rainy day cookies

It has been raining here for two days.  What a wonderful change from the hot sunny days we have had all summer.  The sky is grey and the air, although humid, is cool.

I love to bake on a nice rainy day.  A day that most people think dismal, dreary, depressing, I find a wonderful excuse to blow up the kitchen and make something delicious.

Today I had a helper in the kitchen...

We decided to make my all time favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I love them because they are crisp and chewy and gooey.  

I'll start by telling you to pre-heat  your oven to 400*.  Don't preheat it to 350* like I did.  Then you will have to wait even longer for them to be cooked.

Here's what you will need:

You'll notice on the left side of the picture is a large jar of granulated sugar.  You will only be using brown sugar in this recipe.  I am not sure why I got it out.  But it does look good in the picture.  

sweet little hands...

 So I know that you know how to make cookies.  Here are some pictures of our process.

1.  "Can I help, Mom?"
2. "I can't do it!"
3. Butter
4. creamed butter
5. brown sugar, eggs, vanilla
6. sifting dry ingredients
7. mixing dry ingredients
8. stopped the mixer to take picture of dry ingredients
9. add chocolate chips

 The recipe calls for a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips.  I use a few less because a certain little person always wants a bowl of them.  

Guess which little person...

 Sweet little hands again.

 How many can I fit in my mouth?

chocolate all over face

realizing he has chocolate all over face

 "I'm so cute!"

So after you do all of the measuring, mixing and wiping off little hands and cheeks, you actually bake the cookies. 

 I use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop.  This yeilds a pretty big cookie.  

12 cookies will fit on a large sheet pan.

Here they are again.  I couldn't decide which picture to use so I just uploaded both.  I think maybe the first one is better because the background is blurred a bit.

 When they come out of the oven, they look like this.  Well...not half eaten, but golden around the edges and soft in the middle.

"Can I eat this cookie, Mom?" 

 "Stop taking my picture mom!"

Notice the spiky hair.  We were trying a new hair style.  I was going to say hair do.  Can you say that for a boy?  He did not like it in the mirror but soon forgot that it was sticking up.  

Enjoy these tasty chocolate chip cookies with an ice cold glass of milk.  They are not only perfect for a rainy day, but for all occasions.  

side note:  For those of you who know that I am working really hard to lose weight...now you know why I have not been so successful.  Who could resist these sitting around the house.  They call your name every time you are in the kitchen...or in the living room sitting on the couch...or working on the computer.  I could go on forever...

Here's the recipe:

1 cup (1/2lb.) butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips - I prefer Hershey's

1 cup chopped pecans (optional) - I opt out

Preparation:

1. In the bowl of your mixer, beat butter and brown sugar until well blended.  Beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth, scraping sides of bowl as needed.
2. In another bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt together.  Stir or beat into the butter mixture until well incorporated.  
3. Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Drop dough in 2-tablespoon portions, 2 inches apart, onto cookie sheet.  I use an ungreased non-stick cookie sheet.  
5. Bake at 400* until cookies are lightly browned and no longer wet in the center.  6 - 8 minutes.  Turn the pan 1/2 way through baking.  Mine actually took exactly 9 minutes.  But all ovens are different
6. Remove from the oven, and transfer cookies to a cooling rack.

Nutritional information:

            I could tell you, but who really cares at this point.

My little Picasso

I will start by saying that Matthew loves to craft.  I don't know if it is the actual craft that he likes or if it is the personal attention that he gets while we do a craft, but none the less, he is always happy when we are crafting.

So last week he wanted to paint.

Washable?  We'll see...

Notice we finally insulated the walls. No more studs to look at.  It is much cooler and quieter too!

Of course he chose blue first.

Being the particular little person he is, he would not use his hands so I gave him a paint brush.  

 "Dots"

by
Matthew Pendley

We'll start the bidding at $100.00.

Um...maybe I should add another ZERO to that number.

Well his hands got dirty after all.    

While Matthew was having fun painting I had some fun of my own.  I had not swept the kitchen floor in almost a week. 

GASP!!!!!

GASP again!

That's all the fun for now.

After the mess...

If you saw my previous post on making messes you'll be glad to know that everything got put back in its place.  If fact the room was probably cleaner afterwards than when Matthew started with his mess making.

Matthew picked several books to read so we sat on the floor in his "clean" room and read.  First was Duckie's Rainbow.  Even Samuel joined in.  He likes to bat at the book and tries to turn the pages before we are done reading.

Then we switched books and Samuel was much more interested in the yellow dancing, singing chicken.  (Thanks Grandmother!)

About half way through If You Give A Cat A Cupcake, Samuel was done with me and Matthew and the dancing chicken, and moved onto more fascinating things...the camera. 

It was a nice calm way to end our evening.  

He once was lost

Last week we spent several days at Grandmother's house.  For those of you who don't know who Grandmother is, it is Patrick's mom.  Here's a picture of her.

A great one too I might add!

Anyway, back to my story...  We were visiting at her house.  She is always so generous and patient with all of our messes and noise.  Of course no trip to Grandmother's could be complete without a pit stop at the toy store.  So we headed off to Target and Toy's 'R' Us to shop.  We looked at all of the cars and rode all of the  battery powered 4 wheelers and touched a lot of things.  Finally when Samuel had had enough, Matthew decided on a new Lightning McQueen car and a Mack tractor trailer truck.  When it was time to go home to Waco we pack our things including our new loot and headed for home.

On the way home we decided to stop at Mighty Fine for a chocolate shake.  It was late in the evening and we were tired so we thought a pick me up would wake us up.  Of course Lightning McQueen had to go inside to share the shake with us.  And boy did he make the rounds...from the ordering counter to the hands washing station, to the table, back to the washing station several more times and I think he even might have made it into the bathroom (yuck! remind me to tell Matthew to leave the toys at the table next time!) and then of course to the washing station again.  In all of the activity, we lost Lightning McQueen.

We didn't notice until several days later when Matthew kept asking for him.  I looked everywhere I could think of but could not find him.

So, those of you who know me well, know that I become a maniac when things go missing around this house.  I become a complete nutcase...an obsessive crazy person.  (By the way, we are working on this.)   So there was no exception in this case but even in my mad search, Lightning McQueen was nowhere to be found.  Matthew did end up telling us that he left him on the hands washing station at Mighty Fine so I called them but he was not in their lost and found.  At that point I gave up and decided that we might have to buy a new car for Matthew.

But let's fast forward to two days ago, Wednesday, when Patrick had to go to work really early.  Well that means my day starts really early too because our boys have not learned the joy of sleeping in yet.  The morning started out rough.  It had been a hard night with Samuel unexpectedly not sleeping through the night and then waking very early.  So needless to say, I was cranky. But Matthew woke up unusually cranky too and I found myself wanting to snap at him for being a 3 year old.

Instead of snapping, I did something that I wish I did much more often.  I called Matthew into the living room and we sat on the couch together.  I told him that we were going to talk to Jesus so that he could help us have a good day.

I spent a few short moments (short because a 3 year old does not stay still for very long) praying and thanking our Lord for the day he created.  I thanked him for the boys and asked him to help me remember they are a gift from him...a blessing he created for me.  And I asked him to be my patience and love for the boys.

It was not but 10 minutes later that Matthew came running out of Samuel's room saying, "I found Lightning McQueen!.  He was in the Micky Mouse toy".  Oh the delight on his face was priceless.  Well I guess you can imagine that the delight on my face was priceless too!

"I once was lost but now I am found."

I know the Lord loves to surprise us.  I truly believe that the Lord gave us back the Lightning McQueen car because we spent time that morning being thankful.  He loves to bless us in ways that we are not expecting.

It is so good to have a God that loves us so much.  Sometimes he can love so simply.

It is sometimes so hard to remember the simple things like being thankful.

As you can imagine after Matthew found Lightning, he would not let go of him.  Above you can see the progression of the pictures.  I snuck into the living room while he was watching the Cars movie, go figure, and took these pictures of Mack and Lightning McQueen.  You can see Matthew is in the background not paying any attention to me in the first picture and then he realizes that his car is gone and spies me with it.

We spent the rest of the day playing with Lightning.  Here are some pictures.

Samuel had some fun too.  While Matthew was driving Lightning around on trees and in the grass, Samuel hung out in the swing.  I think he liked it!

Dear Lord,

Thank you for being a God that looks for ways to bless us.  Thank you for returning Lightning McQueen to us.  You are so good.  

Amen

Got Worms?!

Today when I told Matthew that we were going to the YMCA so that I could work out he started crying and said, "I want to go dig up worms".

"What"?!, I said.

"I want to go dig up worms" he replied again.

He was very persistent and had really big fat tears.  It was pitiful!

So we got dressed and went outside before going to the Y and dug in the dirt for worms.

Happy to have his rake and shovel.

A big one!

And some more...

 "I got one, Mom."

"It's wiggling in my hand."

What can I say.  Being a girl and with Matthew being my first son, I can say that I was not prepared for this. I have seen commercials with dirty boys playing in the mud and with frogs in their pockets but I was taken off guard when Matthew wanted to dig for worms today.  

He is all boy!  And we had so much fun!

I MADE A MESS!

Last Tuesday while I was making dinner Matthew ran into the kitchen with something very exciting to tell me.  

He said "Come show me mommy".

Translation:  I have something to show you mommy.

He was so excited for me to see what he had done that I just had to turn the stove off and let my culinary masterpiece (ha ha ha!) wait.

So I went with him to his room and this is what I saw...

"I made a mess!"

He kept saying this over and over and over.  And he was so excited about it.  So proud of himself.  He did it all by himself.  What an accomplishment!

 I asked him where the mess was and he replied, in a very excited high pitched voice, "It's right here!" and pointed to it to make sure I could see it.  

You can see the delight on his face.  It was hard work making all of that mess.

You might be thinking, what's the big deal...his room is not all that bad.

Well just wait.  It got much worse before the night was over...before the hour was over...before 10 minutes was over.

The finished product.  His masterpiece.  

I think almost every toy in his room is out.  It didn't really take long to clean up though and the artist himself was actually very helpful.  

Ahhhhhh the joys of parenthood!!!

Fever all through the night!

We took Samuel to the ER last Friday evening.  He was running a high fever of 103.8 and it seemed to be getting higher.  The previous hour it was only a 102.4.  We went to the doctor's office first and when they failed to obtain a urine sample, he had already gone in his diaper, they sent us to the ER.  

It is alarming when your baby is is running that high of a fever with no symptoms.  

So we dashed off to the ER and there waited a very long 2 hours (at least the Olympics were on) in the waiting room until we were finally called to be seen.  The only room available was the psych room.  It was a barren room with one plastic chair and the bed.  The walls were bare and white...kind of creepy.  But we were out of the waiting room with hopes that the doctor would be in soon.  

After a very long night with a very fussy baby, we were given a clean bill of health.  They drew blood and urine, swabbed his nose and throat, and looked in his ears.  If you want to know what torture is like, take your infant to the ER.  Nothing was found.  All tests came back normal. So we were sent home with instructions to alternate between giving him Tylenol and Advil every 3-4 hours.  

Babies are so MYSTERIOUS!

If they could only talk and tell us what was wrong.  

We got home around midnight and walked across the street to get Matthew.  Oh yeah, we were lucky enough to not have to take him with us to the ER.  That would have been disasterously (is that a word?) exhausting!  Rishi and Amanda so graciously kept him for us.  

You could say we were all tired the next morning.  Samuel slept through the night and when he woke Saturday morning, I brought him to bed with me.  He went right to sleep...and guess what I did...

Even though the circumstances to this picture were not so great, I loved cuddling with Samuel.  He was clingy for several more days and although it was hard, it was also wonderful.  You know they are only little for so long.  

Matthew too ended up getting the fever and his only lasted a short day and a half.

I knew he wasn't feeling well when he fell asleep in this chair at 11:00 in the morning.  He rebounded fast though which was very fortunate for us.