Putting Them To Work

Why, oh why must movers insist on sticking an orange, yellow, or blue stamp-sized sticker to EVERY piece of furniture they move? I do realize there is a purpose, but surely the moving industry can come up with something better than that? Some way of organizing and keeping track of things that does not involve stickers that may or may not want to come off in the end?

For those of you who do not list "moving" as one of your regular activities, perhaps you have no idea what I am talking about. I'll tell you: every item that a mover moves gets a sticker with a number. Every box, every piece of furniture, every vacuum, broom, bike, scooter, stroller, rug... anything that they pick up and put in the truck. They don't take them off when unloading either.

Now since I have not always been the amazingly tidy and organized person I am today (haha), I actually have more than one sticker on some pieces of furniture - from other moves! How terrible is that!?

Well, no sticker is going to live long in this house! I have decided to no longer be the kind of person who has moving stickers stuck to everything or anything! I am putting the troops to work! I made heavy-duty sheets of paper with squares all over them (much like a sticker or chore chart) one for each boy. Soon, I will let them loose to fill up their papers! I have promised a penny for every sticker they find.

This sort of reminds me of the time my dad promised my sister and me a penny for every cigarette butt we picked up one time. We jumped on that, thinking we'd make a killing (we were young enough to actually think we'd make a killing) but after spending hours picking them up (nasty), we then had to re-count them! Imagine two little girls with bags of cigarette butts, counting them one by one...

Fortunately, we will be dealing with stickers here, not dirty, smelly garbage! I just hope the stickers come off easily, or I will have to run around even more than they do, trying to respond to all the "Help, mom! I can't get this one! This one is stuck! I ripped this one! Ben is trying to steal mine!"

Daddy's Ice Cream Cake

I'm not sure who to give credit to for this yummy ice cream cake recipe, but is delicious and very simple to make!  We call it "Daddy's Ice Cream Cake" because he is the one who came up with the recipe (or maybe got it from someone else) and also the one who usually makes it.  The boys and I made it this time though because it was Daddy's birthday!

It has 4 ingredients - ice cream, Oreos, a little milk, and chocolate syrup (optional.)

1. Crush up most of the pack of Oreos into the bottom of a baking dish.  Add a little milk (about 1/4 of a cup little by little) until the Oreos are wet and clumpy and will smash down into a crust.

2.  Scoop a whole container of your favorite ice cream on top of the Oreos.  This works best if you let the ice cream melt a little first so that it will smooth out nicely.

3.  Squirt chocolate syrup all over and crumble up the remaining Oreos on the top.

4.  Put it in the freezer so the crust can harden and then eat it!  You can do it Norquist boy style and just dig it right out of the dish, or you can do it the more traditional and civilized way and use bowls and spoons.  Either way, it is delicious and pretty tough to stop eating until it's gone!

 

 

This is a really fun cake to make with kids because, well, it is yummy to eat while making it mostly, but also because it is fun and easy for them to crush and scoop and squirt.  Ben and Mitchell were so excited to tell Matt that they actually made his cake for him - almost as excited as they were to eat it!