Tales of Woe and Dessert

The hard drive on my laptop bit the dust - again! Just a mere few months after it crashed and burned the last time. My back up file from our external hard drive has gone MIA and along with it and the now defunct drive - all my files (pictures, music - including the new stuff for the Youth Dances I spent hours to put together, and my document files - my stories I've been working on the last several years). My only hope is that my dad, computer guru of the universe who can fix anything, can spin write my old drive (since it tells me now it is inaccessible) and salvage something. There have been a great many tears of frustration and distress over this technological mishap. So, I did what I do best in times of stress and despair - I made dessert!

This little lovely is a recipe introduced to me by a very dear, very sweet friend from my newlywed college days. A wonderful lady from Down Under, and an equally fabulous dessert. I haven't made it in awhile, and for the life of me, can't think of a good reason why! It's called a Pavlova and there is some hot debate over who exactly is responsible for it - Australia or New Zealand, but what is not contested is that it is named after the Russian Ballerina Anna Pavlova who toured both in the mid 20's. Essentially this is a large meringue with a lot of whipped cream and fruit. I have made this at Christmas time also and substituted crushed peppermints for the fruit and sprinkled grated chocolate over that - very yum. We ate half of it last night and the rest was gone by lunchtime today! Enjoy the pictures - come visit me and I will make it for you to enjoy in person. (please excuse pictures though - I am still trying to figure out my camera settings - grrrrrrrr)

15 Candles

When your oldest turns 15 and wants 15 candles on his cake - this is what you get:



Count 'em - 15! For those who are interested - the cake was Chocolate cherry. It kind of turned out a little strange - really really gooey, but tasted alright. Trent didn't seem to mind. He's trying to earn money for his band trip to Florida and DisneyWorld next year, so no presents to open. I did drop him and a friend off at the movie theatre to see the new Tran.sformers movie and he really enjoyed that. Already talking about driving and what kind of car he wants (Dodge Charger) Yeah - good luck with that!



For a blast from the past on this same topic (Trent) - click here.

(and yes, his birthday was last month, the 29th - but he was due in July, so no razzing!)

Cupcakes & Cousins

Drama Queen

For Summer School, Sadie chose to be in the "Princess and the Pea" class. This particular Summer School class covered all aspects of putting on a play - auditions, casting, rehearsals, sets, advertising, costumes, programs and of course, performance! She really had a good time and proudly brought me home a personal invitation that she made inviting me to see her perform. Sadie was cast as a flower girl and I brought my camera eagerly looking forward to taking pictures of her on stage. One of our small area newspapers also came and the play made the paper. Enjoy!

Summer Bounty

I looked in my garden and what did I see?


A yellow squash, ready to eat!

I chopped it up and threw it in a pan with some Italian Sausage, zucchini, garlic, diced tomatoes and onions (which also came from our garden). I seasoned it with some French herbs - Chervil, Lavender, Tarragon and fresh parsley and served it over Quinoa. No picture of the Quinoa - it is pretty dull to look at. The broth was so good and the Quinoa soaked it up nicely. The kids were not as impressed as I was with this - but poked at it and nibbled a bit with very mild interest (mild bordering on dis-interest - sigh). Even when I told them that we grew some of the stuff in it - I got a few "that's neat" mumbles and that was it.



What the kids did find very interesting was the fresh pineapple and strawberries I cut up to go with dinner. Fruit Salad - yummy, yummy!



Soon to come: pictures of Sadie's Summer School play (which made one of the little regional papers!), Trent's birthday, a very belated Garrett's birthday and to illustrate even further how behind and what a slacker I am - Easter!

Happy Independence Day!

What would the 4th be without Fireworks? This year we had two extra kidlets at our house - our cousins, Gwynn and Sylvia, to share in the fun and fireworks!

Nathan: Hey mom! I'm gonna get a sparkler!

Gwynn likes Sparklers

Garrett likes Sparklers

The camera likes sparklers

(I was trying to get a picture of Gwynn,Sadie and Nathan enjoying their sparklers. Adam ran up with his sparkler right in front of the camera just as I snapped the picture. OOPS!
Guess I better take off the portrait setting!)

Daddy lighting more Sparklers

Next we had fun with Poppers. The kids LOVED them! I loved trying to get pictures of the kids in focus as they ran around flinging Poppers on the ground like crazy people. Guess I better figure out that setting on the camera too . . .

The kids loved the fireworks. Nathan and Adam really liked the spinners. Adam kept saying "Wow-ow!" and Nathan just laughed and laughed. I could NOT get a picture of the spinners to save my life - miserable blurry and half the time they shot out of the frame just as I snapped the picture. I did a little better with the fountains. Even then, those sparks come flying out so fast! This first one shot up really high - it was so cool! I tried to get pictures of our other fountain - it shot out different blobs of color and was really neat, but all my shots were a blurry mess. These were the best ones.

Happy 4th of July!