The kids have been doing various amusing things that I keep thinking I need to blog about but now that I'm sitting here, I'm sure I'll be lucky if I remember a quarter of them.

Oskar's been telling me that he wants to be a "daddy" when he grows up. And he wants to build his house in my "back 'ard". This morning he made us chuckle when he announced to Annika that he was going to tell her the rules. She said she didn't want any rules...no surprise there.

Hmm...well...can't remember any of the other funny things. Guess I couldn't even make it to a quarter of them.

Nothing to Do but Write

I just cruised through all the various sites that I watch and no one has posted an update...so I guess that means I have nothing to do but to write myself.

I already mentioned that on Thursday I had a friend over. She came over with her little girl who is in Oskar's swim class. It's nice because she gets along well with Oskar AND Annika. So we had a really long playdate which was great because it gave *me* lots of time to visit with my friend!!! At one point the kids were playing house and of course Oskar was the dad. He announced that he had to work and when pressed he said that his job was to clean. So my friend asked him what *his* daddy's job is and he said, "driving". He thought about it some more and said, "He gets case of dillas". I started cracking up. A "case of dilla" is a quesadilla. Dwight will sometimes bring Baja Fresh home after work so apparently Oskar figured that's what he does for a living. He drives and gets quesadillas.

This morning was Annika's swim class. She's a little fish. Today after one of her submersions her teacher announced that she had just set a record for her Waterbabies classes - 8 seconds under the water. And then I was thinking I should have let her go longer. I just pulled her out at that point because it seemed like a long time. But she seemed pretty comfortable under there. And she came up smiling.

I should go download photos of my camera and upload some. Later.

Butterscotch Brownies

Oskar finally seems to be better. He hasn't thrown up since yesterday morning and he's eating normally again. Yay! Plus he's not sleeping the day away.

I just made some Butterscotch Brownies. My friend Christina gave me the recipe a couple of years ago and I've never made them. I think I tried some of hers though and they were very good. Here's the recipe if you want to give them a try:

Butterscotch Brownies

These are chewy and nutty, like traditional brownies, but with a butterscotch taste.

Serving Size: Makes 25 Squares

Ingredients:

- 5 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and flour the sides and bottom of the 8-inch-square pan.
2. In the heavy saucepan melt the butter over low heat, then remove pan from the heat and use it as a mixing bowl.
3. With a wooden spoon stir in the brown sugar until well combined. Stir in the egg. Beat in the flour, 1/4 cup at a time. Stir in the baking powder, salt, vanilla, and walnuts, and mix well together.
4. With a rubber spatula spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan, scraping out all the batter with the spatula.
5. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top is dry and the cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven.
6. Let the brownies cool about 10 minutes, then cut them into squares.

From The Fannie Farmer Junior Cookbook by Joan Scobey. © 1942, 1957, 1993 by Fannie Farmer Cookbook Corporation © 2000 by Time Warner Bookmark

I'll give you an official review once they finish baking. :)

I've also updated my MySpace profile a little. I added some photos and a song for my profile. A few old friends contacted me from there so that's cool.

Pied Piper

It's about 12:19 am and I'm slaving away in the kitchen. :) I'm baking pies for Thanksgiving. We're driving up to Pennsylvania to spend the holidays with my husband's family and my contribution to the gathering is to bring pies. I have 4 down and at least 4 more to go. It's crazy. I was planning to bake pies all day tomorrow but then we decided to move forward our trip so that we'll hopefully have arrived before the flurries start (yes, it's supposed to flurry tomorrow evening). I'm a little intimidated about making pies. I haven't made too many pies in my life. I've made a pear pie a few times (I know, that's a funny pie to be the only one you've ever made) but that's it. So I'm really expanding my repetoire with all this pie-making. So far I've done two apples and two cherries. I couldn't find enough of the right kind of cherries at the grocery stores so one of the cherry pies is just a canned filling. But I actually made the other cherry pie and the two apple pies are from scratch. Well, not the crust. I only have one pie pan so I figured if I was going to be buying aluminum pans anyway, might as well buy the ones with the crusts in them and speed up the process a little. :) Although I do want to try this pie crust recipe.

The pies I'm making are:

• two cherriy pies (i was only planning to make one but my father-in-law advised me that it would disappear quickly)
• two pumpkin pies
• two apple pies
• one pecan pie
• one buttermilk chess pie (it's a lemon-y pie)
• and maybe a lemon meringue pie...i'm not sure about tackling a meringue just yet. that seems a little ambitious. but it's my husband's grandfather's favorite pie and thursday *is* his birthday. maybe we'll just buy a lemon meringue pie.\
• another maybe is that pear pie that i've made a few times. it's actually pretty good.

I was going to make a raisin pie but it turns out that a bunch of Dwight's family doesn't like raisins - including Dwight - so it was easy to axe that. for the same reason I quashed any ideas I was having about making carrot pudding .