Early Anniversary
Last night, Ryan and I went out a couple of days early for our anniversary dinner. He made me choose the restaurant. I wanted to go somewhere new (to me), and fancy-ish, so I picked Maggiano’s.
It fit the bill. We had a candle on our table, there were cloth napkins, and the maitre de was even wearing a jacket and tie! Definitely fancy-ish!
The restaurant was also very pretty:
We shared an appetizer of bruschetta, which I maddeningly forgot to take a picture of, but you’ll have to trust me when I say it was as beautiful as it was delicious. For dinner, I got the salmon oscar (which was the real reason I chose this restaurant, once I saw it on the menu). It was amazing!
And for dessert, we shared a dessert sampler platter, which had creme brulee, an apple crostada, New York style cheesecake with fresh strawberries, chocolate zuccotto cake, and, my personal favorite, tiramisu! We ended up bringing quite a bit of it home…even when the desserts are so tiny, that’s a lot of sweets!
It was a great way to celebrate our 12th anniversary!
Chickadee Thursday
Chickadee is a pointer…she points at everything and asks, “What’s that?” She especially loves pointing at all of the family photos hanging in our den!
She’s also very interested in looking out the front door right now. Today was especially interesting because it was raining!
And, a bonus picture from yesterday, just because she’s so cute!
A Belated Birthday
Even though Ladybug’s birthday was last week, we waited for Daddy to get home from his trip to celebrate. So today, she opened gifts:
Built a new friend at Build-a-Bear:
Chose a restaurant (that wasn’t McDonald’s!), for dinner:
And enjoyed her purple and white pony cake:
Happy belated birthday, Ladybug!
Tasty Tuesday–Sopapilla Cheesecake
I tried this recipe out for Mother’s Day, and it was delicious! I’m not claiming it’s authentic or anything, but it’s easy to make, and so good! It was also be good topped with whipped cream and fresh strawberries (neither of which I had on Mother’s Day…maybe next time).
- 3 8 oz. packages cream cheese, softened
- 1 1/2 cups white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 8 oz. cans crescent roll dough
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350.
Beat cream cheese with 1 1/2 cups of sugar and vanilla extract until smooth.
Unroll the cans of crescent roll dough, and use a rolling pin to shape the each piece into a 9×13 inch rectangle. Press one piece into the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish. Evenly spread the cream cheese mixture over dough, then cover with the remaining piece of crescent dough.
Drizzle the melted butter evenly over the top of the cheesecake. Stir the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar together with the cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle over the cheesecake.
Bake in the preheated oven until the crescent dough has puffed and turned golden brown, about 45 minutes. Cool completely in the pan before cutting.
My “Last Supper List”
Please excuse the somewhat irreverent title, but I got the idea from watching an episode of Castle a few weeks ago. Actually, the general idea is an old one…who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Anyone from all of history is fair game. The title for this particular version is catchy, however, and limits the guest list to 12. For the sake of my list, I’m assuming that my husband will be at my side as host, so I don’t need to invite him. I’m also not going to be cliché and say Jesus, even though, obviously, I’d welcome Him into my home anytime. I kept my list to all couples…I thought it would make seating and conversation easier. 
- Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip
- Martin and Katie Luther
- Peter Bar-Jonah (the disciple) and his wife
- John and Abigail Adams (I’m pretty sure they’d get into an interesting theological debate with both the Luthers and the Bar-Jonahs!)
- King George VI and Elizabeth
- George and Martha Washington
Mother’s Day Dinner
Since it is Mother’s Day, I figured I should pick what we had for dinner. You couldn’t pay me to go to a crowded restaurant today, so I decided to make one of my favorites, plus something new for dessert:
Tostadas with pork carnitas, jack cheese, and avocado slices, plus some avocado salad on the side. What can I say? I really like avocados, and so do my girls! For dessert, I made a sopapilla cheesecake, which was easy to make, and delicious. That one is definitely going in the permanent file!
2012-13 School Year–Week Thirty-Two
Not a whole lot to report this week, as we’re mainly continuing to wrap things up. Math and history are really the only two subjects we have any considerable work left in. We still have some religion, writing, and spelling to do, and our read-aloud isn’t anywhere near finished, but those things take up a lot less time than math and history!
We’re taking next week off. I know it probably seems silly, taking a week of vacation when we only have two weeks of school left, but if we don’t take a break, I may not have the energy to finish the school year! We will be taking our annual field trip to our local art fair, though, so at least we’ll be doing something!
I’m looking forward to wrapping up this school year. The boxes of curriculum for next year are just too enticing to focus on this year much longer!
The Completed Sets
I have to admit, it’s a bit disturbing how little time it took the children to build all of their Lego sets that they got today. But even though the building part is done, there’s still plenty of fun to be had playing with them!
I haven’t built the limited edition Lego Store set we got with our purchases. That will wait until next week sometime. I’m just not as ambitious as the children, I guess!
Lego Store Grand Opening
Today was day two of the Lego Store Grand Opening celebration at West County Center in Des Peres, MO. If you’ve ever wondered what such an event is like, you’re in luck, because I took lots of pictures! It was quite an experience!
We got there shortly before the Lego Store was scheduled to open at 10, and the line was already incredibly long. I was worried that we’d be waiting for two-plus hours, and even briefly considered leaving, but in the end the wait was really just over an hour. No small feat with five children, but they were all extraordinarily patient, and Grandma came along to help out. Here’s part two of the line we waited in (part one, which was behind us, was about as long, but much more twisty):
Part three of the line was in the mall itself…it was a relief to get out of that darkish, stuffy corridor!
Part four of the line was immediately outside the store, and it was the fun part of the line. The employees were having a good time keeping the spirits of the crowd up, and being that close to the store made you feel like your wait was almost over…and really, it was! I was impressed with how efficiently they kept things moving.
The children each had a “Lego Store allowance” that they received, plus a little extra money from Grandpa. They had a fun time choosing what they were going to buy. We entered another line to check out, and it, too, moved pretty quickly.
We were lucky to be among the first 300 customers (which surprised me, based on the length of the line), and received this free limited-edition Lego Store set, as well. That one is for me!
After making our purchases, we went down to the other end of the mall for the building event.
Our store was building an eight-foot high Incredible Hulk (they have different builds at different stores)!
It was cool how they were handling the building…there were tables set up with bins of Lego bricks, and cards showing how to make a large brick. The instructions were simple enough for even small children to participate.
The children had fun making their bricks, which were later placed on The Hulk.
After we finished there, we went back to the store (but not the line, thankfully!), so the children could get certificates showing they participated.
We had to walk past the building event again on the way out of the mall. I thought we were just going to leave, but the Master Builder was doing some giveaways, so we stood around a bit, to see what that was all about.
It’s a good thing we stayed, because Bunny answered one of the questions correctly, and won a Lego Friends set! It was something she had been wanting, but didn’t have enough money for, because it cost $40! She was so surprised that she won, she could hardly tell the Master Builder her name!
When we got home, we checked out our haul (even with all this stuff, we managed to stay within our budget!):
And then the children immediately got to work on their new sets.
It was a long, exhausting morning, but it was also more fun than I had imagined. The children are looking forward to going back next May for the one-year anniversary celebration!
Reading
It makes me so happy to see Moose having such good success with reading, and enjoying it to boot!
