Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Congrats David and Becca!

My brother-in-law David got engaged on Saturday to Becca. How exciting! I realized I didn't have any pictures of Becca so I included a picture of David with Jenna :). Anyway, David completely ignored all of my suggestions for proposals and asked her to marry him the old fashioned way! As long as she says yes - that's the most important thing! I still think he should have put the ring in an Easter Egg or a burrito!

We had a great Easter and the girls saw both sets of Grandparents as well as Aunt Missy and Aunt Amanda. Easter was also Sarah's 3 month birthday and here's a picture of her with the lamb. She's actually smiling in that picture if you can't tell. Once the girls get older I will get a set of Resurrection Eggs. They are supposed to share the story of Jesus's death and Resurrection in a way kids will understand.

In other news:
  1. We picked up our camper on Friday. It is so awesome!! However, it took Erik (not me - we would still be there if I was doing it) 45 minutes to back it into the miniscule parking spot we were given at the storage facility. We are looking for a new storage facility.
  2. I decided I wanted to make up my own recipe for Cranberry vanilla bread so I threw a bunch of ingredients together and baked two loaves (I want to submit the best to a quick bread contest). Unfortunately, after I took them out of the oven I left them on the stove top. Erik decided to make pasta and turned on the burner with the bread on it (even though there was a pot on a different burner). This loaf pan was one of those flexible loaf pans and apparently they do not like to be on burners. It caught fire and the whole house was filled with smoke. Oops!
  3. I can't get the song "Sarah Smile" by Hall and Oats out of my head. It's almost as bad as "If you like pina coladas...." That song I can NEVER get out of my head!
  4. I got a terrible score on Quiddler today. How can you make a good word with these letters: A, G, G, B, U, C, X, Q??? That is awful. So I only got 29 points :(.


Saturday, March 15, 2008

Certified American Cookie Board Statistician

Today we had friends over to play Dungeons and Dragons. It was a blast! We even watched a movie called "The Gamers" about people who play D&D - and that was hilarious too.

While everyone was here, we had a chocolate chip cookie tasting event. Jon created a Standard Cookie rating sheet that rated cookies based on visual impact, texture, flavor, and after impression. Ratings varied from 1 to 10 with 10 representing the most desirable in a given criteria. Interestingly enough, the cookies I generally make won!! I made 10 different cookie recipes (see picture) and everyone rated them.
Below are the results.
Cookie Analysis 3/15/08
Cookie Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Cookie Recipe Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies Chocolate Chip Cookies Lite Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Absolutely the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Jen Wahl's cookie recipe Urban Legend Chocolate Chip Cookies Nestle toll house cookies modified Best big, fat, chewy chocolate chip cookie Alton Brown's The Chewy 60% Ghiradelli Cocoa Back of Bag
Aaron 35 10 34 23 27 23 32 23 33 28
Matt 28 14 21.5 29 26 15 26 17 25 17.5
Erik 31 8 30 19 22 26 32 14 30 29
Michelle H 32 11 27 25 28 17 34 24 32 18
Michelle C 26 17 35 28 31 28 35 30 33 27
John 30 19 25 26 23 29 29 26 28 26
Gina 32 13 28 24 32 27 33 29 29 27
Mike 33 6 21 22 30 15 29 12 24 9
Jen 22 7 26 19 22 12 36 12 27 5
Total 29.889 11.667 27.500 23.889 26.778 21.333 31.778 20.778 29.000 20.722


The changes I've made to Nestle toll house cookies are to only use real butter, add 1/4 cup flour extra, and cook them for 7 minutes and 20 seconds.
As you can see from this scientific study, Nestle toll house cookies are the best!! How awesome :). Of course, these are the cookies I always make so it made me happy to have confirmation that they are the best.

Sarah has started to smile and make cute noises! Here is a video of her smiling. What a doll baby!!

I got 62 on Quiddler today. I was doing so well until I lost the v :(. 11 points!!!

Saturday, March 08, 2008

A Snow Big Sister??








Every family has a big sister according to Jenna. If there is a family of bears, spoons (don't ask), playdoh, books, etc (and a family is just composed of a few of these things) always one of them is a big sister. Jenna knows her place in our family. Today we got about a foot and a half of snow. Even church is cancelled tomorrow because of the snow. Anyway, we went out to play in the snow and we made a snow family. Of course, one of the snow family members was a big sister :).
In other news:
  1. Sarah is smiling :). I've included a picture - she is adorable
  2. We got Easter pictures taken on Thursday of the two girls together. They were adorable. After the pictures (taken by Squire Photography), Jenna got to pick some prizes from a big treasure chest. One of the treasure chests had butterfly wings. Jenna loved them!!
  3. I'm in book 4 of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. How can something be a trilogy if it has 4 books?
  4. I just finished "Just Walk Across the Room" by Bill Hybels. Excellent book about evangelism through friendship.
  5. We finally saw Ratatouille. Awesome movie!!! I highly recommend it. I especially loved it since it was about food - who doesn't love food? Once we get back into a routine, I'll start my iron chefs again!
  6. I got 12 today on Quiddler. Lost the y, v, h, q, and n. It was a tough quiddler with few vowels.
  7. I'm making about 10 different chocolate chip cookie recipes and we are going to have a cookie tasting to see which one is the best. I have 2 more recipes I want to make. After that - we'll see which recipe reigns supreme!! I'll include the results on my blog when we finish the contest :).