Thursday, June 21, 2012

Our mini-vacation


Tell building a trap with his hot dog stick,
 I think he's planning on catching a deer with it
This last Sun/Mon we decided to take off and head down to Ft Smith State Park to go camping and boating and fishing, something that my kids have been begging to do for close to a year now and we've kept putting them off.  Plus it was Tell's 4th birthday, another great excuse!  I'd gone down to milking once a day last week, the dry weather and lack of grass has made the cow's production drop so much that it just wasn't worth the hassle of twice a day milking. So that helped free us up to get out of here for 24 hours.  We packed up the entire house and then some, or it seemed like it, we 
also bought a bunch of "camping food" at Aldi's, which meant splurges on junk food that we normally don't eat, marshmallows, chips, hot dogs, etc.  But Chris says it's camping and therefore okay.  We got there about 6pm Sunday, set up the tent and then headed down to the lake to paddle around and swim.  According to the signs, swimming is not allowed in the lake, but us lawbreakers did it anyway.  We just paddled to the opposite side of the lake, away from anyone who would care, and swam to our hearts content.  



The girls chased Chris around in the canoe trying to catch him, while he pushed them under with his paddle when they got close, Kayli didn't mind being dunked but Ari cried.  Toughen up girl!













Birthday boy, I made the most delicious cake ever, but of course no one took a picture of it, it was sinfully delicious, and sinfully unhealthy...  Recipe at the bottom for those of you who are in need of something sinfully delicious and unhealthy :











We found a beach type area with tons of little clam shells, the kids collected a bunch to bring home. Which are now spread out all over my porch, at least I managed to keep them outside, the last thing I need is hundreds of sandy clam shells all over my house.












There were some really neat caves in the cliff on one side of the lake, the 2nd time we went out there were a couple young buzzards hanging out, I wanted to climb up and try to find their nest but we didn't.  They were pretty easy going, we managed to get super close before they flew away.












And yes, my husband isn't so great with the camera, out of like 200 pictures, only about 10 of them are any good.  Though I am thankful he took them, if it weren't for him we probably wouldn't have had any pictures at all.


Ender enjoying his cake, I forgot to bring plates or silverware, not that the kids cared, cups and hands work just fine.  And yes, he's naked, anyone surprised?  There wasn't anyone around to care, we had that end of the campground to ourselves thankfully.

















Really Good Chocolate Cake
1 3/4 cup almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup butter, softened 
2 cups plain, unsweetened yogurt
1 cup honey ( I cut it down a bit and used some stevia as well)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
(I also totally cheated and dumped some chocolate chips in there to make it super duper good)


 Do I really need to tell you how to put it together?  Throw it all into a bowl, mix it up, grease up a 9x13 dish or whatever, dump in the cake batter, stick it in the oven on 350 or whatever, cook til done.  Around 30 minutes if you are so disciplined as to set a timer.


Cream Cheese Coffee Icing
Two packages cream cheese
Honey and stevia to taste
couple teaspoons instant coffee

Mix it all up and spread it on top of the cake once it cools off.  I like coffee icing on a chocolate cake, it's just so good.





























1 comment:

  1. Why oh why, when I have it all nicely laid out, does it get totally jacked when I publish? For some stupid reason, the "write" page is a bit wider than the actual blog. So the format is all screwed up now. Any pro's know?

    ReplyDelete