you know, i hate to admit to being a fan of pilsbury, because it flies in the face of the vaguely granola efforts to instill a sense of where our food comes from and that we should not rely on mass-marketed huge mega agriculture production machines for our sustenance, but my goodness, their ready-rolled pie crusts (conveniently in a sheath of plastic and cardboard), are FANTASTIC when it comes to kid-level pie making. 1. they taste good. carter attested to that ("mmmmmmm"). 2. NO FLOUR to deal with. thus no vacuuming or freaking out over the dark green chairs. 3. really really really good crusts. could not be improved upon, and that was seconded by grandma.

so, we spent a relatively mess-free morning making cherry pies. i ADORE cherry pie. and all i had to do was give each kid a crust, spoon some filling (canned)into the middle, help them fold it over, and bake it. voila. nearly as good as the mcdonald's version from the 80s.

and then, with that part over, i gave ava a bowl of heavy cream and a whisk and said "here. make whipped cream." -- would you believe that she did it? almost all the way at least. she whisked and whisked and whisked and whisked. at least 20 minutes.

i am going to task her with making our butter from now on. maybe open a creamery.

in other news, she had a great day at skating, did really well, remembered how much she likes it, passed the basic 3 skills, hooray. she was getting so lukewarm, but it was so hard to know if that was a phase. i am thinking it was a phase. my policy is to keep her going, but at a reduced pace when she gets like that, and honestly, i think the forced break due to illness made a difference.

carter and i had a great time while she was skating. CanAm (Canadian-American) Hockey tournaments are going on and they had a huge set up, including a 'goal' board that was divided into a tic-tac-toe set up that lit up in squares when you hit it with the puck--the idea being that one person wold shoot, hit one of the nine squares, then the next person would shoot, etc. carter tried to hit the puck with the hockey stick, got frustrated and resorted to hitting the goal board with the stick, much to the amusement of the staff. when ava was finished, she waltzed out, picked up a stick and sent the puck flying into the 'goal.' nice. left-handed too. she knew precisely what to do with that hockey stick. i asked how easily i could have one at home. they also had a video feed of the "miracle on ice" -- the 1980 US vs Russia hockey game for the gold -- Carter was frozen in amazement. Not only were there people on screen banging around into each other with sticks, on ice, but it was on a HUMONGOUS television. he thought heaven had just been delivered.

and tomorrow, he probably will be talking about hockey. every day, words words words. literally, it is like he just decided to do it. i know i have talked about that before, but it is so weird. it will be an interesting case study. please god, let this be the last time he makes us all jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops for no good reason. not that i did any of the jumping. the county did that for me. i, and many others, have just been doing the worrying.