Lincoln Park Zoo and a Northwestern game!

In September my mom came to visit and we took Will and Liza to the Lincoln Park zoo!

And Matt took Will to a Northwestern football game! We live really close to the stadium so they walked there with some friends from church. Will was so excited - especially to get a hotdog and popcorn:)

Anniversary weekend!

We had a big weekend - on Friday we went and got our Christmas tree with Lulu and Grandmama! It has become somewhat of a tradition of ours to get our tree the day after Thanksgiving. I just can't wait for the Christmas season to start - I've been listening to Christmas music nonstop!

Our little helper was excited to help put lights and ornaments on the tree! Will LOVES the Christmas tree! Every morning when he comes downstairs he says "Oh Christmas tree!" and runs over to it and points out all the ornaments to me - again! I love how excited he gets.

Saturday we cheered on the Jackets!

Will loves to "hide" under pillows!

Saturday night we celebrated our 7 year anniversary (which was Sunday)! We went to Michael in Wilmette and had a great dinner followed by a flourless chocolate souffle for dessert!

I can't believe we've been married 7 years already! It seems like time has flown by. We talked about all that has happened over the last 7 years and all that we are grateful for - most of all our healthy 2 year old son and baby daughter on the way! God has been good to us!

Sunday was also my parent's anniversary - and a big one this year - 40 years! Happy anniversary mom and dad!

The Jackets

This weekend was busy with Will's school fall festival, cooking Matt's chili and Pioneer Woman's sherried tomato soup, and football! Yesterday also marked one year since we lost Matt's dad. Mr. Dart was the biggest Georgia Tech football fan that I've ever met, and yesterday was also Georgia Tech's homecoming. Matt's siblings spent the day remembering him by doing exactly what he would have done - going to the Georgia Tech parade early in the morning, and eating breakfast at the Silver Skillet before the game. We did our best to support the Jackets from Chicago and watched the game on our computer (it's not shown on tv in our part of the country). It was a great game, and we beat #5 undefeated Clemson! A perfect ending to a perfect day.

Here is Matt indoctrinating our son at the ripe old age of 2 ("like his daddy used to do!")...

Fall weekend

I got the iphone 4s Friday (a birthday gift) and have been playing with it nonstop this weekend! Here's a few pictures I took with it of our weekend...

Pumpkin pancakes!

The hideout that Matt made for Will with 2 boxes. Will LOVES it!

Pumpkins at the farmer's market 

Getting a good sniff of the pumpkin pie candle!

Watching (actually just listening to) the GA Tech game

Will put an apple in the "apple box"...kids are so funny!

Lots of baking!

We did a lot of baking at our house this weekend. Some were successes and some were failures. I woke up Saturday to the smell of these baking downstairs:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Lemon coconut muffins! They were from Gluten-free Baking Classics by Annalise Roberts. I've made a few things out of this cookbook and I am really loving it. We had done a little research on the best gluten-free baking cookbook out there and this one seemed to be the winner.

I know several of you read Fly Through Our Window (one of my favorites blogs!) and you may have seen the post last week where she made peppermint patties. Her pictures made them look awesome, and we were supposed to take a dessert to a Super Bowl party last night so I thought these would be perfect (and naturally gluten-free!) THEY WERE AWFUL. Truly disgusting. So I thought I'd let you learn from our experience in case you were also tempted to make them. Peppermint extract and mint extract are not the same thing. Our mint extract turned out to be spearmint, which has the flavoring of gum, or toothpaste. And when you are making something with the exact same consistency as toothpaste, it.is.not.good. But, we kept going. We tried to melt the chocolate in a double-boiler but it wasn't melting well so we added milk. Big mistake. Now we had ganache, which doesn't harden. At all. So with 2 hours to go before the game, we had messy, drippy chocolate covered toothpaste. They went in the trash. I'm sure these would be very good if made correctly.

Fail!

Instead, we made chocolate peanut butter balls, which were easy and turned out great!

Here is the recipe…

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

1/2 cup unsalted butter

18 oz smooth peanut butter

3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 1/2 cups rice krispies (I used a gluten-free brand)

16 oz semisweet chocolate chips (we used half milk chocolate chips, and we added a little shortening)

Mix butter, peanut butter, and sugar until creamy. Add cereal and mix until combined. Chill until cold. Form 1-inch balls and refrigerate 12 hours (we just put them in the freezer for about an hour). Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Dip balls in warm chocolate. Cool on wax paper and then refrigerate until chocolate hardens.

Fun in the snow

First of all, after heavy persuasion, I am happy to let you know that I sent the video to Ellen! So we'll see if I hear anything back:)

We spent yesterday afternoon watching the Bears/Packers game. We've never been professional football fans - of any team, but it's a BIG deal up here, and we felt like we wouldn't be good Chicagoans if we didn't watch that game! Unfortunately, the Bears are not going to the Super Bowl, but it was a good game!

During half-time, we took Will out for a little sledding on a hill at the end of our street…

A great weekend!

Matt and I thoroughly enjoyed having Thanksgiving at our house this year. Not traveling, and having a lot of time to relax before Matt goes to work tomorrow is so nice! We may make this a tradition.

I didn't check my email yesterday until last night - so I had no idea Matt had written that sweet post yesterday! He is so thoughtful - I am incredibly blessed to have spent the last 6 years with him. Our anniversary is always a few days after Thanksgiving and is usually overshadowed by all the other holiday festivities. But, we enjoyed a quiet day yesterday that couldn't have been more perfect. We sipped coffee, watched movies, put our Christmas tree up, and enjoyed a fire in our fireplace the whole time. And Matt made us a great gourmet dinner!

Here's a few more pictures from the last few days...

Out to lunch, and pretty excited about it:)

Loading up on firewood! Yea! We've had nonstop fires ever since.

Picking out a Christmas tree!

We found one in a hurry - we were absolutely FREEZING!

Getting ready to root on the Jackets!