Quarter sized cookies

Today Alex and Nathan helped me bake one batch of cookies from a recipe provided on the back of a bag of Nestle chocolate chips. They had a lot of fun helping me add the ingredients to the bowl but they did not like the mixer running. The recipe said it made five dozen cookies. I got almost three. Which makes me ask; how big are these cookies supposed to be anyways? Mine were about the size of a coffee cup maybe a bit smaller. They are not huge cookies by any means. But I guess that my cookies do not meet the Nestle standards on cookie size. In the future I will try to keep my cookies to an appropriate dimension so that I can get the full five dozen promised. Although if I get five dozen cookies I might feel worse about eating them because I will have eaten so many more cookies. Eating three dozen cookies must be better than eating five dozen. I guess that I will keep my current cookie size and feel better about myself.

Dad's Cafe

The other day I had a thought that when I decide to go back to work I have a bright future as a short order cook. For the most part, I decide exactly what I am going to serve the kids when it's time to eat. There's only so much that is available in the kitchen to cook. Today the menu includes spinach and cheese ravioli, chicken, maybe corn, and applesauce or fruit cup for desert. But as my sons get older they have this annoying habit of having their own individual taste when it comes to food. Both of my sons love sandwiches. While my older son loves all types of sandwiches, my younger son pretty much sticks with either PB&J or just PB. One likes fish sticks while the other wont touch anything breaded unless its chicken nuggets. My older son will eat most vegetables with a little "encouragement," while my younger son turns his nose up at anything that includes vegetables. He has made some improvement on the fruit side. I recently had someone give me the advice to try using ranch dressing as a bribe to get the vegetables off their plates and in their bellies but I have not tried this yet. I know that some people have extreme success in getting their kids to eat vegetables but I am pretty sure that most parents struggle with this everyday.
Snacking can also get out of hand and hinder eating at dinner time. My wife and I noticed that our sons were snacking too much. Now, they usually get one snack in the morning ( This is unless they sleep in past their usual 7:30 for some reason. But this doesn't happen all that much.) and they do not get a snack in the afternoon. This is mainly because my son gets home from school at 4pm and we normally eat dinner between 5:30-6. Cutting down snacks has significantly helped in getting my older son to eat his whole dinner. My younger son is still stubborn about what food he eats. I am hoping 3 is a turn around year for him.
On average I try to make the same thing for them at the same time. Not only does this show an attempt to get the boys to eat their vegetables, but with two kids involved, it stops some of the bickering about who has what. On a perfect day I try to make one dinner that is for all of us. This does not always work out, so many days I take the orders and get to work. I think it is good to give them some kind of choice so unless I have something in mind (like tonight) I will narrow choices down to 2-3 things and let them choose. I can usually get things going out in a pretty reasonable time. I am thinking about getting a table top bell to ring when the orders are up.

It came in the mail

Even in today's age of high technology most correspondence between you and the businesses still use the United States Postal Service. Even in a lousy economy like we have right now I still get mail that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Both my wife and myself received letters from our bank recently to inform us that a branch was closing. The letter went on to give us the next few closest branches that could handle our banking needs. Two things stood out about this letter that made me scratch our head. To start with, this information did not have any strings attached to it. I did not need to call to verify the closing of this branch so why could this not have posted on there website or even sent in an email. In fact even posting a sign on this branches door as the bank closed would only have inconvenienced a small few who for whatever reason did not know of the closing. The second thing that confused me was that the branch that was closing was approximately three hundred miles from my house in another state. Why the bank decided that it was imperative to let me know that I could no longer make a six hour drive to deposit my money is still a mystery to me. But now, after probably wasting a dollar or so of their money to send me this letter, I know that I should not use twelve gallons of fuel to withdrawal that twenty dollars I need to go the movies. (well, maybe forty dollars since movies are really, really expensive.)
A second letter I received recently was from my Gas company. It wanted to let me know that If I didn't schedule an appointment to have my meter read, my gas would be shut off. It said that I needed to contact them by 1911264275. Obviously I made the call as soon as possible but again I was generally confused by this letter. Did this ten digit number correspond with a date that I should have know but did not? I tried several different approaches to reading this number but I could not determine exactly when I was supposed to contact them by. Maybe all the people that have been getting laid off were proofreaders. Is it really that hard to make a letter sent to a customer readable? I guess it is.

Treasure Hunt

Yesterday my son decided to start digging in the dirt next to our patio. He has been fascinated with this patch of dirt since we moved in a few years ago. (I think all boys have a natural attraction to digging in the dirt that supersedes all other functions) I even went the extra mile last year and built a 4 x 8 foot sand box for the boys to play in but for reasons I don't quite understand my older son still loves that patch of dirt. Yesterday however, he started a new game where he drew an X into the ground and declared that this was where the treasure was hidden and he needed help to dig it up. I am all for indulging my sons creative side but I cringed at the idea of having a hole next to our patio so I put off digging until it was time for him to go to school. He hasn't mentioned it since but I know this will probably come up again. (my son has a steel trap memory and can remember things that happened two years ago like it was yesterday.)
So I decided that in a few weeks I would bury something in the backyard for them to find. I haven't yet decided what to bury but I am going to draw a treasure map and we will follow the map to a strategically placed X. What to bury is the question. Obviously it has to be something that wont be ruined by being placed in the dirt. A box can be used but I still need to be aware that dirt is not good for a lot of things. And there should probably be pieces of treasure in the ground since I have two sons. Although I have been making headway into teaching them to share, putting two things in the ground reduces the chance of having issues. Also, I have been debating on buying something new or burying an older toy. Right now an older toy is more desirable since I don't want them to have the impression that there is a toy store buried in the back yard.
Personally, I think that this will be fun for them. Not only will it help there imaginations by pretending we are pirates or treasure hunters but the map will make them follow basic directions. The only conditions that I have to remember to tell them is that this is a game that they can only play with myself or my wife. Otherwise I can expect to walk out into the back yard and find a landscape that looks like the moon. Treasure hunt is a fun game, but having try and avoid dozens of small holes can be just a little annoying.