king cake for four

so after a small hunt through this little florida town (which has gotten muct bigger than i last was here).....i finally found a bakery that carried the elusive king cake

i have never been one to really seriously celebrate mardi gras- no huge drunken moments of shirt lifting, no piles of plastic glimmering beads stashed away in a closet some where, no day dreams of making my way to the french quarter to watch parades with thousands of other drunks...but this year i thought it would be fun to introduce my nieces and nephew a long standing mardi gras tradition of the king cake....i mean what kid would not enjoy a tradition where you are encourage to bite into a cake that purposely has a plastic (naked) baby jesus baked inside, right?

so i made an attempt at a vaguely new orleans style meal, printed out a brief description of what the tradition was all about (i mean if they are going to eat cake, they might as well know why they are doing it!) and tada- a new family tradition is born.....

needless to say with this small family of four and 1/2 people and one pretty good size king cake- none of us found the baby (YET!) and tomorrow we will start a new family tradition of breaking the rules of the king cake tradition(no consumption after fat tuesday, as i have been told) so that one of us can find the plastic treasure.

the neverending closet cleaning project

it all starts with one simple thought....

i will help my mom clean out some of the junk that is in the house.

never, never think of thinking this thought....

my mom is not a messy person, by any means- so i thought a littl quick help to organize it all couldn't be too bad...well was i wrong.....

one closet leads to another closet, you can't just stop at one. then you realize that you are not just cleaning out some of your mom's items, but there are things there in piles from my two sisters (who do not live here and haven't lived here for some time)...old paper work, old pictures, old yearbooks, old bills, old cell phone boxes...doesn't anyone throw these things away?

i have to happily admit that i have yet to find a pile of paper work that belongs to me...a comforting thought that i am not the burden of junk that is stocked in some of these closets...

hopefully as i dig through and weed out, it will all make life here a little less cluttered and my mom can know that the baggage left in this house is hers and hers alone and not my sisters'!

24 hour conversation

my seven year old niece said to me one day.....

"do you think those people that work at the 24 hour stores get tired?"

the worry in her voice was too obvious and too cute...her concern for those that might actually have to stay awake all night at the store with no break was truly genuine....

to her great relief, my explanation of working in shifts helped to clear things up as she then commented......

"i guess that's why those people at the 24 hour store where not the same people that i saw there the last time we were there"