Happy weekend!

Happy (belated) July 4th! I hope you enjoyed your celebrations and day off of work! We are enjoying our four day weekend and trying to squeeze everything into it that we can. Luckily, today is our day of rest and relaxation before we have to re enter the real world tomorrow.

First, a little bit of patriotism. I am very proud to be an American and to have all of the freedom's we usually take for granted. I'm glad that we can speak our minds regarding politics and religion (among other things) with no persecution. I'm very proud of our military, especially my big brother and that they defend our nation's freedom while sacrificing so much. I love you Jim and I'm ready for you to come home.

Moving on....
On the fourth, we went to Alex's uncle's pool party to play some water volleyball and to soak up some ray's. Unfortunately,  we underestimated the power of the ray's and are a little lobster-y. But, we had fun and I'm always glad to be invited over. Later that evening we headed to our friend's, Kyle and Lori, house to barbecue. We had a lot of fun but were eaten by mosquito's (despite our bug spraying efforts), so on top of our sunburn, we're speckled with bug bites. Neat. We saw no fireworks, but heard them and then called it a night. Happy Birthday America.

On the fifth, which I dubbed Abby Day, we slept in, Moose got his hair cut and a bath and  we watched the newest Batman movie which, I highly suggest. After sitting in our bat cave basement for a few hours, we decided to stretch our legs with a walk around the neighborhood. On our walk, we discussed the need for an adventure so, Alex and I invited ourselves to my sister's house to spend the night as a pit stop on our way to Starved Rock State Park (she was thrilled to have us last minute...I think).  We packed up, got our pup and drove north. When we got there Becky and Jared made us a wonderful dinner and we played with Ethan and Nora until bedtime.

On the sixth, we woke up, played with some lego's, loaded our car and headed to Ottowa for some adventure- Jared, Becky, Ethan and Nora in tow! When we got there we ate lunch and then hiked, climbed and played. We had a lot of fun and I even remembered my camera so there is evidence of our adventure!

We had a lot of fun and are really glad that the Collier crew decided to join us! Check out their blog to see some of their pictures from the trip!

Hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend! 

Writer's Block...

Sorry I've been absent, I'm suffering a bit lately from writer's block. We're not doing anything very exciting or news worthy. We went to a wedding last weekend and spent time with family. But other than that we're pretty lame. We have no exciting plans for Independence Day and it feels like we live in Seattle with all the rain we're getting. Hopefully there will be some excitement (and sunshine) in our lives to share soon!

Lemon Cookies

A couple weekends ago Alex and I made cookies for a wedding reception and we made some awesome lemon cookies, courtesy of our friend Lori's recipe. Don't worry it's not top secret or very difficult so with no further ado:

                                                                 Iced Lemon Cookies

Cookie ingredients:

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 Tbsp. finely zested lemon rind 

Icing:

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp.finely zested lemon rind

1 cup powdered sugar

Cookies:

First, mix butter on high until fluffy, then add sugar and egg. Continue mixing on medium while adding vanilla and lemon rind. 

In a separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients (you could sift them, but that takes a sifter and extra time). 

Mixing on a low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the creamy/sugary mixture until well blended. Gather the dough into a ball and refrigerate for a bit (the original recipe said one hour, but who's that patient?).

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 

Remove the dough from the fridge and scoop little dough balls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. You can flatten the dough balls with a glass (dip the glass into a bit of sugar between cookies to reduce the stickiness).  The flatter the cookie the crispier it will be. 

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are golden. Let cool and then ice. 

Icing:

Juice 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, zest 1 tablespoon of lemon rind and then mix in one cup of powdered sugar. Mix until it is well blended. Spread on the cookies after they've cooled. You can pipe the icing onto the cookies, glaze the cookies or just ribbon it over the cookies so they're not super icing-y. 

I made about 30 cookies and they were medium sized. 

Happy Baking! 

Baker's note:

I have no idea how long this recipe took from start to finish. While the dough was chilling before I preheated our oven, I had to clean the oven. Because, last time I used the oven I spilled bacon grease/bits all over which made our house very smokey and smelly, so I didn't want to repeat that fiasco...

What a whirlwind!

We've had a crazy, busy, whirlwind week around here! 

Last weekend we were pummeled by a wind storm. There were tornado's in the area but gratefully we were just hit with some crazy straight line winds. Our neighborhood and area of town was hit the hardest. Trees were uprooted, bent in half, on top of houses, in houses and across roads. It was not a pretty sight. We lost power Friday night and it finally came back on around 10 pm Sunday. We tried to make the best of it, so we did what all American's (should) do- we headed to a Cardinal's game, which they won handily! We grilled out a lot and Moose got to go on a lot of walks. Our house was completely spared of all tree and wind damage. We picked up some limbs, sticks and leaves and called it good. We were very fortunate.

We used our Unity candle for light all weekend

Cardinal's Game- Thanks Mom & Dad and Linda & Wayne for the  tickets!
It was a great game!

This limb barely missed Alex' s car! 

The joys of home ownership!

This is an image of some tree damage in our neighborhood. 

The work week went well and on Thursday I got to bake 3 dozen lemon cookies for a friend's wedding reception. They had milk & cookies instead of cake and asked for some help with the baking. Of course I volunteered for lemon cookies, because I love lemon anything. However, I didn't have a lemon cookie recipe. Oops...but, Wednesday night my friend Lori gave me a recipe to use and it was amazing!! I'll post it later. It took a little zesting and squeezing, but well worth it. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a lof of fun! The milk & cookies were fantastic and a good change of pace for a reception dessert. 

Congratulations Jon and Amy!

We rarely take any pictures of us while we look nice, so this was our attempt at the self timer. Alex wasn't very cooperative, so this is the best we got. Most of the other pictures are pretty cheesy.

Finally, today was my friend Paige's bridal shower. Paige and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. It's so exciting watching my friends begin to get engaged and married and I'm so excited for them all as they begin this adventure. Alex and I were the first of our friends to get married so we get to sit back and relax, remembering all too well the eager anticipation and sometimes stress of wedding planning. Paige's shower was thrown by her lovely bridesmaids and they did a fantastic job! Everything was very well thought out and executed. The food was delicious,  the games were cleaver and the company was second to none. I really enjoyed getting to catch up with some girlfriends.

Best Wishes Paige! I'm so excited for you!

Hopefully this week is more relaxing and less eventful! 

What have you been up to?