I Love Riddles! How About You?

Riddles!

I was going through some things I had and ran across two riddles that I heard as child growing up. I thought I'd like to share them with you. Now for those of you who run to 'Google' for searches, etc. Please do not go there to find the solution. This is will be a 'brain exercise' and will be fun to 'figure out' the solutions! Right??? Right!!!

I actually remember being about 12 years old when my dad told these two riddles to me and it took me a little while to figure them out but I got the right answers! You can do it too and probably quicker than I did!

Here goes:

Riddle #1 - $100 and 100 Animals
Chickens are 50 cents each
Cows are $3.00 each
Horses are $10.00 each

You have $100 to spend and you must have a total of 100 animals.


Riddle #2 - A farmer, a boat, a fox, a chicken and a sack of grain.
You are the farmer and you have a boat on one side of the river. With you is your fox, chicken, and a sack of grain. You have to get all three to the other side of the river. You cannot take all three with you at the same time. If you leave the chicken with the grain, it will eat the grain. If the chicken is left with the fox, the fox will eat the chicken. How do you get all three across the river to the other side?

I have the solutions to both riddles. If you want the answers, e-mail me and I will let you know if your answers are correct! Have fun! :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #24

Story #24-You have to eat it – a finatisimal small bite!
Have you ever had to eat something your mom or dad made you eat and you didn’t want to eat it or you thought it would taste yuck?

My mom had a rule in our house when I was growing up. You ate ‘everything’ on the table and on your plate. If you took it, you had to eat it, all of it! Even if we didn’t like something that was for dinner, you had to take at least ‘two bites!’ She would say, “Try it, you may find out you like it. You have to take two bites and they can be infinitesimally small bites, but you have to eat it!” Infinitesimally means that it is a very, very small amount.

My mom and dad, your great grandparents, were born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They loved to eat seafood. My oldest bother Geoff also loved seafood. I did not like it so much. She loved to fix and eat oyster stew. She also loved to fix and eat split pea soup. Those two were my most hated foods! I didn’t mind the soup broth from the oyster stew. It’s just those oysters tasted slimy and awful to me. To this day I can vividly remember how they taste and how they went down my throat. I begged not to eat it. I ate the broth and asked, “Do I have to take a finatisimal bite?” I couldn’t pronounce that word correctly. And she would say, “Yes you do!” I gagged and threw up at the table one night and boy was my mother mad! She said, “How could I do such a thing?! They were perfectly good oysters and what a waste!” I had very large tonsils and I didn’t take much to make me choke or gag. I eventually had to have my tonsils removed and so did my brother Douglas. Anyway, every time that an oyster got near the back of my throat my gag reflex kicked and fought and my mind said, ‘No way that oyster is going down there! Yuck!” I told my mom how I hated those things and I would drink the broth but no way would I eat those oysters! Well, she relented and said, “Well we’re not going waste good oysters; you can drink the broth.” I would crush up saltine crackers and I loved eating the broth with crackers. My older brother Geoff quickly volunteered he would love to have my share! He and my mom would each take an equal share of my oysters. Thank goodness! I told my mom that when I grew up I would not make my kids eat oysters! I never did either!

Then there was the split pea soup. Now I like peas, sweet peas are my favorite. I even like them in salads. My mom would make a big pot of split pea soup and add bits of ham. I had to eat a small bowlful and I would drown it with crackers. I could stomach that soup but I had the strongest urge in my throat to gag! That is another soup that I never made my kids eat. Again, my oldest brother Geoff loved the soup. He could eat a whole pot full! Nasty! Yuck! One day the soup was left out too long and whoever was assigned dish duty that night forgot to put the soup away. My mom had some the next day and got sick, food poisoning. It was because of the ham in it. The pea soup was okay, but you cannot leave ham out as it will spoil. She had to throw away her delicious pea soup. Well, I sure was cheering inside myself, wahoo, I don’t have to eat that again! I felt bad my mom got sick. I was just mighty glad I didn’t have to eat that soup!

There was a third food I hated to eat. It was brussels sprouts! Bleck! They tasted and smelled like bad stinky socks! Eewww! Yuck! My twin brother Gayle hated them too. He would stuff them in his pocket or asked to be excused for a minute to go to the bathroom and spit them out! We both hated them! I remember having to sit at the table one night and not being excused. I had left those two brussels sprouts on my plate and I was stubborn and was 'NOT' going to eat them. My mother was just as stubborn and would not let me leave the table! After sitting at the table for half an hour after everyone else was gone and admitting to myself that my mom was not going to let me leave the table, I finally just held my breath, chewed them up and swallowed them! My mom didn’t fix them often but the next time she fixed them while she wasn’t looking, I pretended to cough and put them in my hand and stuffed them in my pocket! Good plan my twin brother had! He never got caught and neither did I! I told my mom about that years later when I was grown up and she said, “You two little stinkers! I never knew that!” To which I replied, “Good! We hated brussels sprouts and my kids will never eat them in my house because I will never fix them! ” We both laughed about that.

When I had my own family I did have them take ‘two bites’ and at least try all kinds of foods. I don’t think I ever made them eat something that they absolutely hated. I well remember how I felt when I was a kid and I did not want to force them to eat something and get sick.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #22

Story # 22 - Pheffernus and other yummy Christmas treats! It’s magic!

Do you have a favorite dish or treat that your mom makes every Christmas?

When I was a child I loved Christmas time because my mom always made such yummy goodies! Here are a few---
I loved her fruitcake! A lot of people don’t like fruitcake but hers was so good! She would make it right after Thanksgiving. I remember helping her grind and chop up the fruit and nuts. She would put rum extract (Not the alcoholic drinking kind-that’s bad for you!) in it and then she would wrap the fruitcake in a cloth and put it in a cake tin and hide it in her pantry. By Christmas time it tasted wonderful! It’s been a long time since I’ve had really good fruitcake. I’ve taste quite a few but none have ever tasted as good as the one my mother made when I was young. She would make Pheffernus and that was so good. You add molasses to the cookie dough. You shape the dough into balls and bake them. Just before they were completely cooled she would roll them in powdered sugar. They sure were good! I also liked her Tuti Fruity Cookies! She would use a Chocolate Chip cookie recipe and then she would grind up dried fruit-the kind you used in fruit cake-raisins, nuts and then chocolate chips. She would stir all that together in the cookie dough. She would spread the dough out into a jelly roll pan (cake pan) and bake them. Then she would cut them into bars. They were yummy! It was one of my favorites! I also thought the raw cookie dough tasted good too! She also would stuff dates. I loved dates! None of my kids ever liked dates. When I first saw my mom eating them, I thought they looked like cockroaches and so I would never eat them! Dates are a wonderful source of fiber and potassium! My mom would make a fondant out of powdered sugar and condensed milk and make a small candy roll and stuff it into the date and then roll the stuffed dates in plain sugar. Oh they were so good! It probably sounds awful to you, but they really did taste good! My mom would also make sugar cookies. She also made gingerbread cookies and cut them out with a cookie cutter like a gingerbread doll. She also baked pecan, pumpkin and lemon meringue pies! It was a feast! She also made her own cranberry sauce. My mom had a lot of food allergies, especially anything made of cornstarch or corn syrup or dextrose. Those products made her asthma really bad and she would have difficulty breathing. So she made a lot of homemade goodies from scratch.

One particular treat she made and not just at Christmas was gingerbread cake and she made her own lemon sauce. She cooked the lemon sauce in a pot on the burner. Oh my goodness. That was so good! She also whipped cream and we could have whipped cream on it too. I liked the lemon sauce the very best!

When my kids were young we would go to Grandma Valdine and Grandpa Darrell Guptill’s home for Christmas. We had a potluck and everyone brought different parts of the dinner. Grandpa Darrell Guptill usually made the turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and his famous baked beans. Everyone else brought the side dishes and desserts. One time Aunt Ellen brought Buck Eyes. For short, my kids call them peanut butter balls. When my kids tasted those, they told me that I had to learn how to make those! They were really good! Well as of Dec 2007 I have been making those Buck Eyes for 23 years! That is my Christmas treat that is a family tradition for all my kids. You just take powdered sugar, butter, peanut butter and crushed Rice Krispies and make the candy dough. You roll them into balls (Buck Eyes) and then dip them in melted chocolate chips with a little bit of vegetable shortening added to the melted chocolate. I make different flavors of the chocolate to dip the Buck Eyes in and boy they are tasty! I don’t like making the balls so much. I don’t mind dipping them at all, that’s the fun part! I usually make three double bathes every Christmas as my kids love them and so do their children, my grandchildren! Yes, I’ll be making them again this year! What would Christmas be like with out grandma making peanut butter balls ( Buck Eyes)? That would be like having Christmas without a Christmas tree!

9 volt batteries explode! Yuck!

These batteries exploded! Yuck!

Now this is a different experience with batteries I've never had before!
I keep them in a cupboard below my counter between the kitchen and family room. They are stored in a cool and dark place. I was just in that cupboard a few days earlier and never noticed anything odd. This morning I had to grab a phone book out of that cupboard and saw what looked like dried cement inside the bottom of the cupboard door. I keep the batteries on that bottom shelf. I took a closer look at the door and then looked on the bottom shelf and saw these 9 volt batteries askew in their box as you can see in the picture. One battery had the back end complete blown off. There were only three 9 volt batteries in their own package by themselves. I also have AAA, AA, C and D batteries. I checked everything down there. Everything was fine except for these three 9 volt batteries. I cleaned up the mess and threw it away.

I've never had this happen before. I've had toys that had batteries that corroded or flashlights, but never the batteries all by themselves! What I also found odd was that there was 'no expiration date' stamped on the batteries. I bought them from Costco about 2 years ago. Hmmm. Very odd not to have an expiration date.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #21

Story #21 - Christmas and Curious Diana – shake and rattle!

Isn’t Christmas so much fun! All the excitement of decorations and putting up the tree and making a wish list a mile long! The anticipation of waking up early on Christmas morning to find out what kind of presents you got!

When I was a little girl Sears had a Christmas catalog that came in the mail around the first week in December. My brothers and I would pour over that book and circle all the things we wanted. Usually my list was a mile long! When you are little you get so excited about what kind of presents Santa will bring. I always wrote a letter to Santa Claus! I’m a grandmother and I still believe in Santa Claus! The closer it got to Christmas the more excited I got! My mom would start putting out just a few presents the week before Christmas. My brothers and I would wait until my parents were not looking and we would ‘shake and rattle’ the presents to try and figure out what they were! I would also sneak into my parent’s bedroom and look into their closet to see if there were any presents hiding. I was so disappointed that I could never find any! Miraculously on Christmas morning there would always be more presents under the tree! I don’t know where they hid those presents but I was always so surprised on Christmas morning!

This reminds me of when my children were little. Michelle had graduated from high school and was going to BYU-Hawaii in Laie, Hawaii. We lived 45 minutes south of Laie in Kailua, Hawaii on the island of Oahu. She invited a friend of hers to spend Christmas with us. Her name was Loretta and she was from New Zealand. Loretta was also a student at BYU. We loved her accent. It was a soft British sounding accent. We all loved Loretta. Well on Christmas Eve Loretta slept out on the couch in the living room where we had our Christmas tree. We never put any presents out under the tree until after midnight on Christmas Eve. As the kids got older we allowed them to put their gifts under the tree that was for their siblings. Our gifts never went out until ‘after’ midnight.

You may think this sounds awful, but I gave each of the kids a small teaspoon of Dimetapp before they went to bed. I know what you are thinking: Grandma gave sleepy medicine to her kids! That’s right, I did! They also were not allowed to get out of bed until 6:00a.m. on Christmas morning! Anyway, Loretta was sleeping on the couch. She and I planned to ‘booby trap’ the hallway and the kids’ bedroom door. The younger kids wanted to be together and they all slept in the same bedroom. They all wanted to get up early and go see what Santa brought! Loretta and I put colored cellophane plastic over the kids’ bedroom door. We taped it to the sides of the door frame. There was about a 6-inch gap at the bottom so we taped small bells at the bottom. We did this just in case the kids tried to sneak under the plastic! We would be able to hear the ‘bells jingle!’ Then we turned the plastic carpet runner upside down that ran the length of the hallway. The wrong side had thick plastic poky points. These poky points are what held the carpet runner down onto the carpet so it would stay in place. The carpet runners helped to protect the carpet and kept it cleaner and helped keep the carpet from wearing out.

I always kept our bedroom door slightly ajar, not closed tight, so I could see and hear what my kids were up to! Sure enough about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning I could hear whispers from their bedroom door. Our bedroom was next to theirs. I could hear their door open and then one of the kids said, “There’s something over the door, we can’t get out.” Then they figured out at the bottom there were bells. They cut the bells off. They sent one of the kids under the plastic. Then we heard, “Ouch!” They stepped on the plastic pokies! Grandpa and I were giggling softly to ourselves. We full well knew what the kids were up to! They snuck down the hall and peeked into the living room at the tree where there were piles of presents! They would ooohhh and aaahhh! Loretta asked, "What are you kids doing up?” They told her that they just wanted to peek. After a few minutes, they all went back to bed. One hour later they were up and we all enjoyed Christmas morning!

I’m sure if you ask Julie to tell the story, she tells it beautifully! Ask her to tell you the story sometime!

Kirsten's Dentist Appointment

Kirsten visits the dentist today.
This is a picture of Kirsten. I love her 'happy face!'

The above picture was taken a few months ago. I love it because she has a great big smile! She was also smiling because she had just finished eating her most favorite food - homemade spaghetti! She loves to eat it! If you look closely at the picture you will probably see her 'wearing' it around her face!

I did not have a picture of today's visit to the dentist. I told her today we were going to see her dentist. We have to go to Children's Seattle Dentistry. It takes about one hour to drive there. I always have Neil drive us as I do not like driving anywhere near or in Seattle. The traffic is busy, busy, busy! Anyway, as we got out of the car, she was relaxed and we took a seat in the waiting area. All was well until she heard her name called! Then she got nervous! The best way to seat Kristen is to have her sit in her dad's lap in a chair without side arms. Kirsten faces her daddy and then lays backward in his lap and rests her head in the lap of her dentist. She will not sit in a dentist chair. She freaks! She has abs of steel and sits up so fast and starts to scoot down before you can count to 5!

Considering that Kirsten has been through so much medically in the past 18 years, making her dentist visit as easy as possible really helps! The dentist chair just upsets her and we get no where. So between the dentist and her dad they have set up this 'lap' system and it works beautifully! Today when Kirsten was hugging her dad before she had to lie down, she had a steel trap grip around his neck and he had to 'pry' her hands loose. Isn't that sad? :o( Everyone got through the appointment fine. Zero cavities! The dentist said that her saliva/drool is her teeth's best friend as it keeps her teeth from decaying. Her top row of front 6 teeth all along the very top near the gum line are pure white and the enamel finish is very, very thin and underdeveloped. This area would be the first line of attack for cavities. She doesn't eat junk food and I brush her teeth the best I can. Fortunately she has never had cavities in any of those teeth. She only has 2 fillings, one very small and one medium sized filling and those were on molars. She's had 2 extractions. Kirsten does not have any wisdom teeth and it's a good thing, no room! Her brother David doesn't have any wisdom teeth either! Doug only had the top two and they were removed before he left on his mission several years ago.

Kirsten's appointment lasted for about 10 minutes. It went quick. She had her teeth cleaned and fluoride brushed on them. She gave several comments and used a lot of tongue thrust and lip thrust to discourage the dentist to no avail! She gets' 'E' for effort. When it was all over with she hugged her dad and just heaved a sobbing soft cry for 2-3 minutes. That cry is a heart wrencher! She was a trooper! We go back in 6 months. She was very glad to 'leave' and get in the car and go home! She does have a wonderful dentist! :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #20

Story # 20 - The twins – a fight – and someone got stabbed, me!
Have you ever had a fight with a brother or sister? Did you get hurt in a fight by hitting them or they hit you?

My twin brother and I had a fight one day. I don’t even remember what the fight was about. Isn’t it silly that brothers and sisters fight with each other? It really is silly. I just remember that we were both really mad. Gayle had a pair of scissors in his hands and the scissors were opened wide. He ‘stabbed me in the arm’ with the scissors! It was in my left arm just above the elbow. I immediately stopped and looked at my arm and it started to bleed. I told him that now he was in BIG TROUBLE! I still wear that scar today. Looking back on that incident, I wonder what we were so angry about? Surely it was not worth stabbing a sibling with a pair of scissors. I do remember that my twin brother got in really big trouble for doing that. We were taught never to do that. I also remember that being the only girl and having three brothers wasn’t always easy. I realize now that it was just the opposite for them, have an only sister must have big a real big pain for them! I tattled a lot. It’s definitely not okay to be a tattletale all the time. It’s okay when there is something serious happening, but other than that, it’s not cool. In short, I’m sure I was a brat at times.

This reminds me of when Julie and Lisa, my two daughters were having a sibling fight one day. They were really going at it and pulling hair and hitting each other! Douglas ran out of the room and told me, “Mom! Julie and Lisa are fighting and they’re going to kill each other!” I remember just being so tired of telling the kids to stop fighting with each other and to be nice. I felt like a referee wearing a black and white stripped shirt with a whistle. I told him, “Oh let them go ahead and kill each other. I’ll have two less kids to worry about.” I said it with a very flat voice and with no emotion. I was tired! Tired of kids that couldn’t get along. Doug said, “Mom, you can’t let them do that, you have to make them stop!” Douglas was really worried about them. The next thing I knew Julie and Lisa was laughing and the fight ended.

Grandma’s advice to you grandchildren is, “We’re children of our Heavenly Father and He loves us so much. It makes Him sad when we fight. So don’t fight with your brothers and sisters. Just get along. It’s selfishness when you want your way and enforce others to do what you want. I'll love you grandchildren forever!!!”

Love ya!
Grandma Guptill
-in Washington :o)