Turbo Hork

Today Cecilia looked at me, smiled and said,"buh buh buh."

Which, I can only assume means, mama I really didn't like eating those beans.

In all fairness, this did help me decide whether or not my jeans were dirty enough to merit washing.

I do suspect sometimes she does thing like this just for the clean up afterwards. Baby girl loves her some shower time.

All clean.

Oatmeal Creme Pies

Makes approximately 2 dozen cookies.

Ingredients:
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tb hot water
1 1/2 cups  flour
3 cups oatmeal
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1/4 cup honey
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°.
Dissolve baking soda in water.
Combine flour, oats, cinnamon, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
Mix butter and brown sugar till fluffy. Add in honey, egg, and vanilla. Mix till combined.
Add baking soda to mixture.
Slowly add flour mixture to butter until fully combined.
Spoon  rounded tablespoon sized balls of cookie dough onto parchment or silpats; no more than 12 to a jelly roll sized sheet. These cookies spread.
Bake 8 -10 minutes or until center is no longer pasty.
Let cool for 2 minutes on sheet before moving to a cooling rack.
Cool completely before frosting, about 30 minutes.
Sandwich buttercream between 2 oatmeal cookies.

American Buttercream
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup crisco (or more butter)
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tb milk or cream

Directions:
Beat butter and crisco till combined.
Sift in powdered sugar in 2 batches. Mix and scrape downs sides of bowl between batches.
Add in vanilla. Add milk till buttercream reaches desired consistency.

Notes:
I made these for National Pie Day. They are very  delicious. Feel free to increase the cinnamon. You can substitute corn syrup for honey if you are out of honey, but they taste better with honey. Also, I tried baking these at 350, tried smashing the balls flat, and chilling the dough, but nothing really seamed to change how they baked up.

Enjoy!

Anachronistic

I found some more photos from our vacation that I wanted to share.

We visited with the Bahr Grandparents while we were there. It was everyone's nap time so the kids were a little fussy.

But Granpa Cecil took us out to see the calves. He calls them babies. I think that is adorable.

After that we went to the Smith Granparents' home.

We played with puppies and Uncle Marshall. This is Gideon, the sire of the puppy coming to live with us next month.

Harvey, Captain and Uncle Marshall also has fun playing with the marshmallow guns. Harvey never did get the hang of shooting them though. We'd place a marshmallow for him to shoot and he'd just suck it back into him mouth. We also had no problems with marshmallows left around the house. Between Harvey, the dogs and the cats they were all picked up.

Captain and Marshall also introduced Harvey to the wonders of ice bowling. I wasn't there for this, but it seems like he had fun.

These are some photos we took after feeding the ducks.

Both kiddos were having so much fun they didn't want to leave.

Winter Crafts

These are some of the projects I've been working on recently.

This is the famous cake We made for Captain's final.

Harvey and I made these paper heart chains for Valentine's Day. He enjoyed handing me the paper strips and stapling the hearts together.

He calls them "trees." I have no idea why.

This is the thing I'm proudest of at the moment. Do you remember that big long list of things I wanted to finish over the summer? Well this was one of them. I knew it needed to wait till Cecilia was old enough to hold her head up. I did take some artistic liberties with the shape of Harvey's hair. If I had gone with what was really going in in the photo it would look like he had dinosaur spikes coming of the back of his dome. Anyways, I just printed out photos of the kids and traced the edges. Then cut them out of black cardstock and glued it to paper.

Also, I would love to get input as to what color to paint the frames. Captain likes them the way they are. I originally was thinking white, but now I think maybe a bright color like red or yellow would be better.

That's it for now. I hope everyone else is keeping busy this winter.

Home and Counting

Everyone is happy to be back at home, where things can return to normal.

                             
I gave the kids hair cuts today.   It is not terribly obvious though. Harvey just had a trim up around the edges, and Cecilia literally only had 3 hairs cut.

It still took 1 and a half viewings of Lightning McQueen to get through though.

And here is a video to show you all how cute Harvey is counting all on his own.

                                        

The Little Things

On this vacation, the kids have been enjoying the little things.

Things like feeding the ducks.

If you have a change, get some cracked corn and go feed some ducks.

It will be more fun than a matinee. Watch out for the geese though, they  can be persistent.

Cecilia didn't care much for the ducks to be honest.

At one point, I threw out some corn to the ducks and they were startled. They all flew up at once, which made Cecilia scream for a few minutes. 

She did, however, LOVE her first cookie.

She loved it to bits. She may have cried when it was gone and we whiped the remains from her clutched fists.

Cecilia also enjoyed falling asleep in people's laps.

So those are the little things we have been enjoying recently. 

Vacation Photobomb