Is It Naptime Yet

I know you all have been dying to see the family reunion pictures. 🙂

Well they’re mostly of my little family and kids and from the beginning of the reunion. Turns out I took twice as many of the fire than we did of the reunion. People sitting around talking just isn’t very interesting, or if we were doing something interesting we weren’t able to take pictures due to having our hands full!

Anyways here’s our photo’s from the trip.

The red sun we encoutered outside of Beaver. 7/6/07

The smoke outside of Beaver- 7/6/07

Eden as a suitcase.

Sick Lilah.:(

Preparation

My Aunt Sherri and Uncle Bud.

Craft table- cousin Nicole (Bud and Sherri’s granddaughter.) nephew Howie.

Me, Andrea and Brien- Brien Decorated their sunglasses

Eden in the apron we got there and with her bracelet/ tattoo that Brien put on her.

Katy decoratecd herself. She was trying to run away from Jon when he took this picture.

Tasty popsicles- where’s the apron when you need it?

The drive home

 

Fields we passed.

The side of the road before we hit the detour.

The detour begins- we’re on the I-70 when I took this picture.

Beautiful scenery until we hit traffic.

Our fate. Slow, snail paced traffic for about an hour and then heavy highway traffic.

Pretty rock cliffs.

That’s our picture overview. We’re not always good at taking pictures, but you saw some cute kids.:)

Yesterday I was a great wife and made chocolate treats for Jon to take to his coworkers. I was a bad mom because I was so immersed in the projects that PBS was on all day and Eden often came over wanting to be held but having to be turned down by her chocolate fingered momma. Even on days I had tons of studying to do I would have time for them. Yesterday I just had to get things done so the house could hopefully get back to order ASAP. Lilah was mostly okay. She just tried to “help” by licking any spoon with chocolate that she could get her hands on. Only when I told her no she could not have any more chocolate did she get upset. Lilah would just come and see what I was doing and them go on her merry way of watching whatever was on. By the time Jon got home Eden was a mess, even after a nap, because she needed some love and attention. Also I had put her in Lilah’s chair at one point and she wanted to stay in it, but if I was out of the room I took her down because she couldn’t be trusted to sit still and I was afraid she’d fall off of the chair, so whenever I took her out of the chair she got upset. It was a crazy.

These are the chocolates I made.

I made different truffles and then chocolate covered popcorn. The recipes came from my friend Amber. I cut off the extra chocolate that you see on so many of the truffles. I figured I did okay considering this was the first time I’d done anything besides the chocolate molds you can buy. Wilton has special dipping spoons that might help avoid the huge amount of chocolate around the base of the truffles, so I may try those next time. So here are things I learned about chocolate.
In the truffle recipe it says to refrigerate the center for the truffle until firm. (Please refer to the recipe so you know what I’m talking about.)
Well I thought to save time on Monday morning I’d make the center the night before. I didn’t save any time because the center had completely harden by being in the refrigerator overnight! (So tip: it only takes about an hour in the fridge for the center to be firm enough to shape it. Or you can do it the night before but plan on letting it thaw the next morning.)
The second thing I needed to improve on was the outer coating. On some of my truffles the outer layer of chocolate cracked. What I think happened is the center was too cold…it had been in the freezer more like an hour, plus it was still fairly cold and hard from being in the fridge the night before…and the chocolate that I melted to coat it was a little too warm. So when I let the truffle centers sit for just a little while after being in the freezer and the melted chocolate for the outer layer to sit, then they were less likely to crack if they cracked at all.
I made a lot of popcorn and I think I made around 130 truffles. I still have truffles to give away even after Jon took some for his coworkers today. I packaged everything in cute bags, but I was too lazy to take a picture last night when all was said and done.
I think I’m good on making chocolate for a little while. I made these with the Wilton wafers, so I didn’t have to worry about tempering the chocolate. I hope as I become more experienced that I can use the real thing.