Catching Up

It has been a few weeks since I last wrote. The busyness of the spring has me a little behind things!

Emily is spending more and more time outside. We find it harder and harder for us to get her into the house each evening.

Bryce's parents visited us last weekend and we had a great time with them. The girls did some shopping; Emily scored 2 new swimsuits and I got some new shorts...hoping we will actually need these items SOON! The guys had the project of moving the TV to a console table in hopes that we would be able to sell the TV stand at our garage sale that we just wrapped up yesterday; we didn't.

We spent this past Friday and Saturday out in the garage trying to rid ourselves of the clutter. We began with Emily's clothing and toys. It started with 8 Rubbermaid boxes of clothes and blankets, and ended with just 4 boxes. We sold all of the furniture that was left from our garage sale to my cousin Amber. Lucky for her we took good care of everything we previously owned. Unfortunately we were able to sell our large couch on Friday morning to a lovely older couple who are building a lake cottage and we now have no upstairs furniture. Until we are able to get a new couch, we are using camping chairs as our seating...kind of silly when we have perfectly wonderful, comfortable theater seating downstairs!

This marks the last week of preschool for me. I have made it a whole year. It has been a lot of work, a lot of fun too though. But, I am really looking forward to the summer and the warmth that the sun brings!

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Over the weekend I purchased a set of ice cream sandwich molds made by Tovolo.
The set includes a pig, a cow, and a chicken.

The set was really super cute and Emily thought it was a set of puzzles so I was a little concerned that she might not give them up. She did give them up in the end and tonight after she went to bed, I finally got around to using them. First I had to make the cookies. I used chocolate chip cookie dough by Pillsbury. Then after waiting precisely one minute I had to cut out the cookies with the mold. This left for lots of yummy leftover chunks of cookie!

After cooling completely I put the cookies inside of the mold, scooped ice cream in, topped it off with a matching cookie and pressed down. This process had to be done quickly and by the end I still had a little bit of a mess. The end result was a delicious ice cream cookie sandwich, which of course I ate!

I think these will definitely be a summer favorite at our house!

A Very Long Week

This week has been quite long for all of us. We began the week with a very thorough cleaning of the house because everyone ended up with the flu. On top of the cleaning we were also battling temper tantrums from Emily; tantrums like I have never before seen with this child. They were long tantrums-one lasted an hour. Our way to handle them was to ignore them. They got shorter as the week went on and Wednesday and Friday we didn't have one tantrum with Emily. Ignoring a tantrum is much easier said than done!

This week at work I began teaching my preschoolers their songs for preschool graduation. The kids were doing quite well on the first day. I glanced up from my song sheet and realized these little kids have come so far in the last nine months and I began to cry. Who would have thought that these kids have grown on me so much? I think I will miss a majority of them when they are off in kindergarten next year.

On Thursday evening I put my apron on (figuratively, not literally) and I became Susie Homemaker. I made a loaf of banana bread and a batch of my amazing cinnamon rolls. The banana bread was for us at home. The rolls were for Bryce to take to work. I have made them for Bryce to take to work before and they were a hit 2 years ago. So much in fact that one guy who had them talked them up to everyone and by the time it was all said and done the men of Microsoft required 16 cinnamon rolls. None were left for me to enjoy. :( Oh, don't ask me for the recipe because you won't get it. That is the one recipe that I refuse to share. If you ask nicely I might make them for you though!

This weekend should be a nice relaxing one. Today the plans are for a little laundry, some shopping and then the Elton John & Billy Joel concert tonight. Emily's favorite teacher and my good friend Whitney will be coming to the house to hang out with Emily so Bryce and I can go to dinner before the concert. Th picture below is of Emily and Whitney at Whitney's wedding last summer.

Hopefully the weekend drags on the way the week itself did!