The quest for the ultimate chocolate chip cookie

Join our quest!

We have decided that one of our summer projects will be the quest for the world's best chocolate chip cookie. Each week will bring a new recipe to try and rate. I randomly chose the first one from an online recipe website after we decided that the toll house recipe can only go so far. Everyone always wants chocolate chip cookies, but the same thing gets boring week after week, this quest is sure to spice things up! A new recipe will follow each week, feel free to post your favorite for us to try.

Feel free to join in, make cookies and post your opinions. We are keeping a simple chart with a 5 star system on the fridge. Ellie of course is keeping her own 7 stage chart because 5 was just not quite good enough!

Here is this week's recipe:

2 c all purpose flour
2 tbs all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 c packed brown sugar (light or dark, we used light)
1/2 c sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 c chocolate chips
1 c chopped walnuts (I added pecans)

preheat oven to 325
mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and set aside
mix butter and sugars with a mixer until blended and smooth, add egg, yolk and vanilla
mix until incorporated.
add dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
stir in chips and nuts if you choose
divide into 18 equal balls (I just used my small pampered chef scoop and made a few dozen)
evenly space on cookie sheet
bake for 12-18 minutes, rotating from top to bottom after 8 minutes
cool on sheets to maintain chewy texture

Good luck and enjoy!

I have been following a great blog called biblical womanhood. Lucky for me, she is starting a wonderful challenge to become more organized throughout the coming weeks. I am anxious to take this on as I find myself to be a much more patient wife and mother when I feel that my environment is in some kind of order. Heaven knows I do not need perfection, but I also do not care to spend my days searching through piles of papers to find my checkbook, searching through baskets of socks to find a pair, and searching through piles of toys to find my children who have been swallowed up by the mess!

We are working on starting new habits in the new year as a family. My children have been dilegently following our 4 new rules in the house and we have been rewarding them with marbles in a jar to help support their progress. The goal is that through treating each other more kindly and with more respect and by being more responsible family members our family will grow stronger. And how else are the kids going to get a trip to the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese?!? I do think getting organized can help to support these goals as well and it is important for the kids to see that I am working toward something too.

This week, throwing out trash, and starting the give, sell, maybe boxes. I have always wanted to do that! The trick to making this stick is to count the basement as a part of the house and not ignore it or use it as the dumping ground. Here's hoping!

Kate turns 1!

Yes...she was 9 months at last writing and breezed through 10 and 11 months so quickly that I didn't have a second to catch my breath or write a word about it!  

My baby is one year old.  Right around this time is when I start to think hmmm...wouldn't it be great to have another?  It is very strange to look at our little family and think, this is the last time we will have a first birthday party for one of our kids.  Kate's "firsts" will most likely be our "lasts", so I am finding every milestone to be bittersweet.  We celebrated her birthday over a few days beginning with lunch for the whole family at Red Robin.  Parents across America love Red Robin because it is one of the loudest restaurants you can go to and usually is able to drown out any noise we may be making.  Kate was stunned by being the center of attention and she loved it.  As we have become wise in the ways of little one's birthdays Kate received just a few presents and just as we knew she would loved the gift bags and boxes just as much if not more than the gifts. The biggest hit was probably the cakes that seemed to keep on coming. One for her actual birthday, then ice cream from Momere and Papa on her birthday night, plus the ice cream at lunch at red robin, then the dirt cups and cake at her family party on Sunday.  Whew!  She certainly has Thomas' sweet tooth!    She is still a little dream...she uses signs to get what she wants (milk, eat, up, drink, up, flower, dog, up, papa, dada, up) and starting to try and take a few little steps on her own although as you may have guessed she loves to be carried around.

Kate is 9 months old!

Here is what happens when your fourth baby turns nine months old and you are trying not to let the month-by-month-birthday-cake-tradition die.  You find that after a busy day of work(mom and dad), school(for the girls), Auntie Nicki's (Thomas and Kate), and dance class (the girls again) that you are frantically stopping at Copp's on the way home to buy some birthday fun.  One blueberry pie and long drive home later, you find that your nine month old is fast asleep.  You ignore the baffled father that worked so hard to get her to sleep and you wake the baby up.  You sing to the half awake baby and then, since she is your fourth baby and most if not all rules have gone out the window, you feed the once sleeping baby pie and ice cream.  You then take lots of pictures to document the event so someday everyone's baby book with be even (the fact that the baby books pretty much tell only of the day of their births so far is another story all together).  Of course Kate loves it, and because baby #4 has learned to go with the flow, she goes right back to sleep.   Whew!  Only a few more months to go....

dimes from heaven

You may or may not have heard of a phenomenon in which money appears seemingly out of nowhere, often in the forms of dimes.  These dimes are thought to be a message from a loved one or an angel.  There have been cases where people have actually seen the money drop from the sky. Many of my dime experiences have happened in times of difficulty and stress...a dime will "appear" before me where I just KNOW there was none a moment ago.  I had my most mysterious dime experience yesterday.  All 4 kids were home, so I was running around in servant mode, attempting to get laundry done while tending to everyone's needs.  Eventually the oldest 3 kids headed for the basement to play.  I came down to check on them and low and behold I found some water in our basement (we are saturated here!).  I told the kids...."it is a blessing you were playing down here, mommy found this water and can fix it before anything gets wrecked!".  I dealt with the soggy toys, threw away some wet paper and dried off the markers that were laying in the puddle.  THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT ON THE FLOOR.  I went to the laundry basket and grabbed a towel, shaking out any crumbs that may be trapped (it was in the dirty laundry).  THERE WAS NOTHING ON THE TOWEL.    I used the towel to dry the floor.  When I was almost done wiping things up, I heard a scratch.  I lifted up the towel and there on the floor WAS A SHINY NEW DIME.  And it gets stranger....I picked the dime off of the damp, cold, concrete floor and IT WAS HOT TO THE TOUCH AND TOTALLY DRY.  That is when I knew that this was an out of the ordinary experience.  

how cute....

These were too cute to pass up.  Thomas as "SuperBatmanMcQueenSkywalker" and our little bedtime cuddlebugs.  The more kids in the bed the better they sleep.  All three have been cuddling together at night.  Our kids are just the variety that like to have someone else around at ALL TIMES.  When we put them all together, mom and dad get a better night sleep too.  And I am sure the girls are sleeping more peacefully knowing Thomas John, superhero extraordinaire is watching over them!