G turned 4 months yesterday!!

My big boy...it's going by so fast!!

Team Spike

Demon Hunter & Spike (of course we had to have code names!)

A friend of mine turned me onto something called letterboxing.  Basically, you have a stamp book and a stamp. You create a team (in my case, me and my boys) and together you go out looking for "letterboxes" which are basically hidden boxes with a stamp and a notebook inside. You stamp your stamp in their book and your stamp in their book.

The fun lies in following the clues (they are mostly in park-type settings) and pretending to be spies or detectives. 

You can also "plant" your own boxes for others to find. The website suggests waiting until you have found a few before hiding your own but we were anxious to get started so we hid a box in our neighborhood. 

The fun is in trying to think of good clues to help others find our box. I also wanted something fairly close by so we could go check on it from time to time. 

Mama Spike

Hint: The box is under these rocks!!

The part that I'm really excited about is that this gets us out of the house, doing fun things as a family outside in places we normally don't go. It's also very close to being free, which is a pretty big benefit. :) 

Happy Hunting!!

Baby G is 3 months old!!!!

November 29--

Baby G turned 2 months old!!! (and was a little cranky for his monthly picture!

He smiles now!!

Mama's Moomers

Last week my sweet Moomers had a stomach bug. I felt so bad for him, little guy. He threw up in the middle of the night and I kept him home from school the next day. He camped out on the couch and watched movies all day. I thought he was better and I had planned on him going to school the next day, but he came to my room at 2am covered in vomit. 

I gave him a bath and fresh jammies and got him settled in on the couch. The next day was spent recuperating as well and he was fine by following day and went to school. 

My poor sick boy :(

Mooms has been doing the sweetest thing for the past few weeks: he'll make little love notes for me and put them in his back pack for me to find. Here is a couple of recent ones:

Both of my boys are great little artists and I love it when they make things for me. Being a mom is the best thing I've ever done...

Baking with my boys

Moomers and LeeLee love being my "helpers" when I'm baking and they are getting really good at knowing which ingredients we need for our current favorite recipe. They usually decide between the two of them who gets to do what: Moomers, in charge of putting in the oatmeal, LeeLee the chocolate chips. 

Each time I decide to bake cookies I'll suggest another recipe but they keep requesting this one so that's what we go with. I used to just buy whichever random semi-sweet morsels were on sale: usually Nestle or store-brand. But one day C brought home some Ghiradelli morsels because they were on sale.

 I had never used them before and at first was not too into using milk chocolate instead of semi sweet, but I was so so wrong. They are delightful. 

In all honesty, he probably bought them because of the San Francisco connection.

But the thing I like about the morsels is that they are HUGE. Not hard little chunks but big and soft: perfect for these cookies. 

Since the flavor is a little more mild than semi-sweet I do add a bit more kosher salt and vanilla extract to balance them out.  

The times I spent baking with my mom were some of my most treasured childhood memories so I love passing that on to my boys.  They really love helping and they do already come from a culinary family: both their step dad and their uncle are chefs.

C had to take over with the baking lesson and show them how to scoop the dough onto the cookie sheets, I had to go feed baby G. The cookies turned out well!