Camp Silver Springs 2008!

There were too many good pictures to choose from (thanks Mom and Dad!) so here are just a couple of group shots! Camp was a super fun great time (as always)!

Happy July!

I'm getting out of the habit of posting regularly and once we get back from our vacation I'll have to work on that! I was trying to get an Owen video up here but it was taking forever to upload (download? whatever...). This is Owen surrounded by toys while perusing some dinner options in his Meal Time book. Yum! Also, when I get some pictures from Camp I'll post some of those but I didn't take any myself so I'll have to depend on the kindness of others for those (that's you Mom and Dad!).

Poor Little Nose.

Two things...

1. Don't you hate it when you're all eager to hear from someone and normally they answer their phone or get back to you right away but this time they don't and it happens to be the 1 time out of 10 that you actually had something important to ask? (I'm talking about you, Pat!) Ok, really everytime I call I think it's super important. Because it is.

2. Don't you hate it when you let someone working at a store ruin your whole day just because they're in a bad mood and they insist on being rude to you even though you're being extra pleasant in the hopes you can make them feel better? (I'm talking about you, rude lady at Target, and you, rude cashier at the grocery store) I'm not really going to let them ruin my whole day. Especially since only one of them happened today.


And then here's Owen after eating his yogurt last night all by himself. I feel much calmer now. Thanks Owen:)

Pizzelle Experiment

I decided to make pizzelles over the weekend and experiment with the flavors since I always just make them the traditional way. We tried peanut butter, cinnamon, chocolate and strawberry and they were all great except the chocolate which didn't taste like anything. And no, there aren't any more.






Owen likes to watch for birds, squirrels and dogs out our front window. You always know when an animal is in the front yard because he'll squeal and wait for you to come look with him.

A Patnap

This is Pat's favorite weekend activity. Napping. That is a bag of marshmallows at his side. Apparently he fell asleep in the middle of his snacking last weekend. It should also be noted that this was at 10:30 in the morning.

Mr. Happy.

I wasn't going to post anything today but then I got this hilarious picture of Owen so I felt it was necessary.

This is totally unrelated but I was trying to decide if I needed to keep a casserole cookbook I had bought from a library book sale that was published in 1967. I've never actually looked at it and thought I would make something from it just to prove that it was useful. The best part is that the recipes call for things like "1 tablespoon of fat" or "1/2 teaspon monosodium glutamate." It never occurred to me that you could just buy MSG. Anyway, I decided I should keep the book because there is a recipe for something called Jiffy Cheesefurters and that's just always going to make me laugh.

Father's Day Picnic

We celebrated Father's Day by going on a picnic which Owen actually sat still for! Here's a couple pictures of our day.

Happy Father's Day!

An Owen Video!

So this isn't the most exciting video ever but it's very recent (yesterday) and super cute (if not a little long...). I wanted to see if this would work!

Look!

Pat can clean! I was being helpful by documenting the whole thing. Owen was being helpful by shouting things.

I dunno...

Owen got a new sleeveless t-shirt and I like to think he's trying to show off his muscles in this picture. The temperatures here have been in the 90's so we figured he deserved it. Sort of not at all related to that...Owen and I try to spend a lot of time outside so we're often making small talk with neighbors and petting unknown dogs. Today a man I had never seen said "It's kind of an old-fashioned summer, isn't it?" I smiled and made some sort of noise that meant "yes, indeed." I have no clue what he meant or if I just totally heard him wrong.

We celebrated an early Father's Day over the weekend with my parents and ate some (not very lemony) lemon meringue tartlets. They looked cute though:)

Happy Friday!

Lunch

I miss putting up pictures of my breakfasts so here was our lunch from yesterday. What kind of mom would I be if I didn't try to convince Owen that egg sandwiches are great? I even threw on some cheese to make it more convincing. Owen is a fickle eater though and decided halfway through that egg sandwiches are not good. Carrots are way better.


This is Owen before he threw his sandwich to the ground. He was still enjoying the food at this point.


Ah yes. My lunch. Remember how you're supposed to read recipes all the way through before starting? I usually read the ingredient list and look at the picture to make sure I want it and then begin. Well, here's another sad lesson learned. You take a tomato, slice off the top, break an egg into it, bake it for awhile, top with some cheese and bake some more. I still think that sounds great. Unfortunately the egg never cooked! I don't want a soupy egg! I want cooked egg! I even cooked it longer after I found it was liquidy and it still never firmed up. Normally I would assume I did something wrong but then I looked at the end of the recipe and it says to serve with slices of bread for dipping. Um...no. I do not "dip" things into my eggs. Nor should anyone else.

Cookies and Crackers

I needed some cookies today. It's been that kind of day. I was lucky they turned out to be good because I took a "healthy" recipe and made it healthier. Want to know how? Of course you do. I used wheat flour instead of white, eliminated the granulated sugar, doubled the amount of applesauce, left out the butter, added a tablespoon of peanut butter and substituted raisins for chocolate chips. That was pretty risky. And you know what's worse than having a day where you absolutely need some cookies? Getting a bad cookie.


This picture was from the other day. I think Owen was trying to ask me to get him a graham cracker and accidentally picked up the bag by the wrong end. He left a trail of crackers behind him. It was super cute. You can see in his eyes how worried he was about the whole situation. Luckily, we operate on the assumption that our floor is always clean.

Calm.

Owen has a lot of energy. I need to get some of that. Here he is in a rare moment of calm.

Happy Birthday to Pat's Mom!

Happy Birthday!

Coconut Cake for the occasion!

What Happened?

I was doing so well with posting! We've all been sick here lately and I haven't taken many pictures but here's one from awhile ago of Owen hugging his giraffe blanket (and my leg).

Happy Memorial Day!

Scott, Crystal, Sherri and Mike came over yesterday to eat lots of good food with us! It was the usual Memorial Day food (burgers and such) and a yummy trifle (layers of chocolate cake, cool whip, chocolate pudding and heath bits)! I managed to take one picture while everyone had food in their mouths.

This recipe was called Turban-shaped Challah with Raisins but it said I could use brioche or challah dough which doesn't make any sense when you look at the name. I used brioche dough anyway because I had some left from the huge batch the other day when I made a mini-loaf. Super good but I swear it tastes like Auntie Anne's pretzels somehow.

Here's Owen trying to get to the bread! He liked it too. Oh, and I did end up finding the peas that Owen hid in the bottom of a cupboard under our griddle!

The Case of the Missing Peas

I made some brioche! I was so excited to eat it that I didn't think to take a picture of it first. I think this was around the same time that Owen swiped a small tupperware of leftover peas from the fridge and vanished with them. I found Owen but we still haven't found the missing peas.

When did squirrels start looking like this?

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

It's Over!

I'll have to think of a new 30 day challenge for myself! There have been a couple of suggestions brought to my attention but I'm still thinking about it. I feel like I'm missing something because I didn't have to put any effort into my breakfast this morning (cereal!).

Day #30!

Remember when I said I would never eat CoCoWheats again? Well...let's just say I wanted to make this Breakfast Apple Kuchen for this morning and when I looked at the recipe last night I realized it called for Cream of Wheat cereal...I was not about to go out and buy that so I used the CoCoWheats. Apparently they are good for something after all! This was truly tasty. I also managed to halve the recipe without any issues this time and made them all (except for the one in the picture) in mini-pie tins that Mom gave me just yesterday! Everything is more fun in a mini-version!

Pat and Owen partying it up at the Perdan's.

Here is the Compote I tried to eat for breakfast the other day in it's more appropriate mini-pie form. I've had this mini-pie dish for about 2 or 3 years and it's the first time I've actually been able to use it!

Breakfast Salad?

It is much too early to be up on a Sunday but I can't fall asleep. This was only good because I couldn't taste the carrots that were in it.

Owen.

Day 28

Grapefruit.

Homemade!

I made English Muffins this morning! Ok, so really the process started last night. I was halving the recipe so I wouldn't end up with so many and as usual got distracted and halved everything but the amount of water. So then I had to undo that by adding the rest of the ingredients. The dough was all crazy and I was pretty sure they were going to be a failure but...ta da! They came out really normal!

No Thanks

Looks good, right? I'm not normally one of those people that passes something up because it's too sweet but in this case I made an exception. This smelled really good when I was making it last night. It is a breakfast compote. Today I looked up the word compote and found out it means dessert. That would have been good to know yesterday. It was apple slices and raisins simmered in orange juice and cinnamon, refrigerated overnight and then orange slices were added this morning. Pat said it was like pie filling and I have to agree so that's what I'm going to do with the leftovers.

Toasted Peanut Butter and Jelly

I had a magical breakfast moment this morning where I ate exactly what I wanted. I didn't even know it until I was already eating it but I probably could have eaten about 10 of these.

Here's Owen entertaining himself while dinner was being made. His new favorite toy is a pot or pan and a lid.

Popovers

These things are crazy! I have no idea how they end up looking like this and they end up with big pockets on the bottom of them. They're actually pretty neat but they needed butter to actually taste good and nobody else wanted anything to do with them.

Um...

Last night Pat said something about breakfast chili and we agreed that was nasty. Then I thought it would be funny if I made something that looked like chili but was actually really tasty. Then my brain shut down because Desperate Housewives came on. So when I went to make my breakfast this morning I pureed some strawberries, mixed in some yogurt, added blackberries (to pretend to be the meat?), and sprinkled on some cinnamon. Of course it was super tasty but it didn't really resemble chili. At all. Later I realized I could have even made some pound cake and used a slice to pretend to be cornbread. That would have been a nice excuse to have some cake for breakfast. That's part of the problem with having something different for breakfast every day. You have to have a plan. You can't just wake up and figure it out then because stuff requires so much preparation. Oh well, 7 more days!

Ok...so...remember that potato omelette debacle? Well apparently I have major problems with flipping things out of pans (or baking dishes). I'm pretty sure most of my problem this time was attributed to Owen pulling on my leg and me knowing I wasn't serving them to anyone so they didn't need to look pretty. The blondies turned out fine and Pat used the excuse to dish himself up some super large servings since we didn't cut them into bars. Ok, maybe I did that too.

Here's me and Owen on Mother's Day!