Made with real fruit juice...

So my kids went to two birthday parties yesterday. One for my Godson and his brother, and one for my nephew. So much for a day of rest :-). We also presented our veteran's quilt to our chosen recipient, and he was very happy to get it. It was very nice. But back to the parties...

My s-i-l went all out. They have one child, they will only ever have one child, and they are determined to do it all. No...hmmmm, maybe we can throw together a birthday party TONIGHT for them. Nope, they are the whole, "hand make the card to look like cookie monster's face" type. The beauty of an only child! Well, this only child turned 2 yesterday. BJ's party was over in Tampa, and so my husband took the kids as UIP had a concert. The same thing happened last year, and I feel bad, but we will see them for Thanksgiving anyway. They had a Sesame Street themed party, and when my family turned up, they doubled the size of the children attending, LOL. The little kids watched an episode of Elmo's world, and they played outside. "K squared" (my brother and sister in law both have K names) had ordered Pizza for food. WAY TOO MUCH pizza judging by the jumbo pizza and a half that came home with us. It makes me wonder if they invited a bunch of people who didn't come, or if they thought BJ and his 3 little friends would eat a lot? I guess the kids' parents and my family added into the equation, but there was still plenty left. An entire spinach and tomato pizza. Yucky...I mean LUCKY me, LOL. Even my kids want nothing to do with it, and they eat veggies. For the record I eat some though as you can pick anything off a pizza if it is warm enough for the cheese to be soft.

K squared had also bought those snack sized baggies of chips/goldfish, etc. They again must have overbought, because they sent home an ENTIRE stuffed-to-the-top paper grocery bag full of them. We have snacks for MONTHS now. AND, the party favors were little metal schoolbus- shaped, Sesame Street character covered lunch boxes. Filled with candy. Which leads me to the title of this blog.

You know ring pops? (Okay, Sparkling Suzanne might not know about them, but I trust the rest of you do, LOL.) Ring pops generally are 5 times the size of an allowable-in-this-house lollipop, but they were in the bus along with push-pops (for 2 year olds!!!!) and my kids opted to have either a push pop or ring pop after lunch for the rest of their RDA of sugar :-). As I opened Mimi's Cotton Candy flavored ring pop for her, I noticed the words, "Made with real fruit juice." Are you joking? Is that meant to make me feel better? How much "real fruit juice" (as opposed to fake fruit juice?) do you suppose there could possible be in there, and does it even remotely make up for the rest of the ingredients? Let's see: sugar, corn syrup, invert sugar, buffered lactic acid, natural and artificial flavors (just how would you "naturally" flavor a cotton candy flavored lollipop? with more sugar?), PEAR JUICE CONCENTRATE, artificial color, red #3, blue #1 Lake, blue #1. Yep, that pear juice practically makes it health food...if you forget the sugar, sugar, more sugar, and artificial colors enough that the poo I find un-flushed in the toilets over the next day or two should be really interesting. Why bother with the real fruit juice? Because Concentrated fruit juice is SWEET, that's why. It's just one more way of sweetening it up without you realizing it.

Oh well, you only live once, and they only eat ring pops once a year, so I imagine they will be okay if we can avoid a sugar induced coma...

Off to sew!

obm