Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Sap!

I know I don't mention it often, but our family (minus Don) are all addicted to World of Warcraft (WoW).  With the announcement of a release date of the expansion this week, I thought I'd share with you the comic Liam drew:

A little background first before I try to explain it...  For those of you that don't know, WoW is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) with over 10 million subscribers.  It's a multi-faceted game that's really pretty simple to play but has complexities to it.  On the surface, it looks like your goal is to get your character to level 70 (soon to be 80 in the expansion) but it really is so much more.  One of the parts Liam likes is battlegrounding.  What that means is you pit yourself and your allies against an equal number or the opposing faction.  Each character class has a different set of abilities:  both in strengths and weaknesses.

One of the abilities of a rogue is to Sap people.  That means he sneaks up to you stealthed, and hits you so you're unable to move.  In the game when you (or anyone) gets sapped there's a swirly circle above your head until you can move again.  Hence, that's what the red circles above the guys heads are.  The little bubble states "No Wonder They Win"  since all the characters except one are sapped.  (And btw, the guy on the left side that's lying down is a hunter that has feigned death but is still sapped.) 

This probably makes NO sence to anyone that doesn't play, but I thought I needed to share it -- he did a great job. :)

If you're curious, here's our character breakdown:  Liam has a lvl 54 hunter, Adrienne has a lvl 43 mage, Travis has a lvl 70 priest, a lvl 70 warrior, and a lvl 46 mage, and I have a lvl 70 paladin, a lvl 70 warlock, and a lvl 50 rogue.  Wanna play?

Almost A Month

Yes, I know it's been a month since I've posted (sigh).   No excuses, no complaints, just an "I'm back, thanks for sticking it out with me".  :-)

While I don't have anything foody to share with you today, I wanted to put a shout out to Liam's new soccer team - the Infernos.  Their first game was last weekend and it was SO hot.  Game time was at 11:45 and the temperature was already over 100.

Liam had to play the entire game (we only had 7 players show up) and during the 4th quarter it was all he could do to walk after the ball (poor kid was so hot and tired!)  They all played a great game, though, and won 6-0.   I'm hoping this will be a great start to a great season.

Thankfully our game this Saturday is at 8am -- it will actually be pleasant outside and we won't have to melt.  (I feel sorry for the poor goalies who have to wear long sleeve shirts and gloves!)

GO INFERNOS!

No, I Haven't Quit

I've had a couple of people ask me if I've given up on my blog and the answer is a definite "no".  I think I needed a little break when I wasn't feeling well -- and now my mom has been here for the past 2 weeks (with one more week to go) and we've just been enjoying her while she's here.  What else have we been doing?

Well, for the last 6 or 7 weeks we've had our backyard in a disaster but to a good end ...

Yep, we had a pool built.  The backyard landscaping is almost done -- and should be finished by Monday.  Hopefully I'll get some more photos so I can show it off. 

Grandma's had an exciting week too ... she went and had an item checked off her "bucket list" and got a tattoo ...

It's on the outside of her leg slightly above her ankle.  For those who don't know, the teal cancer ribbon symbolizes the fight against ovarian cancer.  My mom was diagnosed with stage IV over a year ago and has fought against it with some great medical care and the "nothing will beat me" spirit she's always had.  I admire her strength and determination and am glad she can wear this badge of honor -- for she truly is a survivor.

My final "share" for this post is the newest member of our household ... Elsa.

My mom and Adrienne went to the shelter yesterday and brought Elsa home -- she's a 5 year old sweetie (though much to my dismay not housebroken!) and it will be fun to have her in the house.

As for my plans for the blog?  Once my mom goes home next Tuesday I should be able to start my postings regularly again.  I want to thank everyone who has stuck with me on my absence (and those that have emailed me wondering what was up!) -- and hopefully I'll be bringing you some yummy food and fun crafty projects soon. :-)

Away

Happy Independence Day!  For those of you that are celebrating today, anything fun going on?

Wednesday I took the kids down to California and we're here until Monday.  Yesterday we went to Disneyland (one of my favorite places!) and today we're just going to hang out and have a bbq with our good friends.

Yesterday's Disney day was HOT! HOT! and I feel like we melted a bit during the day.  One of the neatest things, though, is we got to ride on the new Toy Story Ride.

The idea of the ride is you wear 3-D glasses and get to play carnival games for a score.  The "car" you sit in has a small "gun" type device mounted in front of you and you pull a string back and forth to fire off whatever it is you're shooting.  It could be as different as pies, darts, balls or rings and your job is to hit the targets for the most points.  We had a great time -- and had it not been so hot we probably would have waited in line again for it.  (The wait wasn't bad .. maybe 30 minutes.)  If you get a chance to get over to DCA, I'd recommend checking it out.

How Was Your Weekend?

Did you have a nice weekend?  Ours was really pretty quiet.  Yesterday for Father's Day the kids got Don a new hard drive (500 gig) and a new computer chair.  He knew about the drive (I didn't want to buy the wrong one) but the chair was a surprise.  We had kept the box in Adrienne's room and Don saw it on Saturday but thought it was for Adrienne.  He was shocked when Adrienne came down with it yesterday morning -- and felt kind of silly for not realizing it was his.  :)  Btw, it's comfy and he's happy with it.

When deciding what do have for dinner last night I went with one of Don's favorite foods - hot dogs.  Yes, yes, I know, not the most gourmet of dinners (and honestly not one I enjoy), but it makes him happy when we have them so that's what counts.  I opted to search on Food Network's website in hopes of finding something a little different to do with them besides boil and bun.  I came across this recipe from Bobby Flay and man, it made them worth eating.

First you start with a homemade barbecue sauce.  When I first started putting this together I wasn't too sure about it -- didn't know if all the flavors would blend well but boy, they did and they were great.  I used 3 chipotle peppers and that was just the right heat level for us.  The basic idea is to grill the hot dogs (I used Hebrew National) and then the buns -- spread with the barbecue sauce, add a pickle and top with homemade cole slaw.  Delicious!  Served with cantaloupe it was another great summery meal.

I have lots of leftover barbecue sauce so I think I'll use it to make barbecue chicken later this week.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Happy Birthday, Adrienne!

Today my sweet girl turns 12!  She had her birthday party this past weekend but we celebrated today with another cake (the one above is from her party this past weekend), her BFF came over last night and spent the night and all day with us and they're now at the park running around.  May you have many more of the happiest birthdays!

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

For my last stamp camp I had Adrienne bake us up some cookies from Martha Stewart's website, Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies.

Didn't they come out gorgeous?  Fresh hot out of the oven they were really good -- slightly soft and not too sweet.  Once they cooled?  Um, not so much.  They had the consistency of sand when you bit into them and if you broke one in half you'd have crumbs everywhere.  I'm thinking maybe I'll add cocoa powder to my regular sugar cookie recipe next time and see how that comes out.  (Link above will take you to the recipe .. I'm not going to bother to repost it.)

In other happenings, there are only 3 (yes, 3) more days of school and we're all looking forward to it.  I've got the kids trying to come up with some fun stuff for us to do this summer and hopefully whatever it is we end up doing I can share it with you.  :-) 

Up and Running Again

Yeah!  My iMac seems to be back to working again (after replacement of its logic board and hard drive).  All I can say is thank goodness for backups.  Luckily we kept a drive specifically for backups (and it backed up daily) so I didn't lose anything.  And the best part?  I can start blogging again!

This first post back I'm going to share with you what we had for dinner oh, about a week and a half ago.  When my brother comes for dinner I try to do something a little out of the ordinary and that night I decided to tackle coconut shrimp.

There are many, many, many recipes for coconut shrimp out there.  Originally I was going to use the one in my Fried and True cookbook (written by Rick Rodgers) but finally opted to go with one from Emeril on the Food Network site:  Coconut Shrimp with Pineapple Habanero Chutney (it was the habaneros that won me over).

How was it?  Good.  Well, very good.  The chutney had just enough zing to it to spice up the shrimp and the shrimp fried up nice and crispy.  The only change I would make next time is to not mix in the coconut with the batter -- I think it would be better served by dipping it into the batter and then rolling it in the coconut before frying.  Not something I'll make again soon (not healthy at all!), but it would be great for appetizers at a party (as long as I get a bigger deep fryer).

Happy Birthday, Travis!

Hard to believe that 16 years ago today Travis was born.  He's grown up into such a wonderful young man and I'm very proud to say that he's my son.  May the future hold nothing but brightness for him.

For his "actual" birthday today we're having Subway for dinner (don't ask -- he loves sandwiches) and I'm sure he'll play Warcraft.  We still have leftover cake from Saturday so we'll do another round of singing as well.

This cake comes from AllRecipes and starts with a box mix ... it tastes great but I had a problem with the center falling (you can kind of tell from the photo).  Guess that really doesn't matter too much -- just add more frosting to the middle.  :)

Week In Review

Since I haven't posted since Tuesday I thought I'd do a quick "week in review".

We've had a pretty busy week -- Liam was sick again with his allergies so back on breathing treatments he went.  The good news is I think we caught it early enough that he won't end up with pneumonia yet again this year.  Adrienne had a big project due this week in math -- a 5 paragraph essay and accompanying charts about a stock market project they've been working on (which you know is just as big of a job for mom as it is for her).

Travis hasn't had as much homework as he usually does so he's been working on his Warcraft character and getting his tailoring level up.  As for my Warcraft "career", I'm trying to decide exactly how I should spec my Paladin -- I was holy/ret for so long then last night switched to protection/holy and really didn't like it so back this morning to holy/ret I am.  (I know most of you have NO clue what I'm talking about so you can skip this ..oops, too late.)  For those of you "in the know", here's a screenshot I took last week of one of my guildies and I after we'd cleared Stratholme.  Gotta love that instance.   :)

Tomorrow is Travis' 16th birthday so last night we celebrated a little early with my brother -- I made ribs, some yucky broccoli salad (packaged from Costco -- it wasn't good AT ALL), garlic french fries and then a coconut cake.  So I'll have something to share tomorrow on his actual birthday, I'll share the rib recipe with you now and the cake tomorrow.

This recipe was originally from a post on rec.food.recipes many years ago (like, um, 15) and I wouldn't make them any other way.