Sir Daniel, the Valiant

Daniel has been loving the last few weeks in Preschool. Their unit has been on Castles. This week they built this awesome castle of cardboard. They painted it during class as well. On Friday I got to see it, and got a few pictures. This one is Daniel on the drawbridge.

Here's Daniel's flag.

And Daniel's pattern. They practiced with patterns on the castle walls.

Currently, Sir Daniel is fighting a battle. His throat has been invaded by the bad guys, known as streptococcus. He and his army of white blood cells were doing their job, but have called in the reinforcements from team Amoxicillin. With the new recruits, Sir Daniel's army is regaining some ground, but he could be in for a few more days. I stayed home from Church with him today, so as to avoid spreading the influence of these bad guys to his friends at Church. Also, he wasn't really feeling up to being at Church. We're cheering for you, Sir Daniel!!!

A Belated Valentine Poem

I love my husband.

He loves me.

This holiday is nice,

But there's too much candy.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Decadent Petit Fours

As promised, the recipe, as found in Jan. 1994 edition of Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks: Appetizers and Snacks. I changed a few things, and added the vanilla icing, based on their chocolate icing recipe:

CAKE
1 pkg. devil's food cake mix
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup oil
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream

CHOCOLATE ICING
6 oz., or 1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips
1 can Fudge frosting
1 t. vanilla

VANILLA ICING
6 oz. white chocolate, or 1 cup white chocolate chips
1 can cream cheese frosting
(I THINK I left the vanilla out, because of the color, but I can't remember for sure....sorry)

Heat oven to 350. Line 15X10X1 baking pan with waxed paper, extending over the short sides. Grease and flour the waxed paper. Combine cake ingredients at low speed until moistened; beat 2 minutes at high speed. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool slightly; freeze cake for 30-45 minutes.

Remove cake from pan; remove waxed paper. Cut cake in half (you will only use one half for one icing recipe, wrap and refreeze the other half). Cut cake half into 48 (1 1/4 in.) squares; place back on pan, and stick back into the freezer while you prepare the icing.

Melt chips in medium saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Add frosting and vanilla, if using. Mix well to combine. Heat 1 to 2 minutes or to desired dipping consistency, stirring constantly (*a note from me: I'm not sure what I would thin it down with (maybe just water), but the next time around I'd like to experiment with getting the icing a little thinner).

Place wire rack on sheet of waxed paper. Remove 4-5 cake squares from the freezer at a time. To ice, spear with fork or toothpick. Hold cake square over pan, spoon icing over cake, twirling to coat all sides, except the bottom. Place on wire rack. Reheat icing over low heat as it thickens. (*another note from me: this is the tricky part. I tried lots of methods. Stabbing the cakes from the sides results in a hole on the side with no frosting. Stabbing them from the bottom provides a challenge getting it onto the wire rack. I even tried pouring the icing onto the cakes with the white. This was by far the easiest, but not the prettiest. It was challenging to coat all sides with this method. Probably my favorite method was just placing the cake square on a fork, over the pan, and pouring the icing on it, coating all sides. This made it easy to then transfer to the wire rack. Again, I think the icing could have been thinner, and I would experiment with this next time.)

Garnish the tops quickly (the icing hardens fast, making it difficult for things to stick) with sprinkles, candy or piped frosting. The possibilities are endless!!

Best of luck, and please let me know if you try them!!!

*Amy, seems like if you had a gluten free cake mix, this could work fine, don't you think?

Two Teens, One Roof

As of today, there are officially two teenagers in my house.

Happy Birthday, Dailie!!

Actually, with teens like I've got, I have nothing to complain about. They are fun, interesting people, and I love having them both around. Here's a recent picture of Dailie with her new glasses. She's also wearing a shirt from her workshop and concert with Randy Sabien. This is who she spent her birthday with.
There was a workshop and concert with Randy Sabien, a world renowned jazz violinist, for the 7th and 8th grade orchestra students in the district scheduled for Dailie's birthday. Click on the link with his name if you'd like to learn more about him. They left school for the workshop around 12:30, and stayed until the concert began at 7 pm. So, most of the family did not see her on her birthday until after the concert. The concert was great. The music was very entertaining, and Dailie even had a solo!!

After the concert we decided to celebrate by going in the middle of a blizzard (well, not quite, but close) to get blizzards (at DQ, hee hee). Dairy Queen had a promotion where kids could get a free small blizzard with straight A's on their report card. I don't think they were too happy about that particular promotion when we walked in 20 minutes before they closed on a snowy Friday evening and ordered 4 free blizzards : ). Thank, you, Peoria Dairy Queen employee who filled that order with a smile. We did pay for the blizzard Rick and I shared, and Daniel's cone : ). Saturday will be a busy day as well, so we'll have a family b'day party on Sunday afternoon/evening, but it was fun to do a little celebrating at DQ on her ACTUAL birthday.


Dailie is a beautiful daughter, both inside and out. I am so happy that I call her both daughter and friend. I love you, Dailie!!

Tea Time

Today was the Royal Tea Party at Lakeview Preschool (don't worry, it's apple juice : )). Daniel has been excited for it. He even helped me make these petit fours for it yesterday.

I've made them before, and was reminded why I don't do them often.

I'm sure he'll have a great time.

*one of the reasons I took these pictures was to test my theory that it was my memory card that is actually bad, not my camera, and guess what? My theory seems to be right!! I took 5 pictures, and every one of them turned out right, without any problems. We may be back in business with photos!!!!!!!!