She Made Blue Jello

So one of the problems with our original kitchen, that I'm attempting to remedy as I move the necessities back into our remodeled kitchen, was that I really didn't have a good place to put anything. All the cabinets were deep and dark and high overhead, so a shorty like me better have an excellent memory or the gumption to get up on a kitchen stool every blessed single time that I wanted to cook anything.

Want to guess if I have either of those things?

You know what happened next. As I'm clearing out the old cabinets, I am HORRIFIED to discover how much food I have. Five jars of peanut butter, because there were all those months when Sydney wanted a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch every single day, so I'd buy a new jar of peanut butter every time I shopped, and then one day she wanted oatmeal. Roughly three times as much rice as I really need, stored in three different locations. A box of bread machine mix--HOW long has it been since I've used the bread machine? In the past two years, I've attempted perhaps three times to cook some recipe or other that calls for cardamom. Want to guess how many jars of cardamom I found?

Three.

Anyway, I also have a side project of exposing Willow to logic, following directions, math skills, and, most importantly, common sense, by giving her food to cook completely by herself--refrigerator biscuits, slice and bake cookies, instant oatmeal kind of stuff to start--so when I pulled out that one last box of blue Jello left over from Willow's ocean party, I handed it straight over to the kiddo and asked her, "Do you want to make some Jello?"

Did she!

I always tell Will that it's best to read all the instructions through before she begins, and to gather everything that she'll need, but she never does, and I don't care, because much humor ensues from this. For instance, first Willow had Sydney fetch the cup of cold water, which took FOREVER, but then when Sydney had gotten it Will looked at the instructions again and said, "Wait, we have to have boiling water first," so Syd had to go pour the cold water down the sink.

Then Willow asked me to boil a cup of water, which I did, and when I arrived with boiling water in a measuring cup Willow looked at it, stymied, for several long, thoughtful seconds before saying, "Hmmm, we need a bowl."

A bowl was obtained and the boiling water was poured in, Sydney was dispatched for cold water, which was poured in, and then the girls stirred the boiling water and cold water together for a while until Willow finally asked, "Shouldn't this be blue?"

The directions were consulted, and blue was, indeed, added:

Will asked Sydney to stir, then tried to stop her after about two seconds, but (masterful quick thinker that I am) I insisted that since stirring was Sydney's job, she should be permitted to stir as long as she thought it necessary. Whew!

Finally, the blue jello was sent to the refrigerator, to be visited about two minutes later by Willow, who interrupted her clean-up to go check on it "and see if it's almost ready."

At this point, I'm curious to know exactly what one would have to do to have jello NOT turn out correctly, but I do have to say that oh, my goodness, those girls surely thought that their jello was just about the tastiest food in the whole world.

Sweets made by sweeties. They're not wrong.