Good Grades Date

Will's grade card came back with good marks this period.  So another celebratory date was in order!  This time it was daddy's turn.  They dressed up (matchy-matchy) and hit up Five Guys for lunch before catching a movie.  It can be assumed that this was a great afternoon for them both.  ;)

While the boys were out, Sophie set up another block castle on TOP of the dining room table.  Not my first choice, but she looked so cute up there working so intently.  

And then us girls had a little tea party lunch with passion fruit tea.

Hoping both kids took away great memories of this day.  It was a high point of the weekend for all four of us.  ;)

Bobbing for Apples

Halloween night was rainy and windy this year.  Trick or treating got rescheduled to the weekend and we spent a fun evening at home as a family.  The night was highlighted by a new-to-our-kids fall activity:  bobbing for apples!  It was so much fun and is sure to become an annual tradition now.  

We brought up the galvanized bucket and I did my best to clean it a bit as it normally stores sports balls, baseball gloves, etc. in our basement.  I used a pitcher to fill it with water and dropped in four of the smallest apples that Will and I picked recently at Erie.  Perfect size and firmness for little people attempting capture with teeth in a bucket of water.  Haha!

Soph chose (on her own) to put on a swimsuit and Will just took off his shirt in preparation.

Let the game begin! 

I adore all of the expressions of the onlooking child! 

Look at her seriousness! 

First success! 

Enjoying the reward. 

Sophie continued to have a hard time but never gave up trying! 

Finally, Craig cupped his hand under an apple to give her something to push it against and she found success.

Way to go, baby girl! 

Going in for round two.  (This turned out to be a substantial part of dinner.  Haha!) 

And then at the end, because our kids just LOVE to be naked, they stripped down to their skivvies and birthday suit respectively and jumped in to dance in the "tub". 

We followed this up with a bath, jammies and the Charlie Brown Halloween on TV.

Kids in the Kitchen

Quick blog update:  I tried the restoring deleted accounts page once more yesterday and this time it gave me the message that "the account has been deleted and it is no longer recoverable".  It's just so unfair.  I know we made the mistake and that it's our fault to begin with.  But if recovering an accidentally deleted account is ever possible, then the system Google has put in place to do so should WORK for everyone that is able to provide the information prompted.  Why has all of my hard work been thrown away because of an "internal error" on their page when no one is available to help you resolve that problem???  It makes me sick when I think about all that has been lost and all the time I could have been sleeping/using my time more wisely.  So I'm just trying not to think about it.

Craig suggests I go back and delete all the "frivolous" posts:  the book posts, the dinner posts, etc.  But I love those!  I know I've said it so many times before, but the time we spend at the dinner table is collectively my very favorite moments & memories with my family - the good and the bad.  Those posts aren't just about the food I put on the table, they are pictures of my family sitting at our table, setting our table, smiling or pouting with food on their faces, tasting their first blueberries as infants, savoring our fresh strawberry ice cream from the berries we picked earlier in the day, trying a new dish from an unusual vegetable that arrived in our CSA bag.  You can see their faces looking older, hair getting longer, chubby toddler cheeks disappearing as time passes.  I want those pictures to be a part of our story too!

But realistically, if I'm going to attempt to re-upload pictures to some of my most important previous posts AND keep up with new & current stuff, it just doesn't make sense to continue the dinner posts or to revive the old ones.  Here and there, I'll still write about some of our favorite recipes and post pictures from the dinner table, but nothing of a routine nature anymore.

Turning over a new leaf...

Here's a favorite salad I made over and over this summer.  So simple and so good when tomatoes and green beans are in season.  Beans are lightly blanched.  Pitted kalamata olives, halved.  Hard boiled eggs, sliced.  A drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Optional:  a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.  AMAZING.  And filling.

The rest of these pictures are of the kids (mostly Sophie) helping in the kitchen.  She loves to be in there with me, always grabbing her stool and dragging it up to the counter to offer her assistance.

This night (back in September) we were making homemade graham crackers, a la Catherine McCord of Weelicious.

She helped me roll out the dough between layers of parchment

, I sliced the flattened dough into rectangles and she poked in the fork holes.  We make a good team.

Our finished product.

On this night, I boiled whole, small, red-skin potatoes for about 20 minutes and then spread them out on an oiled cookie sheet.  I gave Sophie a cup and she smashed each one down into a flattened disc, like a pancake.

She also used a melon baller to scoop out balls of watermelon for our dinner.

Our potatoes were drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and put into a 425 degree oven for about 25 more minutes to crisp into deliciousness.  (Idea from Pinterest.)

Also for dinner, we had our favorite mini meatloaves from Cooking Light.

Voila!  Dinner!

This was something I've wanted to try for a long time, but just kept putting it off.  Pumpkin cinnamon rolls from my favorite Smitten Kitchen.  Don't know why, but I was intimidated.  The rising times make it take awhile, but the actual work is not difficult or time-consuming.  The stand mixer does all the kneading work with the dough hook (my favorite discovery).  This is the dough all rolled out and ready for filling.

Brushed with butter and sprinkled very generously with a combo of cinnamon and both brown and white sugars, and rolled up for slicing carefully with a serrated knife.

Another rise and then into the oven, where they plump up and fill in the gaps that were initially between them when placed in the pan.  And the smell?  I'm sure I don't even need to explain how amazing it was.

Soph helped me mix up the cream cheese frosting.

And we spread it over the warm rolls.  Mmmm.  Please give this recipe a try!  It's soooo good.

Cottage cheese pancakes happened one morning this weekend.  Cracking eggs is a skill we're still learning.  ;)

Will doesn't offer to help as much anymore, but cracking eggs is still a challenge that intrigues him.  He asked to be a part of this. 

We are definitely a breakfast-loving bunch.