Shocking Puffins!

I found a recipe online for Pancake Muffins (aka puffins). Each one is dipped in pancake syrup before eating. They were so delicious! The girls devoured them quickly. Speaking of quickly - I've been making fruit leather lately and the girls eat it so quickly I can't even snap a picture. I'm not kidding!
I make fruit leather using this recipe:

2 lbs strawberries
2 pears
splash of lemon juice
a little water
Cook until soft. Puree in food processor. Pour into two cookie sheets. Bake in 170 oven for 6-8 hours. It's really good, healthy, and soooooo yummy.

Pancake muffins = puffins!

Every Tuesday I make dinner for my small group. The past few dinners have been less exciting. I made chili wagon wheel casserole which had basically no taste, and tortellini carbonara which was good but not great.  However the coq au vin I made was fabulous! The picture doesn't look great but it was really good. It had bacon, chicken, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, pearl onions, spices, etc, and 2 cups of red wine. I served it with rice a roni and everyone loved it!

coq au vin. lots of yumminess

Daddy and Matthew working at the computer

Yesterday I went to HerWorld for high school junior and senior girls. We built a motion detector using snap circuits and I got to talk a little about electricity. The girls loved it! However I was the one who was shocked. The girls filled out forms listing their information and the senior sitting next to me was born June 1994.
I graduated high school in 1993. Hmmm.... it seems like just yesterday. Where did the time go?

Snap circuit motion detector

I've registered for another triathlon. This one will be at Alum Creek so I'll be swimming with the fishies! It 1/4 mile swimming, 10 miles biking, and 3.1 miles running. I do need a new bike though. I don't want to be laughed at by the other triathletes because of my free non-speed bike with the babyseat on the back.

79 points on Quiddler today

Summer bike riding

Jenna on the trail bike

This weather is FANTASTIC! Yesterday was the first day of spring but it felt like summer! We love long family bike rides however Jenna is too big to fit in the bike trailer, so we had to find a way to bring all the kids with us. We probably can't leave some of them at home.

The trail bike is our answer! Jenna pedals along behind Erik and absolutely loves it! I pull Sarah and Matthew in a trailer behind me. So we've been able to bike to Handels and Jenis ice cream in the past week (I'm sure we will go other places besides ice cream shops, but really? why bother??) When we rode to Jenis the other day I got a black and tan sundae. Yum-O! Salty caramel ice cream with hot fudge & caramel topped with roasted almonds, whip cream, and chocolate stout bundt cake. Yea!

On the top of the mountain!

The other day we had a tornado warning. We all went to the basement to huddle against the elements. Rather than huddling, the girls found some old boxes to play with. All three of them had a great time jumping and playing in the big boxes. Yes Matthew is in there too.

I think Matthew is in there somewhere....

Sarah and Daddy love grapefruit



In other news:

1. Our book club is reading The Windup Girl by Paolo B. It is interesting that you can extrapolate the current state of our society to the one in which this book takes place. This author is one of those authors who immerses you into the world and characters with little backstory. I really like that. It's fun to deduce the world on your own rather than having the author spell it all out for you.
2. I'm almost finished with Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman. Great, great book! Instead of reading the second book right away, I'm going to read Rhett Butler's People. This is the story of Gone with the Wind from Rhett Butler's point of view. I'm excited about this book since I really love Gone with the Wind!
3. To thank Erik for working so hard to pay off the house, I am going to surprise him by signing him up for a Bacon of the month club. I think he will really like this since he seems to have some sort of obsession with bacon.
4. 70 points on Quiddler today

Gender neutral cats

A few months ago Joel and Megan visited us and Megan was wearing the cutest shoes. I loved them but couldn't find any shoes like them. She said they were Clarks and were very comfortable. Apparently Clarks stopped making the shoes she had but I found some other Clarks I really liked.

Yes I just wrote a paragraph about shoes. If you know me, you know I have just a few pairs of shoes I wear because I'm an engineer and not a real woman.

However sometimes I see shoes and like them. Like the following - super cute shoes!

My super cute new shoes

 I've heard a lot lately about making mashed cauliflower rather than mashed potatoes. I thought it would be fun to try and make both for dinner and have a taste test! Erik, Sarah, and Matthew did not touch the cauliflower. Only Jenna and I ate it. Bummer - I thought it was fantastic!

Mashed potatoes and mashed cauliflower

 To get ready for spring planting, we will be starting several seeds indoors. We usually buy these little cups from Lowes to put our seeds in. This year Erik found a good idea on Pinterest a very manly website to create little cups to hold seeds out of newspaper. Sarah was very "helpful" filling the cups with dirt.

Sarah and Daddy making starter dirt cups for plants.

 Wednesday was a momentous occation in our household. It was Pi day 3/14! I made a double chocolate silk pie which was really incredible. This picture isn't great because the whip cream is overpowering it, but the pie was fantastic! We always have to celebrate Pi day!

Double chocolate silk pie for Pi day!

 I'm not sure if you can read the following picture. It says "I know dont like Matthew". This was written by Sarah. She is pretty good at writing for 4 and it's interesting she chose to write this particular sentence too. She gave this paper to Scruffles since she thinks Scruff does not like Matthew.

Tell us how you really feel Sarah...

Scruffles with his/her blue collar

Scruffles had a little growth on his side. We were a little worried about it so we took him to the vet. Rather than just watching it, they removed it and stitched him up. They also gave him a collar he was supposed to wear for 10 days. He wiggled out if it in 2 hours.

On the report listing Scruffles procedure it listed: female spayed. Huh?

David said he paid for Scruffles to get neutered many years ago. One of these doctors is wrong.

Poor Scruffles - no one actually knows his/her gender.

78 points on Quiddler today

My number: 36



Kate, Me, and Tricia post-triathlon

Yesterday I competed in my first triathlon and had a blast! My friends Kate and Tricia joined me and all three of us loved it.

However I need to add something to the list of "stupid things Gina says" (this is a REALLY long list). When I went up to the registration desk to sign in yesterday morning, the person working there wrote a number 36 on my arm. I asked him "are you writing everyone's age on their arm?" He looked at me like I was an idiot. No - that was my participant number. It also happens to be my age - oops.

Now Tricia wants to run a 10k. So we'll have to look around for a 10k - I'm sure there are several races but I haven't paid much attention.

Jenna and Sarah have recently been doing adventurous things! Jenna went to the police station with her Daisy Scout troop. She was fingerprinted and got to sit in a police car - she loved it!

Jenna getting fingerprinted when her Daisy Scout trip visited the Police Station

Sarah had a Daddy Night at her preschool where she made him a nice paper tie he could wear (it was snazzy!). She also saw and touched several animals. Erik said many of the other kids were scared to go touch an alligator but Sarah jumped right up and held it.

Sarah holding a baby alligator at preschool



I'm excited for Pi day coming up!  We will be having chocolate pie - yum!

51 points on Quiddler today

No debt, no extra r's

I've really enjoyed making bread from my new bread cookbook The Bread Bible, however when I ask the girls what bread they want me to make it is always vanilla bread.

I like variety.

Apparently they don't.

The vanilla challah bread I make is delicious. The recipe calls for a vanilla egg wash on top which gives it a nice golden vanilla flavored crust. So yummy! We also make vanilla butter to put on the bread (butter, powdered sugar, vanilla). Erik even made vanilla almond butter to spread on the bread. Yum! Still - I'd like to make something else! I made beer cheese bread the other day but they didn't want it. This is becoming an obsession!

Vanilla challah with vanilla butter

In other news:

1. We paid off our house. Oh yea!!!  I'm so excited that we have no debt. How awesome is that :). This really gives us freedom to buy a castle like Erik wants or travel the world like I want or rather to save more for our kids' college education.  To celebrate we are planning on going out to eat somewhere - possibly a Japanese steakhouse. I've only been to one once and thought it was really fun!
2. I went running and swimming tonight. Because I've been training for this triathlon I've started to fall in love with running again. When I go to the faculty symposium for a week in April I'll be bringing my running shoes since the hotel has a fitness center.
3. At spinning class last week the teacher played this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyx6JDQCslE&ob=av3e I seriously almost laughed out loud. This is too funny.
4. Integer only has one r. After teaching this basic programming class for the past two semesters this has become a little pet peeve of mine. One r, just one.
5. 83 points on quiddler today. I got to make the word "math" and the word "quiz"

news flash!

My sister Missy got engaged last night at the highly romantic Bob Evans!  I'm so excited for her. The girls were so excited they jumped up and down - especially when I told them they could be flower girls.

We really like Dave - he is a Christian who likes to play nerdy games. Really - what's not to love!?!

Congratulations Missy!

There goes the lights again.

Finals week has come and gone and I have survived it (barely...). I have no new classes this session which is a break from last session with 4 new classes! I do have 4 classes - 2 online, 2 onsite but they are all classes I have taught before so it shouldn't be too busy for me.

Next session in May and June I will be teaching C# and VBscript. I'm excited to teach those classes however the classes are Friday nights and Saturday mornings. This is during prime camping season - bummer!

Erik's birthday was Monday however he was so sick with a stomach virus that we didn't really celebrate. Later in the week when he was feeling better I made him a raspberry key lime pie (which he absolutely LOVED), beer cheese bread, and cheesy quesadillas for his birthday.

Lately it has been nice outside so we haven't had the fire going but I wanted to post this picture of Scruffles by the fire. He is normally camped out by the fire all the time. Scruffles loves the fire!

Scruffles' usual spot by the fire

Our small group served dinner at Ronald McDonald house and had a great time. There were so many families we served that we almost ran out of food. It is such a great ministry! I missed it because I was teaching but it's great that our small group can serve this way.

Our small group serving dinner to the families at Ronald McDonald House



Matthew's favorite activity is turning on and off the lights around our house. Sometimes we will go around the house and every light is on. He drags around his stool to each of the light switches so he can reach them. He is so adorable. I was in the shower yesterday and the lights kept turning on and off. Sometimes I just want the lights to stay on.

Matthew's favorite activity. Turning on and off the lights!



In other news:

1. Our Coo* book club picked a new book to read. The Windup Girl by Paolo B. It sounds interesting and there are big elephants in it so you can't go wrong there.
2. I'm also reading Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman. This is a really good book - love her writing.
3. On the Kindle Fire (yes I'm cool like that) I'm reading Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. This book has been on my list for quite a while and I like that I can take it anywhere. I go so many places ya know.
4.  I'm also reading Queen of Men by a super-awesome author who has been gifted with an exceedingly large cranium.
5. I was reading my friend's blog and realized she is reading books that help her become a better mother, parent and Christian. So I think I am going to look for a book like that. I wonder if GRRM writes a book like that....
6. 67 points on Quiddler today

Snap Circuits!

For Christmas, Jenna received the complete Ramona Quimby collection. She was so excited to receive these books and treasured them. She has already read them. I bought her a Junie B. Jones book. She flew through the entire book in 20 minutes.

She's a machine.

So I looked in my basement. Did I have anything Jenna could read? I had a Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (grades 6-8 reading level) and the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (grades 3-6 reading level).

She finished A Wrinkle in Time. She loved it and she knows what is going on and can explain it to me. Should I mention she is in first grade?  I don't even bother with the books she brings home from school. They are too easy for her.

She is also blowing math out of the water. In her math group she is adding three digit numbers and working with fractions better than some of my students.

To top it off she has tons of friends and really loves school. I hope she has this attitude for a long time.  It's so exciting that she loves school so much.

Sarah is doing great in school also. I can only imagine what she will be doing when she is in first grade (calculus, writing her college essays....)

Matthew is improving so much from the speech therapy.
Here is a list of words Matthew can say:
Mama
Dada
on
uh oh
num num (m&ms)
ee ha (tick tock)

Here is a list of signs Matthew can do:
bath
all done
elephant
more
shoes
belly
eye
milk

He's getting there!

Devry is hosting HerWorld pretty soon and I will be involved teaching the girls about circuits. This event is to encourage girls to pursue science, engineering, and technology as careers. I got snap circuits from Devry to test out and see hhow they worked.

The girls first snap circuit

Snap circuit with sound

The girls loved the snap circuits and I got to teach them about the flow of electricity and short circuits. It was a fun experience!

68 points on Quiddler today

My Greatest Love of All

Lent starts on Wednesday February 22. It is a time of fasting and sacrifice - an act of penitential self-denial.

This year I will be giving up something that will be harder for me to give up than coffee, pizza, candy, and even chocolate.

What is this beloved item you ask?

It is none other than peanut butter.



Oh peanut butter how I love you? Let me count the ways...

 I will also be giving up chocolate nut butter. So I can eat almond and cashew butter during lent but not chocolate almond butter.

Here is an example of my eating patterns:
Breakfast:  Cereal, toast with chocolate almond butter
Lunch: Pasta or whatever we are having for lunch, a reeces cup dipped in peanut butter/spoonful of peanut butter with M&Ms or hershey kisses dipped in it
Dinner: Peanut butter and honey sandwich, string cheese, banana (when I'm teaching). When I'm not teaching I'll eat whatever we are eating plus some form of peanut butter/chocolate nut butter with some other dessert combination.

I eat peanut butter or chocolate nut butter for EVERY meal. My day really isn't complete unless I have some form of nut butter.

This lent season will be difficult for me. But I can do it!  This past week since I've made the decision to give up peanut butter I've eaten so much peanut butter that I've made myself sick on occasion. PB overload baby!

In other news:

1. David and Becca are having a baby girl!  David tortured me for almost an hour trying to make me guess but he finally told Jenna (not me!) they are having a girl. Yipee!
2. Our book club finished Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. I really liked this series and am SO excited for the movie to come out.
3. I finished Watcher of the Dead by J.V.Jones. This is a fantastic series but the last book isn't written yet. On her website she admitted to being a slow writer so she's not sure when the next book will be published.
4. I just started Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman. I really enjoy her writing so am looking forward to this book.
5. I also started reading the Mercy by Beverly Lewis. This is the third book in the Rose trilogy. This series is about a boy who wants to go to college which is apparently taboo in the Amish culture. That's a bummer since I teach at a college.
6. Since I've signed up for the triathlon (which is in just a few weeks) I've gone running twice to practice. Both times I ran for 20 minutes at 6 miles/hr (if you are good at math that is 2 miles). This is definitely not competitive. Unfortunately I found out that the order of the triathlon is swimming, biking, running. I really wanted biking to be last since that is the easiest. At some point I'll have to practice swimming but I'm not worried about it since I know I can swim - I'm just slow. Really I guess I'm slow at everything :(.
7. I'm sad Whitney Houston passed away. I grew up listening to her music and just loved her. The songs I liked were Greatest Love of All and How Will I Know. 
8. 52 points in Quiddler today. I lost the Q

Pink Carnations and Red Roses

For Valentines day I decided to be all crafty due to Pinterest and have the girls make their own Valentines. I found this butterfly pattern on the site (pictured below), had the girls cut it out (see Sarah's cutting job below), decorate it and put a sucker in as the head of the butterfly. The picture on Pinterest was much cuter but this is pushing the limits of my craftiness anyway.

Cute butterfly craft from Pinterest

My version of butterfly craft.

 Both girls had Valentines parties at school. I always loved Valentines parties growing up. The girls loved looking through all their Valentines. Of course the girls got pencils. I never liked getting Valentines pencils. Seriously? Who wants a pencil?  Who ever REALLY WANTS a pencil? Not me.

Sarah's Valentines party at school. She is doing a Valentines craft also from Pinterest

Sarah reading a book to Scruffles

Sarah and Jenna with Valentines carnations they got from Daddy

Last year Erik bought the girls flowers for Valentines day. Purple flowers for Jenna and white flowers for Sarah. Sarah promptly told Daddy that she did NOT like white flowers. She even reminded him that she does NOT like white flowers. Who knows why? Anyway he bought them the same color pink carnations this year.

Erik got me red roses and a reeces peanut butter heart. He loves me!  He has gotten me roses every Valentines day even before we started dating.  I love roses and Erik!

I took a video of my manly husband chopping wood.  I have been also honing my wood chopping skills. Erik keeps telling me I need more speed and power but I think I have plenty of speed and power. You can be the judge.

85 points on Quiddler today

Arbonne vs. Erik

My neighbor sells Arbonne products. When Matthew was born she gave me some diaper rash cream that I love! It works really well and doesn't smell like diaper rash cream (bonus!).

Since I loved it so much, I bought some more Arbonne diaper rash cream.

$14 for 5 oz

Seriously?? For diaper rash cream?

I have a friend who has made her own laundry detergent and other cleaners. Could we make diaper rash cream?

Erik took on this challenge since it is healthier and cheaper than storebought products. Diaper rash cream is not nearly as exciting as Heather's homemade products but is less than $14 and works well (picture above)!

Diaper Rash Cream
5 oz olive oil
1 oz grated beeswax
1/2 oz zinc oxide powder

Thanks Erik! Although we hopefully only have a year and a half of diapers left.

In other news:

1. I registered for an indoor triathlon. I won't be competitive but it will still be fun! I'm doing the triathlon with one of my friends. Hopefully I can jump in the hot tub after it's over. Swimming, running, and biking all in one day!


2. Our Coo* book club has finished reading Catching Fire and are moving onto MockingJay. This is a good series and I'm looking forward to the movie.


3. This semester I have two onsite classes and two online classes. The demographic in my onsite classes is rather uniform. In fact, in my two onsite classes there is only one female student. I have been trying to come up with interesting examples and decided to use football (since I think guys know about football). And I've decided that I love Tim Tebow. Yep. Really do. So my class jokes a lot about Tim Tebow and he is in pretty much every example we use. I even had to cheer for the Broncos when they played the Patriots even though Erik is a serious Patriots fan! Too bad he's not in the superbowl.


4. 61 points on quiddler today
   
   

My friend

Comfort. That is the word I am holding onto right now for my good friend. She is 31 years old and has two children (7 and 4) and was just diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. Last week was the worst week of her life as she said.  Her 7 year old is Jenna's best friend at school.

What is strange is that she has no risk factors. No family history, she does not drink, smoke or consume any caffeine. She exercises regularly (goes to spinning class with me!), and she does not have diabetes. Those are the risk factors. So this was a complete shock.

It's strange how cancer works like this. It is indiscriminate.

So I'm praying for comfort for her now.

Her website is: http://thelittlelump.blogspot.com/

Hello, Mr. Dillinger. Thanks for coming back early

Tron debuted in 1982 as an animated sci-fi movie about a programmer who was sucked into a computer and had to battle the Master Control Program (MCP) in order to come back. They may or may not have intended the movie to be funny.

It was funny.

And classic.

We had a Tron party this weekend complete with Tron food. Jon and Michelle Cook, Amanda, and Erik and I got our nerd on and watched both Tron and Tron Legacy. We stayed up until 2am but it was worth it!

Here are some pictures of our awesome nerdy tron food.

Tron cookies - yes those are circuits (good and plenty circuits!). Made by the Cooks

Tron cake with edible silver fondant and glowsticks on top! Made by the Cooks

Motherboard wheat crackers made by Erik

Motherboard brownies (notice the tootsie roll capacitors). Made by me! Note: those graham crackers got nice and stale very quickly - yum!

Prior to our Tron party everyone (minus me) in our family got really sick. Jenna and Sarah both missed school, Matthew was sick, and Erik was lying on the couch for a day moaning. 

It was bad.  There was a lot of  sickness. Luckily I did not get sick. We think Erik got so sick because the steroids he was on due to the poison ivy weakened his immune system.

Sarah, home from school sick, lying by the fire taking a nap.

 This week (in the midst of the sickness) we got a cord of wood. Here it is in our driveway. Now we have a lot of wood to burn over the winter to stay warm.

cord of wood

65 points on quiddler today!

Maybe I'm the talkative one

Our little Lady bug is now 7 years old. She had a fabulous birthday party with 11 talkative 7 year old girls in attendance. So talkative that Erik had to hide in the computer room for awhile.

At Jenna's birthday party the girls did a lady bug craft from Oriental Trading Company. The craft was fun but required a lot of gluing. Thus it was a little messy.

Now I am one of three people in charge of the nursery/toddler ministry at church. When I went to Oriental Trading I went a little wacko and bought a ton of crafts for the nursery/toddler ministry. They really have tons of cheap, cute crafts for little kids.

Hard at work on the crafts

The girls loved the craft

Jenna's Birthday cake - red velvet cake with chocolate frosting (so it had lady bug colors!)

In other news:

1. Our Coo* book club finished the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and we are now currently reading Catching Fire. This series is really good and Erik and I have been discussing our theories about what we think will happen. This is a great read!
2. I am also reading Watcher of the Dead by J.V. Jones. This is book 4 of the Sword of Shadows series and I highly recommend this series.
3. Finally Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan came in from the library. When I reserved it initally I was number 700 something so it took a long time for me to get this book. Just like the first Percy Jackson series, I'm enjoying this series as well (this is book 2 in the Heros of Olympus series).
4. I'm also reading the Case for Christ as well. This is well-written and engaging.
5. So those are the books I'm currently reading. I'm also debating another series. Erik is reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. He thinks I'll like it.  I just don't know - the first book was so broad I'm not sure if I'll like it. I'm still deciding. Erik keeps saying "but Tim is reading it" since he thinks I'll read whatever Tim reads.
6. Matthew is now walking, however he is not talking. Help Me Grow is an organization that will give him free speech therapy starting February 1st. I hope he will start talking soon. Now he does the "more", "all done", and "shoes" signs but that's it. The girls were basically talking in full sentences at 19 months and he is not saying much at all. I hope they help him.
7. This semester has been tough and I'm barely keeping my head above water. I wasn't sure how I was doing since I am teaching 4 new classes!  However one of the online deans called me today and said I was doing an awesome job and wants me to talk about my experience to all the online faculty in Engineering and IS on a conference call in a few weeks. Wow! That is pretty exciting. So I guess they like me :).
8. And I'm on the committee planning the faculty symposium in Chicago in April.  I'm excited about this since I'll get to meet and work with faculty across the system.
9. Our church has changed their name to Gateway Community Church. I'm pretty excited about our name change. We even had a big party to celebrate. We changed the lighting during our worship (pretty colored lights!) and got fancy TV's and touch screen computers out in the main area. It is pretty awesome.
10. We are starting a 6 week series on the End times in our Tuesday night Bible study. We've had so much discussion from doing the Heaven series by Randy Alcorn that everyone wanted to study the End times.
11. This weekend we are going to have an awesome Tron party with friends.  We are going to stay up late and watch both Tron movies and eat Tron food. It should be a blast!
12. I had a lot to say!
13. 76 points on Quiddler and I got to make the word "teasing"

Chopped Basket 1

Chopped is a TV show on the Food Network in which 4 chefs compete for $10,000. They get a basket with all kinds of crazy foods in it and have to make a coherent dish out of it.

I thought this would be fun to do. So I got a Chopped Basket for Erik. It contained:

• Tilapia
• A pomegranate
• Crunchy potato topping
• An onion
• Mike & Ike candy

Now you may look at that list and say "HUH?" But that is exactly the kind of crazy things in chopped baskets on the show (well maybe not exactly - they might have squid and chocolate covered raisins but believe me the combinations are weird).

Erik's chopped basket

 Erik transformed this odd assortment of food into a really good dish. He encrusted the tilapia with a mixture of onion, potato topping, and crushed up gold fish crackers (yes this is Erik remember).  Then he made a sauce out of pomegranate seeds and Mike&Ikes. He put this mixture in refrigerated crescent roll dough to make a side dish. Then garnished the plate with more of the sauce. 

The sauce was surprisingly good. The whole dish was actually delicious. The tilapia needed a little more salt but other than that I thought it was great!  I am looking forward to doing more chopped baskets - this was fun!

Erik's dish plated for us!

On Friday Erik's poison ivy had gotten so bad that his right eye was swollen shut. It was all over his face and hands and he had trouble doing simple tasks with his hands.  This was not good.

So on Saturday I pulled the car out of the driveway to go to church and the tire blew.  Bummer. I drove it back into the garage slowly and carefully. Erik really couldn't change the tire because of his horrible poison ivy. And I can't budge those lug nuts to save my life (Gina != strong)

So Erik took the other car to the emergency room and got a steroid injection in his butt. Yes his butt. His poison ivy was so bad they couldn't put it in his arm because the dose was too strong. Wow! Now he is on steroid pills for 15 days. He looks and feels so much better. His hands hurt but today we were able to put the spare tire on the car.  It required some fancy maneuvering for both of us since his hands still hurt but he was able to loosen the lug nuts enough for me to get them off.  Hopefully they are tight enough to drive the spare to the tire place!

Note: we did the chopped basket last weekend before the poison ivy attack

93 points on quiddler today!

The FIRE!

Last Friday I came home from Zumba with Sarah and Matthew in the car. I pulled in the driveway as Sandy my mail lady was delivering a package. She said "I hope you get something good!". I said "it's probably for my husband since he is always ordering things."

Little did I know.

Erik looked at the package and said "you're going to like this". It was from J.Cooper. Huh?  Erik said it was an early birthday present. Apparently waaaay early since my birthday is in July.

I opened it.

Oh my!

It was a brand new Kindle Fire. Awww yea! 

We have been addicted to our new device. Actually Sarah has been addicted to it. Fortunately she hasn't installed any apps yet .  The girls call it an ipad because they are used to Uncle Dave and Aunt Becca's ipad.

Thank you Joel! 

What should I get Joel for his birthday?  A trip to Europe? A bugatti veyron? Head reduction surgery? Lifetime supply of reeces peanut butter cups? The sky's the limit!

I got some pictures from Becca from our time at the in-laws for Christmas I thought I'd post. David has made a cross stitch for every one of his nieces and nephews. He finished this really cute one for Sarah.  I didn't get a good picture though. If I was awesome at photoshop I'd fix it up.



Cross stitch created by David for Sarah



Uncle David and Sarah making Christmas ornaments

Me and Jenna making Christmas ornaments

Grandpa's 3 level train set. The girls love it!

Uncle David reading a Weird Al children's book to the girls

My favorite picture. Grandma's reaction when she saw the ultrasound of Dave and Becca's baby!

Since Erik has been crazily chopping wood for our new fireplace, he's been outside a lot. Touching lots of vines and things. And now he looks like a monster. His face and arms are completely covered with poison ivy. Every night he wakes up in the  middle of the night unable to sleep because he's so itchy. So he takes a bath in baking soda. I feel so bad for him.

I haven't been sleeping either but that's because my classes are killing me this session. I have 4 classes with 2 new preps. Three of them are an obscene amount of grading. Just trying to stay on top of them I'm up until after 1am every night. Yikes!

Please note: Jenna starts selling girl scout cookies on the 14th Please order soon :)

39 points on quiddler today. Not good :(

Grapefruit and Brioche

For Christmas Joel and Megan got me the Bread Bible. David had previously got me The Bread Machine Cookbook by the same author and I loved it so much I wanted the other book.  From the Bread Machine cookbook I've made many recipes (usually I just use the dough cycle and bake them in the oven so I can control it better and prevent the funky hole in the bottom of the bread). Anyway, I've made brioche several times from my bread machine book. In the Bread Bible, the recipe for brioche rolls requires the dough to rest 16 hours. Wow! I was curious as to why the dough would need to rest so long and what difference it would make.

Oh my!

These were the best rolls I've ever made! Restaurant quality for sure. They melted in your mouth. While you can't really taste them from the picture - they were truly divine.

Also in the picture you will notice the MASSIVE bag of grapefruit.

Brioche = Yum, Grapefruit !=Yum

Erik found this bag of grapefruit at Meijer for only $5. He is not on the grapefruit diet. However he has been eating 1-2 grapefruits every day. He's a little obsessed.



I don't like grapefruit.

In fact, I actively dislike grapefruit. This is how I feel about grapefruit (I wouldn't use the bad word though).

Every year we decorate a Gingerbread house for Christmas. We decorated this one after Christmas but it was still fun. Jenna and I love to decorate the house but Sarah spends the whole time asking if she can eat the candy....

Our Gingerbread house

 Matthew has reached 18 months now and is not talking. We had him evaluated by the Delaware County Help Me Grow and he qualified for speech and physical therapy. So we will have therapists to our house once a week helping Matthew talk. I wonder if they could get our girls to talk less....

If you are wondering if he's walking, check this out :).


Daddy reading to all the kids



93 points on Quiddler today