7 Quick Takes about Really, Really Domesticated Animals, Cackling Over Hand Towels, and Almost Catching Spiderman on Camera

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

When my 4-year-old wandered into the room, I made the mistake of saying hello. He looked annoyed and said, "I was counting to 1,000 and you just messed me up."

"Oh, sorry," I apologized.

"I'll just start over at 100," he sighed, and went back out.

I heard him playing with some toys in the other room for a few moments, then there was a pause and he reappeared in the doorway. "Actually, I'm going to start at 150."

I nodded seriously and said "Okay, sounds good," and out he went again.

I didn't think it was a good time to remind him that he doesn't know any  of the numbers he'd been talking about for our entire conversation.

—2—

This weekend was pretty crazy. In 48 hours, our family observed Easter, watched general conference, and celebrated a family birthday. 

Frankly, it was too much. Each of those events included 756 tiny things for me to buy, make, or do ahead of time, and I crashed. 

Instead of cooking the special birthday dinner I'd planned for Saturday, I fell asleep and Phillip ordered pizza. We ran out of time to dye Easter eggs, not that we could have done it anyway because I'd remembered dye but forgotten to buy eggs.

Oh, well. I tried.

—3—

After all those special events and their attendant treats, we're all roving wild-eyed through the house with no idea what to do with ourselves now that it's all gone. 

Not only was there Easter candy and birthday cheesecake, but alllll the General Conference Snacks.

The best part of this was learning that my 7-year-old thinks Sour Patch Kids are called "Sour Pouch Kids."

General Conference Snacks is an Evans family tradition. Before this biannual religious broadcast, we print out pictures of the church leaders who will be speaking and tape them to different snack foods. When someone speaks, the kids get to eat the snack their picture is on. 

Elder Christofferson is speaking, who I believe was chocolate-covered almonds this year.

My absolute favorite talk of conference was this one given by Russell M. Nelson, who is the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

If you have 15 minutes waiting in the school pick-up line or for a bus or something, listening to this would be an excellent use of that time:

—4—

The 12-year-old taught our pet rat Scout to eat vegetables in his arms lying on her back like a baby.

This is even cuter in person.

It's stinking adorable, but sometimes I just watch her doing it and say, "Look at you! You're a disgrace to your wild ancestors!"

She doesn't really seem to mind as long as we keep the fresh veggies coming.

—5—

Someone called The Minimal Mom showed up in my YouTube feed one day, and aside from the fact that I pegged her Minnesota accent exactly 10 seconds into this video (can you hear it if you're not from there??) I really loved her perspective on minimalism.

I didn't agree with everything in this video, but it inspired me to rid my kitchen of a bunch of stuff I've owned since George W. Bush was president and never used. And it gave me permission to pare down the 20 coffee mugs crammed into the cupboard.

HELLO WE DON'T EVEN DRINK COFFEE.

—6—

As I was looking around the kitchen trying to decide what to tackle next, my eyes settled on the hand towels hanging on the oven handle. 

And by that I mean the hand towels lying in a crumpled heap on the floor in front of the oven, because that's where they always are. 

They're always slipping off, which drives us all crazy. My kids have tried to get around the problem by simply grabbing a new towel out of the drawer every time they need to dry their hands. When they're done they shove the wet towel back in the drawer, because kids apparently love drawers full of damp, smelly towels.

After a little Internet sleuthing, I did two things:

1. Followed this amazing DIY hand towel hack to secure the towels to the oven handle so they'll never fall off again, and
2. Hide everything inside the drawer so the kids will have no choice but to use the designated towels in Step 1.

All day, I was cackling like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit every time I saw the kids open the drawer to grab a new towel and it was EMPTY. They just stood there, slack-jawed and confused, until they reluctantly went over to the oven and used the hand towels. 

If all goes well, I'll be able to put the drawer towels back in a week once they're properly trained. 

—7—

My 9th grader needed to take some perspective shots for her photography class, so she enlisted her her 4-year-old brother to help. 

She dressed him up in a Spiderman costume and had him crouch on the ground, then arranged some other things in the picture so she could rotate the photo 90 degrees and make it look like he was climbing on the wall.

After they were done, he went inside and started playing with a Minion stuffed animal on the couch, and it was so cute. I tried to sneak in and take a picture, but apparently he heard me coming and these were the two shots I got:

Behind the sofa is an excellent place to hide from the paparazzi.

I guess superheroes can only stand being photographed so many times in one day.

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