Tbug

Where to Stay/Coffee – Denison, Texas

It’s been a week since we got back from vacation. A WEEK. How on earth did time fly so fast? Seriously. So much has happened in this past week. We finally, thank the good Lord, got Rain! We needed it. Our AC went on the fritz and came back again. Don’t know, don’t ask :). Hubby got home with us only to turn around Monday and head back to Boston, more on that later. Tbug started School. My parents left on vacation. It’s just been a whirlwind of things.

p.s. I might have been dragging my feet about packing myself after packing 3 other people for our trip…

The leading up story

Hubby’s work took him out of town to Boston the week before we were to leave on vacation. Our scheduled departure date was Sunday, August 5, 2018. Hubby’s work trip was supposed to bring him home on August 3, 2018. Supposed to…

Hubby was supposed to board a Delta flight in Boston in the evening on Friday, get into Kansas City late, and potentially drive home to be home around Midnight. A storm threatened the Eastern Seaboard and all Delta flights were canceled in a 150-mile radius around Boston, although hubby said no storm ever hit where they were. All of his co-workers who flew on Southwest Airlines, their flight was delayed, but they got out.

His travel partner and he jumped on trying to scurry and find flights home. The earliest they could get home was Sunday. His travel partner wound up getting home around 4 pm into Kansas City on Sunday. He got rerouted finally through Northwest Arkansas and got home around noon on Sunday. No flights were to be found for Saturday. Oy! (more…)

Family Fourth of July

I’ve talked about our Family Fourth of July quite a bit this week between the Spumoni Cake, the Wacky Cake, and the Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches. A lot of food talk huh? I also made a Greek Pasta Salad. Holy Yum! But hello, where are the pictures of the fireworks? I’m so glad you asked!

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with what desserts we were going to take. Then making sure I had all the ingredients. Finally, the execution.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

It seems like most years Tbug doesn’t get to be around for my husband’s families Fourth of July party. This year was different though, yey! That means she was in case you didn’t catch that. haha. One of the things the family does is whoever hosts provides the meat usually and everyone else brings a side or dessert.

Since I knew Tbug would be able to make it, I shot her a text and asked if she’d like to make something. She said yes. I then asked if she had any ideas? She said let me think about it. I told her just let me know so I can have all the ingredients needed.

She sent me 4 options…

I told her all were good options, she had to choose which one. She finally decided on the Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches. I then proceeded to click on link after link without really finding the recipe I was looking for, So I went to the drawing board and said, we’ll do our own. (more…)

Wacky Cake with Perfect Party Icing

I really think people don’t believe my now 4-year-old can actually cook. There are some kids I’m sure their parents say can cook and maybe they can, maybe they can’t, but my kids, both of them have grown up in the kitchen with me. I started Tbug helping me as early as I could… she came into my life at 6-years-old. And Abug has done nothing but live in the kitchen with me because as a baby I wasn’t sure what to do with her while I cooked.

And yes, there are some people who give women in the kitchen a bad rap because of all the feminism/sexism mumbo jumbo, but I personally LOVE to cook. I haven’t always… but I have since my late teens/early 20’s. When I was a kid, I had better things to do with my time I guess. I wish I’d have started earlier.

But this is a post about Wacky Cake… not me. I’ll try to remember that…

So when we were getting ready for my husband’s family shindig, I asked Tbug what she was going to make for the party. I didn’t quite give Abug such an option because, well she’s 4 and may not know what all there is. She’d have probably told me Mac and Cheese or something like that. Truth be told… maybe I should have let her take that as her contribution. There were few sides it felt like, maybe because I didn’t care for most of them… but there were lots of desserts. (more…)

Cherry Cheesecake French Macarons

Saturday night we had my husband’s families Fourth of July Party. Lately, I’ve been on the kick to make French Macarons. It might be because my aunt stroked my ego and said that I made restaurant style French Macarons. We’ll blame it on her… lol.

I had egg whites that had been sitting out aging like they say that they need to do for French Macarons. I actually had other plans for them but wasn’t going to be able to do that for a while and didn’t want these to go bad. So I convinced Tbug to make the French Macarons. I thought she might enjoy making something different… Eventually, I had to take over because it was getting late at night and she still had her cookies to make… but she stuck it out to that point I took over. (more…)

The Birthday Party

This sweet little girl is 4 today. 4. How did that happen? I seriously don’t know. It seems like just 4 years went by in the blink of an eye. I’m sooooo proud of how she’s turned out and some days she leaves me shaking my head wondering how her mind got where it got!

Only having her sister around certain times and with trying to plan a birthday party around our hectic at times schedule, we actually wound up celebrating her birthday 2 weeks early. Hey, a girl is allowed to celebrate her birthday for a month, right? I think so!!

The Birthday Party

I knew the theme was going to be Unicorn’s since sometime last fall. It’s random. It’s so totally her! I did some research online looking for party decorations. I started to order offline but then went to town to Party City to see what they had. They had everything I wanted and I could walk away with it in hand so I went ahead and changed up the unicorn pattern a little and bam, we were set! (more…)

My Mother’s Day 2018

Happy Mother’s Day! Mother’s Day is an interesting day, truly. Some people even choose not to celebrate it thinking that it is a Hallmark Holiday, however, those same people are willing to celebrate International Women’s Day. Just a thought. haha. I choose to celebrate Mother’s Day. It might be a Hallmark Holiday but you know… I like Hallmark movies. haha. I wonder if Hallmark tv channel and Hallmark Cards are one in the same… Google… I’ll be for you in a minute.

Now… I was a step-mother long before I was a mother. In fact, 6 years. There is a lot of debate if I got included in that celebration. There’s sometimes a debate if any step-mother’s are included. My husband included me although I didn’t feel like I should. But that’s neither here nor there. I am now a mom too. I guess I do get to celebrate Mother’s Day. Although I should clarify, earlier when I said I celebrated, don’t worry, I celebrated my own mother and my grandmothers.

Anyway, this year I invited my grandma, my mother in law, and of course my mother (after all right now we live in her house) for Mother’s Day dinner. The week leading up, I had no idea what I would make. I like to cook after all! But I was still at a loss for what to make. (more…)

The Duck Race

If you’ve been paying attention to the weather around the country any this week, then you’ll know the Midwest was supposed to get hit with a HUGE potential of Severe Thunderstorms/Tornadic weather. I woke up this morning to a HUGE bang of thunder. I always say that all we need is a good thunderstorm and all trees just blossom BAM! Yup, I was right.

The other thing to note is we’re on baby watch 2018. No… not me. The horse’s sillies. One mare is 1 week overdue and the other is about 2 weeks out. With crappy weather like this, I halfway expected to walk out and find 2 babies on the ground. So far, notta.

But there is a light rain going on and by the time I was done feeding critters, I’m kind of soggy. Which reminds me of a day not too long ago that I got soggy. Let me explain…

Jared carrying me to shore on his back. Tori walking along side.

The Duck Race

A couple weekends ago we were helping out with Trails for Kids. One of the events to raise money is the Duck Race. We sell little toy ducks that float for $2/each or 3 for $5. Then we go to Sugar Creek, the creek that runs right alongside the campground. We dump them in, and the winner wins half the pot of money collected. Easy enough, right? Sure… (more…)

Easter 2018 (Better Late Than Never)

Easter 2018

Yey! Easter has come (and gone!). This year we made a trip to my aunt and uncles in southern Oklahoma for Easter. It is a 5 1/2 hour trip down, so we left Friday, celebrated Easter (with dinner) on Saturday and drove home on Sunday. Luckily this was our year to have Tbug with us too! Woot woot!

We weren’t able to get Tbug until something like 1:30 on Friday and my dad wasn’t able to get off work until closer to 3ish so by the time we got out of there, it was closer to 4 or 5. I can’t quite remember but does it really matter?

On the drive down I listened to the book, The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi. I can’t read in a car. I get car sick just sitting in one if I’m in the back seat, so reading is totally out of the question. But Audible to the rescue! It wasn’t a total loss, yey! I’ll have to do a “book report” on that in the coming days. So totally worth reading (or in my case, listening to).

We stopped in Oklahoma City for dinner. Technically Norman at a restaurant called Salt Grass. So totally YUM! Oh and don’t worry, I sent my friend Camille a picture of the water tower. I didn’t forget her on my way through… although I never got a response. In the words of Stephanie Tanner, How Rude! haha.

We got into AC & UB’s close to 11 pm. Abug told UB she was going to get up the next morning at 7 am and do chores with him. (more…)

Meet Thumper and Ginger

Yup, we’re going to try our hand at rabbits. Wish us luck!

Backstory

Last week (yeah, this hasn’t been going on for very long) was Tbug’s Spring Break. She got to spend most of it with us. On Thursday, for whatever reason, Abug started in on wanting a bunny. So Friday afternoon we went and got a few things to start working on rabbit cages. I used to have bunnies when I was younger and thought I still had the cage, but couldn’t find it. Must have been hauled off as scrap a while back, I don’t know. (more…)