I don't like peanut butter

Samuel with his spelling bee participation award

Malachi "helping" with the dishes

The peanut butter jar broke my spatula

yummy, monster cookies

So tonight after dinner, I asked Travis if he needed anything before he leaves for the field tomorrow (he'll be gone 10 days)  He told me he needed me to make monster cookies for him to take to the field.  So I started making the cookies, I realized that I needed to open a new jar of peanut butter.  I use the kind of peanut butter where you have to stir in the oil and then you can use it.  It is one of those things that I find really annoying and hate to do it, but I still keep buying that kind of peanut butter.  So anyway, I saw on facebook that a friend of mine, her son had the idea to use a hand mixer with one beater to mix up the peanut butter.  Well, I thought that was brilliant and got out my hand mixer to try it.  So I stuck the beater in and turned on the hand mixer.  Instead of it mixing up wonderfully, the peanut oil sprayed all over me, the counter, and everything within a 4 foot radius.  So not only did it not work, but the oil that I need to mix into the hard peanut butter was basically gone.  Travis told me just to throw it all in the kitchen aid and mix it up with the cookie dough.  So I was trying to use my spatula to scoop out the peanut butter, and it broke it.  Man that peanut butter was hard.  So I threw that away and got out a knife, and was able to get out the rest of the peanut butter.  Now Malachi was up on the counter with me, because that is where he insists upon being while I am baking.  He picked up my second jar of peanut butter and dropped it on the counter and it broke.  So I had to throw all that peanut butter away and clean up the mess.  By this point, I really don't like peanut butter.  But the cookies were made, and tasted good so it all worked out.  I'm just completely out of peanut butter, which doesn't bode well for making school lunches tomorrow.  Also while travis was putting some pans away, my glass 9x13 pan fell and shattered.  Let's just say the kitchen floor was swept many, many times tonight.  In other kitchen mess news, yesterday I was baking some cinnamon rolls for a friend in the ward who broke her ankle, and Caleb was helping me, and was adding a cup of flour into the mixer while it was mixing.  The mixer hit the measuring cup he was trying to dump in, and it sprayed flour all over me, from head to toe, I even had my mouth open (ewwww), I wasn't too happy about all the flour everywhere, but Caleb said he was sorry, and helped me clean it up, and we finished making the cinnamon rolls.
So Caleb and Malachi have been sick with bad colds all week long.  And now Travis, Betsy, and Joseph are also sick, so Austin, Samuel and I were the only ones who went to church today.  I took Caleb and Malachi to the dr. on Wednesday, because Caleb has been having high fevers, and complained of ear pain during the night.  The Dr. said that Caleb's ears are fine, and to just keep doing what I'm doing to take care of them.  I've had to cancel a lot of appointments and other things during the week, so I am looking forward to the time when they are feeling better, and we can go back to our normal things.
Samuel won his class spelling bee, and participated in the school wide spelling bee, and out of 12 people, made it to 5 people left, before he was eliminated.  He was pretty cute, spelling his words, and he did a good job.
The last couple of days, I have been thinking a lot about how blessed I am, and feel grateful for my family, church, and friends.