Just Life

Nothing out of the ordinary in this post. Just normal life. Kids being kids. Doing what they do.



Ben LOVES books. He can say "book" and he asks for them all the time. He thinks he should get at least five books before bed. He'll sit with a book, turn the pages, point at things, and babble like he's actually reading it.



Bubbles!



No, Momma, my balloon!



Sam had a big day on Saturday. He graduated from Pre Hockey 1 to Pre Hockey 2 and got a faux-hawk.



Sam played in the fountain after his haircut.



Splish, splash!



When using edible markers, remember to put them up when you are done or everything edible becomes fair game with kids. Here is Sam decorating his donut one morning.

Sam and Hagen and Hockey

We didn't have hockey lessons today so we just went for free skate after lunch. We had a hard time telling them apart when they were on the ice in their matching Allen Americans jerseys.

Sam and Hagen like to take breaks on the bench like the players.

They like skating even more now that they have all of their gear.

They are getting pretty good too!

Here is a video of Sam skating. He's in the middle of the screen on the far side of the ice under the red arrow at the start of the video.

Valentine's Cookies

My dream has come true! I have successfully baked sugar cookies from scratch, made icing, and decorated them with Sam. They look and taste wonderful!

We've made sugar cookies and decorated them before (here and here), but they were not what I had in my mind. They were not pretty enough, too crunchy, and too much work and mess the first time I made them with Sam. The second time I didn't even let Sam help and I bought the cookies from the store.

Since rolling out sugar cookie dough has proven to be a disaster, we tried using Wilton's Valentine's cookie pan. I used the cookie recipe on their site and the royal icing recipe from About.com SoutherFood. I used White Lily flour so that the cookies would be lighter.

The recipe made 30 cookies. I used a medium size cookie scoop to get a consistent size cookie and pressed the cookie dough into the pan. I cooked them for 15 minutes at 325 degrees. I used a lower temperature than the recipe suggested because the cookie pan is non-stick.

Why use White Lily flour?

Wheat flour contains two proteins, glutenin and gliadin. When you combine flour with water, the proteins create a strong and elastic sheet called gluten. Flours vary in their protein levels, which affects the texture of baked good. Gluten gives structure to yeast breads, but is not recommended for tender cakes, biscuits, and quick breads. Southern all-purpose flour is milled from soft red winter wheat that has less gluten-forming protein.

Most national brands of all-purpose flour are a combination of soft winter wheat and higher protein hard summer wheat. White Lily contains approximately 9 grams of protein per cup of flour, whereas national brands can contain eleven or twelve grams of protein per cup of flour. If you live outside the South, White Lily is available online or in specialty shops in other parts of the country (e.g. Central Market).

Pops keeps us supplied with White Lily flour and cornmeal, catfish, and other things that just aren't the same outside of the South. And, no, Texas is not "the South". Texas is Texas.

For results similar to those of Southern flour, substitute one part all-purpose flour and one part cake flour for the amount of Southern flour in a recipe. Finally, high protein flour absorbs more liquid than does low protein flour. If you attempt to make biscuits with a high protein flour, you will need to add more liquid.

-- Bon Appetit, Y'all, by Virginia Willis

Sam was not thrilled with the slow flow rate of the icing. He really just wanted to flood the cookies and sprinkle them with sugar. Next time I'll use the larger squeeze bottles for him. I like the smaller ones because you can get more detail and a thinner coat of icing. I personally just don't want that much icing on my cookies, and the added bonus is that thinner icing means less drying/hardening time.

Only 24 of the cookies got iced because the other 6 got eaten while we were waiting for them to cool. I couldn't keep 3 hungry boys out of the kitchen with the smell of fresh baked cookies after being snowed in all day. That would just be cruel!

Mmmm ... Sammy couldn't wait to eat the teddy bear.

Snow, Melt, Repeat

Another snow day with my favorite little guys. Great excuse to stay in their Spiderman pjs all day.

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes ...

We've been iced/snowed in since Tuesday and it's Saturday. The sun is out, but it's still just 20 degrees out. The high is supposed to be 45 today so hopefully it will melt and go away, not just melt and make more ice. More snow is forecasted for tomorrow and Wednesday, so I'm not sure what we'll be dealing with this week. We have to make a grocery run today and I'm not looking forward to the crowds. Everybody has been stuck in the house and tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. Oh joy! On a positive note, we've really cleaned out the freezer and the pantry.

The sleet storm hit Monday night. It sounded like the house was being bead-blasted all night and there was lots of thunder and lightening to go with it. It was the strangest thing ever and we didn't get much sleep. Tuesday was ok, but Wednesday greeted us with rolling power outages and low gas pressure. Chris braved the cold and made scrambled eggs outside.

The boys stayed in their pajamas all week.

Ben was not the least bit thrilled with us trying to telecommute while he just wanted to play.

After the sleet storm Monday night, we were supposed to get another light dusting of snow Friday morning. We woke to this.

Sam couldn't wait to get out in the snow. He mostly wanted to track down the neighbors and have a snowball fight.

Our house, covered in snow, again. This is starting to happen so often that it's almost not a picture-worthy event any more.

Benny-boo made it out for a little while. He does not have as much waterproof clothing as Sam, so he was not very thrilled. He just learned to walk on sand last weekend and he was not very interested in learning to walk on snow.

Making snowballs.

Snowball fight.

More snowballs, please!

Yep, Mom, still not movin', and my feet are getting a little cold!

It's so nice having neighbors with kids the same age. 7 kiddos across 3 houses.

Could not have made it without many pots of coffee this week, but we were drinking it black to ration the milk.

Warm and cozy in their pjs. The boys came inside for hot cocoa and some Scooby Doo.

A Taste of Spring

We had some beautiful weather last weekend with the temps staying in the 70s most of the time. It was also a three day weekend since the kids' school was closed Friday for parent/teacher conferences. Chris and I have been working so much lately that we just decided to be kids for a weekend and play as much as we could. We went out to eat and sat on patios. We went to hockey practice, practice skate, and a hockey game. We played in the sand and in the water. We even went swimming (indoor at LT Fitness). We had so much fun that we didn't want the weekend to end. We got a little taste of how fun it is going to be this spring with two little boys!

It's Valentine's Day "season" and that means a new batch of gel clings to play with. They didn't last as long as the ones we had at Christmas. Mr. Ben has already shredded them. Good thing it's cheap entertainment.

The patio at Blue Fish in Allen at Watters Creek.

The kids had fun with the chopsticks.

I'm ready for the green to be green. Picnic lunches and such.

Haircuts for the boys.

Acka backa soda cracker

Acka backa boo

Acka backa soda cracker

I love you

Ben is doing a lot better than Sam did with the haircuts. I had to hold him in my lap though to tame the stranger anxiety.

Haircuts are no problem for Sam now. He wishes they would last longer so he could keep playing the video games.

Sweet baby face.

Look who's playing with trains.

The Village at Fairview has an awesome "beach" area. Beach volleyball, horseshoes, and bean bag toss areas along with a playground and plenty of sand and toys for the kiddos.

Ben has only been walking for about a month and a half so it took him a while to get used to walking on the sand.

Filling buckets with sand. Endless hours of fun.

If you look close, you can see a handful of sand he threw over his shoulder.

No wait for the patio at Glorias. Not sure why because it was gorgeous outside. See the water fountain in the background?

There's no way you can keep kids away from this.

Patterns and colors and water to splash!

As soon as Benny got a good face full of water he had had enough.

A change of clothes and we were off to the hockey game. We got the kids to bed around 10pm that night and they slept until 9:40 the next morning. I could get used to this!