Easter Dessert and Bonus Picture.

Our Easter Dessert.  It's a chocolate chip cheeseball with the Peeps bunnies thrown in there for extra cuteness.

I was only planning to put a picture of the dessert but then I saw this and wook at that wittle face .... 

Raspberry tea.

The kids were trying to finish up their schoolwork (still late, but not as late as last week.) and the girl has an excuse because she was on the road with me all day. She wanted to make raspberry tea but had too much to do, so she asked if making raspberry tea would count as cleaning in the kitchen (in what universe?) anyway, I said no. Then a few minutes later, her brother asked if he made her raspberry tea for her, would that count as cleaning. She said "No, I already asked." I guess it was worth a try.

Raspberry tea.

I hope our raspberry plants survived the winter and grow!

I've invented a sandwich (cross posted from my gluten free cooking blog.)

This sandwich is very, very, very popular at my house. I invented it on Friday, grocery day. We were out of cheese and so I was trying to make something besides a grilled cheese. I needed it to be completely gluten free. This is what I came up with. You'll need:

Butter.

Rudi's multigrain bread.

Deli Cuts Roasted Turkey

KRAFT Miracle Whip Mayonnaise

Hormel bacon bits and lettuce.

I heat up a skillet and put in a teaspoon of butter. Add 2 slices of Rudis multigrain bread and fry until the bread is crispy and turning golden brown. Then, I remove the pan from the heat, turn the stove off, put the bread on a plate, spread the miracle whip, put on the turkey, bacon bits and lettuce and enjoy. My daughter especially has been begging me to make these. Finally last night I taught her how to make her own. She decided today that having tried it with both regular bread and gluten free bread, it's better with the gluten free bread. They're yummy. Now to think of a name for them? Any suggestions?

Unexpected math lesson.

My son wanted to do another experiment from the Big Book of Boy Stuff yesterday.  He wanted to make homemade root beer.  So while I was at the store, I picked him up some root beer flavoring (who knew this even existed?) and some soda water and when we finally got home last night from all our after school activities (9:30 p.m.) the younger 2 kids made root beer.  I didn't expect it but I kept hearing them doing math calculations.  It seems that their syrup was supposed to make 3 cups, but it only made 2 1/2 cups and they were supposed to add 5 ounces of soda water to every 1/2 cup of syrup.  Youngest son wanted to just pour it all in, the whole 32 ounce bottle but the girl wanted to be precise.  I heard them arguing him saying "It's not an exact science!" and her insisting that it was.  Finally I went in and helped them, but we used the girl's math, because she was so determined.  It ended up being a little strong and needing a little bit more club soda added to it, so the boy was right.  For some reason, it smelled like root beer, but tasted kind of like wintergreen life savers.  It was fun anyway.  Today, they are going to do a more old fashioned recipe with that does not have club soda, but instead uses yeast to make the bubbles?  I can't say that sounds appetizing to me.

Our late valentine's party cupcakes.

Pictured at top is the picture my daughter took of our Valentine's cupcakes on Monday night.  At the bottom is the picture that I took (not realizing she'd already took a picture) on Tuesday morning.  Do you notice the difference?  Yes.  Someone stole one!  Thought we wouldn't notice, hmm?

Game Night.

Game night was fun.  We kind of brought every game we could think of and waited to see who would show up. Turns out the ages of people ranged from 2 to 75, so we had quite a variety.  We set up the Wii and we played Win, Lose or Draw and then we played Reverse Charades.  It was fun for all.   Here's the cake my daughter and I made.  We only had black and orange icing and we didn't want it to look Halloween-y (though that's what the icing was from) so we made a checkerboard.  :-)  The orange checkers are Mentos and the black checkers are Junior Mints. 

Grocery shopping again.

Have I mentioned that I don't like grocery shopping?  I had to go again today and I have had such a headache all day that I imagine that an axe handle must be sticking out of the top of my head, it feels that awful, but it had to be done, so I went.  My husband had given me coupons that had come in the mail and one was for 16 dollars off my order if I went above 160 dollars.  They know that 160 a week is above my grocery budget because they track spending with those plus cards, so they are trying to make me get in the habit of spending more.  I know that, but 16 bucks?  I had to go for it.  My youngest son was with me.  We stocked up on expensive crazy things like peanut butter (really only 1 jar but it was a biggie) and toilet paper and we threw in a few things we really didn't need like Goldfish crackers.   We got the 16 dollars off but we had gotten a little carried away and were over budget even with the 16 dollars off and a few other coupons.  I felt bad because I always feel bad if I go over the budget.   It's a personal challenge, that budget.  I came home and looked up average grocery budgets and found this.   Apparently, according to the FDA, I am even under the lowest estimates for a family of 5 which includes 3 teenagers (AND 3 dogs and 2 cats) and we pretty  much never eat out.  I feel somewhat better, but I am still absolutely determined to stay within budget from now on.  :-P

PS.  I wore the same pants that I blogged about before here. but I've lost some weight and now they are way baggy on me and so they no longer have the same effect.

PSS.  I did have a grocery list today as well as a meal plan, but that coupon made me go kind of crazy.  That's my excuse.:-P

PSSS:  Also, I had a headache.

October the third.

I can't believe it's October.  If you read my blog, you'll find that I often marvel at how quickly time passes.  It's 82 days until Christmas.  This year has passed quickly.  It's been so much better than last year in many ways though and for that I am thankful.  Speaking of being thankful, I've already started craving thanksgiving-y type foods and have already made a chicken in the crock pot and made gluten free stuffing to go with it.  It was very good and I may do something like that again later this week, although if I make it over and over, by Thanksgiving, I'll be kind of tired of it.

Just a little bit of trivia about our family .. we were all born in even years and so in odd numbered years, all our ages are odd numbers.  My kids are now 13, 15 and 19.  I won't even say how old my husband and I are, just be assured that we're old and we're odd.  Numbered that is.

I just got a call from the nurse at my doctor's office.  My hemoglobin is 8.1 with the normal range supposed to be 12-16 and my iron is "quite low" so I'm going to have to go back on iron pills.  :-( 

Wednesday/Wednesday.

Last Wednesday, we were at the beach, then playing Goofy Golf, then having pizza at the Mellow Mushroom, which has the best gluten free pizza in the world.  It's funny because several of my family members couldn't remember the name of it and it got called Mellow Yellow, Magic Mushroom and several other names in our conversations.  At this point in the vacation, we were getting really tired so we would giggle about just about anything.

This Wednesday, we've got school and work and a little bit of chauffeuring and we're also babysitting my mom's dog, Tinker, which we call Tinkersitting,while my mom stays all night with her sister.   As for school, it's going okay.  My husband did decide on Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1 for the book this year, rather than Life of Fred and it seems to be going pretty well.  My youngest told me yesterday that his scores so far on the lessons were A+, A+, A, so I guess he's getting it.  I'd hate to see what my scores would be as my math is so rusty!