And then there was Brownie-splosion!

Day 19:

Yep! Brownie-splosion...more on that later.

Today started off like any other day, studying Thai with our language tutor. Today was my last day of using Doug's stage 2 videos. Starting next week, I'll be mixing things up a little with my lessons. I'll do a video one day, practice conversation, story-telling sequentially (basically putting sentences together with basic connecting words and sequences) and question/answer words one day, and then have one near torturous day of listening to a recording of myself speaking Thai. Come to think of it, watching myself on video will be pretty torturous too, especially since the camera adds a hunch back, witch fingers and nose, and about 3 chins. I'd be thrilled if it just added the standard ten pounds, but no such luck.  (Side note, today we were keeping Miss sickie contained watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which led me to ask Doug if I look like Angela Lansbury. Doug said I'd look like her in about 15 years, then he told Kees that Angela Lansbury looks like a mix between me and Gramee...not sure if that's a good thing).

Apparently when you mix these....

You get this.

Alright, while I am very much excited about my new learning methods because I get to make lesson plans, it will also require a lot more preparation time. In the past I have been using edited together Thai lessons that Doug made. So please pray we all stay healthy and I am able to balance everything well. I'm also teaching Kees homeschool, doing an English class once a week that I am developing lessons for, baking class once a month, and volunteering at the school for kids with special needs once a month. Specifically the English class and my new Thai lessons are still in the early stages and require planning, so pray I will do well, but not put my perfectionist hat on and neglect my babies and baby daddy. (Yeah, I just said "baby daddy", I'm surprised too).


Okay, so after language study time, I started a continuation of panicking from yesterday about the upcoming zombie apocalypse, er, I mean Songkran. I've expressed before about my irrational fear of starvation if I don't eat every two hours. We normally eat Thai food from street vendors at least once a day cause we can all eat for around $2-3. But with Songkran happening lots of places will be closed and there is no telling what will be available. And even what we could get would come at the price of getting SOAKED. Once Songkran is in full swing, if you leave your house you are inviting people to splash you and from what I can tell, if you splash a foreigner, like myself, you get bonus points. All this to say, I was feeling the need to stock up on a few food items to cook at home, so Doug wouldn't have to sacrifice himself to the zombies, I mean, Songkran celebrating crew.

I told Doug when he left that I wanted him to get lots of pictures, he got 2. When he got back we ate and then as the afternoon went on, quite uneventfully, I thought to myself...what am I going to blog about. Today, I'm just a stay at home Momma with a sick baby girl. We did lots of snuggling and resting. And then, a special gift from heaven, I decided to make brownies... And the rest is history.

The people in the back of this truck were throwing water.

This is Cow Soy.  I think I've posted a picture before, but I'm posting again because I don't think I included a description of the side items you get with it.  The Cow Soy itself, on the left, is a yellow noodle soup, with curry soup broth, chicken or pork meat and crunchy noodles on top. The extra items, on the right, are cabbagy type stuff, half of a fresh lime, and little purple onions...are those called shallots cause that kind of sounds right.  I want to say some of the dark greeny stuff is pickled, but I never add it to mine so I'm not positive about that.

And thus begins, brownie-splosion 2014. In an ironic twist, I had that yummy banana stuff for dessert last night and decided I might go with out processed foods (including sugar) for a while, but after I drank one of my hoarded Dr Peppers, I figured why not try the brownie mix recipe Doug saw on Facebook. Doug masterfully convinced me that making brownies was my idea by cleverly and covertly asking me leading questions, suggesting that I was neglecting my new baby: the kitchen aid.  He was all, "How are you liking your kitchen aid, is it everything you hoped for, it doesn't seem like you use it much, I found this brownie recipe..." It's scary how good he is...

The recipe Doug showed me.

So I had dinner going, warming up soup from yesterday and making broccoli and yucky carrots for added color to the meal, mixed up the brownie stuff in the kitchen aid, no problem. Then, because I don't trust myself, I put a cookie sheet underneath the brownies to catch possible explosion, you'd think that this would have been a built in reminder to check to see if the top heating element was turned on, a la cake-splosion 2013, but no, I didn't. And I didn't set a timer either, cause that's how I roll. Actually I usually can't find my timer because we also use it for time outs, so it gets moved around the house. So, by some miracle, I remembered to go check the brownies as we were sitting down to dinner and wouldn't you know...brownie splosion, that top burner got left on again, cooking the brownies extra fast. Apparently in the early stages of "baking", the brownies crowned over the sides, but none dripped over. The brownies looked pretty pathetic and reminiscent of the after affects of a bombshell blast.  Which makes me sad because it was a new recipe and now I don't even know if it's a good one or not!

Dinner and brownie-splosion, the broccoli was yummy.  I tried to drizzle the carrots with honey, cinnamon, and pecans since it was yummy on bananas yesterday, but I wouldn't recommend it.  Notice the brownie pan has weird crusty stuff around the edge from the near overflow.  Yikes!  I"m such a disaster!  They are going to coin a kitchen phrase after me, when you mess something up, they're gonna say, "Oh, you really 'Kelleed it this time" or "You pulled a Kellee didn't you?"

The Tomlinson babies did not care about the appearance of these brownies.

Brownies, or not, sick, or not, Kora rarely stays in one place for long.

My defense: ADHD. If you haven't heard this story before, go grab some tissue because your gonna cry, from sadness or laughter, more likely laughter.  So, I'm about 20 years old, home from college on the weekend, enjoying breakfast with my family on a Sunday morning. As my dad buzzed around (he's a morning person), picking up everyone's plates and generally tidying up the kitchen before the rest of us were even half way done, I made a joke, or so I thought, "Dad!!! You are so ADD!" To which my mom nonchalantly replies, "No honey, he's ADHD, you're ADD." My mom doesn't joke like the rest of us, so I knew she "thought" she was stating a fact. "Huh?" Her response went something like this, "Yeah, don't you remember getting tested in 2nd grade? You were only border line, but your teacher put you in that cubicle ."  This was life changing and shocking! I most definitely did NOT remember being tested, but I did remember the cubicle. The teacher told me it was for good behavior. That I got my own private "office" to work in. All those years of feeling superior, like I was the teacher's pet, shattered in one moment at an innocuous (yeah, I looked that word up, I totally thought it was innoculus) Sunday morning breakfast.

And now we are on the precipice of Songraning ourselves! We'll be out splashing tomorrow, hope my kids enjoy it.  Kees has enjoyed watching everyone else in the past and not wanted to get wet himself, so it should be interesting.  Tomorrow, I'm sure I will have stories to tell.

Not sure what your babies do when they are sick, but mine concerns herself with trying to remove the sheet from the bed.

And my good word of the day, well maybe I should start saying, Francis Chan's good word that I'm stealing for the day, is: "Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers."  Hey, Francis, what if our lives make no sense to anyone? :)