3D snowflake

Our kids made 3D snowflakes at their homeschool group meeting yesterday. Here's a link on how you can make them too.

My View from Here.

I joined a flickr group that committed to take one new picture a week. The theme for this week is "My View From Here."
This was my view as I looked out the front door window yesterday.

Carrot Cake

When I was growing up, my mom was truly a health food
person before it was so popular to be a part of the health food world. We did not have junk food. We did not have bleached flour or white rice, nor did we have refined sugar. Our peanut butter was the kind that was made purely of peanuts and needed the oil stirred in before you could use it. On occasion, we even had our peanut butter freshly ground from peanuts at GNC. When there was a potluck dinner at church, she still cooked healthfully. From time to time, she would try something that was to our childish eyes and tastebuds, completely outlandish and disgusting. And, yes, we would get embarrassed when our classmates looked at our lunch and say, "Ewww! What is that?!"
Imagine my chagrin and embarrassment when my mom decided to do a kind deed for an older batchlor in our church and make him a carrot cake. WHO had ever heard of CARROTS in a CAKE? I sure hadn't, and I thought surely she was going overboard trying to push her healthly living lifestyle off on this poor guy. It was not til many years later that I discovered that there really is such a thing as carrot cake, and it really is delicious! In fact my husband's grandmother could make the most wonderful carrot cake in the world for our birthdays. She has passed away, but we are still able to enjoy the recipe.

Here it is:
2 c sugar
1.5 c oil
4 eggs
2 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp salt
1 c chopped pecans (opt)
3 c shredded carrots
(I've heard that you should not use the pre-shredded carrots)

Mix dry ingredients. Add vanilla and eggs. Add carrots. Add oil, and mix well. Pour into 3 greased and floured 8 inch round pans. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Frosting:
8 oz cream cheese (softened)
16 oz box powdered sugar
1 stick butter (softened)
1 tsp vanilla
1 c chopped pecans

Blend cream cheese, butter, and vanilla. Add powdered sugar and blend well. Mix in pecans. Frost the cakes after they are cooled.
Sometimes I double the frosting recipe so I'll have plenty of frosting.


My husband just had his birthday, and I of all people made a cake with CARROTS in it! Here is a picture looking at him through the cloud of smoke from his candles that he blew out.

It all started with a "quick" run to the grocery store. I was doing really good getting all the kids in the vehicle while I was loading groceries. I had to be home very quickly and have supper on the table right away in order for my husband and son to get to their Cub scout meeting on time. As I was throwing groceries in the back, I was planning what I would throw on the table.

In the mean time, one of my daughters decided to climb in the driver's seat and start messing with all the controls. At the advice of my oldest daughter, the one in the driver's seat decided to turn on the GPS that my husband had received for Christmas.
I finally got the groceries loaded, and put the cart away, and jumped into the driver's seat. After I thought I had fixed all the driver's controls, I dialed my husband to tell him I would be home shortly. At the same time I was talking to my husband, I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot. All of the sudden a larger than life voice spoke up. "TURN RIGHT!" said the man on the GPS. Whoa! That scared me, and I could not hear my husband. I started grabbing for wires to unplug the GPS only to realize it was not plugged in. Meanwhile the thing was still barking out directions to my house. I did NOT need to know how to get home. I started yelling at the kids, "How do you turn this thing off?!"
"It's the button on top, Mom" they all said.
Holding the phone with my shoulder, and the steering wheel with one hand, I started pounding the top of the GPS with my other hand to turn the stupid thing off. No success there. At the same time I was pounding, I looked up to see a telephone pole right at the corner of the passenger side windsheild. I swerved. Too late. I was scraping a mailbox that was right next to the telephone pole. Off came the mirror. Sccrraaape it went across the door. Thud it hit the ground.
Let's just say that when it was all over, there was a crying mom and four crying children in the back seats.
Today, our vehicle is in the body shop for a week. If we keep this kind of thing up, we'll have a whole new body for our vehicle. We have already had a new windshield and a new bumper. Never in my life have I had a vehicle in the body shop until this one. Oh, and lesson number two. Don't cancel your car rental insurance to save $3.00 a month. You just might need it one day. :D

She's Unique

We wanted four children so we would not have a middle child. What we didn't count on was having three of the four children being girls. The picture above is of our middle daughter. She is so different from our other children that one of our friends often says about her, "Which one of these is not like the others?" She loves to pose, she loves to dress up, and she is much smarter than she appears. :)

She also comes up with some of the funniest ways to say things. The other day when I became concerned about a spot where a tick bite had been, she asked me, "Mom, are you going to Google 'How ticks get on you and cause an infection and make you die.com?'"

In the above photo, I was taking 10 year pictures of her brother. His props were a camo outfit and his new gun for one set of pictures, and a cowboy outfit and gun for another set of pictures. She decided she needed in on the action, grabbed a broken gun, sat on a stump, and put on this pose with no prompting from me. In fact, she demanded that I take the picture. I'm glad I did because it turned out pretty well.