The Search for the Perfect Cookie

I have never been able to make good chocolate chip cookies. No matter what I did they would come out flat and crispy, not soft and chewy like I wanted. Others would make me cookies and I would ask for the recipe only to discover my attempts did not produce the cookies I desired. So one day I was searching online for the perfrect, easy chocolate chip recipe...and I found it! I made these cookies and held my breath as I opened the oven when it was time to take them out and low and behold they were fluffly not flat! Soft not hard! Chewy not crispy! They were exactly what I had been searching for. I made them again and again wondering if it was a fluke they came out so good, but each time they are as goon as the first batch I made. So I am sharing the recipe for all of those who, like me, never thought they could make a good chocolate chip cookie.

1 stick butter, melted (yes MELTED, not softened)

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour (sometimes I do half whole wheat flour, half regular flour and they are still so good and a little healthier....can cookies be healthy?)

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips or more if you like it extra chocolately.

Put everything in a bowl and beat - let your kids lick the beaters and mix in the chocolate chips. Bake at 375 for 8 minutes (according to my oven 8 minutes is the perfect time but you may want to do it a little longer).

Yummm....

Just some random stuff

I thought once Logan started sleeping through the night I would be able to get my 8 hours every night and wake up well rested and cheerful each morning. Well it seems that even though he sleeps well I still wake up for no reason at all, or Trevor or Colin will wake up for different things during the night. Last night, for instance, Dave was gone camping with his scouts and I had a plan to put the boys to bed early (Colin missed his nap but instead of being tired he was WIRED) so I could watch a movie, then read my book (I'm reading Before Green Gables so any Anne of Green Gables fans will have to read it) and have a wonderful night's sleep. I am not sure what I was thinking. A little after midnight Trevor wakes up and yells, "Mom I need a drink of water." He yells it again and again until he sees me in his room with the cup. Then I am up around 1 with Trevor asking which switch to push to turn on the light to go pee, then at 2 and again at 3 because Logan has learned to roll over and he now rolls over in his sleep and it wakes him up. I roll him back over (he sleeps on his stomach - I know I'm breaking the rules but he sleeps SO GOOD that way), put in his pacifier and go back to sleep. He is awake again at 5, I try to get him to go back to sleep but he sees me and is all smiles. I feed him and by 5:24 he's back in his crib and I am back in bed. I then hear Colin waking up at 6:18 and so my day begins. And just so you know...it's 8:34 am and Logan is still sleeping. How nice to take long naps whenever you want.

Trevor has strep throat. On Monday my friend Marylin called me to tell me she saw the doctor my kids go to (Dr. Downey - they love him) because her daughter was sick with strep. So on Friday when Trevor woke up telling me his neck hurt (he'd had a fever the day before and was tired all day long - it was actually kind of nice him being sick!) I called Marylin and asked her what the symptoms for strep were. She told me to take him in just in case, "If you wait all weekend and it is strep then he's going to be miserable." So I took him in and we ended up seeing the doctor Marylin always takes her kids to. It took three of us to hold Trevor down to get the throat culture but it was positive so I was glad we had gone in. He feels "too good" now and said his neck is "much cooler." I just keep watching Colin for symptoms too since he's the one who usually get sick so if he does not get this I will be very surprised.

Colin keeps waking up dry each morning which is nice but he will have one good day with no accidents and then the next day it's like he forgot how to go on the toilet. Oh well, at least when he does have an accident it's on he wood floors and not the carpet. That's something to be grateful for. Yesterday when I took Trevor to the doctor I asked my dad to watch Colin and Logan since I am always afraid they would catch the germs there. So I tell Colin he is going to Papa's house and he says, "What about Gramma?" and I say, Grandma is at work." and he says with a frown on his face, "Oooh, but I miss Gramma."

Anniversary, Father's Day and Colin's Success

The best marriage advice I ever got was from my friend Tricia who told Dave and me to always spend at least one night away from our kids for our anniversaries. We took that advice to heart and also decided that each year we would take turns planning the anniversary as a surprise for the other person. Dave does the even years and I do the odd. We also buy a little something to put on a shelf in the family room to remember where we went or what we did. So here is a little recap of what we've done so far:


Year 1 - I planned a trip to San Diego. We went to Balboa park and Coronado Island to go to the beach.
Year 2 - Dave got us a room at the Treasure Island and tickets to a few shows. Three days away from 3 month old Trevor...it was good to be alone but we were both happy to get back and see our baby.
Year 3 - I got us a room at the Big Yellow Inn in Cedar City and tickets to a play at the Shakespearean Festival.
Year 4 - We went to Laguna beach and got spa treatments and sat on the beach and did nothing. (Can you tell we like the beach?)
Year 5 - We stayed home, but the kids were gone and I did a scavebger hunt for Dave. I sent him to all of the places we went on our first date.
Year 6 - Dave got us a room and spa treatments (another trend of ours) at the Green Valley Spa in St. George.
Year 7 - This year! We celebrated this past weekend even though our anniversary is on the 23rd. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant at the Venetian and then saw Phantom. It was SO GOOD. Then we went on a gondola ride. My sister watched the kids...Thanks!!


Father's Day!


I let Dave sleep in (something he likes to do a lot) and made him a breakfast of crepes. When it was time to eat I had the boys put on the shorts and shirt we bought him and wake him up. Colin was not very happy with this idea. For Dave's card I had the boys tell me what they liked to do with their dad. Here is what they said:
Colin - I like to draw bobots with Dad.
Trevor - He's a very very good Dad. I like to wrestle and play monster game with him.
Logan - (Big smile!)

Colin's Success!

We started potty training Colin 2 weeks ago and I thought it was going to be a never ending process. Well he has stayed dry for three days now with just two accidents, one at my sister's house and one this morning. Yesterday he was even going into the bathroom and going all on his own without me telling him he needed to go try. I'm so excited. It's been nice only changing one child's diapers for the last three days! I keep thinking of all of the money we'll save now on diapers and wipes!! He's even been to the store a few times and has done really well. Today will be a test - church and then over to my parent's house for dinner.

Updates

Here are some new picturs from the weekend. We've been trying out food with Logan and he's not been too interested. This weekend I tried sweet potatoes since Trevor and Colin loved them as babies but Logan had more fun spitting it out. Dave mowed the lawn Saturday night and Colin wanted to help. Trevor usually helps too but he was upstairs playing the computer. He is so good at the games he plays that he can do it all himself. I think soon he will be better on the computer than I am. He definitly takes after his dad!

Tagged by Marylin

What I was doing 10 years ago:

• I was at SUU and decided to stay for the summer so I could take enough classes in order to be done with everything by the end of the Fall semester so I could student teach Spring semester. I lived in the sorority house that summer and I was also the sorority President so I had those responsibilities as well. It was a summer like the way a Tale of Two Cities starts out "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

5 Things on my "TO DO" list:

• clean the house (I have a friend from college - a SORORITY SISTER - coming into town tonight and she's coming over with her family to visit)
• start an exercise routein
• set up the "slip and slide" for the kids (I am totally going to play on it with them)
• finish the laundry - it's never ending
• make up my dinner menu for next week and get my grocery list done

Things I would do if I were suddenly a Billionaire:

• I guess Millionaire doesn't cut it anymore
• Buy my dream house that is up the street (the one with the LAUNDRY ROOM!!) and get all of the extras I want.
• Take my family (my parents, Dave's parents, our grandparents, our siblings and their kids) on a Disneyworld Cruise.
• Buy a beach house in Coronado Island
• Put money away for missions and college (that might end up taking most of the money by the time my kids are old enough to go!)
• Go to Italy with Dave
• Stock up my food storage (since my new house has a HUGE pantry)
• Buy a video camera so we can record the kids
• Go out to dinner every night for a week
• Hire a maid service

3 of my Bad Habits

• biting my nails (I am really going to stop this time)
• interrupting people when they are talking (I had no idea, but my husband pointed this out to me!)
• not following through on things I want to do

Places I've Lived

• Las Vgeas, Cedar City for college and Las Vegas once again

Jobs I've Had

• Day care worker (lasted 2 weeks)
• worked at the library
• Hallmark sales associate (I loved that job)
• I worked at a law firm for a few months doing a project for one of the lawyers there
• I cleaned the athletic office building/gymnastics locker room at college.
• worked at a summer day camp before I got my first REAL job out of college
• a teacher - high school and then middle school
• a mom

Some things people don't know about me:

• I have about 10 beginnings to books I want to write. If I get an idea I have to start it so I won't forget. I am getting close to finishing the one I am working on now and then I want to try and get it published.
• I hate clothes shopping.
• I don't like hanging out with a lot of people at once. I'd rather be with a small group so we can all talk together.
• I almost changed my major to Nutrition
• I hated babysitting as a kid

On the Road to Kindergarten

Trevor had his last day of preschool last week on Thursday (was it really only a week ago??) and his teacher planned a little graduation ceremony for that night. When we got there I was surprised to see so many people since there are only 4 kids in his class and one of them is the teacher's daughter, but his teacher's parents and sister came to support her. Trevor did a great job. They all introduced themselves by spelling their name and they all had a little part of a poem to recite and a song to sing. It was so cute and Trevor kept making funny comments throughout the whole thing and the other parents would say, "How funny, he is so cute." Dave and I were very proud and a little surprised at how different Trevor was sitting with his classmates. We both said how happy we were he got kicked out of his first preschool because this one seemed so much better suited for him. He was the only boy in the class, but he still enjoyed himself each week and made good friends. After the ceremony his teacher presented each child with a backpack full of things to do over the summer and a few supplies they will need for school in the fall. It was such a fun night and it made Dave and me realize just how fast our kids are growing up and all of the things they will be doing in the future.

The pictures are the kids signing a song about being a star, his class posing for pictures and the last one is Trevor with Miss Crystal. He said on his last day of school as I was droping him off "Mom I am starting to get sad." Then he went up to Miss Crystal and told her he loved her and that he was going to miss her!