The marshmellow pancake adventure

Meredith's school is closed today and tomorrow for Fall Break, so I have been racking my brain trying to think of something to do with her that will make the 4 day weekend go a little faster. We invited her friend Abbey to spend the night on Wednesday night and then stay and play in the morning for a few hours before her mom picks her up. The girls are so sweet together and really fun, but very high-energy. Abbey is a little firecracker, which Meredith finds delightful, and I am sure that there will be many stories in the years to come of scrapes our crazy girls will get themselves into! Oh well, birds of a feather...

Last night was the first night that Abbey has spent the night away from family, so we had a couple of rough patches. Finally at 11:00 the girls were settled into bed (we started bedtime at 8:30) and sleeping the with bedside lamp on and the portable dvd player playing Little Einsteins. They both looked like zombies and had dark circles under their eyes, but Abbey was fighting sleep with every fiber of her being! Matt finally went in and used his patented parenting skills to gently calm the girls down, but tell them in a serious tone of voice that it was bedtime and they HAD to sleep now. His technique is much more effective than mine is, I bribed them, bargained with them, pleaded with them, ordered them, scratched their backs, patted heads, prayed over them, read 2 stories etc. I should have had him handle it from the beginning, he is much better and not getting suckered in!

One of the bargaining chips I tried using was promising that we could make pancakes in the morning. Meredith asked if they could have chocolate chips, because Matt did that for her a few weeks ago for dinner. I said we were out of them, so she said "How about marshmellows?" and I said, okay, go to sleep now and when you wake up we can put marshmellows on our pancakes. We ended up mixing some in, and decorating the top with more marshmellows a little bit of chocolate syrup "hair" for the marshmellow faces.

It was not the healthiest breakfast my children have ever eaten, but I am sure they have had worse too! It never would have occured to me to put marshmellows on pancakes, but it was something different to do, and I am all about trying to keep things interesting around here!