The Search for Miss Direction: Daddy's back!

You know the song "Big Yellow Taxi" where the lyrics say "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"? Okay yeah, so true this week. While Noah, Kayla and I managed just fine on our own (I'm pretty darn stinkin' proud of my 6 days as a single parent!) all three of us (probably for different reasons) were overjoyed to have Grant return home this afternoon.

Last night, in order to welcome him home I let the kids get out the finger paints to make banners/pictures for him. Craziness with paint and sponges ensued all over my kitchen. It's washable as are Noah and Kayla, so no worries. I took more pics, but considering Kayla was running around mostly sans clothing I'm only posting a few. The end products are up, though.

Then, mostly just because we could, we had a picnic dinner on the floor in the kitchen after baths. Who knew it was as easy as letting them eat on the floor to keep them happy? And for all you health freaks out there, I had just mopped the floor after the paint fiasco, there was a blanket down and of course they had plates. It wasn't like I really made them eat off the floor. Though Lord knows with those two...

This morning, though it wasn't our usual kid kitchen time we decided to make some cupcakes to welcome Daddy home. I had a box of halloween sprinkle cake mix and after looking up a few things decided on some pretty cute spider cupcakes I thought we had to try out. I should know by now that the best laid plans hardly ever go as they should.

First, as I'm doling out the batter I realize I only have one muffin/cupcake pan. Why has this never occurred to me before? The average box of cake mix makes 24 muffins yet I only had room for 12. And yes, I could have baked twice but I was under a bit of a time crunch as we still had to run to the store to get the decorating materials and we had to squeeze lunch in there too. Refusing to get bent out of shape, I pulled out my mini muffin tin and made 24 mini cupcakes to go with our 12 big ones. We'd just make mini spiders, right?

So we run to Wal-Mart to get chocolate sprinkles, pull and peel licorice and some mini m&m's. Wal-Mart has no pull and peel licorice. How is that possible? They had regular twizzlers, they had little licorice nuggets, they even had this thick licorice rope stuff, they had filled licorice for crying out loud! Grrrr... And no mini m&m's either. Still refusing to get bent out of shape we headed to Target.

Where we fortunately found the pull and peel licorice. And the mini m&m's. Crisis averted.

Back home for lunch and then Noah and I set out to make mini spiders since Kayla was refusing to eat and this mean Mama told her she couldn't help with the cupcakes until she'd eaten her lunch. I quickly realized that the decorating 'stuff' is too big for the mini cupcakes. The candy corn fangs won't stay on, the licorice legs look ridiculous and maybe this wasn't the best idea after all. But as my daily trials of being a mom have taught me, sometimes the best ideas are born out of the moments when all else seems ruined.

Playing with the decorating stuff we already had out and scrounging through my pantry for a few more things, Noah and I started making goofy faced cupcakes. It turned out to be a blast! Using everything from pretzel sticks to tootsie rolls we got creative. Noah told me it was the most fun he's ever had decorating cupcakes. And not to brag or anything but I think they turned out cuter than the spiders would have anyway. And oh so original. Tasty, too!

So even with my feet to the proverbial fire, we got through the last week without too many snafus. And I'm going to try to work a bit harder on remembering to take a deep breath and remind myself that sometimes when things don't go according to plan they end up being even better than anticipated. I'm glad the kiddos and I had the past few days all to ourselves but I'm even happier that all four of us are back together :)