This guy lost his legs in a bet over a heated game of Blokus.

First off, it was WAY hard to find a gingerbread man cookie cutter. I thought that grocery stores would have them as part of their Christmas display, but no luck. The nearby cooking-utensil-selling store didn’t have them either, and neither did Target or Bed, Bath, and Beyond. We finally found one at Michael’s that is actually made of silicone and supposed to be for making small, gingerbread man shaped pancakes, but it worked just as well.

I decided to use this recipe from Baking Bites, my favorite baking website, but, as always, my approach was more haphazard so my results are not quite as intended.

First I attempted to assemble the ingredients:

Ingredients team: ASSEMBLE!!

That was when I realized that I’d forgotten to buy cloves, one of the key spice ingredients along with ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. BUT I discovered that we did have pumpkin pie spice, which is just a mixture of ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and all spice, so I recklessly decided to substitute it for all four spices. BAKING WITHOUT BORDERS!

In other news, molasses…

... kind of looks like tar

Seriously, I don’t know what else I am going to use this bottle of it for. I may have to make like fifty batches of pirate gingerbread men just to use it up. Or pour it on Steven when he sleeps in till 3pm…

So whether it was a Too Much Molasses (I am also haphazard about measuring) dilemma or a You Can’t Really Substitute Spices Like That problem, the dough ended up being darker than advertised:

I know, it totally looks like I was making chocolate cookies. Sadly, I was not

Steven was actually convinced it was chocolate even after licking the beater. He was a little disappointed.

Luckily, the lemon frosting turned out amazing, just as promised! I mean, maybe because it only had two ingredients, but still. Frosting magic time!

Food Lion brand ziplock bags: for the discerning baker who has no money

And once you draw clothes on ONE gingerbread man, the rest look naked

The one in the upper left corner is my favorite. He means serious business

The no head one is also a class act.

Overall, my kids came up with some pretty creative pirate characters. Including the usual “cannon accident” or “shark attack” or “fighting with other pirates”. My personal favorite was from one girl who named hers “Peggy the Pirate. He says he lost his leg in a fight, but I think he’s just clumsy. He’s always falling down and stuff. Don’t tell him I said that.” Happy times!

My planet is called ChocolateLand because it is entirely made of chocolate. If you go there, you’ll have to meet everybody, but watch out! They will probably try to lick you because this is how they greet each other. Their food is sugar.

The kids on my planet get taught by wizards. They learn magic, fighting, growing plants, and hypnotism.

If you do something bad, you get sent back to Earth. Or you go to the mines, where they mine for water, which is very rare.

On my planet it rains dolphins.

And then today:

Me: Yeah, you will have to shuffle these flashcards yourself, I cut my thumb this weekend and now I can’t do a surprising amount of things. Like texting. It’s mad annoying.
Girl: You TEXT?!?!
Me: OF COURSE! Why is that so surprising?
Girl: It’s just… my parents don’t know how to text.
Me: I’m not the same age as your parents. I’m closer to YOU than to your parents.
Girl: Um, whatever, you can DRIVE.
Me: OMG.

And, to twist the knife:

Boy: Why is there a drawing of a birthday cake on that whiteboard?
Me: I don’t know, it was just there.
Boy: Is today your birthday?!? Are you thirty?!?
Me: WHAT? No! I’m only twenty-two!
Boy: Oh. Well, that’s only eight away from thirty.
Me: (sigh) Good mental subtraction.

If you’re interested, I’m up to about 26,000 words on my novel, about half of which is from the perspective of Middle School Patricia. Mr. Snape Darcy, her dream man, makes regular appearances. It’s pretty epic.

Tuesday, tutoring group
Girl: Where do you live?
Me: You’re just trying to distract me so I won’t make you do more decimal division.
Girl: No, I really want to know! I love decimal division! Decimal division is for rockers! (does rockers sign)
Me: ….. Awesome.
Girl: You’re kind of helping so you can be like my backup singer. Or second guitar.
Me: That’s like… my dream.

Wednesday, tutoring group
Girl: Do I really have to keep multiplying fractions? I know it already!
Me: Okay, do the Challenge page. That will prove to me that you’re a MASTER!
Girl: Whatever.
Me: (to the tune of the Pokemon theme song) I WANNA BE THE BEST AT MATH, like no one ever was. TO MULTIPLY FRACTIONS IS MY REAL TEST, TO REDUCE THEM IS MY CAUSE…
Girl: You are the most annoying tutor ever.
Me: You mean you’re not so inspired right now?
Girl: Can I be with Mr. Cameron next time?

Then I realized that my tutoring kids are probably too young to even know what Pokemon is, let alone know the theme song. To be fair, the only reason I do is because Thomas had the CD and made us listen to it in the car for a period of two months. Rob also told me that the kids he works with had no idea what a velociraptor was because they were too young to have ever seen Jurassic Park. And if they did see it, they would probably be all “This movie sucks. That dinosaur doesn’t even look real!” IN MY DAY we made do with moderately realistic computer animated dinosaurs and puppets! Kids today. Ridiculous.