Hi everyone!
It’s Mommy Monday!
Remember when the recipe for JELL-O Jigglers came out? It was such a “fun” twist to an old favorite! Kids thought it was great that they could eat JELL-O with their hands, and all of the “cool” parents jumped on the bandwagon to make these fun treats for their kids in all different flavors and shapes.
Raising five small children was not a “cheap” task… even with both parents working, “disposable” income was pretty much non-existent. There were always incidentals that would eat away at the budget… outgrown clothes, lost shoes, broken windows, stitches, braces…
You know… the “oh crap! stuff”.
I was never much on providing a lot of sugary junk food for my kids… I opted for fresh fruits and vegetables instead- and they were surprisingly okay with that. In fact, fresh veggies with dip was one of their favorite after-school snacks! I could never seem to keep enough of it in the house.
But JELL-O?!?
JELL-O was CHEAP!
And EASY to make!!
And kids LOVED it!!!
I remember being at the grocery store right around the time when JELL-O Jigglers were first introduced. They were offering free Jiggler molds with the purchase of 2 boxes of JELL-O… so I bought a couple of boxes and went home with my strawberry JELL-O and my “cool mom” Jiggler mold.
A few nights later, my husband and I left the kids with a babysitter. On those occasions, I would always try to have a special treat for them (okay… so maybe it was a “bribe” 😉 )… IF they were good for the babysitter. With 5 kids always going in 5 different directions, babysitters were VERY hard for us to keep- I had to do whatever it took to keep them coming back!
So, I made those fun JELL-O Jigglers… ONCE!
After my husband and I had returned home, I remember walking through the living room, past the dining room, and into the kitchen for something to drink. When I opened the refrigerator, I noticed that the whole plate of JELL-O Jigglers was gone.
To me that could only mean ONE thing… the kids behaved for the babysitter!!!
YAY!!! It worked!!!
But then…
I walked back into the dining room, turned on the light, and…
Something didn’t seem quite “right”…
WHAT… IN… THE… WORLD… HAPPENED?!?
The light was on… but all I could see were… SPOTS! Not those tiny little spots that eventually disappear when your eyes adjust to the light… these were huge RED SPOTS!!! My walls and my once white ceiling were now “decorated” with more than a dozen random red blotches!
YEP… leave it to MY kids to discover that not only was it fun to eat those JELL-O Jigglers with your hands, but apparently it was a riot to launch them through the air and watch them stick to the ceiling, too!
To this day, I’m not exactly sure WHAT the babysitter was doing at the time all this fun was going on, and I’m still not sure WHO the “ringleader” was… but I have a pretty good idea.
This has to be one of my kids’ all-time favorite childhood “heartprints” because they still talk about it and laugh about it whenever they get together.
I haven’t made JELL-O Jugglers since then, but maybe it’s time to be a “cool grandma” and try those “fun” treats just one more time- I mean, they come in sooooooooooo many more colors and flavors now!
Then I can send a plate of them home with each of my grandkids… right AFTER I tell them this story, of course…
Enjoy!
Lynn