Happy Easter!

I don't know what Dennis was doing behind my back while I took this picture, but it sure did make the kids laugh! At least we got genuine smiles out of all of them, which is a rarity in a photo! I took too many pictures to post on the blog, so if you want to see them, you'll have to follow the link to our webshots site to see the Easter photos section. We had a great conclusion to our Easter weekend activities. I was at 3 services of church accompanying the choir to a really neat Alleluia chorus combined with a responsive reading. I came back home before the 3rd service to help get everyone ready and we took this cute picture, then went to church. In Bay's Sunday School class, evidently they were having a dicussion about the Easter Bunny, and Bay kindly informed all of the pre-schoolers that the Easter Bunny definitely is not real.

We picked up Dennis' mom on the way home from church so she could hang out for the afternoon. We enjoyed egg salad sandwhiches for lunch with our dyed eggs, then hid plastic eggs outside for the kids to hunt. That, of course, is very funny to watch. As we were giving Leah hints to find her eggs, Bay provided her much competition to getting to them first.

We had our homemade ravioli for dinner, some with alfredo sauce and some with spaghetti sauce. Both very yummy. I also made some homemade Rosemary/Garlic tuscan style bread. Yummy as well. And then Flan for desert. If you don't know what flan is, it is a spanish style egg-custard with caramelized brown sugar. I used to hate it as a kid, but it tastes okay to me now.

A great end to a great weekend, and the earliest Easter any of us will ever experience is now over. Now back to life a usual!

Ravioli & Easter

You might ask yourself....what in the world do ravioli and Easter have to do with each other??? Read on to discover :)

Last night we decorated Easter Eggs. We don't have a ton of Easter traditions at our house, but decorating eggs is one of them. The kids had a great time, which is way better than last year (everyone was grumpy last year for some reason????). Bay and Leah wanted to keep dyeing their eggs in every color available, which was funny.

Eric's eggs are the column on the far left, then come Bay's, then Leah's, and then mine and Dennis'.

This was some "serious" fun!!!!

Like I said before, we don't have a ton of Easter traditions around here, and one of them that we definitely don't have is a certain meal we eat for Easter dinner. Sometimes we have had a Southern MD stuffed ham, other times, I'm not really sure what. Anyways, my mom and I read an article about making your own ravioli, so we decided that would be fun to try for Easter. We spent about 5 hours today making ravioli....130 of them....to be exact. They are 1.5" square, and were really fun and easy to make, just time consuming. Half of them are stuffed with a mixture of 3 cheeses, the other half with a meat/spinach/cheese mixture. We dried them for about 1 hour on trays before putting them in the fridge. Whatever we don't eat tomorrow (which should be a lot left over) we will freeze! This might be the start of a new tradition, then again, traditions are sometimes more fun to break :)

Here is a picture of 40 of them lined up on trays to dry.

Can't wait to eat them....mmmmmm....

New face on the house

What a difference a new coat of paint makes to the entryway makes! I just wish I had taken a picture of the dilapidated entrance before I sanded and painted it! It was brown, crumbling, peeling and flaking paint all over the place....it looked REALLY dingy. I got so excited to sand and paint it, it just happened really fast! Now the paint matches the shutters and red brick of the house, and is so refreshing. Just the little things that give me a sense of accomplishment in my day :)

Leah in Curls....Before....

.....and After
At Wal-mart this ThursdayI purchased a set of foam rollers for Leah. I told her she could have curly hair for a couple of days if she would like to. Well, being Leah, we had to put them in as soon as we got home. So I sprayed her hair wet, put them in as she patiently handed me the rollers and watched in the mirror the whole time. She wore them all afternoon, and then went to sleep in them. The next morning first thing she asked if she could see her curls! So we took them out and boy were they tight! Everyone thinks she looked like little orphan Annie for about 12 hours! Gradually they softened and were even there today. She really thought that was fun and I just couldn't believe how excited she was. So we thought you would enjoy the pictures of Leah with quite a curly little head! Although her brothers said they thought she looked like another girl, they wanted their sister back :)

Leah's Birthday Dress

Leah's birthday is coming up at the end of this month. I thought I would make her a new dress for one of her presents. I recently saw a dress in a catalog that had a horse screen printed on it. Since Leah loves horses, I thought it would be something she would love, but at $35 for a dress, I couldn't bring myself to it. So I stole the idea and made my own :) I already had patterns and fabric, so I drew the picture of the horse, scanned it and printed it on iron-on-transfer paper. I transfered it onto the skirt material of the dress, and !oila! her new pony dress. The only thing I would have done differently in retrospect is to make the horse a lighter color since it showed up so dark on the blue fabric. Otherwise, I am so excited to give it to her.

Making Soft Pretzels...yummmmy

Usually on Fridays we try to do something fun or special as part of school. Eric requested this week that we make soft pretzels, so I made up the dough while he was doing math, and by 11:00 it was ready to be shaped and cooked. They made a great lunch! Everyone enjoyed shaping their own, and on top of that, they were delicious.

I found a great recipe by Alton Brown from the Food Network. If you've never seen his show or tried his recipes, they are almost always spectacular. He is so scientific about cooking, and so I am including this recipe because the pretzels were so soft and moist, not dried out at all!

HOMEMADE SOFT PRETZELS

1 1/2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)

1 T. sugar

2 t. salt

1 package active dry yeast

22 oz. flour, approx. 4 1/2 cups (I used a little less than this)

2 oz. (4 T.) unsalted butter, melted

vegetable oil for pan

2/3 cup baking soda (don't omit this secret ingredient)

1 egg yok beaten with 1 T. water

pretzel salt

Combine the water, sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 min. or longer or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until combined. Knead until the the dough is smooth and pulls away from teh sides of the bowl, about 4-5 min. Remove the dough from the bowl and place in a well-oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size (about 1 hour).

Preheat the oven to 450. Spread two baking sheets lightly with oil. Set aside.

Place 8-10 cups of water and the baking soda in a large saucepan or roasting pan and bring to a rolling boil.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 or 12 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24 in. rope. Make a U shape with each rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the oiled baking pan.

Place the pretzels in teh boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds each. Remove them with a slotted spatula or spoon. Return to the baking sheet, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Bake until dark golden brown in color, about 12-14 min. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 min. before serving.

Eric at a Piano Recital

Eric was in a piano recital a week ago, but I just hadn't posted anything about it yet. He did a great job! The songs he played are "Almost like a dream" and "Shout to the North". Right after the recital, Dennis and I took just him out for a belated birthday treat (he turned 9). Since we didn't do a birthday party this year, we decided to do something special with just him and us. Granni & Gramps babysat the others while we took Eric up to Annapolis for dinner at a seafood restaraunt (Kentmorr Rest. http://www.kentmorr.com/) and then to see a movie he has been really wanting to see after reading the book series-Spiderwick Chronicles. It was a good movie (way too scary for the younger two) and actually we had some great conversations afterwards. In the movie there was more drama than in the books surrounding the fact that the parents of the main characters were separated, so it offered an opportunity to talk about this with Eric, something he really has been sheltered about up until now. So we had a nice time on Saturday, and on Sunday, we celebrated Granni's birthday as a family!