In the Kitchen: Hershey’s Cocoa Edition

Remember our Thursday night “In the Kitchen” posts awhile back.  Apparently we fell out of the habit after the Christmas holidays last year or at least if Addie and I were “in the kitchen”, I didn’t take any pictures to document our creations.  Since both boys have karate on Thursday nights, Addie and I have vowed to use that time to get back “in the kitchen” and see what trouble we can get into together. 

Addie has been listening to this audio book in the car the past few weeks:

She has been begging to make a chocolate cake.  Trying to be frugal and maybe a little more domesticated too (I am, afterall, a full-time stay at home mom this year.), I searched the Hershey’s website to find a perfect chocolate cake recipe.  I’ve had a canister of cocoa sitting in my pantry begging me to make something with it.  At last, we found a recipe (or picture rather) that Addie thought would be perfect for making a chocolate cake just like Betty Bunny’s cake in the story.  (I’m usually a Betty Crocker mix kinda girl.  If I have to add anything to a mix, it counts as homemade in my book.)

Here Addie is with her finished product.  She did most of the mixing, pour and even egg cracking all on her own.  I’m teaching her how to measure everything but still do most of that for her.  Since she took charge of most of the process, we had a rather messy kitchen and messy hands (mine included) so I didn’t get to take any “during” pictures.

It was pretty yummy.  The icing is more of a glaze, which is why it is running off the cake and the entire thing is pretty rich but overall pretty good.  Addie did point out that it wasn’t exactly like Betty Bunny’s cake.  Our cake was missing the red flowers with the green center.  I made a round layer cake, what more can you ask for?

Since we were already messy and in the kitchen, we also decided to make some Cocoa Cookies.  Again Addie did a lot of the mixing, but we had to let the dough sit overnight in the frig to firm up.  So, we woke up early Friday morning, got the boys off to school and work, took the dogs for a walk and came back home to finish up our baking. 

Here she is rolling the dough balls in powdered sugar before we pop them in the oven.

The finished product:

These were okay.  Not as rich as the cake, but if you like chocolate cookies this would probably be a good recipe to try.  I’m not really a huge fan of chocolate cake or cookies, which is one reason we made them.  Perhaps I can stay away from them?

I’m glad we were able to take the time to get back “in the kitchen”.  Working in the kitchen with multiple generations seems to be a tradition of the past.  I’m hoping we can bring it back, at least in the Lacy Household!

Tooth Fairy

Remember the Shark Boy post for a few weeks back?  Well, the dentist gave his teeth about six weeks to loosen up and fall out and then they would need to be pulled.  Unfortunately they never loosened up enough on their own and Dalton had to have them pulled on the third day of school.  He did great!  He was cool, calm, collected and didn’t shed a single tear.  I, on the other hand, was a complete mess.  Mostly due to miscommunication at the dentist’s office but had to put my foot down when they tried to usher me out of the room while he was getting the procedure done.  Is this normal procedure for most pediatric dentists?  There was a three  year old little girl in the room across the hallway from us.  Her mom didn’t seem to have a problem leaving her in the care of almost complete strangers.  I say almost complete strangers because had I left Dalton alone, another dentist would have preformed the procedure.  A dentist we had never seen and didn’t even know my child’s name.  Needless to say, I’m glad a threw a tiny (okay, maybe large) fit and demanded to stay in the hallway and let them know we were willing to wait until our dentist had time to preform the procedure.  Perhaps I am over protective and will be forever labeled as one of those crazy over involved parents…..but I think I can live with that.  Hopefully Dalton and Addison can too!

Here is Dalton’s loot from the tooth fairy….2 gold dollar coins.  One for each tooth that was pulled.

Jules, our special elf assigned to our family by Santa himself, also paid the kids a little visit the next morning.  He brought Dalton a shark book complete with a second shark tooth necklace.  Dalton had one shark tooth necklace that Macca brought back as a gift from Hawaii, but Jules thought he could use a second since he did have two shark teeth.  Jules also brought Addie a Hello Kitty book and necklace for being so patient at the dentist and for helping to take such good care of her brother that afternoon.

Hopefully the teeth were pulled in time and the adult teeth can now move into their correct position.  We are praying that both kids escape braces in the future but the extra teeth leave little to be desired.  I guess time will tell.

We have a 2nd Grader!!!

The last week of summer vacation we were able to attend Meet the Teacher night at Dalton’s school.  He is still participating in the Dual Language Program and seems to love it.  One of the neat things about the program is that they attract quite a few male elementary teachers.  I’m not sure why, but I kinda like the idea of Dalton having a few male teachers early on.  He has Mr. Cortez this year and I think it is going to be a great fit (for both Dalton and myself).  He seems very organized, stern but soft spoken and appears to enjoy his job.  He claims to welcome parent into the classroom and was very receptive to my request to volunteer.

Here is our 2nd Grader on his first day of school!

One of these days I won’t be dressed in gym clothes in a picture.  However, that is the wardrobe I seem to wear 90% of the time.

We started a tradition of having ice cream for snack on the first day of school a few years back when I would pick up Clayton.  Dalton wasn’t even in school yet when the tradition started, but it seemed like we should continue it anyway.  We usually got out for ice cream but this year Dalton requested banana splits.  I’ve never been a fan of store bought banana splits, so we made our own at home this year.

Here are my cuties enjoying their big bowls of ice cream.

We are off to a great start of the 2012-2013 school year and look forward to all the memories that will be made.

Bowling Lessons

I took the kids bowling several times this summer.  Dalton absolutely loves to bowl on the Wii, but has decided the real thing isn’t near as much fun.  Something about gutter balls?!?  The bowling alley we frequent was offering 4 weeks of free bowling lessons, so we figured why not?  Blake took him the first week since I was working that morning.  He said it went well, but was pretty crowded so each kid only got to bowl a few frames.  We are hoping as the weeks pass that the crowd will thin out.  Overall I think Dalton had fun.

Summer Fun: Week 12

It’s the absolute LAST week of summer vacation.  I can’t believe how quickly the time has come and gone.  At the end of the this week, we will officially have a 2nd grader!  We kept the activities this week pretty low key.  We returned to early bedtimes and started early wake up times to prepare for the upcoming school year.  The kids have done pretty well with the change.

We did sneak in one more “summer” outing to the Splash Pad.  Probably not the last one for the year since it will be open for a few more weeks, but the last one for summer.

Addie enjoys “sunning” herself in the shade.

Dalton enjoys shooting anyone and everyone with the water guns.

The kids had also seen something on a cartoon earlier this summer about making a Sockopus (octopus out of socks….clever huh?).  They had been bugging me to let them use 4 PAIRS OF SOCKS EACH to make one.  NO WAY!  We finally had some extra time this week and came up with a solution.  I let them pick out some fabric scraps and I sewed them each 8 legs and one body.  Here they are stuffing leg one of eight.  Let’s just say, they both would still have 7 legs to go if Blake and I hadn’t pitched in to help.  Even with our help, they still are not quite done.  Oh well!  They can’t say I didn’t offer.

Our last summer adventure for 2012 was one last trip to the Magik Theatre to see the dual language version of Aladdin.  It was a great show.  We are looking forward to the start of the 2012-2013 season.

Does anyone else only seem to get a series of cheesy grins from your kids when trying to take pictures?  These are pretty classic faces around here.

Take 1:  Dalton seems to be in pain and Addie always sticks her chin in the air.

Take 2:  A little less pain and a little less chin, but still cheesy.

Here are some of the photos we snapped of the kids with the characters after the show.

Before the show, trying to take a less cheesy picture.	Dalton with the Sultan.
Dalton with Abu.	Dalton with the Genie and Jafar.
Addie with Jasmine.  She would only take a picture with the princess.	Dalton with Aladdin.

Summer Fun: Week 11

Summer is drawing to a close, so time to pack in a few last minute must do’s.  This week the kids and I enjoyed an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese to spend the last of some birthday party tokens acquired earlier in the summer.

We finished our Summer Bridges workbooks!  Yay!  Notice the pretty flowers on the table….those were from Blake just because.  Yes, I do have the best husband in the world.

We went bowling.  I guess I forgot to take a picture of Dalton….poor kid!

And finally, we celebrated Grandma’s 51st birthday with a birthday weekend at our house.  Yes, we did put 51 candles on the cake.

On Saturday, we headed down to the Pearl Farmer’s Market.  Addie and Dalton enjoyed dancing to a live band, eating some chicken and waffles and picking flowers.  Mom’s lifelong friend, Faith, was also able to join us for the weekend.

After the farmer’s market, we hit up Crazy 8 for some tax free shopping and Sprouts to get in on the sale of Blue Bell ice cream.  Blake stocked up on one of his seasonal favorites, Southern Blackberry Cobbler.

After a morning of shopping, we went home to drop off the boys so that all the girls could enjoy an afternoon of pampering.  Addie got her first mani/pedi.  (Thanks Grandma!)

It was a great weekend!  We are so glad that we were able to celebrate Mom’s (Grandma’s) 51st Birthday with her this year!

Summer Fun: Week 10

 

This week we decided to be a bit spontaneous and start our week out with a quick trip to the beach.  The kids had so much fun on our beach vacation last year and have been begging to go back.  Since Destin, Florida (our vacation destination last year) is not quite close enough to make a day trip out of it, we settled for Port A instead.  We loaded up the car on Saturday night, enjoyed an early bedtime and an even earlier wake up on Sunday morning.  We were packed and on the road before 7am!

Our traditional beach pictures:

Building our Sand Castle:

You can even see some of the white sand that was still in our sand toys from our trip to Destin Beach last year atop part of our castle.  Addie said it was “snowing” on that part.

The beach is about more than just the waves.  Snack Time, Kite Flying and Bubble blowing were all on the agenda for Addie.

For Dalton, it really is just all about the waves.

I’m not much for the waves so I volunteered to let the kids bury me in the sand.  After covering my legs, they lost interest.

Once we finished at the beach, we headed into town for a nice seafood dinner at a local restaurant with a patio.  We even had the chance to see some of the fishing boats come in to get their daily catch weighed and measured.  We stopped at one of the local stores for a photo op, then jumped on the ferry to head home.

All in all, it was a great beach trip.  Perhaps even a new Lacy family summer tradition?

The only other thing we did this week that is blog worthy is transform our playroom back into a preschool classroom.  Addie only has one more year until she enters the world of public schools, so after a lot of talk and consideration due to changes at my job, Blake and I decided I would stay home full time with Addie this year.  Dalton and I did “homeschool preschool” the year before he went to kinder and we really enjoyed it.  I’m hoping it will be just as great of an experience with Addie.