Hot Chocolate In The Summer!

Okay, so the blog title is probably making you wonder, "What in the world are you talking about? Are you crazy?!" Now, while I can answer the first question, I think I'll let you decide the answer to the second one. Anyway, we had just come home from a walk on a very hot day, and Corinna asked for some hot chocolate. By now, you probably think you know where this is going. We humored her and drank hot chocolate when we were already blistering hot. But no! We set about making iced hot chocolate. It was delicious!!! It was refreshingly cold and a great way to have "hot" chocolate in the summer. Here is the "recipe" in case you are interested.

Iced "Hot" Chocolate:

Ingredients:

• 5 Packages of Hot Chocolate Mix
• 2 Cups of Milk
• 4 Cups of Ice Cubes

Instructions:

1. Warm up the milk in the microwave until it is hot, but not boiling.
2. Pour the milk in the blender and add the hot chocolate mix.
3. Pulse until thoroughly blended, making sure to lift the lid to allow steam to escape.
4. Add 2 cups of ice. Blend. With the lid ON!
5. Add the remaining 2 cups of ice. Blend.
6. Serve! (Hint: It looks a lot nicer in glass jars/cups.)

Makes about 6 Cups. About enough for 4-5 people. If you don't eat it all before you serve it! 

Answers and a New Blog Face

As you probably noticed (if you're reading this) my blog has a new look! You're probably wondering why there's a new look after not too long on the old one! Well, it may not have been a problem for some of you, but the background wasn't coming up. It would just have a black background and gray words. Not a good combination! So, I found a new one. Mommy helped me. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that, so...................................................................................................................................

Here are the answers!
Since nobody commented their guesses, I won't know what you really guessed, but here they are anyway:

1. Jet Fuel...........................................Baked Beans

2. Polar Bear.......................................Ice Cream

3. Cool Winter....................................Mints

4. Sore Toes........................................Corn

5. Crazy Kid.......................................Ham

6. Underground Icicle.........................Carrot

7. Week's Pay......................................Celery

8. Eve's Temptation............................Applesauce

9. Hey-Dey Special.............................Fork

10. Boxer's Delight.............................Punch

11. High Taxes....................................Tea

12. A Stab in the Dark........................Knife

13. Quack Grass..................................Lettuce

14. Popular Constellation.....................Spoon

15. Sleeping Relative..........................Napkin

16. Queen's Bath.................................Water

17. Protein Plus...................................Milk

18. Pucker Up......................................Pickle

19. Dug-Out.........................................Potato

20. Somersault......................................Roll


Here is a picture of all of us at Grandpa and Grandma's house:

Fourth Of July 2013

Ummmm, yeah. So it's been a month since I last posted. I was hoping nobody would notice that, but I guess now they will. Hey! I'm supposed to be honest, right??? Anyway.......

For the fourth of July, we went to Grandpa and Grandma Jasper's house. We like to go there with our good friends: the Gays who will be moving soon. Like far, far away. All the way to Missouri. Anyway, it has been our tradition for....well....a really long time! This year, Corinna, Natalie, Darin, Kara, and I went to Grandpa and Grandma's house a few days earlier. The Gays drove us halfway and met Grandpa and Grandma in the cities.

The festivities started on Wednesday night. The rest of our family and the Gays arrived before 10:00, when the fireworks started. Grandpa said that fireworks cost about $1000 a minute!!! That's a lot! And, it lasted twenty minutes! That's like $20,000!!! It was a good show! Grandpa brought "carrots" (a.k.a. circus peanuts) in a little cooler to hide them from questioning, nosey eyes.

The morning of the fourth, (Thursday), we got up early and got dressed to go to the race. Well, actually everybody did the walk, except for Darin. And he's ten. And not your average ten-year-old. He's pretty short. Okay, so he's taller than Corinna. But, she's three. He says he's four foot six and growing by the second. Hmmmm....

Anyway.... After the adult race, which by the way was 2 and1/2 miles, the kids races began. Clara Gay, Natalie, and Corinna each ran in their separate races. Corinna got scared and started crying, so Daddy had to pick her up and carry her to the mystery dinner, sorry, to the finish line. I'm getting ahead of myself. After the races, we went back home and Kara, Grandma, and I started preparing lunch. For lunch, we were having a mystery dinner. Basically, you have a coded menu and you order everything in four different courses. You get five different things in each course. Everything except beverages is cleared after each course. Silverware is not provided. Which means that you might have to eat soup with a knife or no silverware. You can order silverware, but unless you figure it out...
Here is an example: the menu could say Two-Ways, and it would mean you would get a fork. Or, Jack's Favorite, meaning green beans. You get the idea. I think. I hope. Because now, you get to try to figure out the items that we had. Here is the list: (The answers will come in the next post so you actually think about them and don't just cheat. :-)) Comment with your guesses so they are recorded. :-)

1. Jet Fuel

2. Polar Bear

3. Cool Winter

4. Sore Toes

5. Crazy Kid

6. Underground Icicle

7. Week's Pay

8. Eve's Temptation

9. Hey-Dey Special 

10. Boxer's Delight

11. High Taxes

12. A Stab in the Dark

13. Quack Grass

14. Popular Constellation

15. Sleeping Relative

16. Queen's Bath

17. Protein Plus

18. Pucker Up

19. Dug-Out

20. Somersault

After the mystery dinner, we went to the the silent auction. I didn't bid on anything for myself, but Mommy found something that she wanted and she had to go back home, so she had Kara and me bid on it for her. Now, Olivia wanted it too, so we were bidding against her. It was pretty fun, especially since we won! :-) The item was a hand knitted purple shawl. It was really soft! After we brought it home, Mommy said that Kara and I could share it! It will be very nice in the winter.

Later in the afternoon, we climbed the rock climbing wall. I went up twice. Once on the harder side, (I didn't get all the way to the top), and once on the easier side, on which I finally did get to the top. 

After supper, we went to the parade. Alex, Clara, Darin, and Natalie went on the street float. So that meant that Olivia, Kara, and I were left to catch candy, besides the toddlers. They did most of the catching. :-) But it was fun for them. 

I will post pictures and the answers to the mystery dinner items in the next post.

The Fourth of July was definitely a fun day spent with good friends.

Beauty in Opposites

I love looking at opposites. But I prefer sunny days over rainy days. The first set of pictures is on a beautiful sunny day and the next set is on a rainy day. All these photos are unedited!

 
And the rainy day pics.........................

Florida 2013 Part 6

You are probably wondering when these Florida posts are going to end! :-) (I mean, 6 parts! Come on already!) Well, I have news for you! This is the last one! Aren't you excited to read about my conclusion to our vacation???

Well, on Friday, April 12, our last day in the Keys, we packed up and drove to Leigh Ann's Coffee House for breakfast. Kara and I split a cheese danish and a cinnamon roll that had pastry dough instead of regular dough.

 For those of you that don't know, a cheese danish is filled with cream cheese whipped with powdered sugar. Not some sort of savory cheese.:-) Both of our breakfast items were delicious! And yes, that is my ever present journal, trying to catch up on all the latest events. :-)

 After breakfast, we drove to a "few" gift shops. Corinna got her souvenir at one. She got a fuzzy pink stuffed animal starfish with colorful swirls on it. It also has big eyes and a mouth. She calls it her "sauw-fish." It sounds kind of like "selfish", but it's pretty cute. At another gift shop, Darin got a small dolphin snow globe. After looking at several gift shops for Kara, (without success), we drove to Sparky's for lunch. We had been there on our previous vacation to Florida three years earlier. Kara and I split a small pizza. It was a 10 inch thin crust pizza with shrimp, bacon, fresh tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. Mmmmmm. It was good! The shrimp were flavorful and juicy, the bacon was crispy, and the mozzarella was oozing off the pizza, not to mention the nice addition of fresh tomatoes! That was a very good pizza! After lunch, Kara bought a Sparky's shirt for her souvenir with the money that was given to her by our grandpa and grandma. We had finally found Kara a souvenir! Victory!! :-) After lunch, we drove back to Fort Lauderdale, where we would be staying for the night.

 Mommy and Titus at Sparky's with hundreds of dollar bills behind them

Driving on the 7 mile bridge

Look at the water!

As a surprise, we stopped at Robert Is Here in the afternoon. It is a smoothie and fresh produce "stand" that we had gone to three years earlier. It was nice to get out of the suburban for a while and the cool drinks were refreshing. But we all agreed: they needed a BlendTec! :-)

And yes! That is all! That concludes our Florida vacation! We arrived home on Monday, April 15 without any disasters or accidents. :-)

Florida 2013 Part 5

After our wreckless (well not exactly wreckLESS) supper at The Wreck, we slept at a Holiday Inn and had breakfast there in the morning. Their bagels were actually not too bad! Another odd thing about their breakfast: they had a tip jar! Daddy said that he had never seen one of those at a hotel before. After breakfast, we drove to Bahia Honda State Park. We were there early enough to claim one of the shelters for the day. We swam for the whole morning and "snorkeled" in the afternoon. We didn't actually have snorkel gear, but Mommy and Daddy had bought us goggles, so we used those. And they worked pretty well!

We were able to get this picture before a park ranger told us we weren't supposed to be climbing on the trees.

Brothers!

Having a fun time swimming together

This is a Queen Conch. If you look close enough, you can see it sitting inside there. When I found it in the water, I couldn't believe it!

Kara found a small starfish under a rock. Under water! It was pretty cool! It even stuck to our hands when we held it.

 Darin and Kara found a sea urchin while snorkeling as well. It was pretty sharp!

 I found a closed shell underwater and decided to bring it up and try to open it, since it felt pretty heavy. We opened it and found an octopus! Or maybe a squid. But we were all pretty surprised!

 We put the octopus/squid in a bucket with water and some sand. Inside its shell were some small clearish elongated things that we guessed to be larvae. When we put it in the bucket, it started darting around and swimming. Then it squirted out some black stuff. It was pretty cool!

After we packed up, we showered and left the beach. Then we drove to Keys Fisheries for supper. It was right on the water and all the fish was fresh. Supper was a lot better than the night before! 

We all got pretty burnt in the sun at the beach.

THIS is our supper. The salad in the left foreground is Daddy's and the dish at the back is Mommy's. Daddy had a chicken salad and Mommy had some sort of lemon flavored fish. The two dishes of Lobster Mac 'n' Cheese are Darin and Natalie's and Kara's and mine.

After supper we went to Sweet Savannah's for ice cream. On the wall outside the shop was a large cupcake with light pink frosting and sparkly sprinkles.  So, OF COURSE Kara HAD to have her picture taken next to it! :-)

Florida 2013 Part 4

On Wednesday, April 10, we woke up early and drove to the Keys. We were at John Pennekamp State Park by 9:00 for our glass bottom boat tour. The bottom of the boat had two glass sections to look through. For our ride to the coral reef we sat on the top deck.

Titus looks a little skeptical, but he was just fine.

Corinna covering her ears from the loud blast that is kind of like a turning signal, letting other boats know they are going to go around a sharp turn.

Kara snuggling with Titus

It was a nice view from the top deck.

Natalie's favorite look on vacation

This is not edited!! This was what it looked like when we got to the coral reef.

The lady who told us everything about what was at the reef was very knowledgeable. And very nice. She told us what all the fish's names were and where they lived and their eating habits and such. She also told us about the coral. There was coral that waved in the current. It looked like a plant and was either purple or brown depending on its feeding stage. We saw lots of cool fish and even a stingray!

We sat on a bench while the lady went back and forth between the two sides of the boat. Each rectangle had a number so she could point out exactly where certain things were. Also, the captain of the boat could hear everything she said so he could move the boat for the other side to see something.

This is what the view down looked like.

That is the coral I was talking about on the left edge of the picture. It is brown with purple on the edges and purple "veins" running through it.

Look at the cool striped fish and the bright blue fish!

This is a brain coral. The top was damaged by a boat scraping across it. It takes a really long time to grow.

Here is another brain coral.

Titus ended up falling asleep after we left the coral reef. :-)

 After the tour, we went into the giftshop that was at the state park and Natalie and I each got a necklace for our souvenir with the money that Grandpa and Grandma had given us. She got one that had a stingray on it and mine had a sea turtle on it. They were silver with black accents.

For our "lunch" we went to Bob's Bunz, a place we had been to on our previous trip. It is a very good bakery. Their cinnamon rolls (or "bunz") are really good! This is definately a place you would want to go!

After our lunch we went to Robby's to feed giant fish called Tarpon. They are like five feet long! After Corinna got over being scared, she had fun.

That night we went to The Wreck for supper. It was recommended to us by somebody in the Marina next to our hotel. If you are planning a trip to southern Florida, DON'T GO THERE! That is unless you want slow service, a bar-like atmosphere, and mediocre food. We didn't. We still ate there, but, as Daddy said, supper was a wreck. Literally!

All photos courtesy of Mommy except the coral ones. And the one of her. :-)

Florida 2013 Part 3

The day after we went to the beach we swam in the pool for the afternoon where it was more shady because we had all gotten so burnt the day before. There was another big plus about the pool: it was really warm! Not just compared to the ocean but to other pools too. It was a good temperature for swimming. Mommy even got in!

He's got a funny look on his face, but he's cute!

Another funny look.

He's sticking his fingers in his mouth. Yet again.

Finally! A genuine smile from Corinna!

He's trying to get that foot in his mouth.

There we go!

Now he's using both hands to get it in! :-)

I totally forgot about this picture in my first post about Florida. When we got to our condo in Fort Lauderdale, we found this in our bathroom. It is just towels and googly eyes. Isn't that cool?