our latest fun adventure

Mac-n-cheese=yuck.
Mac-n-cheese made with tub margarine and reconstituted powdered milk=double yuck.

(Hey--why is margarine spelled that way but pronounced as if it followed the rules for a soft g? It's the opposite problem of 'girl.' If you follow the rules, it should be pronounced 'jirl'. Once again betrayed by the vagaries of English spelling!)

So today's fun activities for the kids included getting out a little blow-up kiddie pool we bought for $1 off the clearance shelf at Food-4-Less, and combining that with 3 cans of shaving cream we've been carrying around for 5 years even though Tim hasn't used shaving cream in that time, and adding 4 young children and a little instruction on how to shake and spray. It was really really fun. Caleb ended up coated with slippery white, and we decided that, in the future when everyone's old enough to do slip-n-slides, we'll use shaving cream instead of water. Then a little hose action, and we had a whitewater wading pool to play in.

Later, the kids continued their dig for buried treasure in the back yard. The hole is getting quite big, but no treasures have come out of it yet except good memories and dirty hands, and a couple of scoldings for taking my best serving spoons out to dig with.

Making plans for upcoming holidays: so far we have requests for 3 kitty costumes and a vampire costume for halloween. Anda just has to be a cheetah. She has become absolutely fascinated by reading about animals, and cheetahs are the latest favorite. So last year's jaguar costume is going to become this year's cheetah. Dan and Ben just copy.

And the only thing we know for sure about thanksgiving this year is that we're going to have a cool whip pie. That was all the kids ate of the pies last thanksgiving, so we're even going to skip the crust, and just spoon cool whip into the pie plate and serve it that way. Jello was the only other thing the kids ate, and I'm wondering if I can get away with having a jello-cream-feast and skipping all the other stuff, except for me and Tim.