House O' Sullivans

I've gone through several phases with bread.  The easy way out--that is the breadmaker phase.  The make the dough in the breadmaker THEN bake it in the oven phase.  The make it and bake it all in one hour phase.  The make the dough in the KitchenAid phase.  Right now I am loving making bread in the old-school way--grinding the wheat, hand kneading the dough, letting it rise twice, making a huge mess, and taking way too long. Sophie, Hallee, and Zeke LOVE kneading and shaping the dough.  We have a game that we play while we knead.  Each of the kids gets a dough "baby" and kneads it while I knead the "momma"--a big wad of dough.  When the babies least expect it, the big momma goes on a wild rolling spree and rolls the babies into her mass, or even worse, a cavernous mouth opens wide and consumes them!   The kids think this so is entertaining and nobody misses bread-makin' day. This was a big batch of whole-wheat, flax seed, and home grown...

We were lucky to have Great Grandma White (aka GG) in Salt Lake for a couple of days.  The kids especially  loved reading books with her.  The Tuesday after GG arrived, we had an impromptu family gathering at our house with my parents, the Walters, the Andersons, and Casey's parents.  Grandma also made us loads of granola, which we are still enjoying. Hallee and Zeke play together often.  Some of the sweetest moments are when they sit together and quietly talk and "read" books together.  This particular day, Hal had her little arm around her brother and was patting him and loving him as they read together.  Heaven! My friend Kimberly had a birthday this month.  I was in charge of dessert for the celebration dinner at Ali's house, so I made a large volume of homemade magic shell and dulce de leche for frozen yogurt sundaes.  It was so good!  Casey and I found this Magic Shell Recipe  a few years ago and were...

Hallee must have been hungry again.  Doesn't her mom EVER feed her?

. . . tonight's event was CARAMEL APPLES!!  Not exactly healthy (except for the fact that there's an apple in there somewhere), but fun and delicious, none-the-less.  I decided that to celebrate the "harvest season" this year, we'd have at least one "harvest activity" each week.  Our creations speak for themselves.  (And, of course, we did all of this in the backyard.)