Baking and Selling

Josiah is a good kid.  He is smart and creative.  He has tons of energy and loves to play.  But Josiah also likes to talk using a character/cartoon voice a lot.  It became apparent this week that we needed to take more drastic measures with changing that.  Lately it has seemed like he doesn't even know how to speak using his real voice anymore.  So, now, every time he says anything to me using a character and/or baby voice (he likes to throw that in there, too), I just say, "What?"  And he has to repeat it.  And I will ask, "What?" ad nauseum until he says whatever it is using a real voice.  We have tried to couch it in the fact that he should use the voice that God gave him.  It is his unique voice and it should be heard in its original form.  It has led to a bit of frustration on his part.  Hopefully, he will use that frustration to be more proactive in his speech.  He's not the type to just clam up and be quiet as a reaction to all my "what's" either.  He's a talker.

Josiah has also been watching the Kid's Baking Championship on Food Network with Todd.  He has enjoyed it so much that he went through all of my cake recipes and pulled out a stack that he wanted to try.  His criteria seemed to be: 1-Any and all cheesecakes & 2-Anything with blueberries.  So the first cake he made was a blueberry cake.  He wanted to do it all by himself, but since he is not yet proficient in fractions, I thought I'd better help.  (When you read the recipe: "One, one, line, two, tablespoons baking soda." I think you need help with the measuring.)  I knew he wanted to do all of the mixing/baking and so I told him at the beginning that he could do it all.  And yet, he seemed to doubt me, because EVERY step he would say, with much anticipation, "Can I do it?"

When we put the batter in the pan, it went: Batter, blueberry pie filling, batter, crumb topping.  But when we cut into it, the pie filling sank.  It was a very heavy cake, but it did taste good.  At least to most of us.  Henry asked that next time we make a cake with, "no blueberries, actually no berries at all."  He has never been a blueberry lover.

Our neighborhood newsletter had a map of our neighborhood in it with all of the playgrounds shown.  There ended up being a playground within walking distance of our house.  It was down a street we never had any reason to turn on, so we never knew it was there.  So, we made the trek and the kids all had fun.

On Saturday, we joined our neighborhood, and participated in the community yard sale.  There were three other houses very close to ours with their own sales, so it helped create a lot of traffic.  Josiah wanted to sell water bottles.  He set up shop.  His original asking price was $2.00 for room temperature water.  I told him 50 cents at the most.  He was not as interested in manning his station as he was in shopping at our neighbor's sales.  So he had zero profit.

Henry wanted to sell granola bars.  He put about six granola bars in a bag, sat down, and read a book while he waited for customers.  Every now and then he got hungry, so he'd eat a bar.  I think he ate about four of the bars.  Josiah ate two.  Again, no profit.

Todd graciously brought Josiah and Caroline to a few of the neighbor's sales where we nabbed a great beach chair for Caroline for only $2 (in excellent condition).  She also picked up two small stuffed animals, because you know, she didn't have enough already.

Josiah picked up a Spiderman plane.  Then he spent the next several hours getting upset that I would not take him around to more sales to spend his remaining 40 cents.

Sitting at a yard sale makes the time pass super slowly.  Todd spun the boys around for a while, until he couldn't stand up straight. 


We sold quite a bit of stuff (and brought three boxes worth to Goodwill after).

After the yard sale, Todd managed to find more energy to cut down some tree limbs.  The trees were hanging so low that we were having to duck to get around half of the yard.  He said when he was cutting, that he looked up and there was a dove staring at him.  There she was sitting on her nest.  So, he left her alone.

The next day we noticed that she had a baby in there with her.  We couldn't get a good picture of both of them, though.  A branch always got in the way.

By the end of the afternoon, we were all so tired that we spent our $37.80 yard sale profit on dinner.  At least we have less stuff in the house now. 


Caroline spent some of her afternoon tying up her brothers.

I have been working on changing up the chore chart.  Sweeping had to go because the skill level was just not there yet, so I had an open spot on each of the boys' list.  At first I didn't know what task to give them, and then it came to me as I walked into their bathroom the other night.  The smell of urine was strong.  I knew which male was the culprit.  But after cleaning the toilet and the floor all around it, I decided they could wet-mop the bathroom floors.  Easy, and very, very necessary.

We only have two more weeks of CC left and we have quite a few activities that end in the next couple of weeks.  We are looking forward to a more relaxed May before the summer begins!