Giant S'mores Cookies

Brandon had seen an idea on Pinterest (it cracks me up that he likes to look around on Pinterest) to make s'mores inside of a chocolate chip cookie.  I wasn't so sure it would work and tried to talk him into making it more like cookie bars, but he insisted so I looked it up and found another blog that had an idea close to what he had in his mind.

We had already made some chocolate chip cookie dough earlier that day (I use the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips since they're all natural, so we use the recipe on the bag for those), so there was plenty left.  Timothy thought it was the coolest thing ever, I'm not so sure the girls cared what was happening, but they did fuss and cry a lot when they saw the ingredients and found out they had to wait to eat a cookie till it was all baked and done.

So we started with a ball of cookie dough and flattened it out on the cookie sheet.  Next we added a smaller version of a s'more (like a quarter of a large graham cracker, 3 small squares of chocolate, and half a marshmellow)

Then we added another scoop of cookie dough on top and molded it all around the s'more

We put them in the oven and I think they baked for 15-20 minutes, they turned out quite large!

Everyone seemed to love them (as you can tell from the chocolate on the faces)!!

Summer Time

Woohoo!  VBS is over!!  Not that I didn't enjoy it or look forward to it or anything, but it's a relief to have it over and done with and we had so much help, it all turned out great!!

I meant to blog about a new park that we went to last month.  We had a nice Saturday with not too much to do and I had read about a park about half an hour away that sounded pretty neat so we loaded up the kids and the backpack and lunches and swim suits and headed out to Enumclaw.

The park was really nice, they had three different playgrounds and one was for young children, so Caroline could actually climb up and slide down by herself, she loved that!  They had a big open field to run around in and a lot of nice picnic and grilling areas.  The best part for the kids was the splash pool.  It wasn't really large, but it was hot outside and the water was FREEZING cold, so it was nice to cool off.  I'm pretty sure it was glacier water, it was so cold! 

The best part for me was the view!  It was so high up in the mountains and so beautiful, it made me want to sell our house and buy a farm in the mountains!  And, as a side note, I seriously want to do that, to just scrap it all and buy a farmhouse and have cows and chickens and grow all our own food...I would love to do that!  But anyway, they had a short hiking trail but it was steep, so Brandon wore Caroline in the backpack and I made sure to hold Charlotte's hand and we braved the trek down to the view site for the dam and back up again.  Timothy spent the hike looking for Bigfoot and Charlotte looked for fairy houses.  Caroline almost fell asleep.

It was such a fun place, I wish it was a little closer, but not too bad for a day trip.  The kids loved hiking, so we're hoping to do more of it while the weather is nice.  I've been checking out other places to go, I'm excited to take them!  Anyway, hopefully now that my crazy month is over, I can do more normal blogging and updating on here!

Maybe I'll Find Time Later

That has been my theme for the past three months...I'll find time later, but it's not really happening.  Sorry, a lot has been going on over here, but finding time to sit down and type it all out with pictures has been hard!  So...what have we done since early May?

Brandon was gone for two weeks in May and two weeks in June, so the kids and I pretty much just hung out at home and at the Y and school and didn't do too much.  We had a lot going on at the end of the school year with programs and Kindergarten graduation stuff so that kept the kids busy and I was busy with end of year PTA (for some reason, that I can't remember now, I agreed to chair fundraising next year and a lot had to get done before school was out).  The kids finished out the year great, Charlotte made so much progress in just two months, I couldn't believe it!  Timothy finished top of his class in reading and did great, that boy LOVES to read!

So right after school got out, Brandon left for a class for two weeks at the end of June and when he came back, he and Timothy left for a few days to go to church camp, I still can't believe Timothy was old enough for camp, but he had such a great time, he still keeps asking me when he will get to go back.  Thanks again to everyone that emailed him a campergram, he was so excited!  They came back from camp on the 4th of July and we had a cookout and bike parade at church that night.  Brandon had taken the camera with him to camp and the battery died, so I didn't get any pictures at the parade, but the kids loved it and Charlotte even won a prize! 

This past week we enjoyed getting to see my nephews from TX.  My parents took all the boys and myself and Heather to Great Wolf Lodge for a night last week, that was the coolest place ever.  Timothy had so much fun, he keeps begging us to go back (like tomorrow!) so we promised him we'd go back sometime this winter. 

Since then, we have been busy little bees getting everything ready for VBS, which started last night.  The first night went so well, We had about 75 kids and probably twice as many adults, I don't know if anyone counted that, but there were a LOT of people there!!  We got till Wednesday night so hopefully by Thursday I can spend an entire day at home doing absolutely nothing!! 

So the kids...Timothy has really become a reader, he loves to read pretty much anything, especially Dr. Seuss books and he loves for us to read to him, his favorites right now for us to read are old Hardy Boys books. 

Charlotte went to Princess Camp earlier this month and had so much fun learning about her favorite princesses.  She still loves to "read" as well and will usually sit and pull all the books off our bookshelf and look through them all. 

They have both enjoyed playing out in the yard this summer, the weather has been so nice!  Timothy has made a lot of friends in the neighborhood so he's usually out riding bikes with the boys and Charlotte and the girl next door play together a lot too. 

Caroline has become such a talker, she repeats EVERYTHING you say to her!  Her Bible class teachers told me she has such a cute personality.  She also loves to dance and will stop playing and just twirl, she loves it.  She loves playing with baby dolls and she is also becoming a climber.  I caught her the other day with one leg over the side of her crib so I'm hoping she won't figure out how to climb out of there any time soon!!  She has an obsession right now with opening and closing doors too.

And I think that catches us up to now.  We don't have any plans that I know of for the rest of the summer so I'm hoping we can get some work done around the house before school starts in September! 

JDRF 2012

I know I'm really really late posting about this, but May was so super busy that I seriously just forgot...but anyway, this was our 4th year walking for TEAM TY for a cure for juvenile diabetes.  Thankfully, the way Timothy's soccer schedule worked out this year, we were able to all be there for the walk and then go to soccer right after (and just as a side note, I didn't take one single picture of him playing soccer this year, total mom failure right here). 

Because the walk has grown so large, they had to move it again so this year we were at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, where the Tacoma Rainiers play minor league baseball.  It was so much fun to be there and the kids had a blast.  Timothy made me cry so bad though, about halfway through the walk, he asked me where Tyler was and I told him that he was much faster than us so he was probably closer to the front of the group than in the back like we were (thanks to 2 potty breaks right at the beginning).  He then asked me if Tyler was going to win the race and I told him it wasn't a race and he asked "but if Tyler's really fast and he wins, does that mean he doesn't have to be sick anymore?"...broke my heart, this little guy loves his cousin so much. 

So anyway, here are a few pictures I managed to snap that day, it was a little crazy with all three kids there, but it was still a lot of fun and of course, we are hoping and praying that this will be the year they find a cure for our sweet Tyler. 

Almost Done

Since school starts later up here, our kids still have about 9 days left.  They have been going through all of the end of the year stuff though, and this past week was a big one.  On Thursday, Charlotte's class did their teddy bear picnic.  I wasn't able to be there, and didn't even get a picture, but they all looked pretty cute in their tie dyed shirts.  That afternoon, Timothy's class did their Kindergarten Round Up singing program.  They sang a bunch of cowboy songs and had cookies and punch.  He did great, it's so funny to me that last year in preschool they were always worried about him during performances, that he would goof off or cause problems, but this year it wasn't even an issue.  He's growing up so fast!  Grammy got to come watch him perform and see his classroom, meet his teacher, all that good stuff. 

On Friday morning, they did Donuts with Dad at the school so Brandon and the kids got to come early and eat breakfast together.  It was great, we had a big turn out and the kids had a lot of fun.  That afternoon I was volunteering in Timothy's class and they had an assembly and he received an award for his reading progress.  He was pretty excited and after school we went out for ice cream to celebrate.  While I was in there, I was helping the student teacher finish up the scrapbooks that his teacher has been keeping for each of them all year, I might have cried a little looking through his!  He is growing up to be such a sweet boy, I just love him so much.  He crawled up in my lap tonight and told me that even when he's grown up and big, he'll still cuddle with me. 

So only 9 more days of school and then we're free for the summer.  I'm actually looking forward to it, the commuting back and forth to the school two times each day is getting really old.  They still have field day next week to look forward to and that's about it!  Pretty soon I'll have an almost 4 year old preschooler and a 1st grader (and a pretty cute 16 month old)!!

My cute little cowboy

Singing with his class

All the W.O.W. winners (Wolves of Wonder, their school is the Edgerton Wolves)

My sweet boy and his award

Timothy and his principal, Mrs. Knox

Timothy and his teacher, Mrs. Dent (and the little girl in the background is Molly, Timothy told her that he loves her...and then we had a talk about how we don't need to tell girls that just yet)

Timothy's New Friend

So, the weather this past month has been amazing!  I think last year was just really stinky so it seems like it's a lot nicer than normal, but I'll take it!  The best part is that the kids have been able to play outside pretty much every day this Spring. 

A few weeks ago, Timothy was out trying to perfect his two wheel bike-riding technique when he fell.  A little boy down the street came over and asked if he was OK and I remember thinking, "what a nice boy".  A little bit after that, we were taking a walk and the same little boy asked if he could walk with us.  I told him I thought he should probably ask his mommy or daddy if that was OK with them and he told me that they didn't care.  Timothy started riding his scooter around with him (we found out his name is Marcus) and ever since then, if the weather's nice, they've been outside together, riding bikes or scooters together.

Last Wednesday, Timothy had school in the morning and we happened to pull into the driveway right before the bus stopped in front of our house and Marcus got out.  Timothy ran out to say hi and Marcus asked if he could play.  I said he needed to eat lunch first so Timothy ate a couple of bites and ran out to play.  I got the girls down for naps and went to work out in the front yard (I'm still not totally comfortable with letting him out there to just play without being able to see him).  They spent most of the afternoon riding back and forth between houses.  I also got to meet his older brothers that day.  I've learned a lot about them since then (it's amazing how much kids will go into detail about a story, makes me worried some times to think about what my kids say)! 

I learned that Marcus has two older brothers.  They rent their house and live with their mom and dad.  Their mom doesn't like to have anyone come to their house because she says it's too dirty.  Their dad doesn't like to meet other parents, especially moms.  The older brother has anger management issues and when he gets mad he hurts people, one time he threw Marcus across the room and broke his arm.  The middle brother has had one kidney transplant and is on dialysis because his new kidney is failing and he needs another transplant.  Marcus doesn't like to be at home. 

Today they played most of the afternoon and when Caroline woke up from her nap I had to go to the store.  Since Brandon's not home, all the kids had to go with me.  Marcus asked if he could come, but I didn't think that would be appropriate so I told him I didn't have enough room in the car.  Timothy was acting up while we were out, so I told him when we got back that he needed to spend some time in his room.  We had barely been home 5 minutes when the doorbell rang and Marcus was asking if Timothy could come out to play.  I told him that Timothy wasn't allowed to come out right now but he would come find him later on.  It had seriously not been 10 minutes and the doorbell rang again and he was there asking if he could play again.  I told him that Timothy needed to stay home a little longer and he asked me what he had done to get in trouble.  I told him that Timothy had been disrespectful.  His reply was, "what did he call you?" which threw me off guard and I told him he didn't call me any names, he was just having some trouble obeying.  He said that that is what kids are supposed to do, to obey their parents and it's the parent's job to discipline the kids when they do something wrong.  I told him that in our house it's the parent's job to teach the kids how to do what's right but sometimes we have to take a time out to remember what's right. 

So he left and I went back upstairs.  The girls were playing in the play room so I sat down in there and looked out the window and Marcus was just sitting at the end of our driveway.  It really did make me cry a little.  So I told Timothy that he could go out and play as long as he came in when I told him it was time to come home.  They ended up swimming in the pool of another kid that lives right across the street which was perfect since I could watch from the play room window (and that kid's mom was out there with them). 

So at dinner, Timothy was asking why Marcus plays outside so much and I told him I wanted to tell him something but he didn't need to repeat it.  I told him that I didn't think Marcus enjoys being at home, that it sounds like his brother and his parents might not be very nice to be around and that maybe there's some fighting going on and he doesn't like to be there.  Timothy's response was "well you and Daddy fight, so it's OK."  I was thrown off at first, and tried to explain that what Brandon and I do isn't really fighting but he seemed confused but I explained that in our house, no one gets angry and hurts anyone or says mean things to anyone.  He seemed to understand after that. 

So they play and I pray and pray and pray for that boy and his family.  And then tonight when I was putting Timothy to bed it hit me, I am so glad that Timothy thinks that what Brandon and I do is fighting.  We don't argue much, but it's usually a conversation about whatever happened that upset one of us and some debate back and forth.  I'll even go so far as to admit that there's occasionally a raised voice or two...and that's pretty rare for us to argue in front of the kids anyway and if we do we always make sure to reconcile in front of them as well so that they see an example of how to treat someone you love...but from what it sounds like this little boy lives with...I will gladly have Timothy think that what Brandon and I do is fighting. 

So I guess this is an early lesson in teaching our kids what it means to be in the world but not of the world.  Timothy and I had a long chat about how he can be a good example to Marcus and his brothers.  And hopefully I will get to meet his parents soon and can try to build a relationship with them.  Please please pray for our family and please pray for Marcus's family.  I know we came back to Washington for a reason or reasons or whatever, and I can't shake the feeling that this sweet boy and his family are one of those reasons.  And pray for Timothy...this has potential to be hard on him, we will make decisions for our family based upon what's best for our children and that has potential to cause him some hurt...thankfully, our God is a powerful and compassionate God and if anyone can bring this family some hope and peace, it's Him!

My Big Boy

Well he's definitely not a baby anymore.  Timothy turned six this past month and I'm still trying to figure out how that all happened!  He's so big now I can barely pick him up!  A few days after his birthday he went for his 6 year check up (which, thankfully, did not include shots) and he was almost exactly 4 feet tall and right at 50 pounds. 
We celebrated his birthday all weekend long, his birthday was on Thursday so Wednesday night before church we went with my parents to eat at Red Robin and we made sure they sang to him and he got ice cream.  Thursday morning he wanted giant cinnamon rolls for breakfast, we got Happy Meals for lunch and that night we celebrated at home.  I made a cake and we had pizza (his favorite) and he opened his present from Brandon and I (a skateboard and a helmet with pads).  He also took cupcakes to school on Thursday, and of course, they had skateboards on them.  Friday night we went to my parent's house to celebrate there and had burgers and hot dogs and Dr. Pepper cake (yum!) and he opened presents from family (including a new real basketball goal, he was so excited).  Saturday we had his party with his friends from church and school and then, since the weather was SO NICE that day we went to the Spring Fair.  Charlotte actually wanted to ride the rides this time and they all did fine until the fireworks started and then the big two got scared and we had to leave.  Sunday for lunch he wanted to go to Applebees and get pancakes...this boy is all about food, he's eating so much lately I'm starting to worry about our food budget!!

He's grown up quite a bit in the last year as well.  He has learned so much at school, he's reading like crazy, doing all kinds of math and science, he loves to learn!  He is so smart he scares me sometimes!  He loves Bible class and can usually answer every question I give him about what he's learning in there, even when I try to trick him!  He's so helpful and it's amazing to think just a couple of years ago he was a crazy little toddler that was driving me crazy every day! 

The other big news of that weekend was that Caroline just up and decided on Friday that she didn't want to nurse anymore.  We had been slowly working our way toward weaning, but she was still nursing 4 or so times a day and then Friday night she just wouldn't do it...and then she wouldn't sleep...so it was a rough weekend!  I think she's cutting a whole lot of teeth at once and just for some reason didn't want to nurse anymore.  I was a little sad about it, I was hoping we could do it together and wean together, but I'm a little happy that it's over and I'm not so tied down anymore.  With my normal day to day work, children's ministry duties and PTA stuff it's nice to be able to leave her at night with Brandon if I need to get some work done or go to meetings. 

Not much else has been going on...Charlotte is loving preschool, I'm not really loving the commute back and forth to school every day (two back and forth trips a day), but only another month or so of school left...Brandon left today to go to his sister's graduation so the kids and I are on our own till Monday...and we might be getting a puppy this summer, more on that later!!  Cause, you know, I don't have enough going on without adding another mouth to feed and clean up after!!