Whoopie Pie Heaven

I should have known.  From the moment the "Turn Sister's Day into a Whoopie Pie Day" idea was birthed, I should have known this would be no small operation.  It sounded innocent enough when it was introduced.  Four varieties were mentioned which seemed reasonable for three moms with seven preschoolers to tackle.

But then came Numbers.  It was when I was trying to decide if I should double or triple a batch that made 15 sandwiches that I heard Bigger Ideas.  Like, each freezer having a hundred sandwiches each.  

I should have known that the Chief Baker among us with a family of 9 wouldn't think of doubling a batch that makes 15 cookies.  She multiplied her pumpkin recipe by 7.  

In the end we had eight bowls of batter.  Big bowls. The smallest among them made four dozen sandwiches; the largest two were Tupperware's Fix n Mix bowls that easily made triple that.

Not surprisingly, we baked All. Day. Long.  Our list of four varieties had morphed into the following one:

Pumpkin

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip

Pumpkin baked in a waffle iron

Vanilla

Vanilla with blueberries

Vanilla with Chocolate Chips

Oatmeal Spice

Chocolate

Shoe-fly Pie (Ever hear of that one? Welcome to Lancaster County.)

Chocolate with mint frosting

Vanilla chocolate chip with mint frosting

All of us worked really, really hard all day.  

Hey, Somebody had to supervise the Baker/Photographer.
Plus, somebody needed to taste a few...
and needed coffee to go with it.  This is all legit stuff!

We ended up with Whoopie Pie Heaven for most of us, including the DNR guy who dropped in at an opportune moment.  (Would it take a Lancaster county DNR guy to recognize a Whoopie pie by name?  Maybe he's even familiar with Shoe-fly Pies.) 

But for the baby of the family, the table laden with Whoopie Pies was no heaven.  He wanted one of each flavor in his little one-year-old belly and, when his sampling was limited, he tearfully resorted to sneaking tray scrapings out of the trash.  Poor deprived child.

Our baking ended at suppertime with 503 Whoopie Pies in the final count. Our freezers are bulging happily (not to mention the humans), all thanks to the Chief Baker who does nothing small-scale in the kitchen.

That trait of hers was the reason that something within me panicked when she said, "For our next Sister's Day, let's make meat pies for the freezer.  I can make the dough."

Right.  Does anyone have a commercial freezer for sale?  I foresee myself needing one very soon.  

The Game

It all started as a game.  

The two of us went shrieking through the house until I caught him. He's getting faster. Plus, he can turn sharper corners than I anticipated so it was a genuine chase.  

But I got him. 

I wrapped him up in my arms and held him there.

He was laughing.  His chocolate brown eyes danced, pleased with this 
kind of undivided attention. 

"Where are you gonna take me?" he asked.

"Well, I caught you, so I get to keep you." I headed towards the stairs, my son draped across my arms like an overgrown baby.  
"I know of a good place to keep my teddy bear."

I dropped him into his sister's crib.  "There. Now I have my teddy bear in a cage. I'm gonna keep him here and take good care of my pet."

He was laughing.  Those expressive eyes of his were laughing, too.  

He thought he had a secret his captor didn't know about.

I wasn't downstairs for more than thirty seconds before I heard little feet pounding down the steps with giggling to go along with it.  

He flung back his head and exploded into belly laughs when I 
raised my eyebrows at him.

"What? You got out?  Okay, then, I know of another cage to keep my teddy bear in."

This time he was laughing too hard to run.

I caught him easily and carried him over to my desk. I put him into the knee-hole and positioned the chair in front of it.  "Whew! Now my bear can't get out."

But he did. He came over to where I was seated on the rocker and stood beside me, daring me to catch him again.  I snagged him and hefted him onto my lap.

The game had changed.  

It had started out in fun but now I was as serious as a heart attack.

"Well, you can get out of all the cages I put you in, 

but there is one place you can't ever escape from."

"Where is that?" his eyes were dancing again, imagining how brilliantly he would escape the next spot.  But this time he was wrong.

"You are all trapped inside my heart and you can't ever get out of there."

He looked curiously at me, wondering if I had lost my mind and was going try to physically stuff him into an internal organ.  "No.  You can't fit in here," I said as I patted my heart. "Not your body anyway, but you are already there and no matter how big you grow or where you go, you'll always be there."

He was confused.  Understandably.  

Sentimental mothers don't make much sense to playful little boys. 

I loved it then, when our family devotions were just finished and he said, 

"Let's play a fun game.  Mommy, you stand here by the couch."

I knew what was coming and stood there grinning.

"If all the mommies in the whole world were standing in a lo-o-o-ng row and I could pick one mommy, I would go down the row and say, 'No, not that one with brown hair and brown eyes.'"  He took a step closer, pointing to another imaginary mother, "No, not that one either with red hair and red eyes." 

He was moving in my direction.

"Yes! This is the Mommy I want with blue eyes!" He hugged me.  

It morphed into a family group hug, like it always does.
Maybe he's learning.
Maybe he's learning that some cages are heart-shaped that he'll never escape from.
And maybe he's finding out that he wants to stay there.
Forever.

Celebrate Spring like this??

I need to type really fast because my bucket of water is filling right now.  My window washing bucket.   Remember our exercise agreement back in January?  Well, I didn't get my quota in last week and am now being punished with three windows.  On the second day of Spring, mind you!  This is brutal.

I wanted to post a really great post on celebrating Spring with cupcakes and flowers and things. But I can't because I need to wash windows.

Considering the title of the blog, though, I know there are a few 'Dewdrops of Joy' in this. Three clean windows on the second day of Spring?  This might be a record.

Plus, our landlords might notice and lower the rent.

This might not be so bad after all.

On the other hand...

my bucket is full, 

and I still have to wash spider eyebrows out of three windows.

And on the second day of Spring!

Who agreed to this anyway?

The Daffodil Project

It was spring 2014.  At least, that was what the calendar said, but this year Winter was loathe to release its grip on the world and relentlessly hung onto late March with icy fingers.  It blew chilled winds into reddening faces and spit late snow flurries down the coat collars of shoppers.  It was a winter to remember, according to old timers.  Not a few were ready to see it end and to watch spring burst through the chill, reviving the world with a balmy change. 

In spite of the late winter, not all was gray and cold.  One shopper in the large, Midwestern grocery store smiled to herself as she thought of her errand.  It was her Daffodil Project, one of her favorite events of the year, which caused a hint of a smile to permanently etch itself on her face.   Perusing the cooler full of flowers, Virginia selected daffodils whose blooms had yet to open.  Only 18 small bunches?  Dividing them among six vases wouldn’t make the bouquets as full as she had hoped, yet with time against her, Virginia made herself satisfied with the flowers available.  She knew that even a moderate, spring-like bouquet would chase away some of the winter blues for half a dozen elderly women.

The Daffodil Project is beautiful in its simplicity.  In the gray of early spring when everything outdoors is still bleak and barren of flowers, Virginia purchases bouquets of daffodils and delivers them to half a dozen widows.  She likes to choose widows from church, especially elderly ones or shut-ins.  Stopping by their homes with a bouquet of flowers and a friendly smile, she stays for a short visit and then goes her way, leaving behind a bouquet of springtime cheerfulness and an elderly widow basking in the warmth of knowing someone cares.  Within days, the daffodils burst into full bloom, permeating the home with the freshness of spring and effectively keeping winter chills at bay.

James 1:27 says in part, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction.”  I’m thankful for the example of Virginia, my mother, who has shown me through her annual Daffodil Project a beautiful way of visiting and blessing widows.  -Originally printed in the Companions

Doesn't that sound rewarding?  Let's expand the Daffodil Project this year and more of us should take flowers to at least one elderly person sometime in March.  Leave a comment below if you decide to join in.  

The Town of a Lifetime

If titles were given to toys from my childhood, The Town would vie with paper dolls for "Most Played With."  Way back then, my mom saw a town in a magazine, and, true to her creative and genius nature, she crafted one of her own by looking off the picture.
  

The town Mom made

The result was something children have loved and played with for nearly 30 years. Though parts of it have faded and at least two spots have been mended, the town is still in excellent condition even after all those years of attention.  

Mom and I started talking about making a town like this for my own children instead of the painted towns she made for other grandchildren.  

"It is way too much sewing for me to do alone with my bad back," she said.  

"You'll have to help me."

Plans fell into place; the children and I spent this past week at my parents' house 10 hours away; and Mom and I spent four solid days sewing the town.  We used fabric scraps from her stash in the basement and found some of the same ones she used for her town. (She cut out the dock for the new pond beside the outline of the dock she had cut out 29 years ago.)  

Our first two days were spent creating the buildings, bushes, and et cetera.  Mom cut everything out and backed them with iron-on stiffening to give them some body.  I earned a master's degree in Zig-Zagging by sewing on all the details on each building.

On Day 3 we laid everything out on a large rectangle of denim and roughly mapped out roads and curbs with string.  Then came painstaking hours of measuring and drawing guidelines so I could sew on all the yellow markings.  The curbs, parking spaces, and dotted lines in the road took a full day of sewing.

  Day 4 was full of sewing on all the pre-made pieces.  It was the reward for all the previous days' work, for every stitch I put in made the town come to life.  Everything on the town is zig-zagged: the lettering on the buildings, the parking spaces, the dotted lines, and the buildings themselves are attached with a tiny zig-zag stitch.  I worked for my Master ZigZaggers title, I tell ya!

We made a few changes from the original town, including adding garage doors to the fire station and changing the jail to a mechanic's garage, naming it LaVerne's Repair after my dad's business. 

 We also upgraded the hospital by adding an emergency entrance.  Somehow the garage doors make parking at a building double the fun.  

No, the roof isn't curvy in real life.  :)

Making your own town instead of purchasing one means you can personalize it with places you frequent.  Ours has Glenwood and Walmart.

Some favorite details on the original were kept the same, like the house with a driveway.  

 It was a good feeling to sew the stop signs on which finished the town!  Our town is longer than Mom's because we included an airport at one end, complete with a control tower and a helipad.

The final product!