The other 'C' of the month

CHAOS!!!!  It seems that our blissful Christmas has passed and chaos has ensued.  I am not talking of the children although I do think the greed of Christmas time has hit them hard and sharing is not something they are willing to do, that my friends though I luckily have under control.  What I don't have under control is my washer breaking.  I was pretty excited to be catching up on laundry and housework and had a load of blankets and some rugs in my washer when I heard it off balance.  As I was walking to the laundry room to fix it, the noise got disturbingly worse.  My pace quickened but as soon as I got to the washer, I knew ti was too late.  The lid was half off and the inside was a good three inches lower that it normally is.  I blissfully thought it was not a big deal, I fixed the lid and tried to rearrange the clothes inside to be balanced, that would definitely work.  Or not because as I started it back up, within seconds the noise was back.  The good news on that one, I have amazing friends and one sent her husband over and he was able to temporarily fix the problem so I don't have to get a new washer today, so far so good because I have done at least 4 loads without a problem today.
Speaking of today, my children ask em if I have seen the huge spider in the garage.  I tend to take their "huge" as not a huge deal because a microscopic sized spider is huge in their book (mine too, I must not lie, spiders are not my thing).  However, last summer we did have a black widow hanging out and when I called someone to take care of it and spray, they asked to take it to school because they are studying spiders and they don't have one that big yet (yes please, eeekkk).  So, I thought I should check it out just in case.  That's when I saw this.....

The quality is not great because I had a flashlight in one hand and my phone in the other to take the picture, not to mention I didn't want to get close and was completely freaked out.  But seriously, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!!!!  I feel like I need to apologize to my kids because that sucker is huge!!!!  Cue the chaos of mommy freaking out and even now getting a mad case of the chills, I feel like I have things crawling on me and I may or may not have checked every dark place in my house to make sure he didn't have any friends he brought along.  Please, lets bring some bliss back into my chaotic household!!

I Should Go To Culinary School

If for no other reason than tonight's dinner.  How does pea soup turn brown?  I have never seen little maggot shaped things pop out of peas.  I made sure they were indeed not maggots or living and I think it was a part of the inside of the pea, I found a raw one I had only soaked but not cooked and split it open and say the thing in there, maybe more like a stem and not a maggot but if I say maggot, you will get the throw up in your mouth feeling I have.  I could not bring myself to eat it, my family did though and they loved it.  Will called me a hypochondriac however when asked if he knew I didn't make it and saw it in a restaurant if he would order it....when that came with a no and he wanted to spit out his food when I pretended to make puke noises, I knew it wasn't as great as they all swore it was.  Cass did have 2 bowls though.......should I worry, ha.  I made everyone smoothies after to make up for it but even that failed.  We had one popsicle left so I decided smoothies for the big kids, popsicle for the baby.  She loved it, until she took a bite out of it, chewed for a good 5 seconds and started screaming in pain from the cold.  I wonder what else I can turn my kids off of?  Maybe I can make dessert super nasty and they will crave nothing but broccoli and brussel sprouts from now on :)