Every Kid Loves Mud

ViviAnne and I had a birthday party for our eldest son Liam last weekend. His birthday was the 29th of April, and our young man turned 5. We had a mud party. Crazy huh? It was the best little kid party I have been too in quite a while. We dug a large pit in our back yard and filled it with water and dirt. The great thing about the Palouse is that there is a lot of good dirt for making mud. All the kids just jumped right in, amazing fun. I feel like I am always telling my kids to not get muddy, we live out in the sticks so there is a lot of dirt and mud after a rain. It was nice to say, "Go play in the mud." It made me feel good to give that back to them after trying to keep them out of it for the better part of the spring.

The other big thing we did was make clean mud. If you don't know what it is, this is your chance to learn. You take bars of Ivory soap and cheese grate them. Take regular toilet paper and shred it long ways so that you have thin strips about a foot or two long. Then add water till it turns into a kind of mud/paste. This stuff is great, not only is it supper clean from all the soap, it is like mud.

If you are going to have a mud party you should serve Dirt Cake, recipe to follow:

1 20 oz Oreo Cookie pkg

1/2 cup melted butter

1 12 oz Cool Whip

1 8 oz Cream Cheese (softened)

1 cup powdered sugar

2 sm pkg vanilla inst. pudding

3 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla

Flower pot (8 inch) and garden trowel, gummy worms, plastic flowers, etc... for decoration

Dirt Cake is made in layers. Crush the oreos in a food processor, take about 10 seconds. I love food processors. I once crushed the cookies by hand, don't do this. Put a layer in the bottom of the pot, about half the crushed cookies.

Combine butter, cool whip, sugar and cream cheese. Use a kitchen aid if you have one, so fast.

Put about half over the first layer of cookies.

Mix the pudding, vanilla and milk together. The milk is about 3/4 of what is required for the pudding so it will mix up thicker and be a more firm layer than if you used the regular amount of milk suggested by the pudding box. Put about half in the pot.

Put the rest of the cream cheese/sugar/cool whip layer in and then follow with the rest of the pudding layer. Cover with the remainder of the crushed cookies, looks like a nice pot of dirt now doesn't it. Add flowers (plastic or real ones that you cut) and maybe a gummy worm or ten sticking up out of the "dirt". If you have a tiny little garden gnome, you should add that in as well. Serve with a garden trowel to complete the ambiance.

Fun, fun weekend!