It Starts

The splintery stairs are gone!  In their place, we have the beginnings of framing for the new deck, plus holes where the footings will be poured. I believe an inspector must OK the holes before the concrete is added.

I was surprised to see that the deck is only attached to the house in two small areas--both about 2 feet wide, on either side of the breakfast bay.  The deck will not be attached to the bay itself, likely because there is no foundation directly below it.  We now have two small (1ft x 2ft) pieces of cut away vinyl siding.

Also, as we are still home recuperating from surgery, T-man got a front-row seat for the building process. He is loving getting to observe the process.

Looking at the house from the back, the area to the right of the deck towards the second bay window is where the stairs and paver patio will go.  In the picture it doesm't look that tall, but the end of the deck is a good 4 1/2 feet off the ground, so there will be about 6 steps down to ground level.

The deck is not that large. At its depest, it will be about 12 feet, but from the kitchen door probably more like 9.  Deep enough for either one of our patio tables (our smaller round one is hanging out in one of the side shots, the bigger rectangle one is in the garage where it's been stored since we moved), or else a different seating group.

I have been window shopping patio furniture ideas, but want to wait and see the finished spaces before buying anything new.  We already have the two tables, though the round one would need new chairs. The old ones are the cheap plastic, two of which moved with us to the old house, and are neither attractive nor comfortable (though they may live on for extra temporary seats in case we have a big party).  The round table is wrought iron and while it wasn't expensive, seems to be holding up great. I can get matching chairs from any of several stores, just waiting for someplace to put them. Our bigger rectangle table needs a fresh coat of paint, but I still love the floral weave pattern that it and its chairs have. Ideally we will keep both, because together we can seat ten people for an outdoor dinner, or have extra buffet or prep space.

I also love the idea of low chairs around a fire pit, but that would probably have to sit down on the patio rather than up on a wood deck. Without fire, we could use the deck for a conversation area instead. I'm also not sure we can trust kiddos near fire, but they aren't babies. So it all just depends on how our existing furniture fits, what furniture we find, and how much we have left to spend after we're done paying for our landscaping adventure.

Disney Wrap-up

The Epic Vacation of Christmas 2010 ended much less eventfully than it began. We drove home by way of the same Atlanta-area hotel, avoiding all ditches en route.  On Sunday, we made a pit stop at a place called Patti's 1800's Settlement in Kentucky which is a crazy set of shops and restaurants that seems to be located near a popular mountain/lake resort type area.  We arrived in between meals, so we didn't eat at the restaurant. Instead, we browsed several of the gift shops and admired the extensive Christmas lights and displays.

 Monday, January 2nd was a school day for Charlotte. We made good time on the way home, but still only had about an hour to unload suitcases before the kids headed to bed.

All in all, it was a crazy exhausting vacation. It was long. It was expensive. And our travel dates were beyond awkward for us. I don't think we'll be doing that again for a good long time.

But, if or when we do go back that way (and likely, we will), we will have learned a few lessons:

1) Do not travel during times prone to ice and snow storms. Years ago I had vowed that we would never again vacation around Christmas unless we were specifically visiting family. I think this year's ditch experience has reinforced that point.

2) Attempt to choose hotel/motels with indoor pools. There is nothing like a swim to work the wiggles out of kids who have been forced to be sedentary all day. At least, I think that might have been the case, had we stayed in such a place :)

3) Deliberately plan for downtime during the trip. We had none. Our day-to-day lives are rush-rush-rush, and this vacation was more of the same. When arriving at work feels like a respite, that probably means the vacation was too busy. It was a fun busy. But it was busy.

4) Having a washer and dryer in the hotel/timeshare room was a godsend. We kept up on the laundry and only had a small pile of dirty clothes to handle once we got home. Which was great because we had no time to do laundry once we got home.

5) Do ask the kids for their opinions on activities. Some of the best family times and biggest smiles came from the rides and shows that the kids chose.

6) Thinking about a fitness bootcamp? Need to jumpstart your New Year's exercise goals? I highly suggest taking two small kids to Disney for 6 days. After all that walking and lifting, it was bye-bye to the Christmas fudge and hello super-buff biceps.

7) Provide for a recovery day before starting school. The past week has been murder on both kids' attitudes. On the bright side, their bedtime routines have been great. They've both been sacked out by 8:30 every night since we've been home.

8) The four of us have worked out a good car routine. I'm sure things will change again by the next big roadtrip, but this time we did seem to have a good mix of games, movies, coloring books, and snacks, and the kids were not terribly whiny during the drives. 

9) Gretchen the Google Navigation GPS Goddess is awesome. She never led us wrong, had great updates on traffic, made it super easy to find upcoming restaurants and pitstop locations..wait, she almost never led us wrong. She was terribly upset with us leaving one of the parks one night and kept insisting that we take streets that had been closed down. But once we found a mutually agreeable street, she led us right back to the hotel.

10) Schedule an entire post-vacation day for sorting photos. Between my camera, my husband's camera, each child's camera, and a pair of camera phones, we took nearly 1300 photos.  One thousand three hundred.

Lucky me I have a coupon code for a Shutterfly photo album.

Days 6, 7, 8

On Wednesday, we took a fairly easy day and visited the Disney Hollywood Studios park. By then, everyone in the extended family group had sore feet (and hubby and I had sore shoulders from hefting children to see shows and fireworks and parades). We probably saw very little of the full park. We did catch a live Playhouse Disney show, the Beauty and the Beast show, and Fantasmic (for which we earned decent seats by arriving insanely early and snacking on caramel corn and roasted nuts). 

Thursday, we returned to the Magic Kingdom to visit more of the areas that we'd skipped before. We checked out Tom Sawyer's island, and Charlotte and I nearly rode another roller coaster (except it had technical difficulties and was shut down shortly before our turn to ride).

Friday was New Years Eve, and the entire state of Florida, including us, went to Epcot.  The temperature had finally warmed into the 70s and the sun was out and we were able to leave coats and heavy sweaters in the hotel. It was literally shoulder-to-shoulder people in the park.

Totally, completely insane. We ate one of our more expensive meals there at the restaurant in the Mexico area and rode the Three Amigos boat ride. Charlotte spent much of the day in search of the perfect souvenir, finally settling on a Chinese umbrella and a beaded bracelet. Trystan had chosen a huge sucker and some scented pens with fluffy koosh balls on the ends.

We wandered through various "countries" enjoying their displays and mini-movies. Towards the end of the evening, we met up with my husband's family and watched the fireworks show. Trystan, by the way, hates fireworks.And pyrotechnics in stage shows. That made for a lovely week. He actually slept through the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. He hid through most of Fantasmic. And he buried his head on my shoulder during Friday night's show at Epcot.

The Disney staff had been hard at work passing out hats and noisemakers and opening extra exit paths to handle the crowds. They handle crowds with an efficiency that could probably teach the armed forces a thing or two.  But not only are crowds calmly and politely  managed, but they decorate the temporary passageways with bushes and trees to make them pleasing to the eye. You can't help but feel handled by the time you have experienced Disney in all its Magic.

Day 5: Magic Kingdom

I promise that soon I will quit writing an entire blog post about each day of our vacation. Really, the last few are not quite that interesting. But no visit to Walt Disney World is complete without a visit to the Magic Kingdom. And Disney makes good on their promise of Magic, especially during the holiday season.

Tuesday was another early morning for us, for good reason. We had breakfast at the castle with Cinderella and the other princesses. Technically, we had breakfast with each other (our family of four, plus my husband's parents and his sister, brother-in-law, and their two children). The princesses do not eat. They flit from table to table for photo ops. And no I don't have copies of any of those photo ops yet. I think my sister in law had her camera at the ready because mine was buried under a pile of coats during the meal.

 At Disney, neither a broken leaf nor a wilted flower nor a discarded scrap of paper goes unnoticed. There is an army of workers at the ready to clean up your trash almost before you are finished with it. Its scary, really.

Something that surprised me during our visit was the cost of food. I was (sort of) mentally prepared for the trapped-in-the-park shakedown on meal prices. But really, everything was very reasonable. The princess breakfast was not exactly Denny's, and we did tend to avoid sit-down dining (as much for our own sanity as for our checkbook--our kids do not handle sit-down dining with easily).

You are allowed to bring snacks and drinks into the parks, so every day we packed water bottles and an assortment of munchies (crackers, fruit, granola bars, etc). And we spend as much if not more money at Subway than we did for some of the meals we purchased. Kids meals usually ran around $5 and included veggie sticks and/or fruit and the adult meals around $7-12.  Thank you Disney.

Tuesday marked Charlotte's first time on a roller coaster (sorry, no photos). She and I rode the Barnstormer, a short kid-friendly one in the smaller-kid section of town. Trystan would have been tall enough also, but he chickened out at the last minute and waited with my husband at the end of the line.  Charlotte loved it so much that she burst into tears when it was done. She wanted to ride a second time, and I had to explain that she had to wait in the hour-long line a second time if she wanted to ride again. That's my girl.

Tuesday was a very long day for us. We arrived early and stayed until after the light parade and fireworks at 9:30 or so. By then we were all exhausted and frozen. And we still had three days of Disney left to go.

Day 4: Epcot

 On Monday, we went to Epcot Center. Of my only visit to Disney as a kid, this was the park I remembered the least. I don't know if we skipped it, or skipped part of it, or if I just plain forget. Because the whole place was brand new to both me and my children.

 Monday was also cold, though not nearly as bad as Sunday had been. With the afternoon sunshine, we were even able to take off our coats briefly. We got a slightly later start than we had the day before. The four of us were exhausted from having a couple of late nights and early mornings in a row. It was nice to let the kids sleep until they were ready to stir rather than throw clothes on their snoring bodies. And we knew that we could come back to Epcot for a second day if we wanted to.

 One of our big concerns with the trip had been Trystan and potty training. Through some combination of physical issues and stubborn-three-year-old issues, he is about 80-98% potty trained. 98% when he is eating well and sticking to a schedule and not sick and not testing every boundary. 80% the rest of the time. We knew from our other family trip that travel is especially hard on the kid with so much time spent sitting still in the car, and eating restaurant food, and not being near to a restroom at exactly the right time every day. (If this is too much information, feel free to skim down past the poop paragraphs). My husband reports that most of the men's rooms in Disney had child-sized urinals, so Trystan enjoyed the opportunity to practice his standing techniques. Of course, standing is not sitting, and it's the sitting activities that trip Trystan up.


I can probably sum the week's potty experience up as not great. We have dealt with worse, but his system got all out of whack and by the end of the week he was almost exclusively back in pull-ups because there are just so many changes of clothes we can carry around in a given day (and even if you double-bag it, poopy underwear smells really bad). Did I mention that our room had a washer/dryer? We used it. Nightly.

One of the funnier parts of the day had to do with Trystan and pottying but not with poopy underwear. After one of the rides, we asked the kids if they needed to take a potty break. I guess Trystan thought we meant *right here, right now*, because he pulled down his pants and peed on a bush. Bad parent that I am, instead of reprimanding the kid I laughed. And posted it to Facebook.

I think my favorite part of the day was watching Captain EO. Yes, the 80's era Michael Jackson Star Wars knock off mini-flick. He saves the day by dancing. It was hilarious but timeless enough to still be entertaining.

That night, we had an extremely cold dinner at one of the Japanese restaurants where Charlotte eagerly tried her first sushi. We actually ate on the patio because there was no room inside. It was a little surreal eating in 30 degree cold with our gloves on, surrounded by paper lanterns and Japanese style gardens, with Christmas choral music playing in the background. It turned out we were really close to the big Candelight Dinner Show.

After dinner, we wandered through some of the shops and then stopped at the big silver ball for one last ride. On the way out, you pass through an arcade-like area with video driving games. The game is pretty fixed, you pretty much win every time you play as there is almost no driver input. And yet, Trystan and my husband managed to break their game. Trystan found the one spot in the game where he could flip his car over, which left the game completely confused about what to do next.

Day 3 : Sunshine State my A$$

 On the day after Christmas, we dragged our rear ends out of bed early to go to Disney's Animal Kingdom, expecting the holiday masses to arrive with us.

 Apparently Orlandons and other assorted visitors decided that Boxing Day would be better celebrated indoors. Where the temperature was above freezing the entire day and not just for a few hours in the afternoon.

It was cold. Very cold. And windy. And a little rainy.

On the bright side, there were no crowds. All day we were able to walk right up to rides and attractions. And walk, we did. We haven't used a stroller for Trystan in well over a year and didn't even pack our one remaining (mostly broken and probably covered in cobwebs) umbrella stroller. My husband and I are evil, evil parents who made our children walk. Helped them stay warm :)

 We had fun, despite the cold. We all got to try out our cameras on the safari ride, and caught the Finding Nemo and Lion King shows. Trystan went to town taking photos in both shows though his little camera doesn't handle low-light situations that well. We had playtime in the Dinosaur area where there was a huge (and relatively well-contained) play area with slides and stairs and rope ladders and a giant sandbox. After a long (and warm) lunch in the Rainforest Café, we rode the train.


In the conservation area, our kids got their first close-up view of some of the Disney characters. Pocahontas, Jiminy Cricket, and Rafiki were all there. Charlotte and I nearly ran over Pocahontas in fact. But the kids were too scared to meet any of them in person. I'm not sure I blame them--Pocahontas is one of the few Disney movies we don't own, and man-sized crickets and monkeys are kind of freaky.

 Towards the end of the day, Charlotte and I rode Dinosaur the Ride. In retrospect, that was not a good idea. But, though I think I have ridden it before (on my one trip to Disney nearly 20 years ago), I didn't remember it at all until we were actually on the ride. The motion wasn't a problem so much as the emotion. There were too many scary dinosaurs and an asteroid and she may not forgive me for that for a few years. And it freaked her out for half the week--she kept her face hidden on a little mermaid ride in Epcot the next day, even though cartoon fish are very far from scary.

By the time we left, Trystan did not even make it out of the parking lot before falling sound asleep. I call that a successful day.

The white dress

Attempt number two of camera phone to blog.

In case you're curious, I'm trying to send photos directly from my phone to the blog. The first method I tried yesterday involved sending a text message. Apparently, blogger will take a text message and publish it immediately, but NOT if it includes a photo.

I was able to email my blog address from the phone, but that saves a draft so I had to go back and tell it to publish. Like a week later when I finally remembered to do it :)

Anywho, here is Charlotte in her white dress from last week.

Kiddie Candids

Until recently my kids had one of those "kid-proof" cameras. The kind whose commercials show kids dropping them down the stairs. Yep, I'm pretty sure this one went down the stairs once or five times. And that's not what killed the camera.

I was going through the memory card looking at what all we'd managed to salvaged. Judging by the kids faces, outfits, and haircuts, we had about a year's worth of pictures. In the first photo, Trystan looks to be about two and a half. And he's clearly upset. If I had to guess, I'd say that his sister had just taken the camera out of his hands.

There were tons of unrecognizable blobs among the shots. And some funny ones, like this series of Charlotte clearly attempting a self-portrait. 

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(Last One of the Charlotte Series)

For some reason, this scene was a popular one. This is the corner of our bed (yes, unmade). The same shot was included in several different groups clearly separated by time.

Feet are also a popular subject. These are Trystan's.

On the same day as he took pictures of his feet, he was photographing our deck. This shot is looking down on the patio and our massively overgrown garden. Its not a bad shot, actually.

You might be wondering just how a kid-proof camera does actually die.

There might be more than one effective method. Ours drowned in the bathtub. Overnight apparently.  Yes, a big person got scolded for leaving water in the bathtub overnight. And a couple of kids were scolded for putting the camera in it.

The camera was toast. The batteries leaked. But the memory card was salvageable (after Windows' checkdisk repaired a file).

This last photo is the last one for the old camera.  I have no idea what this last actually is. Could be an extreme close up of a nose. Could be the bottom of the tub. 

Furballs

I bought baby formula yesterday for the first time ever. We have visitors.

A few days ago, my husband spotted a couple of kittens peeking out from under our front porch. We knew there were stray cats in the neighborhood. My garden, for once, has flourished because of them. They've kept the rabbit population from turning our veggies into an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

There was a family of cats in our yard a few months ago. We had bought kitten food for them intending to rescue the family, but they moved on before we had a chance.

This mother cat also appears to be a stray. She's beautiful, all black with green eyes and no collar. And won't come near us. But one of her kittens was out in the yard on Friday, mewling and acting friendly and curious. 

We set out food for them for a day or two first. Then Friday morning, the curious cat not only let me pet her, but to pick her up briefly. I took advantage of the opportunity to bring her inside and put her in the powder room off our kitchen.  I gave her food and water, and begged some kitty litter from a friend in the neighborhood. Later in the afternoon I managed to snag the other kitten as she ventured out for a snack.

They are adorable, and took to the cat litter right away (thankfully). They were also both much happier once they were reunited. I still feel bad for momma cat. She's come poking back around the porch a couple of times, probably looking for her babies. As a mother, I feel terribly guilty about separating the family. But with cars and tomcats and dogs and potentially-non-cat-friendly neighbors about, there is no way I'm letting these two furballs fend for themselves outside.

We have a vet appointment set for tomorrow, and we stocked up on more kitten food and some powdered kitten formula. I don't have any idea how old they are. Possibly as young as 3 or 4 weeks, though they seem able and willing to eat both dry cat food and wet, and to drink from a bowl. And the milk won't hurt.  They are confined to our bathroom plus a few chaperoned jaunts around the kitchen for now. They have black spots inside their ears that might be mites, and are itchy enough to have fleas.

We don't know how long they will stay with us. Maybe not long. Maybe forever. Yet to be decided. I don't want to take them to the Humane Society, because they do euthanize animals that don't find homes. And I want these two little kittens to have a home, preferably together. My husband and I have still to weigh the pros and cons of allergies, small children, pet sitters, and scratching posts vs furniture before we will decide for sure.

They are beautiful, aren't they?

Picture Day

We took the kids for photos today. We typically do it around each kid's birthday, plus a whole family photo at Christmas.  And our kids like to ham it up for  the camera.


This morning was a little hectic. When I put together the original outfits that we were going to use, we realized that the hot pink in Charlotte's version clashed badly with the brick reds of Trystan's.

Plan B involved a quick hunt through the closet, which turned up some lovely but spring-y outfits for each, plus lots of summer shorts.  We took what we had, and grabbed some of our pool toys to go for a beach look, and were only a couple of minutes late.

Despite having two wiggly kids who tend to make goofy faces when they laugh, the results were cute. And the beach look worked.

Yes, these are professional photos, and no, I'm not violating any copyrights by posting them. I'd happily just buy the image CD, but these places are apparently subsidizing all of their fancy photo printing capabilities, because the CD alone costs twice as much as a CD plus more prints than will ever make it into an album.

The best way to recover from a trip

The best way to recover from a trip is by turning around and going on another one. Right? Uh, sure.

Two weeks ago I went to the RWA National Convention (Romance Writers of America) in Orlando. Yes, I'm a writer. No, I'm not published. I'm working on that :) That, in fact, was the purpose of the convention. Though at times it felt like a vacation (no kids, no cooking, no laundry), the point was to attend workshops to improve my writing and to network with other writers, editors, and literary agents. The first photo is from the last night when the Golden Heart and Rita awards are presented. Its kind of like the Oscars for romance novels, only 99% of all of the awards attendees are female :) The first photo is my weekly critique group (minus Dawn, who had already headed back to her room). From the left are Shawntelle Madison, Jeannie Lin, myself, and Amanda Berry.


After a week back at the day job, and not quite catching up on dirty laundry, we drove to Indiana for my husband's family reunion. The second photo shows my kids (facing the camera behind the table), their cousins (backs to the camera), my sister-in-law (right side of the table) and mother-in-law (left side) working on crafts during the heat of the afternoon. There were lots more cousins and second cousins there that I didn't get photos of. Most of them blondies like my kids :)

We left the reunion close to dinner time and drove up to Indianapolis to visit my mom and two of my sisters. On Sunday, we all went to the Indiana State Fair. We took the fair train, run by the Indiana Museum of Transportation, which also happens to leave from about 5 minutes away from Mom's house. Trystan is a train fanatic and loved every minute of the ride. I got pictures of Charlotte and my sister Katie because they were in the seat across from mine, but not Trystan (who was in my lap or running down the aisle most of the trip).

The kids rode a bunch of rides, and it was Charlotte's first time on a Ferris wheel. We walked through some of the livestock barns. The kids especially liked the chickens and bunnies. For lunch, we had rib-eye steak sandwiches that were delicious. Except that the tent was right next to one of the doors to the cow barn, where the cows were being primped for show. As my husband phrased it, "There is no second place." We drove home Monday afternoon, exhausted, and still haven't tackled the mountain of laundry.


I have an unexpected day off today. Unexpected because we have a deadline at work next week, and I was mentally prepared for stress and overtime. But (fingers crossed!) we are running ahead of schedule, so I'm home.

And I plan to spend the day lazing by the pool eating chocolate, since the kids are at daycare.

Or, I could do laundry, buy groceries, clean the house, pick up supplies for tomorrow's girl scout day camp, and finish polishing one of my manuscripts (fancy word for those unpublished books) to send off to a requesting agent.

Our Garden in June

Our garden is growing beautifully, so far, and I think it looks very pretty. So I took pictures and made a quick and amateurish video slideshow of them. And you're the lucky audience. (Well, you and my future self, since I write this stuff for my own amusement). BTW, this is my first attempt at throwing pictures into a movie for the web, so please forgive the rough edges.

So far, most things are growing great. One tomato plant and one cucumber are attempting to take over the rest, and the watermelon plant at the other end has crept into the rock bed. By count, we have more pepper plants than anything else (combination of jalapeno, banana, and bell peppers), but they're slow to take off. I wonder if its not quite sunny enough for them, or if they're just later growers.

The rain barrel is working pretty well so far, but it has really low water pressure (just gravity). I recently removed the fancy irrigation system made from a kit and replaced it with a really long soaker hose looped around all the plants. The word "fancy" was a bit sarcastic. The kit was a nice idea, but it had some issues (like leaky connections that may have been the fault of the, ahem, installer). The soaker hose seems to be working, even with the low flow from the barrel. Its on a timer set for an hour a day, which seems to be working for now.

And we've been enjoying mini-harvests of beans, green onions, and lettuce (in the flower pots) for about two weeks now. Charlotte eats the peas right off the stalk. And this is the first year we've had ripe tomatoes before the 4th of July. Only a couple so far, and Charlotte has claimed most of those also.

Trystan's Black Muffins

7:32AM Sunday morning

Trystan: "I want muffins."
Me: "Muffins? What kind of muffins?"
Trystan: "Black muffins. I want to stir."

Trystan's Black Muffins

Ingredients
Dry:

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hersheys Special Dark Cocoa)
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Wet:
3/4 cup rolled oats*
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
1 Tbsp dry instant coffee**
1 tsp vanilla extract

*No, this isn't a typo. Read on :)
** This much coffee won't make the muffins taste like mocha, but it will make the chocolate flavor stand out more. You could omit this if you prefer.



Directions

1. (Mommy's job) Preheat oven to 400.
   
2. (Trystan's job) Line muffin pan with muffin cups. We made 24 mini-muffins, but a 12-cup pan should also work (Same temperature, longer bake time). FYI, Trystan chose the pink-hearted muffin cup liners over the plain white that I was reaching for.
   
3. (Trystan's job) Combine all ingredients listed under "wet" above.
   
   • Small children love to stir. I keep small whisks on hand just for this purpose.
     
   • Yes, the wet ingredients list includes the oatmeal. We keep the old-fashioned oats on hand, and I've found that soaking them in wet ingredients before baking makes them less crunchy in the finished product.
     
   • And I add the instant coffee to the wet ingredients because my preferred brand is kind of clumpy and works better dissolved
     
   
   
4. (Mommy's job) Combine all ingredients listed under "dry" above. I do the dry ingredients to keep flour from flying all over my kitchen.
   
5. (Trystan's job) Add wet ingredients to dry, and stir "just until moistened". This batter mixed up almost as thick as cookie dough, and I had to take over the stirring to make sure it got combined without spilling. The thick batter was mostly due to the cocoa powder, but the resulting muffins were really moist because cocoa powder adds some fat along with the flavor.
   
6. (Mommy's job) Spoon batter/dough into muffin cups. I filled 24 mini-cups to the top and had a tiny amount of batter left over. I could probably have done 36 mini-muffins that were all a bit shorter instead.
   
7. (Trystan's job) Count muffins as batter is loaded into each one. If it had been Charlotte helping, she would have had to answer a variety of harder math problems at this stage ("If all 4 of us each eat the same number of muffins, how many would we each get?", etc)
   
8. (Mommy's job) Bake 12-15 minutes (15-20 or so for normal-sized muffins). When you can smell them really strongly, they're probably done. Stick a toothpick in one to check.
   
9. (Trystan's job) Press face to oven window to watch while they bake.
   
10. (Mommy's job) Remove muffins from pan to a cooling rack. Mini muffins are cool enough to eat in less than 5 minutes.
    
11. (Trystan's job) Eat!