Breakfast At It's Best

Breakfast. Just the word can bring back many memories of my Dad in the kitchen, fixing our requested breakfasts so we could go off to school with our tummies full of healthy food so our brains would engage to help prepare us for our future as Doctors. Alas, I decided in the first semester of college that blood and I didn't get along, and Scott was much more interested in all things electronic than anything else, but the dreams of wonderful breakfasts have lived on. Here we often have eggs loaded with wonderful veggies, bacon or sausage, pancakes or french toast and even biscuits and gravy every now and then, although I buy it instead of making it like my Dad used to do. Yes, we do breakfast well here - even having it for dinner now and then. But somehow the boys aren't as thrilled as I was when I was younger. After all, they've grown up deprived.

Yes, you read that right. Deprived. Bereft. Devoid. Left wanting. My underprivileged boys haven't been able to enjoy what they think of as the quintessential breakfast very often. Indeed, the Poptart isn't around much. I daresay they weren't ever brought in to the house until they appeared as a bribe for Laura. And so their fate as legend in our house was sealed. They were the forbidden food. The boys were told they lacked an nutritional value whatsoever but that didn't deter them. They request them at every opportunity. In turn, they have become quite used to hearing "No". But that doesn't stop them. No, in fact I think it spurs them on.

It was quite by chance that they saw the rebate offer a few weeks ago. It seems we can receive a rebate of $10 for buying 10 items - one of which was the revered Poptarts. Oh how the begging started. And they played on my one gleeful talent - bargain hunting! They calculated how much it would really cost us if we got a dollar rebate for every box. They said they'd pay half of the remaining cost. They begged. They pleaded. They promised to only eat one at a time. (Yeah, like I believed that one!)And then, Fate dropped the final blow to my resolve in their hands. It would seem that Heinen's was having a sale. 10 boxes of Poptarts for $10. Yes, that's 10 for $10. Aside from the stamp, they'd be free! And they volunteered to pay for the stamp and bike the form over to the post office themselves. "How could I pass up free?" they said. How indeed. And so ten boxes of Poptarts entered the house. *sigh*

Here's how they enjoyed some of the first fruits of their labor... what can be better than a breakfast of poptarts and a game of mancala in front of Cyberchase? In their view, absolutely nothing. :)