A Little Quarantine Fun--to Get Cowen Out of the House!

 Thanks Aunt Amy for the giant ball sprinkler thing-a-ma-jig.  It worked better than the slip-n-slide with Harriet because she could follow it around and nobody got mad at her for playing with it.  I overestimated the children's recovery.  Cowen and Harriet played in the water for about an hour.  Emeline and Eli lasted about the same amount of time it took to put sunscreen on them.

In case you were wondering about Emeline's outfit.  She really loves her swimsuit but I always make her put clothes over top for sun protection.  The above outfit was our compromise.

Some days you have to laugh.  My sister Amy once gave me a journal with a woman holding a mirror on the cover.  Above the woman it said, "It's either me or the house--we can't both look good."  That was certainly true on Thursday!!  After my being sick and taking care of sick kids, the house was starting to look pretty shabby by Thursday and I hadn't been exactly dolled up either.  I thought it was time to have my hubby come home to something besides exhaustion, so the kids and I decided to surprise dad with a clean house.  We cleaned everything upstairs except the kitchen and we straightened the downstairs.  Then we made cowboy cookies because Timothy loves cookies.  But by the time we had cleaned and made cookies, and cleaned again (I have little kids!) and I'd blown up the water ball thingy and put on layers of sunscreen and sent the kids outdoors, and then welcomed the little ones back in because they weren't really feeling up to playing in the hose, and got them undressed and dressed again, and made supper--I didn't manage to do anything with myself.

As Mirror Woman said, "It's either me or the house--we can't both look good!"

 The food can look good though.  It looked so pretty on my plate that I took a picture.  That is a lettuce salad made with whatever lettuces I have growing in my garden (hard to know when the packet just says lettuce mix) and homemade ranch dressing.  The black beans I cook in the crockpot with orange juice and cumin and they are divine.  I love, love, love them.  If you want the full recipe, let me know.  And then I made one of my favorites from an American Heart Association cookbook--lemon-cayenne chicken.  You coat the chicken in seasoned flour, fry it, then make a pan sauce with butter and lemon juice.  Tasty.

 Eli wanted me to take a picture of his plate.

Cowen wanted me to take a picture of his "face and thumb."  Nice.

May your food look good--even if nothing else does.  I'm pretty sure that is a proverb from somewhere.