Faith, Family, Food and Fun

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!!!

We brought the New Year in with our friends Kent and Mary Beth and their family. Guitar Hero for the Wii was the entertainment for the night!

get a look at the neighbor kid! He can't BELIEVE what he's hearing/seeing!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Sandy

Fun in Northern California

Oh! The weather has been delightful! We are enjoying our time in California! Here are some pictures from yesterday!

Rachel and Lila

Ethan, Joe and Ben

Ron and Kent.

attempting to "fix" the solar calendar. Before we left, they put it back where it was!

Isn't it beautiful?

getting fish food (and trying to keep the ducks away). Ron found a solution to the food stealing ducks...

Kent and Ben

Just lovely!

Sandy

Well, our holiday travel plans changed, but we have managed to get lots of miles under our belt in the past few days! Ron's Aunt Dorothy died on Christmas Eve, so we changed our plans to drive to the west coast, and instead drove to Ohio for her Saturday funeral. It was good for us to be there! We got to visit with lots of our family members. We stayed with my Aunt Lila Mae and Uncle Harold on Friday night, and then on Saturday met up with my sister who took Rachel and Ethan during the funeral. Then we went to my sister's on Saturday night. Sunday we drove to Ft. Wayne to spend the night with Ron's brother and his family. What fun we had! On Monday we hit the road towards Chicago where we stored our car and took an interesting van ride to Midway airport where we caught a 6:30 flight to Minneapolis. From there we flew to...

San Francisco, California!

It was VERY late (as in 5:30 am our time) when we got to bed on Monday night/Tuesday morning. But we hit the floor running on Tuesday morning, and did San Francisco in a day!

we saw a fella catch this guy!

We drove down some amazingly hilly (STEEP!) streets.

took a drive down the crookedest street in the world! WOW!

We saw the sea lions at Pier 39.

We saw Alcatraz.

and had to watch the sea lions some more!

We ate at Chinatown, where Ron had a really cool looking and yummy supper!

We rode a cable car.

and headed north on 101 to visit our friends Kent and Mary Beth!

Sandy

Monday, December 22, 2008

High School Band Concert

We attended Caleb and Cameron's band concert at the high school tonight. It was a very enjoyable evening! Caleb on tuba and Cameron on trumpet. Great job, guys!

Sandy

Sunday, December 21, 2008

A Cookie baking day (a recipe!)

Well, with no church and it being too cold to do much of anything else, Rachel and Ethan and I baked cookies today. This is the second round of the Cappuccino Royales this year. The first batch disappeared before I could give any away on trays. They are easy, and delicious! I got the recipe from my PW friend Marg. She recommended them, and I'll second that recommendation.

CAPPUCCINO ROYALES
2 cups melted butter
1/4 cup instant coffee
2 tea. vanilla
2 tea. brandy or rum extract
3 cups white sugar
3 eggs
2 tea. baking soda,
1 teas. baking powder
3 cups chocolate chips (you can use either semi or milk)
5 1/2 cups of flour (pack the flour into each cup)

Melt the butter, and add the coffee and vanilla, extract and sugar. Stir till combined. Add eggs, baking soda and powder and chips. Stir till combined. Add the flour, one cup at a time and blend each one in well.
Form dough into walnut size balls (I made them a bit smaller...used my Pampered Chef smallest cookie scoop) (you can dip in sugar if you want a somewhat sweeter cookie(I did, and we really like them this way!) ) and place on greased cookie sheet (0r parchment paper) and then flatten. Bake at 360 degrees for 9-11 minutes. Let them cool slightly on sheet before transferring to racks to cool.

We also made some of Grandma K's Christmas cutout cookies, too. MMMMM....