It was a pretty typical day in most ways, actually. Worked around the house, edited a bit, untangled Christmas lights. (I seem to remember doing that often on my birthday. Such is the life of a December baby!)
Josh had been "sick" the day before (yes, I used italics for a reason) and was home again because the school has this 24 hour symptom-free rule. So the lucky duck got to join Lance, Tess, and I for lunch at McCallister's. (Next year? All kids in school!) We even got him to take a picture of us. Notice Tess lurking in the bottom left.
Lance and I had planned on going out to eat and to see the new Hunger Games movie, but the youth in our ward had an activity and our neighborhood babysitter was busy, so we decided to make it a family night. (We also seem to do this quite a bit on my birthday...)
I had been looking for some sort of activity for our family to do after we went out to dinner that night. (The birthday girl doesn't cook on her birthday.) I was having a hard time finding something I thought we would all enjoy when I drove by a billboard for McCord's Candies and making your own candy canes. Perfect.
McCord's has been in Lafayette for 130+ years. The bottom floor is part malt shop, part candy store, and is always run by inexperienced teens. Seriously, I've never been there when they haven't been training some new girl on the cash register. That night was no exception. So we bought our tickets and were given some sketchy instructions on how to get upstairs to where they make the candy canes. McCord's is in this old, old building and we had to go up two flights of steep stairs like this. (Bad shot, but you get the idea.)
Upstairs was pretty crowded and hot - lots of people and lots of boiling sugar!
We stood next to trays and trays of candy canes. They said they make over 35,000 by hand each holiday, which is pretty impressive.
Josh was impressed.
Tess, not so much. She's not a fan of crowds and new experiences. Plus, she was tired and grouchy.
You can see one of the guys stirring the candy cane batch in a huge copper pot in the back there, and the big marble table where you can make candy canes. Oh, and Josh again.
They gave us each a strip of candy cane and told us we had about 20 seconds before it hardened.
The boys all got to work - fortunately, we had discussed ahead of time what shapes they wanted to make. Josh made... something abstract. He's an artist!
Cole made a C. (And then held it backwards for the photo.)
Spencer made an S.
And Tess made a scene because she waited too long and whined and then broke her candy. It was THE END OF THE WORLD. But apparently they've had little drama queens there before because they gave her a new piece and all was right with the world.
My candy cane. I don't think I ever got a shot of Lance's. I think it looked pretty similar.
That's a lot of HOT sugar. I kept thinking of Kanien and Deidra because they taught us how to make candy canes at Mom's group last year.
They wore leather work gloves slathered in crisco. (You should look into that, Kanien!)
In the back the guy is pulling the slightly cooled candy on a hook to get air into it and help it turn white. The girl is working food coloring into the red section of the candy.
More hook action.
Then they showed how they layered the candy and made the stripes. They had this special heater on the counter to make the candy stay warm enough to handle. They worked pretty fast; it was pretty impressive!
We finally finished and headed back down the stairs. Tess took quite a while (they were steep) going down and kind of caused a traffic jam. I'd like to say that's a first for one of our kids, but no.
We went home and I got to blow out the candles on my Monster Cookie Brownies. (Peanut butter and chocolate cookie bar. Delish.)
I didn't get a picture of all my gifts - like the gorgeous bowl Dad and Susie gave me, or the Bingo set - and I'm too lazy to take a picture now. Hah! But I did get quick shots of these garden knee pads that the kids decorate for me. (Can you tell who did which one?)
Lance also made me this book.(For the record, I was NEVER tricked. I knew exactly what was going on.) It's full of emails I wrote to him when we were first dating and engaged. I'm pretty sure I have his emails somewhere around here... a complementary volume might arrive for his birthday.)
At the end of the evening all I wanted was one good picture of me with the kids since they refused to do so on Mother's Day. This was the best shot we got. Shocker.
Nothing grand and glorious, but it was still a great birthday. I feel really blessed to have such a great family and friends!
1 comment:
Happy belated birthday! I used to walk down that street on purpose hoping I'd have time to sneak intoMcCords to buy a vanilla coke (soooooo good) before the trolley to campus came. Such great memories!
Post a Comment