Painted toes and a painted tongue

Upon arriving in the US I promptly went with my best friend Cara to have a pedicure. The Vietnamese woman who painted the little design on my toes also added a little bling. Cute huh? James asked if I had a fungus? Yes, he is just that silly.
One of Jared's first purchases, besides books and a Starbucks Vanilla Frap was a fun dip. He loves that candy. You dip the white stick into the powder and lick or suck it off. The result is a colored tongue.
And yet again James had to make a comment - he asked Jared if he had licked my toes! What a nice dad.

Our new little fire starter and a visit to Jal

My sister Audrey just had a baby girl. Her name is Kira Cene' (pronounced like Rene'). Caleb, when he first saw her name pronounced it Kira "SEEN". So her nickname given by the boys is Firestarter. On the way to see her for the first time Jared said, "All right mom, time to go see our little firestarter." With cousins like Caleb & Jared she is sure to be a firecracker at least!

Me, Aunt Angy with baby Kira Cene'
Grandma Debbie, Aunt Angy, Audrey, Caleb, Jared, Martin and the star of the show: KIRA
KIRA
Jared and baby Kira
Caleb & baby Kira
Grammie & Kira
close-up of Kira

Ice cream with Aunt Peggy and 42 with Papa

Today we picked up Aunt Peggy and headed to McDonald's for some ice cream. Papa ate his at the house and decided to take a nap while we were gone. We visited for a few moments then headed back to the house for a rousing game of 42!

Jared and Papa practically wiped the floor with Peggy & Caleb for the first rounds. Then Caleb and Aunt Peggy started out the next round by winning 3 or 4 games in a row. Aunt Peggy said she smelled a "skunk" coming.

Provider's Pantry

On Saturday morning we got up and headed to the church for Provider's Pantry food distribution day. We helped unload the pallets, set up the tables and take the food boxes out to people's cars.Caleb carrying the meat boxes into the church.
Jared carrying a food box out to someone's car.
Some of today's helpers: Patsy, Wanda, Lawanna and Brenda
tables set up and ready to fill the boxes
Patsy, Jared and Brenda
Caleb, Patsy and Brenda
Caleb & Jared with Granny & Pops
Jared & Caleb with Granny!
Jared helping to unload the pallet and bring boxes in.

Caleb carrying out a fruit box.

Pearl's 72nd Birthday Party...

the 72 candles lit (you can click on any photo to see it larger - was having problems loading the photos so I had it load them as small photos.)
the blowing out of the candles
the smoke that caused the alarm to go off

Peggy & Pearl

the boys and Peggy & Pearl being silly

the boys, Peggy & Pearl trying to be "normal"

Caleb & Jared with Granny...

My sister-in-law Peggy and I made a from scratch German Chocolate cake for my mother-in-law Pearl's birthday cake. Jared and Peggy added the 72 candles to the cake and prelit them for ease of relighting during the "party". After eating dinner we brought out the cake, relit the candles and I carried the HOT cake to the table. Pearl huffed & she puffed and she BLEW the candles out. That is all but the trick candles which kept relighting. There was so much smoke from the blown out candles that the smoke alarm actually went off. Everyone was laughing and trying to not cough. Pieces of cake were cut and passed around - YUMMY delicious!!

after the cake

Best chocolate chip cookies - EVAH!

No kidding! I just made these cookies today and they are beautiful and OH MY GRAVY tasty!

All you have to do is tweak the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips a little. Should I let you in on the secret?


HMMM, I don't know. I guess I shouldn't keep this important information to myself.

Okay, so here is what you need to do:

Brown all but 4 tbsps of the butter first. After browning pour the butter in a mixing bowl and add the reserved butter. Stir until melted. Cut the white sugar down from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup. Keep the brown sugar at 3/4 cup. Add the sugar to the melted butter and mix. Instead of 2 eggs ~ use 1 egg and 1 yolk and mix that into the butter/sugar mixture. Wait 3 minutes and mix again. Repeat twice. At this point the butter/sugar/egg mixture will be glossy and the sugar should be dissolved. Add in the flour/baking soda/salt mixture and then the chocolate chips. Using a cookie scoop set on baking sheet and bake about 11-14 minutes. It only took 10 minutes in my crazy Italian oven. Let cool on baking sheet at least 5 minutes or so before removing to cooking rack.

Voila ~ you have the best cookies ever! And they look so so pretty as well.

Geo-caching around Lago Fimone

We headed out to Lago Fimone (Lake Fimone) for some geocaching. It is approximately 5 km around the lake. We started out with the GPS ready to find 2 different caches. On our way around we came across this gorgeous family of swans. While I was taking photos of the swans Caleb was resting under the wisteria. Caleb in the wisteria
isn't he handsome?
mama swan and her little signets.



We never found our caches. The first one was about 1/3 of the way around the lake and then around 200 meters off the path. It lead into a muddy and heavily forested area. We decided we weren't risking ticks etc to go tramping uphill, into the unknown. We will go back and search again because we found a road that is sure to get us a bit closer to the cache. We continued on around the lake and just as we were 1/4 mile or so from where we parked we came across the parking area where the 2nd cache was supposed to be. We searched and searched and could not find that cache at all. Jared crawled into the bushes and searched around, we pulled back the foliage and James endured some stinging nettle.
the bushes we looked in and around.


It was all for naught since we found absolutely NOTHING. Oh well, it was a good walk. We were up against a very sure possibility of rain and so we hot-footed it around the lake. Just as we were giving up on the last cache it started to rain.