Happy Birthday Benjamon!

My middle son (the sweetest of all sweet things) just turned three. Very exciting this year, mostly because he had such an opinion on how thing were going down. He requested a cars cake. After looking over the pans in the shape of a car I decided I was in no way capable of pulling that off. I told Jamon I was just going to buy one. He says, "remember when we were kids, our cakes had the actual toys on them." Hmmm...why yes I do remember that being super cool. So I went with that.





I have Jamon take the kids somewhere or play outside while I put the icing on the cake. Then we make a big production out of the very first time you see your birthday cake. Benjamon was hilarious. He kept yelling, "it's cars Mommy, it's cars, woohoo!"








"Woody let me introduce you to Buzz. You don't know it yet but you guys will be lifelong friends."



Wyatt and my Dad (also know as my manny because I drag him to the grocery store, doctors office, playground, etc.) hanging out and enjoying the festivities.

By the way we had the party at the park beside our house. It was lovely.




It was SO windy. We had to move the cake to the back of Papa Joes truck to light the candles. We didn't think it was ever going to work but finally Ben got to blow out his candles. High five for sure.

Happy birthday my darling boy. I wish you would stay just the way you are today forever and ever. Except for the occasional pooping in the pants thing. That I could do without.

Love, your Momma.

My Garden

Well hello. I know I haven't posted anything in a while. I am so busy lately and the blog is on the bottom of my list. But hopefully I will find the time to update you on my life goings on and not just food.

We'll start with this.




As you may or may not know. I love gardening. Yes, seriously. There is something very rewarding in eating food that you have grown and cared for yourself. In Edmond we had a little baby garden. We didn't have room for much but I still planted a small one. Here in Kingston America my garden is rockin! I am currently growing strawberries, spinach, green beans, bell peppers (red, orange and green), jalapenos,tomatoes, squash, eggplant, potatoes, onions, radishes,carrots and a weird pepper that I didn't mean to plant and have no idea what it is. I think I will snap a photo and post it so we can all guess what it is. Yes that will be lovely.

Gardening is so great for my family for many reasons. 1) It's a very frugal way to feed the family. It's tons cheaper to buy the seeds or plants than it is to purchase produce at the grocery store. 2) It's a great learning experience for the kids. Meredith and Ben help me pick plants, water and pull weeds. Meredith loves to eat salad because she got to go out and pick the spinach, wash it and put it on her plate. Not to mention it teaches the kids to be self-sufficient and learn to "live off the land" shall we say. 3) We eat healthier. When you have an abundance of fruits and veggies you tend to eat an abundance of fruits and veggies. We plan to cover the back part (behind the fence) with fruit trees. That project will have to come next year I suppose. We have way too many things going on around here. Which I plan to post. I love to see all of your projects so I think I will start showing mine.




Meredith and Benjamon are supposed to be showing the potatoes they dug. Ben is giving his the evil eye and Meredith is looking at Dad. I simply cannot get a good photo of these two together.



Here they are helping me in the garden.

And.....I'll throw one in of Wyatt practicing his spoon using skills since he seems to be left out of the blog photos lately.

Skillet Brownie

Sometimes Jamon comes home from work and says to me "hey here's a recipe for a cake we had at a work lunch and it was really good, or my coworker said we should try out this recipe, or you are such a hot and sexy babe." Okay, so he doesn't actually say that last one but I know he is thinking it.

Here is a FATastic recipe he brought home a few years ago and we have been making it since then. It is super fast and easy and very good.

2 sticks of butter (yes that's what I said 2)
2 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
6 eggs
3 heaping tablespoons of cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt

Melt butter in an iron skillet. Mix dry stuff, pour in eggs and butter and vanilla, mix with a fork until all lumps are gone. Pour all in an iron skillet. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. When outside edges are brownie like cake is done and center will be runny like fudge.

You can see what mine looks like when I take it out. The first time I made it I thought it might be raw in the middle. But actually it is very good. It reminds me a little of chocolate pie filling.

Peanut Butter Play Dough

Here is something easy and fun for the kids. *WARNING* This play dough is extremely tasty.



Perfect if you have different age groups in your home (or not). A lot of time when Meredith is learning Benjamon misbehaves for attention or wants to do something else. I have to come up with things to keep my two year old interested while the four year old is learning.





Both kids enjoyed mixing the dough. We used a stand mixer (I over mixed so mine was a little oily) but you could let the kids help and mix it by hand. Once the dough was done we used mini cookie cutters to cut shapes and worked on learning shapes.




Ben still needs to work on circle, square, triangle (you know the basics). Meredith has those down so I bust out a rhombus to shake things up and keep her on her toes. We found this tasty dough to be a great hands on helper for learning simple math, shapes and counting. Oh, and did I mention it is so tasty? Try this for some good fun with your sweet babies.





1 C creamy peanut butter
2 C powdered sugar
1/2 C honey

Just mix it up until it looks like dough. It isn't sticky like you may think. It was a great solid dough.