Cherry Icee

I took the boys to Target yesterday and let E get an Icee. By the time I got home, Max was totally asleep in his car seat so I decided to unload the car while he was still sleeping. By the time I got around to the other side of the van, I hear E say, "don't come over here." Which means that E did something wrong and will probably be in big trouble. I take one look at Max and find out why. E had blown cherry icee all over his sleeping brother's face! I had to take Max in, wake him up, and wipe him down (his least favorite thing ever). I wiped and wiped and the stupid stuff does not come off. Max seriously looks like he has leprosy! There are little red dots and splotches all over his face and it doesn't matter what I do, they're permanently on his head! I don't think "How to get cherry icee stain off your child's forehead" is in the "Mother Handbook."

Blast from the Past

It's amazing how in the past 2 months I have reconnected and visited several very dear friends and from very different times in my life. It was only fitting that one of my best friends from high school called me up and let me know that she would be in DALLAS!!! I was so excited! I haven't seen her since the summer after we graduated which is 8 year ago!!! Now I have to do a little background so you can know and love Liz just as much as I do. We all ran around as a trio: me, Liz, and Tiff. We were all on Student Council together, Liz was the executive board president, Tiff was Senior Class President, and I was Senior Class Treasurer. Always good times planning and attending school events and so many memories like pool club, mountain dew slushies, Liz being Winter Coronation queen, football games, midnight madness, Queen Bee, Spanish Class with Senora Teen, stuco meetings in Mr. English's room, all the plays, dances. I could go on and on. Anyway...Here are some fun pictures of us. This first picture was Homecoming when we decided to all go together since we were all dating guys away at college at the time. We went together and picked out matching outfits and had a great time.

This next picture is all of us ready for Prom. Our school colors were Black and Gold so it's kind of funny that we ended up wearing our school colors. Don't worry, we actually took dates to this dance. Tiff arranged for an 18 passenger van for a bunch of us to go together. Her dad drove us all there and he even wore one of those tuxedo t-shirts, hilarious!

This was graduation night June 2001. Such a great night and a great summer that year! I couldn't have asked for better friends!!! Then we were all off to different colleges, Liz went to Luther and is now a teacher, Tiff went to BGSU and is also a teacher, and I went off to BYU and I'm a nurse.

Anyway...back to our visit. I only got to spend the morning with Liz, but it was so much fun! I have to say that there was an empty place since Tiff wasn't there. I miss you TIFF!!!! I picked Liz up and brought her back the house so she could hang out with me and the boys. E just LOVED her! He was so excited to meet her and then the fact that she brought him presents was just icing on the cake. She brought him these awesome chocolate rocks that E thought were the coolest things ever and also a dinosaur cookie mix. He has been begging me to make them.



It was way too short and I was so sad to see her go, but we're already planning on meeting up again when she comes back in January or next summer. Her husband just graduate from Michigan and they're in the midst of job hunting so I'm hoping they move to Dallas! I would love to have her close by and I would love even more if she could be E's teacher! Now wouldn't that be amazing! Liz, I had so much fun! Let's plan a girls reunion really soon!

Cake Truffles

We have a mother/daughter activity coming up this Saturday so I've been busy pulling stuff together to get ready. I decided to make little treat bags for everyone to take home with some cute little homemade truffles. I think they're super cute! Here's the recipe for both kinds:


Cake Truffles
1 cake mix (and additional ingredients to make the cake)
1 can of frosting
Bake the cake as directed and let cool. In a largo bowl, break cake up into a fine crumbs. Add the can of frosting and mix up until combined and it holds together. Refrigerate (I put it in for about 1 hour, but it can be in there covered for up to 3 days). Roll into balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Dip in chocolate. Decorate as you wish.


Oreo Truffles
1 bag oreos
1 pkg cream cheese softened
Put oreos in cuisinart and crunch to a fine crumb. Dump into a bowl. Put cream cheese in cuisinart and add 3/4 of oreos and pulse together until combined. Add more oreos as needed, but keep some aside for decoration. Roll into balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Dip in chocolate.

For the cake truffles I made a white cake mix and put a little bit of red food coloring in it to make it pink. Then I dipped it in chocolate and sprinkled pink chocolate on the top. So now when you bit into the truffle it's pink inside. The oreo truffles are dipped in pink chocolate and have oreo bits on top. I tried one and they are super good. All the leftovers will have to go to my friends or else I will consume them all!

Posts to Come

I have a lot of posts to go so here is a little preview for this week...
-drugstore deals
-blast from the past
-4th of July (anyone from the family please send me pictures)
-run on
-9 months
-one liners

Drugstore Deals

This was from last week, but I had to share. I don't have time tonight to go through the breakdown of it all, but here's a little look at what I got and how much I paid. I ended up breaking it down into 2 transaction and my grand total out of pocket was...$1.76. I now have $11 in Extra Care Bucks to use this week and I still money on my CVS gift card. Somehow I forgot to use my gift card instead of my cash, but still $1.76 isn't all that bad.

Sewing Project

Despite all the sewing talent that might come from my family, I am a complete novice when it comes to anything with a sewing machine. I see all these blogs and etsy shops with all this crazy sewing creativity and I just sit there and wonder how the heck do they do it! Well, my mother-in-law found a super cute pillowcase project that she could teach me to do so we could make the boys some travel pillows for our trip to family reunion in Utah.

Okay, so seriously, I totally don't know a thing about sewing so Cheryl was patient enough to get me through and my pillowcase turned out to be an actual pillowcase! I couldn't believe it and it wasn't too hard. E had to see every little thing that came out of G'ma's bag and what each instrument did. He especially loved the magnetic pin holder. E even figured out how to run the sewing machine and wanted to "drive" it so G'ma let him take it for a spin a couple times.

So here are the finished products. E's is the red one with the horses and Max's is the one with the Sheriff badges. Super cute!
We're going to have horse back riding available to us at reunion so G'ma wanted to get E excited to go ride some horses with her. She brought some really fun pictures and told him all about her favorite horse, Gala. E loves his little pillow and believe it or not, Max loves his too. I have no idea why my kids have an affinity for pillows and blankets. E has an entourage of 5 blankets and 2 pillows that he takes to any room that he's playing in. At least my little cowboys will each have a little pillow for the car ride to Utah.

Blackberry Picking

We had our 3rd annual blackberry picking day! I was looking back at pictures from our previous visits and I can't believe how little E was! Here's a look at our first time there. And this is E now. I couldn't believe how many people were there this year! I got there right at 7am on Saturday and they were all picked by 7:15 am! The whole field was full of cars so I had to park all the way at the end, but nevertheless, we went picking. It was really great to have E there to pick all the ripe berries at his eye level. He was finding them left and right. Had he not been there, I don't think I would have picked as many as I did. I had Max in the stroller picking them off the bush and putting them right in his mouth. Oh my, he was a mess! There were a few people asking me if they could take his picture since he was quite a site to see. I feel bad that we didn't make anything with our fresh blackberries this year. E kept asking to make jam. He was asking me if we "had all the ingredients" so we could "make our recipe" when we got home. I made so much freezer jam this Spring that I didn't have anymore room for it so we just ended up flash freezing all the berries and we've been enjoying them ever since. Can't wait for next year!

Slip-n-Slide

Okay, it's time to catch up. No more tip toeing around it. I'm just going to sit here until it gets done so prepare yourself for an all nighter. The other day I received this little freebie in the mail from a mail in rebate from some batteries. You see all those fun little offers on the packages, but does anyone really take the time to do it? I do. My friends at book club were laughing about this the other day when the package of Twizzlers had an offer for a Twizzlers pool noodle on it. They were wondering when they'd see me at the pool with it. Haha, guys.

We did some yard work a couple weekends ago and E was being such a great helper so we helped him set up the slip-n-slide and we all took a turn to cool off. E LOVED it! He couldn't quite get to the end by himself, but with a little help from Daddy he could make it. Max loved just watching E from his exersaucer. Max loved the little sprinkler parts and we let him play in those for awhile.
What a happy boy! I totally had flash backs to being a kid with our slip-n-slide. It was big a yellow and so much fun. Our friends even put a couple of tarps down to extend down the hill. Now that is fun!

As you can tell from the first picture, the garden is doing great this year. I'm growing tomoatoes, rosemary, basil, jalapenos, dill, and cilantro. The cilantro has come and gone and it was great this year. Everything else is ripening as we speak. Great stuff this year!