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| Creek to swim |
I went with my sister on a sisters trip to St. Louis. We ate Thai food, visited the botanical gardens there and lucked out and got to enjoy it for free after hours due to a weekly music day hosted there, stayed for two nights in a bed and breakfast, visited an art museum, ate at an Italian restaurant, visited a science museum, played some slot machines, and went to an escape room (we almost escaped, but not quite). We both experienced some firsts, as it was our first time to stay at a B&B, first time eating from a Thai restaurant (but not Thai food), and our first time trying our hands at an escape room. It was my first time gambling in a casino (and probably my last), and I think Meg said it was her first time visiting a botanical garden. We had fun! :-)
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| My sister and I |
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| Missouri Botanical Gardens |
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| St. Louis Science Center |
We took a trip to visit family and friends. We stayed with my parents and also visited my sister and my nieces, my two best friends from school days, the kids' paternal grandpa, and their great-grandmother.
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| My sister's dog, Heidi, leapt up into my vehicle as soon as I opened my door. She was so happy to see me! :-) |
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| Kids with their cousins |
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| I absolutely love this woman. She may not be my grandmother by blood, nor even by marriage, anymore, but she was always so good to me, and I'll always love her so much. The girls stayed with my sister, so she didn't get to see them. :-( |
We went on an overnight camping trip before the kids would have to go back to school, and we'd planned on swimming the next day. However, we were caught off guard by a thunderstorm that night. It had not shown up in the weather forecast that morning. We had walked to our campground, so we were not close to our vehicle. We stayed in our tents and hoped for the best. We got soaked, though, except William. He took the big tent's rain cover and covered our small pop-up tent, and our two-person tent I shared with Carissa has its rain cover missing. We only got two hours of sleep; William got about four or so. We ended up heading home. We did enjoy our cookout, lol. And at least we can write down a new, crazy experience in our life journey.
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| The people I love most |
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| Mmmm....and YES, there was chocolate involved. |
Things We Ate...
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| Cupcakes were Elizabeth's Sabbath dessert pick. |
Okay, so I've wanted to try making chocolate muffins for quite some time. After I ate one with cream cheese frosting at the bed and breakfast with my sister, I could wait no longer to try it. I'm really getting the hang of baking gluten-free, so there was no question that I would use gluten-free ingredients to create them.
They turned out to be quite delicious and went so well with our coffee. I will say, though, they were not chocolately enough. I totally experimented on my own, so I figured I'd just continue to experiment.
See the inside of the first batch of muffins above? They were moist but light-colored. When I went to try it again a couple weeks later, I forgot the measurements I used the first time. I decided to do an audio of what I did the second time, as I put it all together.
See how much darker the second ones turned out? I liked the chocolate level of those, but they were not moist enough, unlike the others. Soooo, I have to tweak it a little more. But yum, chocolate muffins...
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| The kids eating their last Braum's free treats for reading books |
Sweet woman helping me understand math before I went to CLEP
This was from our large Supercharged Science collection. I got it out one day, and we all had fun.
We collected items to share in a Nature Pal Exchange. We selected a wide variety of rocks from the creek, a bag with slate, and dried and labeled wildflowers with information about each and a write-up about our area.
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| Is this cute or what?!?! I loved singing it. Elizabeth did this during summer school. |
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My flowers always make me so happy. Carissa planted some basil and a variety of other things. She made a pepper box, too, though I think I took these pictures before that, and I don't think I have a picture of it handy. It's cool, though.
I didn't realize I'd not finished commenting on the last three or four clusters of photos here and not published the post. I long to have time to post regularly again. Maybe by this summer (2019).
Until next time...
