Last Thursday, I was on a total home improvement high. Our 40+ year old thermostat had been on the fritz for quite a while, so I went online, ordered a new one, and it arrived on Thursday. I watched a YouTube video done by Home Depot on how to change the thermostat, and it was definitely a good resource! Seriously, there is a YouTube video for everything! I'm currently watching reviews on different school backpacks. Anyways, I successfully installed the new thermostat, and the only down moment was the old thermostat took up a lot more room than the new one.
It doesn't look pretty, but it works! Riding this home DIY high, I decided to finally hang the rods and curtains for our room that we purchased when we moved in two years ago. Side note: the walls in our house are terrible. We're not exactly sure what type of plaster they are, or if they're even finished, but we stripped the wallpaper and haven't touched them since. Kyle successfully hung my mirrored jewelry box, but even that was with a little luck. I used the little cut outs to make sure the holes for the rod were in the right place, made sure everything was level, put in the correct piece to make the holes, and drilled. The wall started crumbling around the hole I made. I thought about putting the holes in the window trim, since that's where the holes are for the rods in the kid's rooms. No luck. I'm partially blaming this on my drill starting to die and losing juice, so I have yet to retry since I've charged it.
The real story, is what was going on downstairs while I was fighting with the walls upstairs.
I didn't want to do the curtains while the kids were napping because they would have woken up. Once they were both awake, I put on a movie, filled their glasses with milk, set out some cheddar bunnies, and told them I'd be upstairs. Within seconds Caroline was upstairs wanting to help, shortly followed by Elliot. I had them help me get the stool from the bathroom, but other than that, there wasn't much for them to do, and they went back downstairs. A few minutes later, they were back up saying they needed more milk. At this point I was in the thick of it with the holes in the wall, and I told them to go back downstairs and I'd be right there. They whined the whole way down the stairs, but I was set on getting these curtains hung. I realized that I had lost to the wall and the trim, and was contemplating what to do next, when I heard laughter from downstairs.
Just as parents of new borns know what eat type of cry means, there are different types of laughter. There's laughter when you hear a joke, when you're watching a movie, when you're being tickled, and when you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing, but it is just so cool. The laughter I heard was without a doubt, the "doing something that you shouldn't be doing, but it's just so cool." I turned the corner down the steps and saw the very full gallon of milk on the kids table in the kitchen, both kids hovered around it, cap off. I say, "Hey guys what are you doing?" and Caroline says excitedly, "We're putting the cheddar bunnies in the milk!" Oh no. I looked in the jug and about 30 cheddar bunnies are floating around in it like a new way to eat a very cheddar cereal.
I had just bought this gallon of milk. There was about 1 cup used, so it was very very full. Not wanting to waste it (and really, only the kids drink milk), I decided I could just strain out the cheddar bunnies. I've been washing out all of our glass containers to re-use/re-purpose them somehow (Hello Pinterest!) and I could finally use them! I took an empty apple sauce jar, an empty spaghetti sauce jar, and my 4-cup measuring cup. Using the strainer I typically use to rinse quinoa, I started separating the bunnies from the milk. At the end, there was a loud clump that wouldn't come out. I expected to see a mush of cheddar bunnies that had sat in the milk too long and lodged together. I'd have to rinse out the container. I looked in the container and saw this:
A large carrot we had picked up from the farmer's market the past weekend.
If it wasn't for the fact that this was kind of a teachable moment (and not something I want to reenforce as funny), and they are my children, I would have laughed out loud. Instead I just starred in disbelief, mouth wide open to try and hide my smile. What were they thinking? What was going on in their heads? The cheddar bunnies make a little sense because they were readily accessible, sitting in the bowl on the table, right next to the milk. But who thought, hey, you know what would make this better? One of those carrots from the fridge.
Kids are so weird.
