Giant S'more Muffin Tops

I was looking at someone else's blog and read about a muffin top pan. It looks like a muffin tin but only wider and more shallow. So, I found one at Home Goods and bought it. Then I borrowed this recipe from that blog for giant s'more chocolate chip cookies. They're huge and fluffy and really easy to make! S'mores are my absolute favorite dessert so this is right up my alley.

Apple Jelly Weekend

I'm pretty sure I've turned into a granny because I actually made home-made crab apple jelly this weekend! I'm not sure what compelled me to make home-made jelly, maybe it was the giant apple tree in my yard with hundreds of big apples just looking neglected. So, I googled recipes for jellies and decided that was my goal for the weekend. My first attempt did not turn out so good, then I tried again the next day and I think maybe, just maybe, it was a success! It seems to be jelling and I should know for sure by tomorrow. By the way, in previous years this apple tree produced tiny little green apples and all my neighbors said it was a crab-apple tree. Well, this year it produced some pretty big red ones so now I'm wondering if it isn't a real apple tree?

Lucille

Lucy told me the other day that she wants to start being called Lucille. She has all sorts of nicknames at her school. Somehow, I don't think she will want Lucille to stick with her for very long.

I haven't had a Lucy posting in a while so here she is wearing her pre-school uniform and all smiles. Her classmates look so darn cute in their uniforms and school colors, I can hardly stand it!

Pikes Peak...uh, Maybe Not

So we set out to go to Pikes Peak a few Sundays ago. We can actually see Pikes Peak from our house, well, our neighborhood actually. It's beautiful. You can see mountains in almost any direction that you look. We've been wanting to go to Pikes Peak and we allowed ourselves an hour to get there from home but we didn't count on traffic and other things so we were late and missed the time that we were planning to catch the cog railway to the top of the peak. But we were actually glad it didn't work out because by the time we got there it was so overcast and yucky out that we don't think we would have had a good view if we had gone up. Colorado Springs has many different tourist attractions so we headed over to the Cave of the Winds and toured caves, which sounds creepy, but was actually very cool and the kids loved it! I didn't get very many photos of us in the cave, but yes, we are suckers for paying $10 for a photo that they took of us!

Back to School

First day of school

The kids on our street holding up the number
of the grade they are starting

Maggie and her friend Ryan

Arkansas in July

Here are a few of the pictures I took while we were in Arkansas in July visiting family.

Maggie and Betsy

My birthday cake

Me eating my birthday cake at Hawg's Pizza

Grant and Ryan

Betsy, Maggie, Ryan and Lucy

Lucy on Marmee's dock

Lucy and my mom

Ethan, Maggie, Olivia, Lucy and Noah

Maggie and Lucy with Nana on the morning we left

Hot Springs Weekend With Friends

Here are my best buds from college. We had a great time together. I think they all look amazing and two of them just had babies!

Me, Catherine Hubbard Adams, Carrie White Teeter,

Megan McKinnon & Misty Sullivan Freeman