On Purpleous

What you are about to read is a true story. These are real events that happened to real people. To protect their identities, only their initials will be used. Please try this at home.

February is a long, cold month in the upper Midwest and passing the time dreaming about warmer, sandier places becomes a daily event. Three women, we will call them P, A, and K, were together one day trying to entertain themselves by telling stories, eating food, scrapbooking, eating more food, and sharing which blogs were their favorites. Well, P and K shared about blogs because A had never read one. She didn’t know exactly what they were. So P and K shared with A about a blog they were fond of called, The Pioneer Woman. And PW’s blog has guest bloggers and one of the guest bloggers was Bakerella. Later that day A and K suggested to P that we should get all of our kids (9 total) together at P’s house over a school break. P was speechless. Not a good sign. Then she gave it an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

So a few months later, A and K convoyed from one frosty landscape to another, and arrived at P’s place. P’s husband D is a wise man and he graciously offered to stay at the family cottage while we descended on his house like mosquitos at a blood bank. The planner in me brought some activities for the kids to do inside inside in case the weather didn’t cooperate. Guess what? We were inside a lot that weekend. P and K wanted to try making cake balls just like Bakerella has on her site. The kids were all for it so we implemented child labor and began an assembly line of making many, many trays of cake balls. We wrinkled up our noses, we furrowed our brows, and scratched our noggins trying to figure out why our creations looked nothing like Bakerella’s? The kids didn’t care because they got to mix chocolate cake with frosting and squeeze it between their fingers without getting into trouble. They fed off the energy of our constant reminders of roll the mess into balls, stab them with wooden sticks (the cake balls not the kids), dip them into messy, melted fake candy- coating, and sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle! They were our little Oompa Loompas and we had that crazed expression on our faces like Mr. Wonka himself.

The kitchen had seen better days and the cleaning up wasn’t nearly as fun as making the mess. But we managed to get things back to order and the kids were hyped up after eating all the “mistakes”. The weather cleared up a bit and we bundled up the crew and took them outside for a walk. Well, some rollerbladed, some scootered, some rode in wagons, some rode bikes, and one decided it would be a good idea to use the pogo stick. Yep, that’s my boy.

We had a great time, and P invited us all back to do it again. I want whatever meds she is taking.

KB

Tagged as Bakerella, cabin fever, cake balls, Oompa Loompas, The Pioneer Woman, Willy Wonka + Categorized as Uncategorized