I hope everyone has been enjoying their summer!  Mine has been great.  And busy.   Camping, picnics, music, guests,  birthday parties, shuffling kids to camps and activities, art shows, and finally, to really slow me down -back surgery.  It was long overdue and I am already feeling great.   No more hunching over in pain with a herniated disc while cooking over my stove.  I can walk with ease and it is such a great feeling!

So I am finally getting a new recipe on my site.     The kids are both in school and the transition I was worried about was almost too easy this morning!   Max is at his first day of Pre-K and has been really excited to start.   Cecilia has been less thrilled about going to school without her big brother but she was such a big girl this morning and there were no tears in sight.   Phew.

I don’t know where August went.  The first week was focused on Cecilia’s Birthday party which was all she could talk about this summer (she is so my daughter) . We had an Art Party and it was  a lot of fun and the finger painting was not as much of a mess as one might think.  But what are birthdays really about?   I mean you can have a great theme but what do the kids really want?  Cake.  It’s all about the cake.   And Cecilia talked about her birthday cake all summer.   If she was mad at Max, she would say, “your not going to get any of my birthday cake.”   That started in June!    She wanted a pink cake and she wanted a flower cake.   When I made her a pink cake in the shape of a flower, she asked, “where are the flowers?”  Sighhh.   “Honey, the cake IS a flower”   I made an ice box cake but instead of buying the Nabisco Chocolate Wafer cookies, I make my own using a variation of this recipe.  It  might be  my favorite cake ever.  Homemade chocolate wafers in between homemade whip cream.  I highly recommend trying this recipe. Read the rest of this entry →