroon together. But then again, what do I know? I can't tell a mason jar from a ball jar.

Palette A

Palette B

So what's your vote, A or B?

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