Foolishness

For some reason it is ingrained in my being to celebrate crazy holidays with food. Themed cupcakes, cookies, or whatnot I find it lots of fun to make out-of-the-ordinary meals. Maybe it's my way of avoiding the dull routine job of continual meal planning and preparation.

Last year I made a silly dinner of fake fish sticks, candy lima beans, meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting and jello in the juice glasses.  Chloe thought it all hilarious!  Clive, on the other hand, was confused and ended up not eating much.  So, I ended up fixing him an alternate plate of food to fill up his little tummy.

This year, I vowed to make a more health-ful April Fool's meal.  I love all the ideas on the Family Fun website but almost ALL of them are comprised completely of candy.  I settled on a menu of fauxberry pie (shepherd's pie with pink mashed potato topping), breadsticks disguised as french fries, and no-bake chocolate cookies shaped as meatloaf slices.

Unfortunately, I used leftover ground beef and potatoes for the fauxberry pie so it turned out looking NOTHING like it should have.  Still yummy though!

For lunch, we hosted some friends and I did the jello-in-the-juice-glass trick again.  The kids ALL fell for it!  I also served apples with gummy worms crawling out of them (which the kids wouldn't eat because of the hole -- the gummy worms they ate without complaint) and silly face cupcakes.

As for other pranks, we didn't do much.  I let Chloe sit on the kitchen counter to do some of her schoolwork and she got a kick out of that.  I tried another prank but Chloe didn't get it at all.  I took all the clothes out of her closet and hid them in another closet.  She came downstairs looking all distraught that her closet was a "mess" (I tend to pile up gifts, outgrown clothes, and other miscellany in the back of her closet that was then exposed when I removed her clothes).  When I told her that it was an April Fool's joke she responded with forlorn, "Mommy, I don't like that joke."  Guess we have to wait on the pranks until they get a bit older!

I fell prey to a few April Fool's Day jokes too.  My dear sister and I were skyping Thursday night and she slyly and convincingly told me of her *fake* plans to move stateside.  She made up a whole story on the spot and it seemed too good to be true.  Alas, it was too good to be true.  :(  She really got me good!

How'd you celebrate April 1st?

Chloe stuffing the french fry envelopes with breadsticks.

Clive said his April Fool's joke was to dress up like a construction worker.  :)