Saltine Toffee - Soooo good

Everyone knows I have a list of food and snacks I try to eat at least once every summer.  The Skor bar is one of my favorites but hard to find. I think Erin and I tried different 2 grocery stores and 3 or 4 gas stations before we found them.  Now I can make them at home!  I know the title sounds a bit iffy, and your arteries will probably harden just reading the ingredients (only 5!) but it tastes JUST like a Skor bar. These is so easy to make, but addictive, I recommend making it for parties so that you aren't eating it by yourself.

*Note - if you do add the nuts, I recommend gently pressing them down with the palm of you hand so that they stick to the chocolate better.

Sharing is a problem

 Aidan does not want to share anything with Emma. At all. Ever. It's causing some problems. Emma is pretty bossy and will yell at Aidan, he'll get upset and push her, she'll cry, he'll cry, Patrick or I will cry... It's a vicious circle.

The pictures below are not their standard operating procedure. Aidan was playing an iPad game and of course Emma wanted to play too.  Aidan moved to the corner of the couch and she followed.  Aidan curled up in a ball too block her view and Emma worked around that.  Nobody cried.

Christmas was much better this year

Thankfully nobody had the flu this year, so Christmas went well.  I had been sick off and on since Thanksgiving and in no mood to put up the decorations this year.  Patrick and Aidan put up everything this year.  No ornaments were broken (yeah!).  Aidan and I made cinnamon ornaments on Christmas Eve.  (I'll have to upload pictures of those later.)

Emma was really into it this year.  She liked opening the gifts, clapped, said "wow" quite a bit.  It was cute.  Aidan was upset that not all of the presents were for him. Fortunately he decided he liked hi gifts and allowed Emma to play with hers (for a few hours). We're still working on this sharing thing.

Yes, he needs a haircut

You can see more pictures of the kids on their blogs. (Aidan / Emma)

Happy Halloween!

 Darth Batman and The Ladybug wish you the best.

More pictures of the kids can be found on their blogs.

Happy Birthday to Emma! (Part 1)

We just had a small family birthday for Emma today.  We've been dealing with an ant infestation, exterminators, horrible colds, and server problems at school that have run all of us ragged.  In fact we had all just started to get better and I woke up sick this morning.  since we were taking it easy I tried out some of the recipes I wanted to use for Emma's party.

Patrick and I both thought these looked awesome.

Mira had used the cloud icing for Kiira's cupcakes in May and it had turned out fabulously.

So of course, when I try it, this is what I get:

Neither fluffy nor cloud-like.  It might have been too hot in the kitchen.  I should have learned by now to stick with my usual icing recipes.  This was pretty disappointing, but no biggie, Emma was only going to have plain whipped cream on hers anyway.  I had some cream left over from another recipe and it would be just the right amount to finish up the cupcakes with.  After a few minutes of beating, the cream still wasn't thickening and standing up.  A pulled the box out of the trash and saw that it wasn't whipping cream, it was cooking cream.  Arg!  Aidan and I went to the store to pick up some whipping cream.  While there he tried to dismantled a plum display, knocked over cans of soup, and had a melt down over the giant lollipop.  Finally we made it home with the whipping cream, I've topped the cupcakes, but can't find Emma's big cupcake.  I then realized that I had used the marshmallow slime on all of the large cupcakes.  Well, maybe I could tuck her number one candle between some little cupcakes to hold it up.  Turns out that we lost the candle when we were moving things in and out of the kitchen for the exterminators.  I was pretty bummed about it since it was the candle we had used for Aidan and had managed to keep up with it for 3 years and a move.  But it wasn't the end of the world.  What I had turned out pretty well:

Emma had a good time, and so did Aidan.  He kept saying "Happy Birthday, Emma" but stopped when we tried to record it.  We've got to work on the sharing though, he promptly took her bus away.

Fun photo app

I'm lovin' photography apps, even though they eat up tons of space on the phone.  I've been having fun with DecoSama Vintage and DecoSama Light.  I picked up DecoSama Vintage when it was a free download.  DecoSama Light is always free, but the full version is a paid app.  I find the Light version to be ok, but very limited.  I'll probably pick up the full version soon, it's not like 99 cents is gonna kill me.

Well, at least they're having fun