Aug 15, 2009

Mom and Bill returned on Tuesday evening then Ron and Adam arrived Thursday afternoon.

The internet went down in the transition between computers again, like last year. Also, like last year, the dogs have been trying to figure out where to sleep, now that their folks are back. They continued to stay with us for the first few days, but now I think they are finally settling back in at home now.

Thursday was Mom's birthday and her cake request was "The chocolate-er, the better". So I made a chocolate fudge cake, torted it and put chocolate ganache, chocolate-fudge pudding, and chocolate mousse between the layers. The whole thing was covered in a chocolate butter cream. I didn't want her to miss Alaska too much, so I put an elk and a small spruce-type tree on it for her. After we had eaten half of the cake, it was sitting on the table with a stiff evening breeze coming though the windows. When Mom went to get the cake to put it away, the top layer had slid right off the mousse and there was a large pile of chocolate goop on the table. . .It was OK, we just scooped it back onto the pile of cake remains for later.

Kaili had a great time at girl's camp this week and was totally exhausted when we picked her up yesterday. I think she fell asleep around 4:00 or so and didn't really rouse again until I prodded her at 8 this morning. Ron and I went to see "Julie and Julia" last night, it was very light-hearted and a very enjoyable movie.

This morning, my dad came over for a breakfast of biscuits & gravy, cantaloupe and chocolate cake remnants.

Aug 7, 2009

Today was a bake day around here. It started with the baking 48 cupcakes, 24 lemon and 24 chocolate. The cupcakes were for a cup cake "cake" for a friend's son's baptism tomorrow. While the cc's cooled I got 7 jars of raisin & spice zucchini cake baked. Next I made lemon custard to fill the lemon cc's and the creme filling for the chocolate cc's. After stuffing the cc's with their respective goops, I made vanilla butter cream and Dax helped me make white marshmallow fondant; both to cover the cc's. There were three egg whites left from the lemon custard, so I whipped them with some cocoa, sugar cream of tartar and vanilla and baked meringue cookies with it. . .the kids say they came out "Awesome".

I was bushed by the early evening, so the kids and I went next door to watch a couple of movies on Mom's satellite. The weather was warm in the middle of the day (maybe it was the oven?), but now there is a very cool breeze from the West.

Aug 5, 2009

Today was a no car day for me. I baked a strawberry cake for tomorrow, got some chocolate zucchini cakes in jars made and canned a batch of tomatillo salsa. Brandy found the fresh cow pies again, Isis is ever vigilant for squirrels, and Aurora is enjoying rolling in the dirt. The weather remains quite pleasant. I guess there isn't much else to report for today. . .

Oh this is the wall in the newly violet colored bathroom.

Aug 4, 2009

Yesterday we picked a few tomatoes & tomatillos and set off "bug-bombs" off at Mom's place. It was my first no car day in over a week. Kaili was able to finish her quilt and is now sleeping under it. As you may be able to see, she has surrounded her self with as many horses as possible in her room.

This morning we went up to Mom's and did bit of house cleaning. Later, we did the final gathering and purchasing of supplies for Girl's camp next week. We also picked up stuff for a couple of cakes I will be doing at the end of the week. I will be testing out chocolate zucchini cake in a jar, to see if it will work for food storage and emergency treats; you know the "Hey Mom, I forgot, I was supposed to bring snacks to the activity in 15 minutes", type of emergency.