Labor Day Adventure - Day 2

Our Labor Day Adventure continued on the second day with a trip to Dinosaur World! Did you know that such a thing even existed?!  This park is right outside Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas.

We got an excavation package that included a fossil dig and a gem mining pass.   At the fossil dig, the kids got to dig into the sand to find fossils, shark teeth, etc.  They got to pick their three favorites to bring home.   

I didn't get any pictures at the gem mining center because I didn't want to get my camera wet, but the kids got a lot of gems in their bags. Noah wasn't much into the gems, but Emily has a pretty extensive rock collection so she loved seeing all the gems she got.

Dinosaur World also has a really nice playground for the kids as well as a Bone Yard where they got to use little brushes to uncover bones in the sand.  

We didn't have a lot of time to play on the playground, but they had some really cool things like this dinosaur skeleton.  Noah was a fan.  

They also had a museum with some real dinosaur bones as well as some Animatronic dinosaurs.  These things were moving and squawking at us.  Noah was scared at first, but then he was okay after we told him that they were robots.  I thought it was pretty cool.

Dinosaur World also has a walking trail with life-sized dinosaur statues all along it.

Emily was acting scared with the Tyrannosaurus Rex statues, but Mike and I called foul on that one. Obviously, they're statues like all the others.

This was a familiar site on the trail.  This little guy was all too confident to go out exploring on his own.

At the halfway point in the trail, there was a pond with these big Koi fish in it.  We'd bought some fish food so we walked out onto the dock to feed them.

The kids loved feeding the fish.

They also had some dinosaurs along the banks of the pond and some Animatronic alligators in the water.  Pretty cool.

Overall, I thought Dinosaur World was a really fun stop on our trip.  We spent maybe a couple hours there and it was well worth the visit.

I'd wanted to go to Dinosaur Valley State Park to see the dinosaur footprints, but we really didn't have time.

And speaking of time, I'm out of time for blogging tonight so you'l have to tune in later this week to see what else we did on our trip. It was definitely a fun one!

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Labor Day Adventure - Day 1

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend!  We decided that we were going to take an impromptu road trip.  We left after church on Sunday and headed down to Texas for a couple days.

We told the kids on Friday night that we were going to go on an adventure, but they had no clue where we were going until we got to each stop.  Emily thought we were going to Mexico.  And don't I wish!

I Googled a lunch place on my phone while we were heading down the interstate.  We ended up at Deiter Brothers BBQ in Lindsey, TX.  I got the loaded baked potato with brisket, which is pretty much my go-to BBQ meal. It was really delicious.  Everybody enjoyed their meal.  Mike asked if this place was better than my favorite BBQ place in OKC and I had to say YES.


Then we were off to our first stop on our family adventure - Sandy Lake Amusement Park!   This is a family park in Carrollton, TX.  When you drive in, you pay $2.00 per person at the gate then you drive in and you can park anywhere.  Literally, you drive down into the park and they have a bunch of picnic tables at different spots under these huge trees and you can just park anywhere and just go have fun.

The park had a family feel to it. It was not too big and not too small.  They have a lot of carnival rides like what you would see at a county fair.  It really took me back to when I was a kid and we spent a lot of time at the fairs when we were showing our cows.

Noah was a big fan of the bumper cars and the pony ride.  We did the bumper cars a couple of times.  Much to his disappointment, Noah was too small to drive the bumper cars so I had to drive with him.  He literally kept grabbing the steering wheel from me and crashing us into people.  haha!  Emily drove her own car and she did not like it when Noah and I ran into her.  She was really offended by that.


It was a hot afternoon on Sunday, but they had a lot of big shade trees to help keep us cool.  We also had rainbow snowcones to cool us down.


One of the main reasons I wanted to go to this park was because they have my favorite carnival ride - the Tilt-A-Whirl. I was so excited for the kids to ride this with me!  We all rode it together and I taught them how to lean one way or the other to keep the car spinning around.  We were all screaming and having a good time.


The Tilt-A-Whirl was a 5-ticket ride, but it did not take us long to go on the ride again.  The second time we rode, I gave the ticket guy 15 tickets for the three of us and he handed Emily five of the tickets back.  And when the ride was over, he asked if we wanted to ride again but I said we would later.


Then we went over to the pond to ride the Paddle Boats. I knew Noah would love this.  The paddle boats could take three people at a time - two people peddling and one person in the middle riding along.  Noah was pretty disappointed that he couldn't paddle the boat.  It was HOT out on the lake though.  There was not a lot of shade.  We didn't quite make it to our 20 minute time limit, but it was still fun.

After the paddle boats, Noah was pretty much done so he and Mike went back to the van to cool off and Emily and I went back to the Tilt-A-Whirl one more time.  I only had two ride tickets left so I went and bought 8 more.  Emily and I discussed that there was a good chance the ride operator would give us back half the tickets and then we could ride again.  But if not, that was fine and we'd be happy with one more ride.  But when we got to the Tilt-A-Whirl, we each had our 5 tickets in our hand.  He wouldn't take mine and he wouldn't take Emily's.  So we rode and had a wonderful time!  Then the ride ended and he asked if we wanted to go again and we said YES!

Emily likes to point out that I was really sweaty and she's right.  But I loved it and I was having a great time.




After the Tilt-A-Whirl, I tried to convince Emily to ride some of the other rides with our extra tickets.  The Spider?  No way!  We'd ridden that earlier and she thought she was going to have a heart attack.  The Scrambler?  No!  The Swings? No!  So we just handed our extra tickets to a random person on our way back to the car.

We left the amusement park and headed for our hotel, which was about 45 minutes away.  That night, we went to eat at In-N-Out Burger (P.S. Why do they not have mayo?  Not everybody wants their "spread".)  Then we went over and grabbed dessert at Curly's Frozen Custard.

After dessert, we went back to the hotel for a little family swim.  We had the whole pool to ourselves most of the time so it was a lot of fun.  Both of the kids loved it.

And that was the end of our first day of our Labor Day Adventure.  Come back later this week to find out what else we did on our trip.

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Trip to the Movies + Riding the Bus

This weekend, we went to see the new Pete's Dragon at the theater.  The kids watched the original Pete's Dragon musical before we went to see the new one so they were well aware of the differences between the two.

Noah had a hard time sitting still in the theater. This movie did not capture his attention like some of the movies we'd seen in the past.  We made it through it though.  It was a lot of fun.

The School Bus

This morning was our second day catching the school bus.  The first day, the bus was about 5 minutes late and Emily was all upset that we had to stand out on the sidewalk and wait for the bus.  EMBARRASSING.

So this morning, I tried to do better and get us to the bus stop closer to the time that the bus shows up.  We started walking down our street and Emily says "I think I hear something big."  What? Like a bus? Okay, lets hurry.  So we turn the corner and there's the bus coming down the street!  We took off running toward the bus stop.  Luckily, there were quite a bit of kids queued up to get on the bus so we made it in time.  Whew.

And tomorrow, we shall readjust.  Again.

But I'll leave you with a couple more pictures of our first day of school.

Noah showing off his new Batman backpack.

Emily had a limit to the number of pictures she was willing to take with her brother.

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First Day of School 2016

Friday was the first day of 6th grade for Emily and the first day of 1st grade for Noah.  They both got some really good teachers this year.  Emily will have three different teachers. She's rotated classes before so this is no big deal for her.



Noah's teacher seems really sweet and I think he'll have a good year.  This is his first year at this school, but he knows some kids from his previous school that transferred this year and he also knows some kids from his summer daycare.



This year, I'm home all day with my new job so the kids are riding the school bus.  On Friday morning, the bus was about 5 minutes late, but on Friday afternoon the bus was a full 10 minutes late.  I'm going to have to figure out how to manage our new schedule.



Pretty girl. I know she's going to have a great year.

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Noah's Birthday Recap

Noah has had a big weekend for his birthday.  He got to pick (almost!) everything.  I wish I'd gotten more pictures, but I always like to live in the moment and not behind the camera/smartphone.

Breakfast

Noah requested chocolate chip muffins for breakfast on his birthday.  I suggested maybe we could have fruit pies for breakfast.   Who doesn't like apple turnovers with icing? Well, apparently, Noah doesn't like them as much as he likes chocolate chip muffins.  But his dad and sister talked him into having the fruit pies on Saturday morning and the chocolate chip muffins on Sunday morning.

The fruit pies were good. I made some with powdered sugar on top and some with icing drizzled on the top.  If you want, I'll tell you how to make them.  But I probably need to make them one more time so that I can get some pictures for the blog.  I think my family will agree with this.  Ha!



Cake, Cookies, Balloons and Lunch

On Saturday morning, we had to go pick up Noah's cake and cookies from the bakery.  While we were out, we went by the party store to get some soccer balloons for the party.  But when we got there, Noah decided that he wanted a Thomas the Train balloon - the huge kind that is weighted so that it walks/floats close to the ground.  The thing was $25!  But it was his birthday so I let him have it.

Noah wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch so we stopped by there on the way home from our errands.  When we got home, Noah took his big shiny balloon inside the house while we were unloading the car.  And within about 5 minutes, the $25 balloon had been tossed up into the air and it hit the ceiling fan and got a huge hole in it.  *sigh*  Cue the disappointment.

Party, Party, Party

Later in the evening, we had some family over to help celebrate Noah's birthday with pizza and a party.  I thought his cake and cookies were super cute.  And, as always, they were quite delicious, too.

For some reason, the bakery gave me more cookies than I even ordered.  Can't complain about that!

Noah was acting all scared when I was trying to light the candles.  I guess he's taken the lessons on fire safety to heart because he didn't want to get near it.

Noah got a lot of fun toys for his birthday.  This is actually his 2nd birthday party. He had another party during Cousin's Week last weekend and got more fun toys.

He's really been enjoying the Playmobil toys that he has.  He has been wanting this police station for a while now.  He's excited to add it to his community.


And how cool is this?! He got a Snoopy Sno-cone Machine!  Did you have one of these as a kid?  We haven't made any sno-cones yet since we have so much cake and cookies, but we're going to do this very soon.

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Happy 6th Birthday Noah!

Today is Noah's 6th birthday.

We had a birthday party tonight with family and Noah got lots of fun presents.  We had a soccer cake and cookies.  They were soooooo cute!



I will have more pics and commentary tomorrow but wanted to post a picture of the cake and wish Noah a very happy birthday.


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Cousin's Week 2016

Last week, the kiddos went to Grandmother and Granddaddy's house for Cousin's Week.  I went down on Saturday to spend a couple of days with them.  The kids and grandparents all had great time playing and spending time together on the farm.

Bright and early on Sunday morning, we got out and took some pictures of the Cousin's Week participants. Heather will have the official pictures ready soon, but here are a couple previews that I snapped with my phone.

Everybody gets popsicles after pictures and before breakfast, right?

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Sunday Lunch

On Sunday, Mike and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch.  The kids are at Cousins Week at Grandmother and Granddaddy's house so it was just the two of us.  This is something that rarely happens these days.


I forgot to take pictures of my food!  But I had the sausage and ricotta flatbread and the fresh banana cheesecake.  Mike had the chicken alfredo and the strawberry cheesecake.  I liked his cheesecake better than mine.

He thought his cheesecake tasted a lot like the homemade cheesecake that my Aunt Judy makes.  It takes her hours to make it.  He wants me to get her recipe and try it out myself.

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Romantic Don Juan Ohhh La La

This is the second year I've grown Don Juan climbing roses in the flower bed beside my bay window.  Now that I am working from home, the bay windows are in my office and I just love looking out the window and seeing my beautiful roses all day.


I've had some problems with black spot on my roses this year and I have been treating it with a fungicide. I am still having problems though so I think I am going to have to find something else to try.  There is a really good plant nursery near my house and I might go see if they have any suggestions.


About a month ago, I cut both rose bushes back severely to try to eliminate all the  parts with the black spots, but even that has not completely eliminated the problem.   I've also started watering my roses in the morning and trying not to get water on the leaves.

Luckily, the roses are still blooming despite some yellow leaves. So beautiful.



Favorite rose variety?

Any remedies for black spot on roses?

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Goofy Kids and Skillet Cookies

This weekend, we went to Toby Keith's restaurant for lunch.  They have benches that are made from the tailgate of older model trucks.  Noah loves these things.  He always hops up on them and says "Take my picture!"

I got Emily to sit beside him, but couldn't get them to take a decent picture.  It's not that difficult to take a nice picture, is it?





Tonight for supper, we made a skillet cookie.

I mean we made supper.  Then had a skillet cookie for dessert.  You know those skillet cookies they serve in family restaurants where they just put a couple scoops of ice cream into the skillet with the hot cookie and serve it with chocolate syrup drizzled over the top?  I thought about just putting a couple scoops of ice cream in with my cookie, but I didn't figure we could would eat it all and I didn't want to waste the cookies.

M&M Skillet Cookie

1 cup margarine, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup M&M's

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla and beat well.  Slowly add dry ingredients and mix.  Stir in chocolate chips and M&M's.

Spread half the cookie dough into a well greased oven safe skillet. Bake 30 minutes or until light brown and set in the middle.  Bake time will vary depending on the size of your skillet.  I use a 9" cast iron skillet and it takes about 30 minutes to bake.

Save the other half of the cookie dough for another day - wrap well and store in the refrigerator.


You might be wondering where the picture of the fully cooked cookie would be?  Well, who has time to think about taking picture when you're staring a yummy M&M skillet cookie in the face?  NOT ME!

Have you heard all the recent warnings about not eating uncooked cookie dough?  I thought it was due to the raw eggs in the cookie dough, but now they're saying it's also because there could be bacteria in the flour.  It's always something, isn't it?

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Send Off to Summer Camp

On Monday morning, I took Emily to meet the bus for summer camp.  She's going with about 150 other kids from our church.  She was a little nervous while we were waiting for time to load the buses, but I know that she's having a great time.

Our church has a Facebook page and they have posted a few photos of the campers.  I've caught a peek of Emily in a few of the pictures.

The camp has a system where we can email her "Bunk Mail" messages that are delivered to the campers each night after dinner.  I've been sending her bunk mail every day, but I was supposed to send the email address and instructions to other family members and I have failed to do this.  I'm going to do it as soon as I post this blog.

We've all been missing Emily this week while she's gone.  Can't wait until she comes home on Thursday!

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Easy Homemade Donuts

On the 4th of July, we made one of our favorite breakfast treats - homemade donuts!  Just ask Noah - they are better than the donut shop!  And they are so easy to make, especially if everyone pitches in.

This is one of those recipes that I remember my mom making for us occasionally when I was a kid.  They were a big hit back then and they're still a big hit now.

So I said they were easy to make, right?  Well, they are made with canned biscuits!  What can be easier than that?

But before you start messing with the biscuits, you're going to need to make some glaze for your donuts.  Or I suppose you could just put powdered sugar on them?  Or cinnamon and sugar?  But where's the fun in that?  

We like to make a vanilla glaze and a chocolate glaze.

Vanilla Glaze - Stir together 1 cup powdered sugar, 2-3 tbsp of milk and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

Chocolate Glaze - Stir together 1 cup powdered sugar, 2-3 tbsp of milk and 1-2 tbsp of cocoa powder.  

I don't actually measure out the ingredients for the glaze, but the general idea is to make the glaze thick enough that it will stick to the donuts without sliding off, but thin enough that it will stick to the donuts.  Makes perfect sense? 

Okay, moving on ...

Just stir up the glaze and set aside.  

Now, pour maybe an inch of vegetable oil into a skillet and heat up on the stove.  Every stove is different, but I set my stove between 5-6 on the dial and that seems to work well.  

While the oil is heating, you'll want to open up your cans of biscuits and lay them out on waxed paper.

I like to flatten the biscuits with my hand so that they are more uniform in size and shape and will be  easier to cut and cook.

Next, you'll probably to cut out the donut holes with a donut cutter.  You'll probably want one like this one that has a removable donut hole cutter.  

This Norpro Donut Cutter is the exact one that I use and it works really well.

You'll want to cut out the donut holes and separate them from the donuts.

I usually put a donut hole in the oil as it's heating up.  I know the oil is ready when the donut hole is nice and fluffy and brown.  Then I just start frying up the donuts.  Four donuts fits in my pan perfectly.  I use two forks to flip them and remove them, but you could use tongs or a slotted spoon just as easily. I use a slotted spoon when I fry the donut holes.

While I'm frying the donuts, Emily and Mike usually work on dipping them in the glaze as they get cool enough.

And, of course, you can add sprinkles if you'd like.  Do this when the glaze is still wet though.

And before long, you have a whole mess of yummy donuts.

One of our favorite parts is that we can use the leftover glaze as a "dip" with our donuts.

And if you want proof that these donuts are worth it, I'll leave you with this photo as proof - YUM!

Have you ever tried homemade biscuit donuts?  

Do you make the glaze or cover them with something else?

Affiliate links were used in this post.

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Butterscotch Delight - Happy 4th of July 2016

Butterscotch Delight Recipe

How to Make Butterscotch Delight

Happy 4th of July everybody! I hope you had a wonderful day celebrating with family and friends.

We spent the day with Mike's family.  We had some wonderful barbecue with all the fixings for lunch.  Then we spent the afternoon swimming and visiting around the pool.

I decided to make a new spin on a delicious classic - Butterscotch Delight.  It's a 4-Layer Delight made with butterscotch pudding instead of chocolate.  This recipe is one of my favorites and I think it could be made with many different kinds of fillings.  What about Lemon Delight? Or Strawberry Delight?

Yield: 12 servingsAuthor: Jennifer SmithPin it

Butterscotch Delight

A cold, creamy dessert for any time of the year. Your family and friends will come back asking for more!

instructions

Layer 1

• 1 cup flour, 1 stick margarine (melted), 1/2 cup nuts, finely chopped. Press into greased pan. Bake 325 degrees for 25 mins.

Layer 2

• 2 blocks cream cheese (16 oz) softened, 2 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 large bowl whipped topping. Mix and spread over cooled crust.

Layer 3

• 2 small boxes instant butterscotch pudding, 3 cups milk. Mix together and chill.

Layer 4

• Top with remaining whipped topping. Garnish with nuts, if desired. Chill before serving.

notes

Make this the "lower fat" way by substituting lite whipped topping, 1/3 less fat cream cheese, and 1% or 2% milk.

http://www.gracelikerainblog.com/2016/07/happy-4th-of-july-2016.html

Have you tried Butterscotch Delight? Did you like it better than the traditional 4-Layer Delight recipe?

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Day Trip Fun

Yesterday I mentioned that we took a day trip to Stillwater to check out the OSU campus.  It had been about 15 years since I'd even been there for a visit and a lot had changed.  One thing that had not changed much was the first Sonic Drive-In in Stillwater.  One semester when I was in college, I had a night class one night a week.  Most of the time, I would stop by Sonic after class to get something to eat on my way home.  The kids seemed unimpressed with my stories, but that hardly stopped me from chattering the whole trip.

After we got done with our tour, we went to the bowling alley to have some "real fun".

It takes a lot of concentration to bowl a good game.

And sometimes the ball is pretty dang heavy.

But sometimes the stairs are more fun.

Sometimes you feel good about your bowling skills. (Note that she's celebrating and the ball has not even gotten down to the pins yet.)

And sometimes you just gotta let it go.  (Note that my ball is in the gutter and all the pins are standing like perfect soldiers.  The pins are pretty safe with me around.)

Emily was actually the winner of this game, but we all had a good time.

Then we hopped in the car and headed back home.

But on the way out of town, I was like "I need something to eat - where's that chocolate factory that we saw on the sign?"  And Mike immediately pulled over to turn around without even know what direction we needed to go.  Ha ha.  Luckily, we were not very far away from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and it was easy to find.

They had case after case of tempting treats.  Their candied apples looked delicious. We didn't try one, but everyone got to pick out something to try.

They also had an ice cream shoppe inside the store.  We got to try a few flavors and it was good stuff.

... And a good time was had by all.

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