my blessed life

Happy 12th Birthday to our Princess!! (isn't this an awesome hat/card that my sister got her?!) Yesterday our oldest turned 12.   It's hard to believe how quickly time flies by. It seems like just yesterday I was getting her nursery ready  and buying all of those tiny clothes. She has grown into a lovely young woman and we are SO proud of her!! She is a joy to have for a daughter. We had a great day together.   First, we had some lunch and played games  ...and acted silly at Chuck E. Cheese.   Then we went to see the new Cinderella movie (wonderful!). We squeezed in a bit of shopping (birthday $$, you know!)  and finally, we met up with my family for a birthday dinner at Olive Garden. And posed for a few funny shots after dinner :) Happy Birthday, sweet girl!!

And it's Tasty Tuesday again!!  Yea!! We celebrated my awesome hubby's birthday yesterday.  We were snowed/iced in (still are!), but we had CAKE !  That's all that matters, right? :) Black Forest Cake is his fave and this is a recipe that I've made often for his birthdays in the past.  It had been a while though and I decided we needed to have it again this year. It's SO good!!  Traditional Black Forest Cake is actually a little heavy for me, but this one is light and delicious! Black Forest Cake (cake) 6 eggs 1 cup granulated sugar 1 tsp. vanilla 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I like the Hershey's Special Dark) 1/2 cup butter, melted (filling & topping) 2-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream 2 tbsp. powdered sugar 1/2 tsp. vanilla 1 can cherry pie filling grated chocolate chocolate curls ***** Preheat the oven to 350F.  Grease and flour three 8" round cake pans.   Whisk the egg...

Well, here it is the middle of February already!  These past couple of weeks have flown by so quickly.  I know I mentioned earlier in the week about how busy we were with last week's trips (you can read more about that here ), but this week seemed to go by almost as fast just playing "catch-up" around here.  You know, the laundry piles, the house cleaning (especially since it was our week to host our church small group), just the usual.   I did let the kids take a "snow day" on Monday simply because we weren't at home on the weekend to let them play in it and they were just dying to get out and play in the snow.  It worked well since it also gave me a day to just focus on some house work. We stayed pretty much on track the rest of the week.  There weren't any spectacular highs or lows this week, educationally speaking, but it was one of those weeks where we just stayed the course.   You probably noticed that Valentine's Day c...

This past weekend was Mr. B's 8th birthday.  This year will be remembered as the year Mr. B didn't want a birthday cake--or cupcakes!--but asked for a chocolate fountain instead.   (I'm pretty sure he was inspired by the popular pictures of this bird ). And, no, I didn't let him lick the fountain.  However, he did sneak a straw later on and proceeded to suck up some of that dark chocolate goodness from the bottom of the fountain!  What a stinker!  (Did I mention that he threw up by bedtime? hahaha) It was a delicious idea though and we enjoyed dipping strawberries, kiwi, bananas, and angel food cake into it...mmmmmmm!  And it didn't seem nearly as fattening as cake:) So, yes, Mr. B had a birthday and is officially 8 years old!  So hard to believe that my baby is that big now!  He is a constant source of entertainment and keeps me on my toes by the minute.  I love him dearly~he's my favorite little boy in the...

We're all very happy to see summertime around here!!  Yes, I know that technically the first day of summer isn't until June 21st, but we all know that summer really begins when school is finished, right? ;)   So with our school work being wrapped up I thought it would be fun to celebrate with a festive summer banner (I've been just dying to hang a cute banner on my freshly painted fireplace !).   I headed over to my  Pinterest  boards (such fun, right?!) to see what inspiration I could find.  And, sure enough, Pinterest didn't let me down--I found the perfect summer banner for us (there were lots to choose from, mind you).   What do you think?  I love the way it turned out!  It makes me smile whenever I look at it:) Now we're busy working on our 2013 Summer Bucket List ( you can see last year's here ).... What fun things do you do to celebrate the arrival of summer? ***** Don't miss a thing here at...

We had a really lovely Easter weekend.  We began our festivities on Good Friday with some yummy strawberry and cream scones and a Bible lesson on the Last Supper from Grapevine Studies.  Then we spent the day just enjoying each other as a family, doing some of our traditional Easter activities, and preparing an Easter dinner for our extended family that evening.   Saturday the rain held off long enough for us to have tons of fun at our church's Easter Eggstravaganza.  There the kiddos had a blast hunting candy-filled eggs, taking horse rides, and playing with the baby animals borrowed from a local farm.  We had a wonderful turnout from our community and everyone had a great time together!  That evening at home we let the kiddos dig into their Easter baskets--a little early, yes, but Sunday mornings always seem so busy that we wanted them to be able to take their time a little. Easter Sunday was truly blessed!  Our worship service at church was...

On this chilly, rainy Good Friday I am looking forward to some quality time with my family.  We worked extra hard yesterday to get two days of school work done in one so that we could do some different activities today. We're starting our day with a copycat version of Panera's strawberries & cream scones (they're baking right now and I can't wait to eat one!).  I have fallen in food-love with those things and I really hope this recipe can fix my craving! Then we're going to spend some time reflecting on the meaning of Good Friday with a Grape Vine study on The Last Supper.  I'm excited about trying this curriculum with my kiddos because I'm looking into it for our next school year.  "Stick figuring through the Bible" just sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? The rest of the day I plan to do some fun Easter activities with the family: dye eggs--maybe like this , or this get our some of our Easter and spring decorations (yes...

So, the flu has left me and I am feeling motivated to be "fun" again!  Yea!!  Last week I was ...umm.... not fun.  Just sick:(  I'm so glad to be feeling human again. This past weekend we celebrated our daughter's 10th birthday.  She has been excited about turning "double-digits" for ..oh, something like a year now and we wanted the day to be special.   While it's pretty easy to get some fun mommy points on a birthday, they still count, right?  She really wanted to help make her birthday cake and while it's always easier for a mom to just get it all done by herself, it was way more fun to let her help.  She's really taking an interest in cooking and I definitely want to encourage that.  She did a great job following directions and putting all of the ingredients in for the cake batter--and, of course, an excellent job of licking the beaters.  That's a tradition in our house.  Sometimes I fight the kids for the beat...

This weekend we are celebrating our Princess' 10th birthday!! It's amazing to think that 10 years ago she arrived, 8 weeks early, weighing only 4.9 ounces  with a little smashed nose from being in the birth canal for so long...heehee She has grown into such a beautiful young lady and we are incredibly proud of her! She has been so excited about this big day--turning 10!!--and has hardly been able to wait at all:)  So this weekend is all about her. Happy Birthday, Sweet Princess!!!

Is anyone else out there mourning the loss of Twinkies like my husband is?  We didn't buy them very often (me--not at all), but occasionally he would bring home a box of one of his favorite foods.   Since his birthday was coming up I suddenly remembered a cake I had made for him on the first birthday of his that we celebrated together: Twinkie Cake !  That was about 17 years ago!  I thought it might be time to bring it back, but then there was the question of Twinkies and where to get them.  Pinterest, of course!  And by that I mean a good copy cat recipe.  So I started the search and found a great recipe that I could tweak a little. So to make a delicious Twinkie Cake, first make your "Twinkies". Twinkie Cupcakes 1 box yellow cake mix (get the kind that has pudding in the mix and calls for oil as an ingredient) 1-1/4 cups water 1/3 cup canola oil 4 egg whites 1 large jar marshmallow creme ***** Preheat your oven to 35...