Larry would leave the house, with our eldest in tow, a little after 8:00am and would drop Jake off on his way to work. I would leave the house at 8:30am with the rest of the crew and take Nate to his camp. I would stay for a bit and then go do a few errands before driving down to Jake and picking him up. Once everyone was loaded in the car I would drive back to Nate’s camp (about a 20 minute drive) and herd everyone down onto field to wait for Nate’s camp to finish up.
This had worked out nicely until today. The day dawned gray and misty. As the morning progressed it started to rain; fitfully at first, then progressing to a downpour. Larry expressed some doubts of whether or not there would be camp. I cheerily asserted that it was rain or shine and handed Jake his jacket. Just before I was about to leave Larry called and to tell me that the organizers were holding off on making a decision about having the camp. Since I was about to leave, we decided that if camp was canceled Larry would drive Jake over to Nate’s camp and drop him off with me. He would be late for work, but it was the best we could do.
As I drove the rain started to come down in buckets. It did not look promising. About halfway there Larry called and said that Jake’s camp was on. Our local soccer club is staffed by a fair number of Brits and the head is Scottish. A little rain doesn’t scare them.
When I arrived at Nate’s camp I could see Sean (his coach) leaning into one of two cars in the lot and talking with the driver. I pulled up behind and stepped out in to the light rain. Sean apologized and said he was calling it off. Most of the other campers had not even shown up and he wasn’t going to hold it for two kids. If enough campers were available he would reschedule for Saturday at the same time. As the diver drove off another van pulled up. We all chatted for a bit while Nate ran around in the rain with his squirt gun. It was supposed to be “water day” at camp and he was ready for action. In the end we left it at camp being rescheduled for tomorrow, Sean would call us back with the details later in the day. I announced to the kids that we would go home and bake cookies. But first we had to go get Jake.
Because of the intermittent rain squalls we were experiencing, I thought it would be prudent for me to just wait at the park and not drive home. I parked the van with the rear facing toward the field. I raised the rear hatch and put on a movie for the crew. Today the campers were just doing scrimmages. When Jake was taking a break from the action I slogged out to tell him I was there, pointed out where I was parked and took the now sodden jacket back with me to the car. It was about 9:40am. Ten minutes later the heavens opened with a drenching rain. The coaches stopped play and moved the campers to the bathrooms for shelter. A few minutes later I saw a very soggy Jake dribbling his ball towards me. Camp was over. A coach stopped by and said that it was too wet to continue any longer. It was just a little after 10:00am when we left the park.
So today we baked cookies, a nice thing to do on a cool wet day.
cookiekids
Originally uploaded by Teckelcar.
(Rebecca looked better in another picture, so I did a little creative editing to get a better shot of all four kids)
I use the Nestle Toll House recipe with two important variations:
I only use 2 cups of flour, I first did this out of laziness and discovered I liked the result. I get a softer, chewier cookie.
I use three cups of chocolate chips (instead of two) and NO NUTS. I don’t like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies, with me it is all about the chocolate. Today I used 1 cup of semi-sweet chips and two cups of semi-sweet and white chocolate swirled morsels.
Oh and I strongly recommend that you use butter and a good all purpose unbleached flour. My favorite brand of flour is King Arthur.
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