Tyler's Wonderful *Wheat* Bread and a Motley Crew

The response to Tyler's Wonderful White Bread was overwhelming at my house! My daughter loved it the most and even wanted to learn how to bake it. I decided to try and make the same recipe and sub out 1/3 cup of the regular a/p flour with 1/3 cup whole wheat flour. The results were great, if not better!! The dough with the whole wheat was a much softer dough and was much easier to work with. The color of the dough was beautiful and I loved seeing the little flecks of wheat throughout the dough. The normal white bread recipe bakes for only 30 minutes. My loaf with the whole wheat took much longer to bake. I want to say it actually took about 45 minutes to cook. The result was fabulous!! My husband and daughter loved it and I think it really made them feel like they had a special lunch. I will continue to make this bread once a week or more as a special treat. I big thank you to Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies for answering some of my bread baking questions. She is a bread baking goddess!!

On another note, my daughter's field day at school was this past Friday. She's in the second grade and has just turned 8 years old in May. The school went all out for field day and I was really impressed. They had fields and fields of games. They even rented 4 huge inflatables inside in the gym. Outside there was a popcorn stand and a snowcone stand.

I got to work at the snowcone stand. I quickly learned that there are members of the PTA/PTO who take their duties very seriously. Very seriously, please read on! I was in charge of putting check marks on the children's hands once they had received a snowcone. All children were allowed only one snowcone and no one was suppose to have a second. They even went so far as to give me a sharpie permenant marker to mark the children's hands with!!

Well, anyone with kids knows that those children would find a way to get that marker off their hand. While I enjoyed all their ploys for a second snowcone, it was all lost on some of the other mothers. They considered this a serious offense and reprimanded some of the children. I found it sweet and endearing. Some of them, especially the boys, were just downright charming about it. Nonetheless, even without their permenant mark, the snowcone was written all over their face, or their shirt, or on the tongue. There was nothing I could do to help them out!! That's when I laughed to myself about my silly job of marking those poor kids with permenant marker. What need is there to mark them when they are literally wearing snowcone all over their face and clothes?

Later on, I found my daughter inside the gym with her friends. They were standing in line for the inflatables with their shirts all askew, covered with snowcone, barefoot, and practically toothless!! Check out the faces on that motley crew : )

It is obviously not cool when you are eight years old and your mom wants to take your picture!!
This picture reminds me of that line you hear all the time as a young parent......."you better watch out, they grow up overnight."

My daughter, Olivia, is pictured on the far right.