Tag Archives: Eve

Chocolate Crumb Cake

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Eve has been planning a wedding for two of her animals since they fell in love at Niagara Falls last weekend. Each day she has wanted to make a cake for the wedding, but we have been busy. Today was our first home day and so we baked a cake. She wrote up the recipe a few days ago and decided today, since it is almost July 4th, that the wedding will be tomorrow and the cake will be 4th of July themed.

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Chocolate Crumb Cake recipe

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Start by mixing the eggs and butter.

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Me: “Why are you holding the bowl in your arms?” Eve: “I’m doing it the old fashioned way, like before they had counters.”

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Hmm…. I think we need more liquids.

I asked Eve if she wanted suggestions, but she said no, she wanted to make her recipe as written. When it ended up too dry she started making modifications and asked me to document them as we went along.

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The update recipe and a drawing of the cake.

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We baked them for 20 minutes. They are dense and almost fudgy… in texture, certainly not in flavor!

When we flipped the first cake onto the plate it broke apart a bit, so we took the opportunity to sample it. I wish I had gotten a picture of Eve’s face! It was not the flavor she was going for! She decided the cake had too much cocoa powder and not enough sugar. I agreed!

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To increase the sweetness we added some leftover Cool Whip between the layers and then, as originally planned, Eve spread the her black raspberry puree on top. She picked the black raspberries for the cake just this morning.

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She added some leftover macerated strawberries, blue sparking sugar, and white sparkling sugar to up the festiveness and (hopefully) the flavor of the cake.

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As the final touch, Eve added black raspberry “fireworks” to the top to make the cake perfect. Then she very carefully carried it to the fridge. :)

So now we have a lovely, and maybe yummy, chocolate crumb cake ready for tomorrow’s stuffed animal wedding. I’m not going to write up the whole recipe here because I would highly recommend you not make it. ;)

Eve’s summer schedule

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Eve woke up this morning and made an exercise schedule for herself.  She also wants me to do this too!  She has taken it upon herself to train me to run a 5K this fall.  Eek!  She just ran in place (and around the house) for 35 minutes straight!  Talking the whole time!  Oh, what we could do if we could harness her energy! We could power the whole neighborhood!

Eve’s first track meet

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We had a super fun day today. Eve ran in her first track meet, an AAU Junior Olympic qualifier! She did awesome!! We drove for over two hours to get there, but it was totally worth it. One of the best things about having kids is all the new areas they bring you in to. I remember watching the track team practicing, way back in my high school days, and being so amazed that anyone could run like that. It seemed like a world I would never know. Now I do! Anyway, back to Eve.

The meet was supposed to start at 11am, but we got a call from the coach at 10:30 saying Eve’s first field event, the long jump, was about to start! Luckily we were only five minutes away. I thought we were doing so good to get there early! We got there as fast as we could, Eve hopped out of the car, and ran over to do her first event! Whirl-wind! :)

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Practicing the long jump before the actual, official jump.

I have some videos of this and Lex is working on an iMovie project, so I’ll try to get those posted soon too.

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Long jump

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Eve jumped 6'7" and earned the silver medal.

After the long jump she had a little break. We used that time to find the bathrooms and unpack the car, then it was time for the 400m. Mandy came to join us for the meet to so we helped her unload her car too. Mandy used to run track in high school so she had lots of good information to help us understand what the heck was going on. :)

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The start of the 400m. Eve is in front, on the right.

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Lex ran out to congratulate her at the end. He has the iPad because he made a video of the run and is working on an iMovie of the day.

Eve came in second, just three tenths of a second behind the first place finisher. She was ahead of the other girl for most of the race, but the girl pulled ahead right at the end. Eve’s coach was so impressed with her 400m that she suggested Eve try the 800m at the next meet. We’ll see what Eve thinks about that. :)

Another long break, then time for the 200m.

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The finish line of the 200m.

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This is the same as the picture above, just zoomed in more. Notice her feet aren't touching the ground?! I love this picture. She looks so happy.

Her final scores:
* Long jump – 6’7″
* 400m – 1:35.40
* 200m – 0:42.20
Official results are posted here on the AAU website.

After Eve had finished her three events we hung out for awhile longer, cheering on the rest of the team through their events.

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Comparing medals. That fine social dance of being proud of your three and supportive of your friend's one.

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What did the girls do during their down time? Run around, of course. Racing to the bathroom, playing tag, hopping and skipping. Oh, to have that energy!

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Triple medal winner! Two silvers and a gold. Happy girl.

We were going to swing by the Atlantic Ocean and put our toes in the water on the way home, but everyone was so tired and they kids were falling apart, so instead we headed to Panera Bread for dinner at 4pm, and then headed home.

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The cool Boston bridge!

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After a long day in the sun ice cream seemed in order. :-)

This meet was the District Qualifiers. Eve qualified for advancement in all three of her events. Unfortunately the Regional Qualifers are being held in Conneticut, the same weekend we will be at Niagara Falls! Bummer. We will plan our vacations a little better next summer and see how far Eve can go. For this summer she’ll continue to run in the rec program and enjoy the two meets they do. Next year, if she wants, we can try AAU and Olympic Qualifiers again.

(Full disclosure, Eve is awesome, but participation in her age bracket was also pretty small. There were only two girls participating in the long jump, three in the 400m, and four in the 200m. She did win medals, and ran hard, but the competition wasn’t abundant.)

Breakfast-in-bed

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I love that she signs her name to her own note. :)

Eve wrote herself a reminder note.  “Make mommy brekfist-in-bed.  -Eve”

She is so sweet.  I had a really nice day with her with breakfast, track, and our trip to the farmer’s market.  Happiness is.

Ticks and lice and nothing nice

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Warning: reading this post will make you itchy all over. Consider yourself warned!

For the past many years I have kept my head buried pretty deep in the sand when it comes to the whole tick thing. When the kids were younger I’d check them, sometimes, in the bath, but that was the extent of my tick related efforts. This year, however, they are consuming my thoughts.

Maybe it’s because we started letting Daisy go outside a few weeks ago and within days we discovered a big, fat tick on her back. Alan and I spent a long time that night attempting to remove it, resulting in fur and cat scratches everywhere. Alan eventually managed to sneak in on her when she was sleeping and get it off. Thankfully! I was texting with my friend off and on during and she said to leave it alone, it will fall off, happens all the time, etc. I was so grossed out!! She sleeps in Lex’s bed and cuddles with the kids and blech!

The next day we got her a flea collar. She is now the dorkiest cat on the block, wearing not one, but TWO collars around her neck. Lucky kitty. A few days later we found another tick on her. Ugh!

Or maybe it is because the ticks are everywhere this year. Two days after the Daisy/tick incident I discovered a tick crawling up the back of one of my kiddos at school. He was laying on my lap being fussy so I started rubbing his back. A moment later I said, “what’s this bump on your back?” I pulled up his shirt and found a tick crawling up his back. YUCK!! I did not react calmly, instead I practically dragged this poor kid around by his shirt trying to get to a good place to dispose of the tick. At the Montessori school we respect all life and gently escort bugs and spiders outside, but this tick when straight down the toilet, despite gasps from the little kids!

A few days after that one of the teachers discovered something that looked like it might be a head lice nit in the hair of a child. The teacher showed me the nit, told me all about checking the child’s hair, and so that became the primary topic of conversation between the teachers for the next few days. So far (knock on lots and lots of wood!) we haven’t seen anything else or heard any reports from families.

However, between all these buggy incidents I am now totally paranoid! Every time I have an itch I feel the need to check for ticks, or lice – nothing nice!

Eve and I participated in a Girl Scout event this morning that had us traipsing through the forest. I insisted she and I both wear long sleeves, long pants, socks tucked in, and hair back with hats on. One of her friends said, “Eve, it’s summer time, you don’t need to wear long sleeves,” and Eve fired back “I found two ticks on me and do you know why they didn’t bite me? Long sleeves!!”

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Eve pulling garlic mustard plants with a fellow Girl Scout.

Are you thoroughly itchy now?! I am!! I hate bug spray almost as much as I hate sunscreen (well, maybe more) but this might be the year I try it again. Or maybe I could get us all tick anklets?

Happy summer! ;)

A Mother’s Day Present

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I was helping Eve clean up her room before bed this evening and feeling kind of frustrated with her and her messy room. She has so much stuff and it’s just everywhere. I opened her closet and was putting away doll clothes when I noticed something tucked in the back corner. I said said to her, with the exasperation clear in my voice, “Oh Eve, why do you have a live plant in your closet?!” So weird and random and totally something she would do. She jumped up and said, “Oh Mom!” and at the moment I remembered her scurrying upstairs after school with a small paper bag in her hands, and realized, oops, I think I found my Mother’s Day present! She made me promise to forget all about it (yeah, this is me forgetting) so I could be surprised on Sunday. The exchange totally put things in perspective and reminded me how sweet these years are, despite the messy room. I am a lucky momma.

Saturday night update: I just went into Eve’s dark room to check on her (I do that when they sleep), and I saw a weird glow coming from that same closet. I opened the door and found that she had hung a flash light from a hanger so that it shined down on to the plant! It casts an eerie glow through the slats of the closet door, but I love the thought. She’s sweet and clever!