Water Bill Drama

So apparently the village of Bella Vista has been "misreading" our water meters for an extended length of time. Rest assured, they are "doing their best" to correct the problem..no no-I'd much rather you DON'T fix the problem. There was a story in the paper about someone getting a back-dated water bill that they had adjusted to the correct meter reading. The bill was for a THOUSAND DOLLARS. For real? Yes! Luckily, we've only been in this house about 2 years, so there can't be that much of a difference to pay, but seriously WHO wants to pay $1000 for water? If I'd know this I would be taking MUCH shorter showers, and I probably wouldn't go pee so much...I'd probably even consider getting one of those LO-FLOW shower heads (ever see that Seinfeld episode? My hair looks like that anyway, so i wouldn't mind so much) Is it even legal for the water company to do this? Shouldn't it be their mistake? What if they've been misreading the meters for 5 years? Are they going to bill at the rate water was 5 years ago, or the rate it is right now? How can they prove when all the extra water was used? My friend had hers adjusted last month and it was double what it should be, but is supposed to return to around the same (give or take $10) next month. My bill was the same it always is, so they apparently haven't made the adjustment and it will show up on my statement next month. Stay tuned for my water bill report, it should arrive in about 2 weeks.

Dun. DUn. DuuNnNn.

Cookie Pics

Cookie Factory!

So the past few nights after my kids have gone to bed and before they woke up puking, this is what I have been up to! My friend Nicki came over to provide emotional relief from the infirmary I've been running, and rather than post about it myself, I'll send you to her blog...because, well i am tired and she's already done the work of posting the super cute pics...and also because I'm learning that if i actually go to bed before midnight, I am not too tired to hold a sick baby from 1-5am. Check it out....aren't they the cutest? Bet you wish I was your visiting teacher! By the way, those are my hands and that's my kitchen (and my new oven ...yay!) in the pics...so why write my own post?

http://landlockedshores.blogspot.com/2007/10/cookie-factory.html

or click the link for Nicki in my Links

If you believe in ToyLand...

Well i was GOING to post super cute pics of my girls and the Kircher kids (I watched them while their mom went to the temple today) at Toyland, but my camera isn't working now! Yesterday as we were leaving toyland Quincy threw up (seriously, again) all over me and the camera! My friend, Emily was awesome and wiped it down while I cleaned the baby up and took my sweater off...but i have a feeling that the puke killed my camera! Luckily she waited to be sick until after we'd seen Barbie, Sleeping Beauty, Dora (again she was terrified of Dora) and she'd already had a chance to play with all the toys and get all the free stuff. (yay! free stuff!)

I'll post the pics (along with my commentary on the excitement of the day at Toyland with 5 kids) as soon as I figure out how to fix my camera! Is there a De-Vomit feature on digital cameras? There should be...there should be a de-vomit feature on most things I own these days! LOL!

Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

Forget pumpkin pie this year folks. About 5 years ago my sister stumbled upon this Paula Deen recipe that will change the holiday season in your house FOREVER. This recipe is not for the faint of heart OR the diabetic. My sister also posted the recipe on her blog (thank you thank you thank you Hollee Ann for bringing Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake into my life) along with a photo of the finished result in all it's fatty goodness. Sheena, your friends and family are about to LOVE me for posting this because you seriously won't be able to resist making it for all of them. I plan on adding 1 single grain of sugar to the recipe, and then i'm going to screw Paula Deen over, call this my own recipe and enter it in my ward chili cook off on Halloween, where IT WILL WIN-and by a landslide...because it is not chili, it's Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake and who cares about dinner when there is dessert! Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum! By the way, if you are in my ward and reading this i swear i will cut you if you steal this recipe for the cook off...that golden spoon is so mine this year :o) Happy Baking everyone! And once again thank you Hollee Ann and Paula Deen for making the world a better place with this recipe.

Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake:
Cake:
1 (18 1/4-ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 egg
8 tablespoons butter, melted (yep, the entire stick of butter, all 800 calories)

Filling:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened (another 800 calories baby!)
1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 tablespoons butter, melted (again? YES!! can't you SEE how good this cake is?!)
1 (16-ounce) box powdered sugar (seriously. the whole box.)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg


Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well with an electric mixer. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 by 9-inch baking pan.

To make the filling: In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and pumpkin until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Next, add the powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mix well. Spread pumpkin mixture over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Make sure not to over bake as the center should be a little gooey.

Nutritional Information: 1 serving = the entire gooey cake.
Calories per serving: more than you will work of in an entire year until next thanksgiving comes and it's time to make another Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake.


I have only eaten 1 other thing in my life with the word Gooey in the title...and those were Annie Grover's chocolate caramel Ooey Gooeys. I would not have survived High School Seminary without them. I will do my best to dig that recipe up for you folks also, but Annie might be taking it to the grave with her as it truly is a bit of heaven in itself.

Race For The Cure

Hooray! It's breast cancer awareness season. That is so awesome, but do you ever just have a moment where you just feel bad for all the other cancers out there? I mean, Breast Cancer gets all this publicity...but what about the guy with tongue cancer? Or elbow cancer...Is there such a thing? Let's see, I DON'T KNOW because elbows aren't as hot as boobs so no one wants to run a 5K to save them. what's that all about?

Vomit Pants

When Quincy woke up today she JUST WOULDN'T STOP crying. I didn't know what was wrong with her, but she was fine as long as I was holding her or feeding her. So from about 3-5 I just kept giving her food, and she kept eating it, but she would scream every time her tray was empty!
Finally I picked her up and carried her around for awhile, but she started crying uncontrollably. I couldn't even attempt to put her down without sending her into a total meltdown. Finally I realized my bladder was about to burst and that I was just going to HAVE to set her down so I could go to the bathroom, so I handed her a toy to distract her, put her on the floor, and hurried down the hall to go to the bathroom. In an attempt to be efficient, I was unbuttoning my pants as I went so I could go and get back to my screaming child as quickly as possible. But about halfway down the hall she was simply hysterical and I just couldn't take it anymore. So I put my desperate need to go pee on the back burner and went back to try and calm Quincy down. As I bent down to pick her up she THREW UP ALL OVER ME. I'm talking MASSIVE amounts. It just kept coming and coming and coming! I watched her throw up all the 9 million things i had been feeding her for the past 2 hours along with everything she'd eaten in the past 24 hours. It was horrible. But the real horror came when I tried to walk over to the kitchen sink and my ankles squished....and my knees squished...and my thighs squished...and my butt squished. That would be because in my honorable attempt to rush to my baby's aid, I'd left my pants pulled partway down and she had PUKED IN THEM! All i could do was hold her close, laugh at the situation, snap this picture of us all thrown-up-on, and head back to the bathroom to get her in the tub!

I spared you the shot of the vomit pants, because well...it doesn't look like vomit and I know there are people out there that don't actually read the post and only look at the pictures, and I don't want to be mistaken as a poopie mom.

THEN, Reese came in, full of concern for her baby sister, "mommy mommy, Quincy throwed up? Why did she do that? Thats just so yucky mommy. She needs medicine now mommy, get her all better, ok? Hey (sniff sniff) Hey I smell something. (sniff) I...I...I smell... something yucky..." She took one good look at me, covered in vomit, gagged and

ROUND 2!

Reese donated a couple of good sympathy vomits... all over my hair and down the backside of my shirt. She then joined Quincy in the tub for clean up and complained that "Quincy has stinky Frow-up and she needs to stop making those yucky frow-ups on the carpet"

ROUND 3 happened in the tub luckily, so there wasn't much clean-up, but i felt so bad for Q because she just wanted to be held. She got her way though, because i WAS holding her (and wearing clean clothes) for ROUND 4... and ROUND 6. Here's a shot from ROUND 5, which wasn't so bad at all, except she kept crawling around and was mad when i tried to move her off the carpet. ROUND 7 was back in the tub, and ROUND 8 was on the bathroom floor.

The past 4 hours of my life could replace any horror film out there. I didn't even bother to wash the onesie she was wearing for ROUND 5. It went straight to my outside garbage can.

The real dilemma is that Quincy will probably be feeling fine tomorrow. However, MY recovery will probably take a couple of days....minimum. I bet Aaron now is thrilled he's leaving town on Thursday!

Aaron was so great when he got home...he helped as much as he could, and cleaned up the dinner mess and put the girls to bed as I cleaned up all the puke piles, started a load of laundry, took a quick shower, and headed off to the church for Young Women. (where we made gratitude journals of all things) I feel like I need some kind of medal or trophy for surviving the afternoon. Instead I have "vomit pants" and stinky hair. I can't get the smell out, and I'm seriously considering a haircut.

All terrible things aside, REESE WAS AN ANGEL TODAY! Horray! I think she is finally coming out of the yucky stage she's been in for awhile. Her behavior has slowly been improving since my parents got here, but today we made it through the entire day without a single fit, tantrum, time-out, or sister-abuse. We had sympathy vomit, but aside from that, she really did great, I'm really proud of her. Now I have something to write about in my gratitude journal. AND I have an excuse to buy some new jeans...because it will be a miracle if the peach-yogurt-pears-peas-crackers-corn-sweet potatoes-formula-toast-noodle-chicken-black beans-carrot-puke stain ever comes out.