One ring to rule them all ...

Hee hee ... I couldn't resist staging this one day when I was picking up the toys. All sorts of quotes come to mind.

Who will Lemon Meringue choose? R2D2? Or the stormtrooper?

Happy Birthday #4, Stephanie!

We had such a wonderful party for Stephanie this year. There were probably about 30 people - moms, dads, siblings and friends. Stephanie picked Strawberry Shortcake for her decorations which was funny because she doesn't have ANY Strawberry Shortcake toys at all. Ha ha. We had a bunch of activities for the kids to do outside and then we also did "Make-Your-Own-Pizzas". One of the other foodie big hits was the pink lemonade. It was just Minute Maid frozen pink lemonade, but to keep with the theme, I just added some fresh, sliced strawberries. The strawberries actually added a nice flavor. We went through 4 cans of the lemonade! It was "berry" popular. (hee hee  ... I couldn't resist).

I found a nice recipe for strawberry cake that was extremely similar to Cook's yellow cake recipe. I used the strawberry cake for Strawberry Shortcake's head and yellow cake for the rest. It would have been nice to try a cream cheese frosting to go with the strawberry cake, but in the interest of time/energy/etc, I just went with buttercream.

New outfits from the Morabitos! Thank you!

I was up very late getting stuff ready for the party and so, my brain wasn't working so good by the time we got to the "blowing out the candles" part of the party. Stephanie said that she wanted me to put the candles in Strawberry Shortcake's shoes. I thought it would be cute for her to hold one, so I put one in one of her hands. Christian practically dove in and stopped me from mindlessly putting the last candle in her other hand!!! Ha ha! It was hilarious that I almost "crucified" Strawberry Shortcake. Our pastor, Ryan, was there with his kids and got a kick out of it, too. I am so glad he has a good sense of humor!

Dance Class

We were so fortunate to find a free dance class for ages 2 and up. The teacher is a Christian and encourages the students to worship God with their dancing. It is a really nice environment and the teacher is doing a great job. The girls are learning a lot - more about social interaction and structure at this point, but it's all good.

These pictures are from their first class. This past Tuesday was their third class and the teacher encouraged the moms to stay out of the room. I was worried about Erica, but she actually didn't seem to miss me much and did great. Stephanie also did much better (she was having some focus issues) until she bumped into another girl and got a rug burn. Other than that, though, it is still going well.

Dallas Heritage Museum

We spent an afternoon at the Dallas Heritage Museum (open air museum with historical buildings/houses) and got to hear a group of folks (no professionals as far as I could tell - just musicians with a common interest in folk music) playing "Old Time Music". The music was great, but the girls were having a difficult day so we weren't able to take in the whole museum. We'll have to go back now that the weather is much nicer.

Vroom Vroom!

Erica went through a phase where she LOVED to sit in the driver's seat of the car and pretend to drive. Luckily this phase ended about the time that I didn't realize that she turned the lights on and the battery got drained launching us into a two week long saga of car woes - affecting both of our cars and a lot of our money! Ugh.

I remembered the "vehicles" that Mom would set up for Allison and I and figured that would be a safer/cheaper approach. I think it is funny that Stephanie wasn't interested at all in being the driver.

New backpacks

Our A/C broke and we were driven from the house due to the heat. We ended up at an outlet mall with a Hallmark store that was going out of business. We found these bags way in the back almost as if they were forgotten. As soon as I saw them, I knew exactly what they were made for - stuffed animals (at least that is what makes the most sense to me). I assumed that they were going to be pretty expensive, so I grabbed one planning on giving it to Stephanie for her birthday. It ended up only being $6!!! So, I grabbed another for Erica. They were an instant hit! (I couldn't wait for their birthdays to share them! Ha ha!)

Gluten Free Challenge

A friend of mine is married to a man with celiac's disease and all of their children have various levels of it as well. Their oldest son is in high school now and is playing football. So, she shared her frustration with me with coming up with meals for him that he could eat between school, practice, games, etc. So, I set out to recreate my "kolaches" with gluten free dough. Since I am pretty comfortable with my egg filling, I thought I'd try a more "dinner-like" filling and went with pot roast.

I used a Gluten Free French bread dough recipe. It is a yeasted dough, but I found that it really didn't need to rise like conventional dough does. Without the gluten, I couldn't wrap the filling up in the dough like I do with my other recipe. This dough was mushy and I had to mold it into the muffin tin. I filled it up with the pot roast mixture and then patted more dough on top. I did use some egg white to seal it, but since the dough is so mushy, I don't think I needed to do that. They actually turned out much better than I exptected. The top dough and the bottom melded together and made a perfectly sealed "pocket". I did drizzle a little of the pot roast broth on top of a few and we found that it helped make it a bit more moist since the other ones were a little on the dry side.

For the pot roast mixture, I just followed Cook's Illustrated pot roast recipe the day before. I seperated the veggies, meat and broth. The next day, I chopped the carrots, potatoes and meat into smaller pieces (more bite sized). Then, I browned some onions in a little oil, carmelized the potatoes and carrots and then tossed in the meat. I may have added a little dried thyme as well. Then I just spooned this mixture into the dough filled tins.