Perspective...

Colin never gets sick so when he woke up Sunday morning holding his throat and crying I knew right away it was probably strep. I took his temp and it was a little high. I gave him Motrin and he became a new kid. Motrin..what did we do before it?? The rest of the day he was fine but when the night came his fever was up to 101 and he felt crummy. I held him but before he fell asleep he looked up at me and said, "Mommy, make it go away". Ouch. That's the worse kind-of pain as a mother is when you can't make it go away. All I knew is in the morning I could take him to the doctor and get him medicine and he would be alright. Sure enough that is what happened. I took him and he did have strep. We came home with the yucky pink medicine and he is going to be alright. I was stressed those two days because my "baby" was sick. Then today everything was put in perspective for me. What if you can't make your "baby" well? Emma has a friend, Alaina, that when she was six found out she had neuroblastoma. She went through all the chemo, radiation and hell it takes to rid your body of cancer and now she is in remission--she is nine now and is still cancer-free. Through her mom I found a couple blogs. They are under my blog list. I just checked the one "what's cook'n.." and they received bad news about their little girl Bree. It hit me that at the exact time I was stressing over Colin's strep they were receiving the news that their one year old still had cancer in her bone marrow. What absolute pain that mother must be going through that she can't "make it go away". I need to remember that even when my situation seems so bad there is always worse. But even if that worse comes to us God will never leave us...even in this mother's darkest hours she is still praising God. In the end that is all we have. That is what I always need to keep in perspective.

Take a Break and Bake

What is it with May? Every year it nearly kills me. I have a dry erase calender hanging in our kitchen to keep track of our family activities and May's is overflowing. Every single day has something written on it. It seems as if everyone panics and has to schedule every school event, meeting, birthday party, field trip, picnic etc in May. It is not the only month in the year people!!! Ok, I feel better now :) Anyway the other day I thought I needed to take a moment for myself and slow down. So I baked these delicious banana crumb muffins. The whole family loved them and that is really saying something. The kids even had them for dessert with a glass of milk. If you too are feeling the craziness of May take a moment and bake something yummy. Your kids will thank you. :)

Banana Crumb Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 ripe bananas, mashed

3/4 cup white sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup butter, melted

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease 10 muffin cups or line with muffin papers.

2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon the batter into prepared muffin cups.

3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon of butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted into center of muffin comes out clean.