Our new neighbors!

4th of July is my favorite holiday. Red, white and blue is an ideal color scheme, America is celebrating Independence (Jenna, what are we celebrating with Independence day? Ummm.... I don't know - the civil war?), Fireworks are exploding constantly at all hours of the day and night, and most importantly - my birthday! 

Erik's parents moved into their new house on Monday. We are now neighbors! To celebrate, we had some friends from church over for a cookout and to decorate cupcakes with BRIGHT blue and BRIGHT red frosting. 9 kids were at our house all under the age of 8 with free reign on the blue #5 frosting. Yum - artificial food coloring. 

It was chaos with so many kids running around. Maybe the in-laws are rethinking their move.

Flag Cookie

Decorating cupcakes

 Amanda stayed with us for a couple of days this week so obviously I made her do a chopped basket. Erik bought two sets of the chopped ingredients. They were: pork chops, vidalia onions, parmesan cheese, and fruit snacks.

Chopped basket

 We each made two dishes incorporating all of these ingredients. Amanda made cheese and fruit snacks stuffed pork chops, with an eggplant, zucchini, and carmelized onion salad. I made candied bacon wrapped parmesan crusted pork chops with carmelized onion risotto and a fruit snack wine reduction.  Both dishes were delicious! In the end I was chopped. Erik's Mom, Jenna, and Sarah voted for Amanda's dish while Erik voted for my dish. It was a grueling competition (no, Amanda did not get $10,000). Then to celebrate Amanda and I went to see the Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. I had a great day until I came home and saw my email and almost had a heart attack. I've been assigned another new class! This means two new classes this session and three online courses. I've never had three online courses before. I hope I survive this semester.

Our chopped dishes

As well as the Fourth of July, this was also my niece Charlotte's first birthday. We were able to skype with David and sing Happy Birthday. Much cheaper than flying 5 people out to California.

Erik made me a birthday cake as well. It was a dark chocolate cake with a nutella frosting. The frosting had nutella, cream cheese, and lime juice in it. The cake was filled with chocolate chips, peanuts, reeses cups, cocoa powder, etc (basically everything I like). It was interesting!

59 points on Quiddler today.