Holding Pattern  

Posted by Roland

Not too much to post about I suppose. Its quicker and easier to update Facebook so the routine stuff has been updated there. Currently, I'm in crunch mode working 10 hour days and half days on Sat. Violet's due any week now (hopefully Griffin will wait until at least next week). The limited free time I have is spent watching TV for the most part. I recently finished Ghostbusters the video game (360). I'm working on Call of Juarez 2, but its slow going. I didn't realize it was a FPS, otherwise I would have got it for the PC instead of the Xbox 360.

Independence Day  

Posted by Roland

Probably the best thing about living in Euege, OR is that we have friends here. Friends that help babysit, invite us to parties, and generally significantly increase our social lives. Yesterday we went to the Brown's house for a 4th of July BBQ. We were surrounded by kids, and yet we were able to interact with adults most of the time. As the sun began to finally set, people were watering down their roofs. I've never heard of this before. Since fireworks are legal (and to some degree encouaged) here, this practice helps discourage the falling firework embers from landing on a patch of roof moss and starting a fire. It was a good time overall. This is a pic of Drake playing with the T-ball. He thought it was awesome.

We brought chips, sodas, and I made my favorite dessert, Three-Layer Dessert (My mom's recipe.. I don't know where she got it from). It's SUPER easy to make, and doesn't take very long at all (so long as you're not being distracted by the TV in the background as I was). It was a huge success, which is great. I also made a smaller 1-person version in a sundae dish that didn't contain any chocolate in it since one of the guests was allergic. I'm not sure why its called 3-layer dessert though. There's technically more than 3 layers (From bottom to top):

  • Crust. Usually walnut based and made from scratch. I'm lazy so I bought 2 pre-made Honey Graham Cracker pie crusts. But after baking them for 5 mins to make them crispier, I decided to dump the extra crumbs on top into the sink. Half the crust came off! Ooops. Since I stayed up until about 2 am making these, I went to the local WinCo market and ended up buying an Oreo based crust)
  • A blend of Cream Cheese (just one 8 oz package) + powdered sugar (1 cup) + Cool Whip (1.5 cups). I bought an electric hand mixer which made this SOOO quick and easy! And no lumps for a change!
  • Chocolate Pudding (1 lrg pkg)
  • Vanilla Pudding (1 lrg pkg)
  • Cool Whip
  • Grated Hershey Bar (refrigerate the bar to make it easier to grate)