Chocolate Friday - Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes

It's Friday! It's Chocolate!

How does this look?

Yeah, I know. Yummy chocolate goodness. Alas, mine didn't look exactly like that. But taste? WOW!! Out of this world!!

When I found this on The Prepared Pantry website I just HAD to get it. It's called Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes (but I'm sure you figured that out by the title). Just click on the name and it will take you directly to the page on their website.

If you click on their home page, there's a place to enter to win a free cookbook from Better Homes and Gardens.

I also encourage you to browse the site. They have a lot of interesting and delicious looking goodies on there. Another thing I got from them (for free!) is their Baking E-book. Get your free baking E-book here.

If you buy the package for making the Lava cakes, just know that it has enough for 12 cakes. It's divided up into 2 sets of 6.

The cakes I made.

My helper. :)

Now head over to Lisa's at Stop and Smell the Chocolate for more chocolate goodies.

Enjoy your weekend. Have some chocolate.

Until next time...

24 of 52 photos of me

If you read any of my previous posts you'll know that we were in VA this past weekend. I actually did get a few pictures of me.

So, I'm posting one in accordance with Carin's challenge of moms getting into the pictures. Here goes:


Sorry for the blur...we were on the tram.

Now it's your turn to join in if you haven't already. Start now with week 1, it's not too late. Go visit Carin and see more moms in the picture. You'll be glad you did.

Until next time...

Happy First Birthday!

Today was my youngest child's first birthday.

We didn't do anything to celebrate the occasion. Now, lest you think we're bad parents, remember that we just got back from a mini-vacation. We always try to do something special on our children's birthdays. We decided this year, that the VA vacation would count for the baby's.

Besides, honestly, is he going to remember? Is he going to be upset 10 years from now that we didn't do cake and ice cream and presents on his 1st birthday? I think not.

I think he will be upset if we don't do it then.

So, Happy Birthday, baby boy.



Until next time...

Sasquatch search

If you saw this, you'll know that I won something.

Here's what I won.
Is this cool or what!? You know what's even more cool (cooler?)? I got it today! That's right. They just got my address yesterday and I got it today! Talk about fast shipping!

Now the only thing is to divide it equally. There's only one binder and one pencil case. But there are 3 each of the other things; 1 subject notebooks, journals, small notebooks, folders, and composition notebooks.

These are from the Carolina Pad Co., the Sasquatch line, and I blogged about it here to get an extra entry. It worked!

Can you tell I love winning? Well guess what - this isn't the only thing I've won this weekend. I'm telling ya, this was one stupendous weekend. While I was off having fun in VA meeting new friends, I was also winning giveaways in bloggyland.

But I'll tell you about the other one later.

Until next time...

Last minute decisions...

...can turn out to be fun.

Such was the case this weekend. We left Kat and her family Saturday night wishing we had more time to visit. But, alas, that was not to be.

As they went back east, we headed west - and then, south. We stopped for the night and started out Sunday on a new adventure.


We love to visit different zoos (can you tell?). Let me tell you, this one was big. 500 acres!!! We really enjoyed seeing all the animals. And I guess the walk was worth it. The tram definitely helped. So did the shuttle at the end of the visit. This is the first zoo I've been to that had 2 parking lots. We parked in Africa and came out in North America. Interesting, huh? So we had to take the shuttle back over to Africa.

Having fun!

Am I camouflaged?

What's supposed to be here, Mama?

Not happy!

Content to have big brother push me around the zoo.

They had interesting sculptures all over the zoo.


This was really cool. Well, actually it was warm, but you know what I mean. It was the Sonora Desert display.


View from inside the bird aviary, where we saw birds from tropical areas. Like this:


Eclectus Parrot
And this:
Scarlet Ibis

Another sculpture.

The one thing we really wanted to see, and didn't get to, was the polar bear. It was too hot for it.

*****************************************************

A bonus when we go to NC is being able to get this.



Cheerwine. It's a soft drink. Ok, so NC is not the only place you can get it, but it is pretty much exclusive to the Southeast. And it started in NC. We have seen it here in TN, but we found the glass bottles in NC and you can't get those here. The formula in the glass bottles is the original using pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup. It tastes a little like Cherry Coke, but not exactly. (Psst...I like it almost as much as Dr Pepper).

Well, that was another highlight from my fabulous weekend. More to come.


Until next time...

where have I been?

Saturday started really early. The kids were out after about 30 minutes in the van.


The Virginia Museum of Transportation. The trains were the main attraction and everyone was fascinated.

Especially the train lover of the family.

A bird's-eye view of their elaborate train village. I think it was supposed to be Roanoke.



Of course I had to take a picture. Notice there is no period after Dr? This is right, there is officially no period in Dr Pepper. But I really wish they had taken better care of this fabulous drink. Come on, people, where's the 'r'?

The old cars were interesting, too.

Oops...sorry...just saw this notice after taking a few pictures like the one above.

The playground where all the kids could run around. See the girls in the background with the blue shirts on? More on them a little later.

Finally, a car we can ride. Hey, there's another blue shirt! Anyone know yet who it is?

And we're off! Umm...not too fast though. Still it was fun for them (I didn't ride).

Still wondering who the blue shirts are? Here, maybe this picture will help.



Now you know! Our family met up with Kat's family in Roanoke, VA this weekend! We had a lot of fun!

As we were leaving my husband said, "You know, it would have been worth the trip just to meet them." In other words, yes, we had fun at the museum and chocolate store, but even if we had not done those things, we still would have driven 4 hours just to meet such a wonderful family.

And if you haven't met them, you need to. Go over to Kat's blog and see for yourself.

Until next time...

23 of 52 photos of me

Do you know how hard it is to get a picture of this girl? Hard, I tell ya!!

But I finally got one. :)




This is in compliance with Carin's challenge of 52 Weeks; pictures with mom in them. Fall in the boat with us, get on board, and all that. While your at it, check out the other moms at Carin's place.



Until next time...

totally useless information

So here's some totally useless information for you.

This is what a toilet looks like in Japan.


If you think it's difficult to go in an American public toilet, check one of these out. I don't see the bar, but usually there was a bar mounted on the wall for you to hold on to. And for the foreigners there were instructions. Yep, 'cause, you know, you need directions on how to use the toilet.

Oh and the public restrooms didn't have hand dryers or paper towels. They did have sinks, though. I couldn't figure that one out until I saw Japanese ladies pulling little "scarves" out of their purses to dry their hands. Pretty sanitary. Keep those germs to yourself!

Well, there's your bit of totally useless information for the day. (Unless I guess you're playing a trivia game and there's a question about Japanese toilet)? Oh well.

Have a good day!


Until next time...

before and after

Yesterday my oldest gave the boys haircuts for the first time (under my supervision of course). Oh, yeah, and she actually wanted to, it wasn't a "chore" or anything.

She did a great job.

While she was cutting one of the boys hair, one of the other boys grabbed the scissors and proceeded to do his little sister's hair. Aack! Not good!

So I had to fix it.

It used to look like this:


Now it looks like this:


Thankfully, he didn't cut it any higher. But it looks cute and it will grow out (she wants long hair).


Until next time...

do you see what I see?

Earlier this morning we were entertained by this sight.

A little closer...

A lot closer!

If you look close enough you can see the fire. They would ignite it every once in a while to stay aloft. It was a good homeschooling lesson on light traveling faster than sound. We would see the flash, about 5 seconds later here the "whooshing" sound. It would blaze for about 10 seconds. Then the flame would be extinguished, but we could still hear the sound for a few seconds. I can't imagine how loud it must have been up there.

Nice early morning sighting. :)


Until next time...