Teeth!

All of a sudden Baby girl has two little teeth on the bottom. I hadn't even seen them coming. She hasn't been particularly grumpy or had any problems. I hope the other teeth come in as easily.

Is it me?

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Supergirl 72% Spider-Man 70% Wonder Woman 62% Green Lantern 60% Robin 59% The Flash 50% Hulk 45% Iron Man 45% Batman 40% Catwoman 5%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Be Daring

I love what Maya Angelou said, "Success is loving life and daring to live it." Usually I think of daring as being adventurous and really pushing the limits. Lately I have been thinking of a different sort of daring, daring to do what you want in life even if it isn't exciting and especially if it isn't what is expected of you. I have had the chance to be daring in both ways. I went through phases where I did a lot of mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing etc. I moved around on my own for jobs and school. I pushed myself to do hard things. It all took some daring. I had a great job doing things that took a little daring as well, at least for me, speaking in front of large groups and traveling to far off places. Now I am daring to give that up for awhile and do things that are sometimes hard in a different way. I enjoy it, but it is less than exciting. Friends call and ask what I have been up to lately and not much has changed. I am just enjoying the day to day life. It took some daring to get off the track.

In a slightly different way I am enjoying life more since I dared to ignore other people, or more accurately, what I thought others expected of me or what they thought about me. It wasn't any one person in particular, mostly just "the people" of "What will people think?" It is quite liberating to realize that people just don't notice you as much as I once thought many years ago and just do what is right for me. What will people think, probably nothing. They really aren't thinking about you all that much, if at all. This started when life didn't go as planned and I couldn't do anything about it, and when I had a little bit more life experience and the confidence that came with it. I made the best of it and now it's OK to do what I need and it has turned out good so far.

the Giant cookie

I call it a fresh fruit tart. Buddy Boy called it a giant cookie. I tried to duplicate a tart I had last summer. It turned out OK, but there are a few things I would do differently. Here is what I did.

The first thing was the crust. I wanted something crisp, flakey, and sweet. I tried a shortbread cookie recipe, just flour, sugar, and butter. yum. It was pretty good, but didn't have the flakiness I was looking for. Next time I'll try something a little more like a pastry crust recipe except still sweet and buttery. It also needs to be a little thinner so it is more like a crust and less like a giant cookie.

The next step was the chocolate. It is good for its chocolaty goodness but it also works as a moisture barrier to keep the crust crisp. I melted chocolate chips and spread them around. It didn't set up the way I thought it would. It was a little soft and was actually a little bit too sweet. Next time dark chocolate or semi-sweet chips.

After the chocolate came the custard. I went with an easy option and used an instant custard. It wasn't very flavorful so I added vanilla. I wish I had some whipped cream to add as well. This layer was OK, but really needed the cream.

After that came the berries. Yummy yummy. It just doesn't get much better than fresh sweet berries.

I'll definitely try this again and see if I can improve on the fruity chocolaty goodness.

Its a fauxhawk

The past six months have flown by. Here she is fauxhawk and all.

And they call it finger paint

Well, it started out on the fingers at least. He had a lot of fun and it is all washable. You can see why we do art projects outside.