The SAHM's Wonderful Day

I was really sick last week. I couldn't do anything, and my one year old daughter was also very sick I spent all my time on the couch nursing and feebly watching my other children, allowing TV to do most of the work. Today was the first day I actually felt normal. And though I have been trying to catch up on laundry and dishes and cleaning the house, I decided to make a trip to TJ's with all my children.

Crazy, you say? Oh yes it was crazy, but for one of the first times, it was wonderful. We went to Trader Joe's to exchanged the mistakenly bought club soda for tonic water. We got some other items for dinner and such. Then we went across the street to the new Aldi, which is awesome.

The new Aldi is clean and big and has brand new carts with a new way of buckling the kids in, which is sooooo much better. It is the greatest thing ever!

Anyway I got some great stuff at Aldi including desert, and then we went home. It was the least stressful day. And someone actually asked me if my kids were all mine. This the first time it has happened. I know it annoys many of you, but I feel like I never experienced this rite of passage into the bigger families club.

The cashier looked at my four kids and said with surprise, "Are these all yours?"
"Yes, " I replied with a smile.
"Any twins?"
"Nope, they are all two years apart,"
"Wow,"
It's not really a stretch. I am 28, and I have four kids. I think next time a cashier asks me I'll say,
"Nope, I'm just borrowing these two so I don't get carded."

A tale of 2 Babkas

These are my babkas, or paskas, is what my grandmother would call them. 

My grandma grew up in communist Russia, where it was illegal to celebrate Easter. My grandma, Wiktoria Lujakyczykow, told me that only old ladies went to church. At her house they never celebrated anything, for fear they would be found out. As a result traditions were lost. My Grandma's faith was never cultivated. 

When the Germans invaded Russia they took my Grandma from her home and sent her to a work camp. I'm a little fuzzy on the details but there she met my Grandpa, a Pole,  and soon they were married and had my dad. They then went to a refugee camp in Italy, then they moved to England, and finally they came to America to join my Grandpa's cousins. 

My Grandma has a recipe for babka, that she got from a friend. I don't know where she got it from. And that recipe calls for egg yolks. I was feeling cheap and didn't want to commit that many egg yolks to a recipe. 

I was also very tired. I knew we had to have babka, so I threw the ingredients into a bread maker, and hoped for the best. Resolving, if I had time, to make it the long way also. So I made two babkas. The one on the right was made in the bread maker, the one on the left made per my grandma's instructions, but with whole eggs. 

The results, they taste the same and to me are indistinguishable from my grandmas so I call that a win.