Sunday Funday (the pumpkin version)

My most favorite thing in life?  Sunday breakfast.  It is not hurried.  It can be complicated (or not).  Everyone is generally in a good mood.  It is just the five of us.  It usually involves a dance party of some sort.  It is heaven.  

Today's heaven was pumpkin pancakes with bacon.  So if you have never had a pumpkin pancake with a piece of bacon rolled in like a taco filling with maple syrup - you have never lived.  Try it.  No need to thank me.  

Then, because I had an open can of pumpkin - pumpkin pie dip it was awesome and will be great to use up some of the ten million apples we have from the orchard last weekend.  

Now for those of you who have little people and are football fans, you must know what a travesty the NFL's 3:15 pm game can be.  The Packers played at 3:15 and it is miserable with kids - they want to run around and be crazy because they have recently napped.  You want to sit and watch the game and not run around.  So today, I had the brilliant plan to make pumpkin granola during the game so the kids were occupied and hopefully I could steal a few glances at the tv.  

I started with my basic granola ingredients and swapped out pumpkin in place of the olive oil.  I put the kids to work. After about 15 seconds of that, I think Luke sneezed all over the place.  We had to have a friendly chat about cooking cleanliness.  I like my granola like my life - very nutty.  Dottie was having a blast scooping and dumping ingredients.  Especially the peanuts.  

Luke was totally vigilant to ensure that Dottie wasn't getting to add or do something cooler than him.  He added about seven million tablespoons of cinnamon sugar.  He also kept sneaking tastes of the honey.  He wasn't even sneaky about it.  He left a huge sticky trail that gave him away.  They were excellent helpers.  

Of course, even the best 4 and 2 year old helpers get antsy.  And lets be serious, making granola is super tedious after the mixing part is done.  I was abandoned with the granola.  Which I guess is fine because it would have been pretty suspect parenting to let them do the roasting in the oven. 

Finally, several hours later, all the granola was finished.  The game was on but chaos reigned supreme here.  I would like to think of myself as some hippy, granola, calm momma, but to be candid - this is what it is really like:

In fact, shortly after the last roasted pan came out of the oven, Dottie informed me, "this nola is gross".

Great.  

Well, at least they are cute non hippies.