Backyard Honeycomb

Happy Valentine’s day! Just a fun red breakfast before school.

Heart twinkies. I know, saturated fat. But we don’t eat these very often so it’s fine. 🙂

Valentine’s means chocolate. So we had chocolate muffins.

This is such a blurry picture. Hard to take good pictures at 6:30am. I need a new phone with a better camera 🙂

Eli is ready to go. Paul is still asleep.

Eli tried his jello parfait. He didn’t know what jello was. Apparently I have deprived him of a childhood treat. He loved it and wanted another one. I will have to do something next month with jello.

I don’t know what we were laughing about…

A little fruit with the saturated fat, er… twinkie hearts.

One last muffin and it’s off to school.

When we got home from school, I made some puff pastry hearts filled with mascarpone cheese, chocolate and strawberries. Crepes with cream and strawberries. Good thing this chocolate holiday comes around only once a year!

The Christmas break sure went by fast. So did January.

January started out…and ended with lego building, cozy blankets and family movies.

Eli really wanted to take me to his favorite restaurant, Landmark Grill. He found this place while I was running my marathon last year and talks about it non stop.

Paul is sitting next to us trying to concentrate on his morning conference call. 🙂

It’s January and time for another year of trying to eat healthy. Ever tried chickpea cookie dough? Yeah, doesn’t taste good.

So, we stopped off at Walmart and picked up some tasty cookies and dipped in frosting.

Eli and I stopped for breakfast on our way to school. Maple frosted cinnamon roll donut with chocolate milk on the side. Balanced and complete breakfast. Good thing Paul is in charge of breakfasts.

Look at that pie! The stiff cream turned out very well. Mighty tasty! The presentation with the crust needs working on. Okay, the entire crust needs a little love. I wanted a graham cracker crust, and it turned out more like a cookie crust. I’m currently looking for a new crust recipe.

Anyway, the request for a coconut cream pie was fufilled.

Happy birthday, Paul!

I think I’m more excited for this day than Eli is about Christmas!

This is a huge production in our little household. I have been planning this since November last year when Eli said, “Nisse brought the same treats and put them in the same spot as last year!” What? How does he remember this. I had to pull up the blog post from last year to remember what I did 🙂

Throughout the year, I have been gathering ideas and shaking up the treat menu.

The name place cards was a quick fun addition.

To make it a little easier this year the plan was to have pre made treats, but Pirate O’s failed me. They didn’t have mergpijpjes and a few other cakes that I was counting on, so I was forced to try something new. Paul picked up these chocolate covered marshmallow domes. We were a little disappointed that all the chocolate dome shells were cracked, but they still looked great. It was a risk, and Eli loved them!

He thought the snowman faces were cute.

Fun black and white cookies.

The raspberry shooters were new and they turned out really tasty.

There are still the same treats as last year, because not only are they are simple, they look fun.

Hot chocolate is always a must.

Paul’s favorite cookies.

What should he eat first? Ha!

Paul enjoyed his breakfast.

Eli had fun filling up his plate.

Paul and I didn’t get any sleep last night. Anticipating the 5:30am alarm kept both of us up. But, it was worth it. Eli loved it! After breakfast he said he felt the Christmas spirit and really likes the way it feels. Nicely done, Nisse. Now for a fun month of activities to keep it going!

Eli asked several times to have dad come to the Veteran’s day assembly and have him walk with the Veterans at his school. I kept telling him with his back not fully healed, it will be too hard and not to ask him this year. Eli was persistent. So, I asked dad and of course he said he would come.

First of all. What is that last symbol? Star Trek? Yeah, that is new to me.

After the assembly, the Veterans have their walk to be honored.

And the kids shake their hands.

My father said it was a nice assembly and he was grateful Eli wanted him to come today.

Halloween landed on a school day. So a quick breakfast was planned.

Eli is pretty excited for tonight!

It’s a bit early for Paul 🙂

Unfortunately no pictures from this evening. I made chili and cornbread for dinner like every year. Paul took Eli and his friends out to trick-n-treat and then we called it a day. 🙂

Eli’s birthday was low key this year. With dad being in the hospital with a broken back, we didn’t throw a family party.

I didn’t do a lot of decorating.

But, Eli did wake up to some balloons and a fun breakfast.

He opened gifts before school.

He loved his new bike helmet. He wore it to school 🙂

After school, I picked up his birthday cookie.

He wrote this, ha!

Eli spent Saturday at the trampoline park with his best friend. After jumping we took them to Eli’s favorite restaurant for lunch and ice cream!

They both said this was the best birthday ever! So, I think things turned out well.

Today’s luncheon is at JCW’s. We needed some place close.

Yup 🙂 Just a normal Monday.

Dad was moved from IMC to here. Ugg. The food is much better at the hospital.

After lunch we went for dessert, but needed to go someplace near by. We ended up at Great Harvest. Not happy here. Did you know they charge a credit card fee without telling you about it? Yup. They did. Not happy.

Eli is loving visiting Morfar. Okay, he loves the wheelchair and said he wants one for Christmas.

Paul lecturing the two boys on their racing up and down the hallway. Or giving Eli winning advise. I’m not sure. It’s been a long month 🙂

We play the ‘would you rather eat this or that game’ quite a bit. Eli hates tomatoes so tomatoes are frequently used in this game. Tonight Eli didn’t want to eat dinner. So, the ‘would you’ game started.

He said he would rather eat a tomato instead of dinner….

Ha! I love this boy!

This months Monday Luncheon is taking place at IMC hospital.

We are so thankful dad is doing better. He was in good spirits even though he just got the news of having to wait about a week until he can have back surgery. Until then, he is just laying here 🙂

We went downstairs to the cafeteria for lunch. Halibut with cheese. Eli got the grilled cheese. Dessert of silk pie. Unfortunately we have been to this cafeteria many times and fortunately they have good food.

Aaron said next we are going to the University hospital to try out their cafeteria, ha!