October 25 - Staying Busy

I was hoping to have some good adoption news to share today. But I don't have any news at all. Figures, right? I figured I might not hear anything, so I tried to stay busy.

It's fine for me to be busy when Ralph is at school, so I try to get as much done in the mornings as possible. He's really a good boy, don't get me wrong. He plays with Ruby and watches his favorite shows on Netflix in the afternoon.

But...

Ralph knows. He knows when I'm preoccupied and that's when he makes his move. That's when he disappears. Poof! Gone!

One day we looked for him for 20 full minutes. Upstairs. Downstairs. Garage. Front yard. Down the street. Finally we found him in Boo's closet, under some clothes, drinking a juice box!

Today he got into my bedroom and found my toy stash...toys that I have picked up on clearance and have stashed away for Christmas and birthdays. He was so excited!! What could I do?

I broke out the philips head screwdriver and the AA batteries! It was almost as fun as Christmas morning, except that no one took these toys away in order to shove yet another present in their faces. It was precious.

A new batch of granola...one of my projects today.

My kids are cereal pigs. I try to keep cereal stocked, especially when I can match coupons up with a decent sale. My stockpile has recently been exhausted and I haven't found any great deals lately. Maybe I'm just too busy to look?

Anyway, I have planned to make our own granola for awhile. I even ordered a 50 pound bag of organic rolled oats from Azure standard about a month ago. I'm serious!

I found a nice simple recipe and made it my own. I use good quality ingredients. I hate the idea of my kids eating soy anything, canola oil, high fructose corn syrup or preservatives. So here is what I came up with:

18 cups of organic rolled oats
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
6 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup melted coconut oil
2 cups honey
6 tsp vanilla
optional: nuts, dried fruit

Thoroughly mix the oats, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, blend the coconut oil, honey and vanilla with a hand mixer. Pour the oil and honey mixture over the oat mixture and mix completely. Spread the sticky granola mix in an even layer on a cookie sheet. This recipe will cover 4 cookie sheets. Bake at 300F for 10 minutes. Take out and stir. You may add nuts at this time. Bake for 7 - 10 minutes longer, or until the granola looks toasty. Take out and stir, add any nuts or fruits that you like. Let the cereal cool completely, break up and store in an airtight container. Shh! I use plastic ziplock bags. :)

My big kids absolutely would not wait for this to cool. They all had yogurt with hot granola for an appetizer tonight! I'll let you know how long this recipe lasts.