ST. Patrick's Day 2013

 YAY!  a picture of some lucky leprechauns in California!!!  Ethan and his companion, Elder McCracken.

 For St. Patrick's day, I made green chocolate chip cookies--and some even in the shape of 4-leaf clovers (sort-of).  The kids didn't want mint cookies, so I just added green food coloring.

Emmalee (and Ben) enjoying the green cookies.  Rusty made green pancakes for breakfast, but since I had early meetings, I didn't get pictures (or even get to eat one!)

So yesterday I slow-cooked ribs (both baby back & spare ribs) for a nice meal.  I also decided to make homemade rolls along with baked potatoes, baked beans, and asparagus.  On top of that, I decided that my floor was in desperate need of a good vacuuming!  (I am almost embarrassed to say it had been 2 weeks since I last vacuumed).  And with the snow melting, a lot of mud/dirt has been tracked in.  So by the time all the "big" pieces of garbage/dirt and moving furniture, it took 2 hours to get everything vacuumed.  Ben & Emmalee love making a lot of crafts & draw a ton of pictures.  Ben cuts everything out that he draws, so there was a ton of little pieces of paper on the floor.  

Rusty and the 2 older kids went to pick up the 4-H pigs.  We are not ready for them yet, so they are staying at a neighbor's house until our pen is ready in a week or 2.  Since I was busy baking/cooking all day, I didn't make it over to see the pigs, and so I have no pictures of them.  Only Brienna and Zane are doing pigs this year, and since they are older, Rusty is letting them do a lot more of the "work" (like getting the pen ready, buying the food, etc.)

Oh--and I also made the green chocolate chip cookies.  After the green batch of cookies, I tried a batch for me using a little bit of coconut sugar and sugar-free chocolate (I thought they were quite delicious).  But I came to the conclusion that with all the work, it's not worth it to make the big meal very often.  I would much rather spend the $ to go out to eat with Rusty (the kids ate some of the food, but the younger ones didn't care for meat--crazy kids!).  I spent about $15 on the meat (which will feed our family for at least 2 meals, maybe 3) and the rest of the food doesn't add up to much, but the time sure does add up.  But don't get me wrong, Rusty, myself, and his dad thoroughly enjoyed the food. 

The other thing is I'm still getting used to my oven.  The first batch of cookies took a lot longer to cook and so did all of the rolls.  So the next time I make bread, I am going to bake it in a little hotter oven to see if they brown quicker.  The rolls were okay, but just not the best.  They didn't brown very good.  And I just ate a roll for a snack and started thinking of how I made it.  Since they didn't taste quite right, I finally figured out that I didn't put all the sugar in them.  So I need to make another batch soon to see if I can get it right!