Happy Valentine's day

Today has been a busy, hectic day; rounding out a crazy 2 days in the part-time world. Random things that have made me wonder if I should contact tomorrow's volunteers and give them notice tomorrow might be crazy! I think I have fixed most of the random things, we will see.
So, today about everything I wanted to get done didn't get done in the time I was hoping for.  I wanted to have these pocket pies done before Eric got home, but it didn't happen, so now  they are waiting for him to finish the dishes and then we can eat.  

Now, before you go all dang that girl has a problem, I should say I made the cookies for Eric, since those are his favorite cookies and that is all I was planning on doing, but then I found this recipe for a chocolate cherry cheesecake and I decided to make that for tomorrow's meeting.  Well, I needed about a cup of cherry pie filling but then I would have some left over, and the question became what to do with these leftovers?  Enter the pocket pies!  Heart shaped, Valentine themed!  Sadly, I can't eat much if any of these things, gives me heartburn...I will suffer through 1 pie tonight and a sliver of cheesecake tomorrow, but that will likely be it.  I might be trying to fatten everyone up around me and I honestly haven't baked anything in a while!  So it was fun! 
Gwen seemed to enjoy her valentine's day.  And I decided to prep dinner, but have Eric make/assemble.  So I made some sushi rice, made some tempura shrimp and while Eric and the kids made the sushi, I assembled the pocket pies.  We were all in the kitchen and had a good time.  Gwen even ate some sushi!  A good way to celebrate the day!  Happy Valentine's day! 

Father-daughter dance and Valentines

The school has a father-daughter dance and Gwen really wanted to go.  I kept asking Eric if they were going to go and he'd say "I don't know anything about it".  So finally, at dinner the other night I asked and he said, I'll go if someone asks me.  So Gwen asked and low and behold they went to the dance.  I snapped a couple pictures before they left. 

Unfortunately I couldn't get her to change out of her socks, but I did get her to put a shirt under her dress.  WIN!  She also did her own hair and jewelry.  She is starting to get into necklaces and such, not so much bracelets or hair.  She is wearing a "medal" she made it school. 

Nate and I waited anxiously for them to come home, well Nate fell asleep, and I waited.  Gwen was fairly tired but I did find out they did have fun, ate lots of snacks and didn't dance.  Eric spoke to some of the other Dads and asked Gwen to dance, but she didn't want to, she just wanted to hang with her friends.  Apparently the had photographer who took pictures and Gwen brought home 2 flowers.  Eric got a glimpse of what the future will be and I am not sure, he might be scared.

Nate and I decided to secretly make some Valentine's cookies.  Sadly, I had to do a babysitting thing today, so I didn't have time to put the cookies away.  Guess who spotted them about 2.5 sec after she walked in the door.  Guess who told Daddy immediately so she could have some for dessert.  Oh well.  Guess I don't have to sneak them into lunches tomorrow. 

Nate really likes to help and now he has the fancy apron for helping.  He was a much better helper when it was just us and I didn't have to decide which kid does each task. 

Happy Valentine's Day

For Valentine's day this year we decided to bake cookies for Daddy. I thought I would do this on Thursday, I don't know why, I had a 99deg fever, but for some reason felt like we should make cookies? Eric had an after work obligation, so maybe I thought I'd have more time. Sadly, when I made this decision, I had no idea that SOMEONE had used up almost all the FLOUR and the SUGAR! So I had to improvise, and well, it made for quite the interesting problem. First off, I used some wheat flour, second I left dough in the refrigerator too long, although I imagine that might have had a lot to do with the wheat flour than with the time. Also I might have forgotten to add all the wet ingredients before the dry ingredients, oh well, you have kids, things happen! I had already told the kids that I was going to have the help me roll out the dough, sadly Mommy didn't realize it would be too hard and not really stick together. Fortunately, Daddy doesn't really care about such things. And the cookie still taste the same. So lesson learned, spend more time discussing with husband how not to use up the baking supplies before "holidays" fake or not...
Today we were set to decorate and Nate was acting pretty tired/sickly he laid down in his bed and went to sleep. Sadly it was at 3:30, but he only slept 2 hours and since he was sickly, appeared to go back to bed on time-ish. Gwen and I decorated the cookies by ourselves. I will let you determine who made which ones. I decided to do Mexican for dinner tonight, not even Eric's favorite or anything, but I knew the kids would eat burritos/taquitos I fancied ours up a bit. And then for dessert I made panna cotta. It was pretty good. Here is the slideshow:

Eric asked me today, if I was completely on the mend, I told "well, when you don't have any backups you gotta get better", he thought I had looked in the mirror and willed myself better, as per my Dad's advice, who knows, it might have been both. So after 3 days of a low grade fever and hardly eating solids, I am back in the swing of things, the kids are starting to get sick, possibly. Hopefully some good nights sleep for them will get them on the path to recovery.

Valentine's Day

I intended to come on here and post about the cookies and the decorating on Valentine's day, but well, I was a little distratcted, so I am putting it out here today. We had been cooped up in the house for a while and it made me in the mood to bake. I thought why not invite over my new friend over and have the girls decorate cookies. So Wed Gwen and I made cookies the cookies, she actually helped me make and cut out the cookies. Then Fri my friend came over with her daughter and the girls decorated cookies. Her daughter is about 2.5 but the girls play well together and get along, so we like getting them together. I did NOT let Nate decorate the cookies, I learned from Christmas, he's not much interested in the whole decorating, he's all about the eating!

So as you can see from the slide show, Gwen just got down to business and started decorating (my Dad would be so proud well except for the amount of sprinkles!), it was going a little slow so I put a little icing on just a couple of Gwen's but really all in all the girls had fun. I orignially gave Nate a undecorated cookie, but he is too smart and demanded some icing and as you saw from the picture he was pleased to have icing on there even if it did make him look like he had lipstick on!
Eric seemed to enjoy the cookies, it didn't make very many, I wasn't pleased with how hard the cookies got, but apparently no one minded that but me! Hope everyone had a great V'day, we did!