When a mom gets desperate, she heads to Walmart

When the girls came up with this yesterday (and yeah, Madlibs helped, but still), I knew summer was indeed here and it was time for some serious action:

Cake Recipe

For this recipe, you will need:
82 cups flour
6014 tablespoons butter
654987 cups sugar
25648 eggs
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons poop extract

In a thick bowl, beat butter and sugar until bouncy. Add eggs sickly, if you add them too stealthily, the batter won't mix well. Add milk.

When mixture is nice and pink, begin adding flour. Be sure your mixer isn't set too bumpy, or you may end up with flour all over your butt. Add the poop extract.

Pour batter into a pointy pan.

Bake for 45 minutes at 123,456,789 degrees.

Congratulations! You've just made a delicious poop-flavored cake!

So, last night, being the good mom I am, we headed off to get dinner and supplies at, oh, around 8 p.m. We trudged back in around 11 p.m. with our stomachs full of McDonald's hamburgers and fries (hey, we walked them off for hours at Walmart!). We also had three sacks full of fun and games from Ross and Walmart. Ross is a great place to find cheap, and sometimes even educational, entertainment items for bored children. The girls are now the proud owners of:

• Two beading kits (one's a little more advanced and growny-looking for Em ... Oh, 'scuse me, GROWNUP looking. I thought I was back in Alabama for a minute.)
• A Mexican Train domino game with 91!!! dominoes --when they're done playing the game, they can make those domino designs you knock down in 10 seconds after building them for HOURS. Woo hoo!)
• A story-book creating kit (which I'm sure their nephew Ian will appreciate)
• THREE dance/fitness videos (salsa, jazz, and hip-hop, and they actually use them as opposed to the adults I know who buy them **Julie looks around innocently**)
• Hmm ... a 500 piece puzzle of a cute little baby dressed in fairy wings
• An AMERICAN IDOL dvd game (Bama may get in on this one.) I heard peals of laughter coming from upstairs in the wee hours, and I have my suspicions that box got opened right away. It is unfortunate, however, that they know none of the songs. (Got ear plugs?)
• A tiny pottery wheel, complete with clay. We do have to go back for C batteries, we realized today. We forgot to check the box. I was hoping it was manual labor.
• A Mancala game, which has already gotten hours of use
• And for all I know, a partridge in a pear tree.

I did this same thing last summer and it worked pretty well ... for at least a few days it seems. This year, I told them not to open all the packages and do everything the first day. They only did half today. But, they ended up recycling those things over and over last summer, so I think it's money well spent. They also fought less for three days or so last year, which was worth the investment if nothing else. All in all, less than $75, and I bet that goes a lot further than a week of summer camp for one child for $200!

Highly recommended for parents of bored school children out for the summer everywhere.