Tea With Stephanie

I had promised Devin a batch of chocolate chip cookies over the weekend. When I called to discuss what specifically he wanted we talked about various alternatives like orange chocolate chip cookies that I make. Devin suggested mint but did not know if I had a recipe. Well I have been baking enough varieties just off from the original recipe that it is not that difficult to make something up. Luckily they turned out. Here is Devin’s new chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Mint Chocolate Chip cookies

½ cup butter flavored shortening

½ cup butter

½ cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

4-5 drops of green food coloring

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 cups flour

1 ½ cups chocolate chips

Cream butter and shortening with the sugars. Add eggs one at a time and beating well after each. Add vanilla and peppermint extracts. Add in green food coloring if desired.

Mix dry ingredients together and add to the creamy mixture. Can add up to 1/4 cup more flour if needed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Using a small cookie scoop or spoon drop by spoonfuls onto parchment paper covered cookie sheets.

Bake 375 oven about 7 minutes using the small scoop, or until golden brown around edges and a bit on top.

The green tint is just not really showing up in that photo.

This past halloween was the second year that we have let the children go trick or treating. I had a few simple rules for their costumes, 1 They had to be creative and 2 They had to be cheap or homemade. This is what the end result was.

Treanna as a Jedi Knight. She originally wanted to be Shaak Ti but struggled with the time to get my help making the head part. I told her we would concentrate on the jedi part of the costume as that would be our fall back plan. Thus:

Of course you cannot see her awesome hair do (a leia-like roll around the head like a crown), or her riding style boots and other small details that make the outfit. She has her Dad’s purple lightsaber in hand and a back up hanging from her utility belt.

Alaric as the 9th Doctor from BBC’s Doctor Who television show.

Yes that is a sonic screwdriver prop. His cosutme is so dark you really cannot see how neat it turned out. He chose the typical v-neck sweater for his top and has slacks and oxford style dress shoes. The coat was the hardest to find but I did find it second-hand and he thought it was perfect (which is all the counts). I really wanted him to be the 10th Doctor but did not want to spend $70+ on a pinstripe suit!

They had fun and still have too much candy left over.

This seems almost like a dream.

Especially when just this last week I took this:

While I am excited about November, Summer seemed just like yesterday.

Tomorrow I shall post Halloween costumes!

Yes I know I have not been updating. I realized that I was having attitude failure and since I had decided to really only keep my blog positive and informative I was struggling with things to write. This is not a journal I don’t write everything, I keep this the high points of my life as a way to share with family and friends.

 On the technical side it was time consuming to embed the photographs that I wanted of the kids and such. I am still undecided about how to do that part or make it easier to do.

I am hoping that since I am mentally in a place where I am wanting to post again that I will start doing so.
 

In November we took a family vacation. I don’t know if we had ever taken a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane that wasn’t to visit family. We like visiting family but we also wanted our children to experience a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane, did touristy things, and stayed in a hotel.

We were gone for an entire week and we had a fantastic time! Devin only had to work a single day during the middle of the week to do presentations for the conference he was speaking at. The conference provided us with a huge suite and we paid a bit extra so the kids had their own beds which was smart! We only stayed at Mandalay Bay for 3 nights and then moved down to the Excalibur. Mandalay Bay was extremely nice! Excalibur was very middle of the road not that we were expecting great rooms for the price we paid.

Our swimming lessons were put to excellent use the couple of times we went to the swimming area at Mandalay Bay. That was fantastic, we all loved the wave pool and the lazy river ride. The kids really enjoyed the current and swimming in circles. Devin’s parents came down for part of the week as well and we had a wonderful time with them too.

So we did a ton of touristy things. We discovered this nifty passport thingy we could purchase that allowed us to do a bunch of different attractions each day for 1 price. We bought ours for 5 days. The things we did: Start Trek the experience. Treanna and Alaric did NOT enjoy the Borg experience so much so that Treanna refused to do the Klingon part of it. Devin regretted doing the Klingon part as he was quite motion sick afterwards. We did enjoy eating at the Cafe as well. The kids enjoyed their Glok! a traditional klingon dish. We also had the odd experience of a vulcan telling me that my children were excellent examples of humanity. I just about died laughing. However at this point our children were extremely tired and had been up for 12 or more hours.

We went to the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage and enjoyed it so much we went back another day with Devin’s parents. We went to the Eiffel Tower experience with Devin’s parents. We also toured all sorts of casinos and just looked! There was so much to see and it was all larger than life. We all really enjoyed the Bellagio fountains as well as the Conservatory inside the Bellagio. We went through the King Tut’s tomb replica at the Luxor a couple of times and the kids and I did the ride thingy they had there as well. I also went on the Manhattan Express roller coaster with the kids. They had not been on a roller coaster before so it was an interesting experience. I am still not sure how I convinced them to go on it again. Then they somehow talked their father into try it out. Devin and the roller coaster did not get along at all. We also went to M&M world as well as the Coca Cola store.

In all we had a wonderful trip and are looking forward to planning another family vacation next year. We did learn a couple of things, one of which that we want to look into renting a condo/apartment type thing for future vacations for meal planning. Because of various allergies and just plain choosiness eating was a struggle some days. The other thing was that renting a car was a good thing in Las Vegas, everything is so far apart that we still did a ton of walking but when we were at one far end of the strip getting to the very opposite end would have been more of a pain without the vehicle.

I just uploaded a couple of photos from our Vegas trip in November 2007. I am slowly working on figuring out what I want to blog.

This picture was taken on our way out to baggage claim at the Las Vegas airport. There are some neat large statue like things of various desert animals. The children being the geeky kids they are decided they wanted to pretend to run away from scorponok in the desert ala Transformers movie.

This one almost needs no explanation. Except maybe that we had lunch at Planet Hollywood. Not that any of us thought the food was all that good. The decor was awesome food not so much.

Interesting thing is, after looking through all the pictures I think this was the only picture of all 4 of us at the same time while we were in Las Vegas. I did get a few family pictures taken by professionals. If I can manage somehow to get my scanner working again, I might even try getting copies of them online.

For Christmas 2007

Not even sure where to start.

Alaric had a birthday and a party with friends. We have been tearing through the house and cleaning more.  Did our room and Alaric’s room. Still have the girl’s room to go. I finally fixed the shelves in my craft cabinet and made small amounts of progress on my personal hell hole. We all had a 2 day virus of some sort and got over it. We have about 21 days til we leave on Vacation to Las Vegas and quite things happening between now and then.

Oh on a happy note the kids finally started their swim lessons. The first try was cancelled because of an imbalance in the pool chemicals. Then the second try was cancelled because they were both getting over this virus where they were exhausted and had fevers. (The virus? Yeah both children went to bed WAY early 1 night and slept over 14 hours each on the night they were sickest.) So finally they had their first lesson early Saturday morning. They loved it and their teacher was fantastic. Devin and I sat on a bench and giggled madly at their antics. She kept them having fun yet by the time their hour was up they were nearly swimming. Today after a long sleep in to the point we all missed church we went to the Family Swim in the afternoon. We all had a good time and Devin and I were just amazed at how much more progress the kids made practicing today. I have high hopes that they will be swimming by the time we go to Vegas.

Notes to myself of things to blog about. Alaric’s birthday including his Lego birthday cake (with pictures). My pretty fall mums by the front door (pictures of course!). And um something that I can’t remember.

Some days you feel like if you had a camera or a tape measure you could actually watch your children grow. In the last 10 days both of my children have filled out to the point where pants that fit are too tight. On top of that they both probably grew about an inch. Treanna seemed to have grown about an inch in the length of her arms alone. With the cooler weather I have started going through their clothing with a more critical eye. Well it got to the point by this past weekend where neither child had any clothing that fit. On a suggestion of a friend I got a coupon and took them to the OshKosh store in Woodinville with the plan that if we did not find things there we would head to Target. I of course made a list and went through their clothing a bit before we went to try and see what they both really needed. I determined that each needed 2 pairs of jeans and a zippered hooded sweatshirt. Well I found those plus a pair of sweatpants for each. They are both happy and it is obvious they grew as the clothing was the next size up (A a 10slim and T a 14slim) and they both have a good couple of inches in length to grow before they get too short again. They love their new sweatshirts and even wore them to school today.

Yesterday and today I helped the children put their clean clothes away and went through everything in their closets and drawers. Anything they refused to wear or I didn’t like went out the door. They each have nice clean clothing hanging and in their drawers. Alaric still has a few things that will fit for the next couple of sizes. Treanna got her next size box completely cleaned out, everything fit that was in their. Their might be a single pair of sweats that are still too big but I am going to try washing them to see if they shrink first. It still amazes me to realize just how much they both grew in the last month alone. Having them try on all their clothing really made the difference. I know what fits them now. For example I did not know that a red shirt of Treanna’s was really a 3/4 length sleeve. She has grown that much since springtime when we put the shirt up til autumn.

As for the Tinkerbell cup. Well that is an interesting story. I went to a Tupperware party and won a prize for free merchandise. Unfortunately I had already bought the only things I needed/wanted from the catalog so had to stretch a bit to find something else. So I got a Tinkerbell cup for me. It is fun and makes me remember to drink my water. The kids were slightly disgusted by it but I am amused so don’t care. Apparently I am already known as the weird Mom so I guess I am good. 

Now to continue my tear through the house. I have rearranged kitchen cupboards and cleared out some stuff but have more to do. I have cleared out my clothes and got rid of everything that doesn’t fit, doesn’t go with anything else or I just won’t wear. Have done some work on the dining room but have the living room, the front room and my craft area to go. My craft area especially needs it as the shelves in my cabinet seemed to have fallen down. Perfect excuse to dump more stuff from the cabinet. Am I really going to ever do that project? Time to ask the hard questions. I have 4 1/2 weeks before we leave on vacation so need to have my decluttering done by then. The week after we get back is fall clean up. I want a very large and distinguished pile by then, as well as whatever can be donated or freecycled before then.

There is a blanket of dead leaves over my grass. There seem to be dead dry leaves everywhere around my house. It took quite some time to clean them out of the carport today. There are lots and lots of spiders and their little egg sacs everywhere too. I cleaned off the cobwebs and what spiders and eggs I could find while cleaning up today. I spent about 2 hours cleaning out my carport. It has been home to spiders, garbage and other junk for most of the late spring and all summer. Today I decided enough was enough. I have a very large and distinguished pile of trash ready for fall cleanup already. I even managed to clear off several shelves of things that were just out there and replaced them with a small cabinet that had doors that was already in the carport. I still have more to do but the carport was swept, cleared out, moved around a bit as needed, and now my car is even parked in it. I actually think I cleared it out enough that we could park both cars in there.

The kids seem to be doing well back at school. Not a lot of homework which is slightly throwing off the evening groove. So far I have been enjoying my time to myself and have actually gotten some overdue things done. I don’t necessarily feel like I have done enough. But something is better than nothing. Most importantly I am not feeling behind on anything really. We even have begun to tweak the evening routines so things get done around the house but on a regular basis and no one does too much. So far we have been working on it only this week but it seems to be going better. Of course we have a new incentive in the house to really get things done. Devin got an Xbox for his birthday. Granted it is an older system and not up to date but heck it is fun. The kids have been enjoying Mech Assault and Devin has been enjoying Halo. The other game that came with the one we bought was Syberia. I have been wanting to play this game since before it came out in 2002. It is a different kind of game than others I have played before. Some of the game play was frustrating but I enjoyed it overall. I actually finished it completely last night(I love the online hint/walkthrough websites!).

I am glad that I decided not to really buy the children any school clothes yet. They both just had or are having a growth spurt. Alaric has outgrown nearly all his pants in the last 2 weeks. Luckily he still has a few until I can figure out where he is at. I have decided to just wash what clothes they have more often and get rid of things that are definitely too small. Then we will go from there as we figure out what they really need and would wear.

In other news it is official we are actually taking a “family” vacation. In November all 4 of us are going to be flying to Las Vegas for a week. Granted Devin will be doing some work in there somewhere but it is mostly vacation. We are all excited and looking forward to it. I am even trying to get the kids some swimming lessons before we go down so we can actually take advantage of the swimming pools if the weather cooperates.