Chocolate Eruption Cheescake

The cheesecake turned out really well! It was massive with homemade brownies for a crust, dulce de leche, snickers, brownie chunks, white chocolate and semisweet chocolate inside!!

Here are a few pic's:

Here you can see all the goo in the middle! Yum!!

Happy Birthday Auntie Sarah, Uncle Zacky, and Daddy!

(not Emmy yet, but she just had to get in the pic)

The recipe came from this amazing baking cook book of my sisters which I often "steal" from her called the Art of Baking. I LOVE this cook book for the recipes and she tells you all about how to do different things to get good results. Here is a link if you want to check it out.

Homemade Dulce De Leche

Just thought I would share this recipe because I thought it was so neat that you could make your own and not spend tons of $$$ on it in the store. I definitely do not use this much but sometimes I run across a recipe that calls for it and Pat LOVES caramel type topping on ice cream or anything. Do be sure to prepare it way ahead of time because it takes quite a while to cook.

2 cans sweetened condensed milk

Pour the milk into a double boiler (or a stainless bowl over a sauce pan). Cook over low heat for 3-6 hours stirring occasionally until it turns a deep amber color. Remove from heat cool and refrigerate. It will thicken a lot once it's in the fridge and will store for 2-3 weeks.

Head over to the Grocery Cart Challenge for a yummy freezer bag ice cream recipe that this topping would go great with!

PS - I am using this for a Chocolate Eruption Cheesecake that Pat, Auntie Sarah and Uncle Zack want for their B-day, I will let you know how it turns out!

Happy Birthday Daddy

Happy Birthday Patrick!

I know this is a day late but here is a St. Patty's day birthday post for our awesome Daddy and loving husband!!

Just thought it would be fun to brag a little about Pat and how talented he has become (compared to when we first met he told me he could not hammer a nail!) He has become quite the builder of all sorts of things including several pieces of furniture:
This is the bookshelf he built for the school room. I love it!!

My bedside table (we still need to stain it).

Emmy and Mollie got dolly beds for Christmas.This was a shelf he made for his sisters B-day.

Please don't look to close at the mess.

There are many more projects he has built and more he is working on! It was so nice of him last night (his birthday) he spent a couple of hours fixing Emmy's bed (which was broken during some serious rough housing I think) and replacing the whole side board.

Thanks Daddy we love you!!!!!!

Homeschool Science

"Ant, ant, ant!!" Emmy shrieked and then ran into the bedroom. I thought she was running away but appeared a second later with the magnified glass! I thought it was too cute not to get some pics of. This one came out a little blurry but still cute!

Then the boys appeared to see what was going on, here they are patiently awaiting their turn!

Mollie then decided to check things out and realized the ant looked to her like something to eat! In this next pic Emmy is holding her back from destroying the scientific research!

Then last night after supper we drove out to the field at the end of our road and watched as the Space Shuttle Discovery flew threw the sky! It was so neat, it looked like a large bright star moving fairly quickly and we even spotted a shooting star fly right in it's path! James brought the telescope he got for Christmas but it was very hard find it so he gave up and looked on with us.

I have no pic of the shuttle because it was dark and my camera never would have been able to capture it anyway, but when we got home the kids wanted to get the space books out.

I love impromptu science class!!

HERE is a link to more info on the Space Shuttle.

Homeschool Sledding......again!

Nana and Bumpa (Pat's parents Sherri and Bill) very graciously let the homeschoolers come and invade the place for another awesome day of sledding. It was a beautiful day in the 40's and 50's and lots of sun! This time it was a little on the warm side for running snow machines so we didn't have the escort service up and down the sledding hill, but we did get a few rides in!

Ethan and Bumpa headed to the hill!

Mollie and Nana hanging out at the bottom.

Lauren and James getting ready

Emmy thought it would be fun to pull Lily around in the little sled, not sure if she was enjoying it as much as Emmy though!



Mollie's first snowmachine ride!

James had a great time "surfing" down the sledding hill! Check out the video I took of him in action. He actually was able to stay standing the whole time because the snow was so sticky.


Ethan and Pat are up to no good here by the look of their faces, I think snowballs had something to do with it!

Smile! I got this group photo at the top of the sledding hill.

Pat snapped this one of Mollie and I enjoying the sun. We actually went down the hill in a sled like this (thankfully no one caught that on film).

Emmy was sporting these cute little "noggin knots" (as I call them), they stayed in nicely even with a hat on!

As you can see from these pics it was really sunny and warm! The boys actually got really bad sunburn on their faces. Of course stupid me never thought of sunscreen and the boys were out there from 10:00am to 4 or 5:00pm!!

We made snow paints (food coloring and water) and put it in spray bottles for Emmy and the other little ones. The big kids actually enjoyed them a lot too!

Emmy and Beckah thought it would be fun to add some color to the snowman Nana built with some of the kids.

Dominic and Emmy making the snowman pretty!!

More International Night Photos

Here are some photo's from the Little Explorers International Night where the kids display what they have been learning about a particular country or era. The boys have been learning about ancient Israel and how God led the Israelites into the Promise Land.

Ethan and James in front of their display.

James had fun hanging out with his buddy Caleb!

Pat was able to come that night (it wasn't snowing!!). It was a great help to have another set of hands and it's nice to have the Dad's around!

Emmy and Bekah up to no good??

Cameron and Ian did England I think and had some really neat projects!

Maverick and his Canada display.

Hannah and Sarah did Ancient Greece.

James actually took most of these pics while I was busy with other stuff. He took this great one of Caleb in front of his Mexico display.

A few more pics:

It was great to have Mimi and Papa stop by!

This one is a little blurry but here they are with the girls.

Emmy is obsessed with holding and lugging Mollie around, here we caught her in the act!

Emmy is also obsessed with the phrase "hold me", I guess Mrs. Jette couldn't resist!

The whole group got together at the end for a photo.

Here is James and Caleb with their A+ quiz on all of the displays. It was more like a scavenger hunt than a quiz really but the kids all wanted Mrs. Jette to grade their papers. James had no idea what "A+" meant!