visions of sugarplums

I was up 'til 11 pm, stirring caramel. Well, stirring caramel and fudge. I decided to make them both. Simultaneously. And I will admit a little more than much gratification at the fact that both turned out well(ish), with my fudge setting up better than emily's. It's all about one upping the little sister, after all.

The girls decided sleeping with the wiener dog sisters was overrated and all four of them snuck quietly into bed with the four giant squeaky toys, not making a peep, in fear that I would send the dogs in to sleep with them if I remembered they were there. My master plan was even more stealthy, however, and after the girls (bijour and cinnamon) finished helping me with the candy, I sent them outside on a thorough potty run and then steathily squeezed them in the barely open door to the girls room where they found cozy nests of sleeping bags and blissfully ignorant children. Of course candy making was an adventure in vintage candy thermometers that don't work, runs to mega for sweetened condensed milk, and a little bit of creative substitution and jerry-rigging since I didn't want to run to the store when I realized I didn't have enough marshmallow creme and wasn't sure if there was an armed alarm at the boyds house.

Yesterday I ran between the house, the west side and the middle school, no less than 78 times. it was a half day, which meant the girls got home at randomly useless times for the christmas shopping excursion we had planned, so after we worked over capitol mall at a dead run in 27 minutes, we streaked our way to the school to drop the girls off for basketball, then got groceries, then to watch the basketball game, then home to make dinner, back to pick up the other basketball player and get the cheese I forgot at the grocery store, then home to eat, back to the concert, etc etc etc.

I thought I would get a mother of the year award for being the first parent to the school to pick up mackenzie from her away game, and after sitting there for 45 minutes, I realized that the other parents were actually AT the game, so once again, the elusive award escaped my grasp. Oh well. It's the holidays.

Halle's concert was amazing. Well, the tuba part was. It was fun. We all wore our holiday headbands, but since the candy canes kept falling off of aspen's head, I traded her for the collapsed reindeer antlers, much to the chagrin of the six rows behind me who got to watch the band perform, framed by a pair of bobbing candy canes. Nattie's mittens were much more well behaved. Somehow aspen got the gum I gave her as a pacifier tangled up in the wrapper and then subsequently in her hair, which was easy to undo since we could watch the whole disaster in playback on the camcorder of the parent behind us. Needless to say, this morning is a great morning for a bath, and maybe a run or two to the grocery store for one item at a time.