The Sandwich Thief Strikes Again

I think I made a mistake. A while back in an effort to try and get the kids to finish eating lunch a bit faster I invented a new 'game'. And I use the quotes around game because there's no real winning or losing. Here's how it works. I check the kids plates and then I don't watch as they take a bite, then try and figure out where the food has gone. Sounds stupid right? It's simplistic, but the kids think this is great fun and send me all over the place looking for the sandwich or chicken or whatever it is that has 'disappeared'. Their favorite thing at one point was to make me look for it in the oven, which I then pretend is on and hot. And overall the game worked great. The kids actually ate their food and the lunch was probably an hour shorter than it would have been. The problem is it seems like this was such fun that during every meal now the kids will want to me search for the "thief" taking the food. We have grape thieves, muffin thieves and every other variety (no food is apparently safe from these varmints). Meals are now filled with Quinn distracting me saying something like "Daddy, look over there" as he chomps down some food. And then there's Catherine, who doesn't do subtle, just saying "Daddy, don't look" or "Don't look Daddy" and then taking a bite as I turn away for a second. From there it's all a big game as I search their hands, behind their ears and what not looking for the missing food. And it was amusing the first couple of times, and maybe even for the first week or so, but as we head into week three, it's less and less entertaining (for me anyway, I think the kids still enjoy it). But even though it's becoming a bit tedious, as long as it makes the dinners go faster, I'm all for it. The problem now is the kids have started trying to rat each other out whispering to me that they saw the other one each the food. Guess I should have seen that coming. For now though, the thieves are still around and continue to elude me, but one day I will nab the ever elusive sandwich thief and chicken thief.


The heat we've been having the for past couple of days has been absolutely brutal on the hydrangeas out front. I've tried giving them some water at night and it seems to help a bit, but by the end of the day you can see how the entire plant is dropping from the heat. The one bloom up above I thought was neat because it can't seem to decide which color it's going to end up. This particular bush usually starts out with yellow blooms initially then settles into blue or a light purple color, this one seems to have traces of yellow, blue and purple.