Happy Birthday, Madison!

Madison turned 10 last Tuesday and we had a great day celebrating–starting with breakfast in bed.  Luckily Caleb woke me up just in time because my alarm was set for pm instead of am.  I hate when that happens!  He was so cute–he had been up for about a half hour cutting paper snowflakes for Madison’s birthday–his gift to her.  Once I got the other kids off to school, Madison and I went Christmas shopping.  Unfortunately, this was in the midst of the 24-hour stomach flu invasion in our family, and Dave was home sick.  I wasn’t feeling too hot, either, but I survived.  After picking up Lucy from pre-school, we got lunch and ate at a really fun new park in town.  Then we picked up Caleb and headed to Disneyland.  I refused to go on any rides that had fast movements because I knew I would lose my stomach.  So Caleb, Madison, and Lucy went on the fast rides together.  Lucy is a lot braver than I expected!  The day ended with a nice 45 minute wait to get out of the parking garage.  At least I didn’t throw up in the car like Caleb did a few days before.

The birthday cake pictured above is a Sedgwick tradition–however, this was my first attempt at making it.  I’ve always been intimidated by the ice cream.  This pic was taken after half of the cake was eaten and the ice cream was melting everywhere, but it was heavenly!  For a “recipe”, click here.

Goodbye white rolls!

Hannah helping with the white rolls

I will be sad to say goodbye to my 11-years-in-the-making-and-finally-perfected white rolls (I can brag because I finally just got my hands on the perfect recipe–it has nothing to do with my own skills).  We’ve been on a health food kick for the last couple of weeks, inspired by the pounds we gained in Africa and my upcoming marathon.  Incidentally, the “kick” made a detour last night when I “strongly suggested” that Dave stop at Sprinkles as we were driving by.  The line was out the door, and it ended up being about a 20 minute wait for our 2 cupcakes.  Oh…but was it ever worth it!  Anyway, back to eating healthy…We had Chef Brad, a well-known LDS chef and Education week speaker, come speak for our Enrichment night last week. He offered cooking classes for a few days following enrichment. I attended a Vita-Mix class. While I didn’t learn much more about the Vita-Mix, it did spark my interest once again in whole grains. My next step…buy a grain mill so I can grind all these fun new grains and secretly feed my kids healthy waffles, homemade wheat bread, and such.

Since I don’t have my mill yet, I started this beautiful Sunday morning with a recipe I got from my sister on our new recipe blog, “Peachtree Cooking”. All of us (9 daughters and 1 mom) are contributors. The recipe was “Whole Wheat Ricotta pancakes”, and they were delicious!  Check out the blog for more recipes, as they are all tried, tested, and proved yummy.  Warning:  we’re not super fancy cooks and don’t expect all healthy stuff on here.  In fact, most of it’s just delicious without regard for counting calories.  But we’re having fun giving each other ideas.  Happy eating!