31 Ways You Can Get Healthier Today: Eat More Zucchini (or Cucumbers)

Our garden has been going crazy.  I mean, flat insane.  This must be the weather it likes because all we've done is plant seeds and water and the thing has taken care of itself.

And our zucchini just takes the cake.  I have been doing nothing but picking these huge zucchini's and trying to figure out things to do with them.  

So I thought a great nap time project for Elizabeth and me would be to bake some zucchini muffins and then take everyone on a walk around the neighborhood to deliver goodies.  Now, I already know what you're thinking and no, I didn't try to healthify these up.  We used sugar and oil and all the "good" stuff, baked them up and bagged them for our neighbors.  

My happy helpers were thrilled with the idea of a walk and we took off down the road with our bounty and Caleb in his stroller, content for the first time ever.

Seriously, just look at my little man.  Not a cry the whole time!

 
I had bagged the amounts of muffins based on the size of families and stacked them in a box in the order I planned to travel.  I thought it would be nice if we stopped first at the girls' little friends house.  So stop we did and I gave Elizabeth the bag with muffins and Rachel a random zucchini (because we had PLENTY to spare) and told them to go ring the doorbell and tell their mommy that we had baked them some muffins.

I neglected to tell them to only ring it once.

I finally made it to the door by the 20th time Elizabeth had rung the doorbell and pried her finger off the button.  I tried to explain to her that they weren't home and we would just leave it in a bag with a note. 

That didn't fly with my oldest.  

She cried.  She screamed.  She did not want to leave it on the door.  She wanted to see her friends. 

It was really the exact impression I wanted to make on the front porch of one of my neighbor's house, let me tell you.

So dragging her along, we stopped at the next stop, which belonged to another set of little friends.  

They weren't home either.

More hysterics.  

At this point, I was totally rethinking my neighborly good-will, but we had three more stops to go and still a million muffins left that were full-fat and had no business in my house, so I thought we'd take a chance that the next stop was home since their cars were in the driveway.

That was a success.  We didn't know this family well, but they always stopped to talk to us when we were out and about so they made the muffin list.

Next up was the little girl and her family who watched the girls during my lessons and then we had one more stop to make.  I had planned to give it to our neighbor across the street, but she wasn't home and some other neighbors were out who we hadn't met before.

Now they lived on top of a hill and it was a straight 45 degree angle up their driveway.  I knew better than to try it with the stroller, so I loaded the girls up and told them to hike up and give the nice people some muffins.  They got halfway up and then came back down.

Good girls, trained on strangers and all.

So I pulled Caleb out of the stroller and proceeded to walk up Mt Everest to introduce myself to our neighbors.  (I know, we've lived here a year...don't judge...)

The girls handed over their treats and while I told the couple about our family, the girls proceeded to bend down and grab giant handfuls of nice white pebbles out of the woman's flower garden and dump them all over her clean sidewalk.  Horrified, I bent down and attempted to make them pick them up, but the pebbles were so little that there was no way they could get that many back in there. The sweet woman (obviously just wanting to get rid of her mini yard crashers) convinced me she'd just sweep it up, no problem.

Saying goodbye, I turned, carrying Caleb and planning on how to get down the driveway when my two daredevils decided to take off running...

down the 45 degree mountain...

in flip flops...

Oh yes.

And then a truck began coming down the road.  

I swear, the whole scene went in slow motion as I was screaming at the girls to stop running and the plumber's truck was slamming on it's breaks and my obviously deaf children were laughing and squealing at the delight of the momentum pulling them down the hill.  And just when all hope was lost...

Rachel bit it.

Sobs of hysteria and a scraped knee followed suit and I just wanted to crawl in a hole underneath my mounds of zucchini.  Carrying my baby, I scooped up my squalling toddler and, unlike Lot's wife, had no issues not turning around to see what I'm sure were horrified looks behind me.  

To wrap up the evening for you, it was a wash.  Scott was home late and the girls were wired and I had to play the evening fight of getting Rachel to stay in bed solo.  (This has been in progress ever since she figured out how to open her door AND take off her diaper, which is as fun a combination as it sounds.)

So at 9:00 p.m., I decided to delay fixing myself dinner and sat down to write this blog post.  And I was going to comment on not planting so many zucchini plants next year, when I looked at the fun little diagram I made of the garden so we would know what everything is...

AND I REALIZE THAT MOST OF THEM WERE CUCUMBERS!!!  

I have TWO zucchini plants.  I have FOUR cucumber plants.  

I totally forgot.  I didn't label the plants because I had my handy-dandy diagram and looking at them on the counter, I totally couldn't tell them apart.  And now I just gave my neighbors cucumber-zucchini muffins.  

If you need me, I'll be under my bed.