The longest bread-making process ever!

I usually start mixing my batch of bread for the week on Monday morning. Well, Monday's have been a little crazy around here with catching up from the weekend laundry, grocery shopping, etc, etc, that I postponed baking bread this week. I had three loaves left from last week -- this never happens by the way as I am usually using the last crust of bread on Monday morning. As per usual, procrastination never pays off. Tuesday was pretty much a gong show (as you can see from the previous posts) and Wednesday morning, when I was pretty much using the last crust of bread for breakfast, I knew I had to bake bread. The only problem was that I had to be out ALL morning. So, yesterday afternoon, once we had gotten home, had lunch and put Gideon down for his nap, I mixed up a batch of bread. I decided to let it rise a little longer than usual and we just had flap-jacks for supper -- super easy and a hit with everybody! So after supper was done and cleaned up I put the rest of the bread into the pans and let it rise. Just before bedtime, I turned on the oven to let it preheat, and promptly got involved watching a show I enjoy and fell asleep. 2am rolls around and Sarah is crying and wants in our bed. I don't usually wake up, but I wasn't feeling great anyway and decided to make myself a cup of honey-lemon tea. This was when I found my completely overflowing bread sitting on top of the very warm oven! So, as my tea was warming up, I punched the bread back down into the pans and decided to set myself an alarm to wake up and put them in the oven in an hour or so. Just as my tea had about 5 seconds left in the microwave, the power goes out. LOVELY! There was nothing else to do, but drink my tea and head back to bed and deal with the bread in the morning. By the time Matt left at 7am, we still had no power --- and about 4-5 inches of snow too. It was a little chilly in our house! We fumbled our way through breakfast of cold cereal and tried to find clothes in dark closets and drawers and made our way to school. I begged my sister to let me stay at her house for the morning, which actually killed to birds with one stone as I had packed up my twice-punched-down bread with me too. We had a great visit and I was able to stay warm and bake my bread as well. I was very glad to see that we had power when we got home too! I had no idea that when I started mixing my bread at 2pm yesterday afternoon, that it would take until 11 o'clock this morning to to finally finish baking. That's got to be a record, don't you think???

The Final Chapter....

Well, I thought my day could get no worse, and I guess it really didn't get any worse, but it was still full of surprises! After supper I loaded the dishwasher and was about to start it when I realized that my dishwasher wasn't turning on. GRRR!! It is a brand new dishwasher and I was ticked that it wasn't working. So I grudgingly started to fill the sink with water to wash the rest of the pots and pans, PLUS the fully loaded dishwasher. We have a tankless hot water heater -- which I LOVE!! -- and it usually takes a minute or so to get the water hot (but once it gets hot - it stays hot FOREVER!!). The water was running, and running and running and it was still freezing cold. This got me thinking - - where is Sarah??? Well, I found her standing on my washing machine flipping breakers on the electrical panel. About half of my house was now without power! On the plus side, my dishwasher was now working and I had hot water again. And of course any given day would not be complete without at least one accident on the floor, which I was so lucky to step in tonight...... oh, how I love my hardwood floors!! Sarah graciously fell asleep on the couch later and is now peacefully sawing logs. It was a busy day for her too!!

Seriously.....

What a crazy day so far! I just had to document it so that I can prove that I don't just sit around and watch TV all day!! Well, some days I do that a little bit, but I think I have earned those days!! It took FOREVER to get a couple of my kids up and going this morning and Brendan never did get breakfast before he left for school. Grace had an orthodontist appt this morning to get her braces on and I had to take Gideon and Sarah with me. I thought it would be ok, and it probably would have been if the appt had only taken 40 min like they told me it would. They did not take into account that Grace is a bit of a difficult patient and it took quite a bit of coaxing just to get her to even open her mouth. Gideon and Sarah had a "great" time pulling all the books and magazines off the table, turning on the space heater to 30 degrees, spilling fish crackers and animal crackers all over the floor, getting into the filing system behind the front desk, running down the hallways to find Grace, etc, etc, etc. At one point, I had Gideon in one arm, and was holding Grace's hands down with my other hand and Sarah was running amok throughout the other offices. 1 hour after we got there we were finally done, and just as I was paying my lovely $2300+ bill, one of Graces brackets popped off, and she had to have it repaired.... already..... That does not bode well for the future!! We ran her back to school so she could have a quick lunch and go on a field trip with her class. I am sure she will be hurting big time by the time school is out and so I have planned jello and mashed potatoes for supper. Then, this afternoon during "quiet time" I was folding laundry and Sarah came and told me she needed to go to the bathroom. So I told her to go. There is a bathroom RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the laundry room, and I thought she went in there, but 5 minutes later when there was a waterfall coming from the heating ducts above my head, I started searching for her pretty darn quickly! She had decided to run to MY bathroom and then decided to wipe herself with about 3/4 of a roll of toilet paper and then proceed to flush all that toilet paper, and consequently flooded the floor and sending a bucket load of toilet water flowing down the vent. Lovely. So just when I thought I had almost completely caught up with my laundry, I now have a nice load of towels to do. Oh, and the blanket she threw up on in the van this morning too. Oh, and I also locked my keys in the van at the dentist's office. I have NO IDEA why I had an extra set of keys in my purse, but I think that my Heavenly Father knew I needed to catch a little bit of a break today. How boring would my days be without my kids?? Guess what???? I get to find out!!! Only for a few days though. In a couple of weeks I am heading down to Utah to meet up with some of my bestest friends ever and attend Women's Conference at BYU. I AM SO EXCITED!!! I will miss my kids, but really, a little vacation never hurt anybody!!

Breakfast for 8

I decided to go all out and have a bigger breakfast than normal today. Here is what it takes to feed 8 people: 1 dozen eggs, 1 pkg of bacon, 1/2 bag of hashbrowns, 8 slices of toast, and 1/2 gallon of milk. There were no leftovers, and I bet I could have made more and that would have been eaten too. On the plus side - - there were ALL eight of us at the breakfast table all at once. That NEVER happens. Matt actually joined us at the table and it was only 8:30am on a day he didn't have to work. Miracles still happen!!