Why So BLUE?

Crayola coloured bubbles, that's why. Fun to play with... messy to clean up. And this was after I washed his face which was blue AND orange.

Saying Grace

We said this grace throughout Easter:

Lord Jesus,
Fill our heads with hope,
Fill our bellies with food,
And fill our hearts with joy.
Alleluia. Amen.

Just when the 50 days of Easter ended Daniel figured out the actions. It is so awesome to SEE him praying that we have kept saying this grace for most meals. Though he does tend to get stuck on "Heads with hope."

Time to pray...

... fill our heads with hope...

...our bellies with food...

... and our heads with hope!

Oh, and Daniel does say the words: "Alleluia. Amen!"

From A Box

So I tried making some rose sauce for tortellini. Tomatoes, parmesan, cream, even bacon. Delicious! But would the boys eat it? No. But they will scarf two plates each of Loney's Rose Sauce. It's powder you mix with milk and margarine. So much for homemade is better.

Home-grown Veggies... And More!

Well, our garden is coming along really nicely. Today the boys and I were checking out what was growing and we had this conversation.

Jacob: I see tomatoes growing!
Me: Yup. What else do you see?
Jacob: I see lettuce and carrots...
Me: Wow.
Jacob: ... And sausages, and bacon, and juice!

We have the best garden ever!

A Second First Birthday

So we had a good group of family over for a potluck BBQ to celebrate Daniel's birthday. It was wonderful to have everyone together...

I really didn't want to make a cake again, for several reasons:
- In my head I was calling this a "Family BBQ" because I didn't want to go overboard for a first birthday with two parties, and Daniel already had a party.
- Planning a birthday cake is stressful.
- Kids don't really like cake. I realized this the other weekend because none of the kids ate their cupcakes. Sure they licked the icing and took a couple of bites, but really, they would have preferred a cookie or ice cream.
- I already don't have enough plates for everyone to eat supper, much less eat dessert too. And also forks.

So with all that in mind, and a comment from Jeff the previous week, I set about to plan a special dessert...

Yum.

That's right. Ice cream sandwiches! The other week at the grocery story Jeff said something to the effect of  "I really like ice cream sandwiches. I bet you could make them." And I said something like "Probably." A friend of mine makes AWESOME cookies called "Award Winning Chocolate Chip Cookies" so I got her recipe and proceeded to make a batch of giant cookies. The recipe says it makes 72 and I made about half that.  I was short on chocolate chips, but figured with the ice cream it wouldn't matter. These were so good! I couldn't believe that there was even one left over that I got to eat the next day! The boys just got cookies without the ice cream, but boy were they happy...

That cookie is as big as his face!
But oh so delicious!

I really don't know how many cookies Jacob ate for dessert.
But for supper all he had was chips.

Happy Birthday Baby!

So my Daniel is now one year old! I find this amazing and yet unbelievable. I wanted to celebrate with a car theme cake. (Not the movie Cars. Just plain old cars.) He really likes to play with hotwheels cars (we called them dinky cars as kids, I wonder what they are called now?) .
Really good friends of ours had a baby boy (Jonah) the day after Daniel was born, so we decided to celebrate their birthdays together. So a week before their actual birthdays we got together for supper and cake. Now how to make a cars cake for two? I surfed the internet for awhile and found some neat ideas. I don't claim to be a great cake decorator. I mostly have no skills - just the instructions that came with the four pack of piping tips I bought.
Anyways... I put a few ideas together and here is the cake.

Get it?
They are tied for first!

Before digging in.
The cupcakes were for the other kids at the party.
This way all this kids got cars (but the birthday ones were way cooler).

I think they spent as much time chewing on their race cars as smushing cake around.

Jonah thinks birthdays are awesome and delicious.
Happy first birthday Sweetie!

Daniel thinks he should always get cake for supper.
Happy first birthday Little Boy!

Stay tuned... we had our families over for a birthday BBQ and although I did not make a cake, I made something that was way more delicious...

Curry, Curry, Everywhere

So I found a recipe called "Slooooow Cooker Curry." That's right, sloooow. Anyways, we don't eat a lot of curry (ok, really none at all), but for some reason this recipe caught my eye and I really wanted to try it. Potatoes, red onion, crushed tomatoes, curry, cinnamon, garlic, and chicken... What was not to like? So the recipe concluded with "serve with rice and naan." Rice seemed a little redundant since the chicken is cooked on a bed of potatoes. But naan bread... Yummy! So as the curry was cooking I found a recipe for naan bread. It is neat to cook because I had to preheat the oven as hot as it could go, with the baking pans in there, and then toss the bread in and cook for five minutes. I did get mildly distracted and when I pulled the bread out one was burnt. A minute later my fire alarm went off. I was worried because they were all really puffy, and I think naan bread is more of a flatbread, but when I cut into them they flattened right up and looked like the picture next to the recipe. I even ate the leftover burnt one with pizza sauce to dip the next day. The leftover curry chicken, however, is still sitting in the fridge.