Welcome to My Silly* Life...

We're in the home stretch and yet somehow, instead of a finish line, I feel like I'm headed towards the edge of a cliff. A week from tomorrow is the official last day of school and we still have LOTS to do before then.

Monday was Beanie's birthday.  She wanted to go to Chili's and who are we to tell her no.  Here's the birthday girl:

 And her freeloading siblings:

 Ah...a rare picture when they aren't snarking at each other for having "borrowed" something.

And of course the boy to prove that he still exists.

I would have taken a picture of the giant brownie sundae they brought her at the end of the meal but I leaned over to get my new mother's day camera and it was as if a school of piranhas had devoured it...in a heartbeat.  There was nothing left but a little smudge of chocolate on the edge of the plate.

From Chili's we headed to the ball field to drop off middle daughter for softball practice.

Tuesday we went and watched the middle daughter's "pop" choir concert.  Then raced to the softball field for Beanie's practice.

Today, I decided to cook.  I made Sunny Anderson's Cider-Brined Fried Chicken and macaroni salad.  Holy Hannah the chicken was PHENOMENAL!  Seriously.  Make it.  One word of caution...do not brine it longer than an hour.  I also was feeling ambitious so I made Sunny's Patriotic Trifle.  The only thing I did different was instead of using one lb of cream cheese I used 8 oz of cream cheese and 8 oz of mascapone cheese.  The rest of the way, I followed the recipe.  It was WONDERFUL.  See?

I used a small angel food cake and I think it was too small.  Next time I'll either use 2 or a bigger cake.  It was still YUMMY.

Then we raced off to middle daughter's first softball game (are you seeing a theme here?).  We made it just as she was coming up to her first at bat.  Before I could get the camera ready, the ball was pitched and she nailed it into center field.  Sigh...But I did get some interesting shots of the rest of the game.  It went alot like this:

No...no ball.  None were hit to her.  Heck...I'm not sure the ball was hit more than 7-9 times in the entire game.  But they won.  10-8.  And is it wrong of me to thank GOD for the 5 run rule (ESPECIALLY as it applies to batters being walked around the bases)?  Yeah, I thought so.

On the agenda for the rest of the week:  Beanie has a band meeting tomorrow right after school.  She'll be playing the flute next year at school and this is to get all the info.  Then she has her first softball game. Friday she has a field trip on a Mississippi Riverboat and a birthday slumber party. 


And this is a slow week.  Once school officially lets out, multiply this by 4 and this will be my life.
Yay me.


*silly...actually, I think crazy fits better, but silly are the lyrics, so I went with it.