4th of July and Baking

WOW! This has been one big week of events! There was the Circus Saturday, visitation with my brother Sunday, and 4th of July Monday. The circus was a last minute idea, after leaving my job to stay home with my amazing daughter and to give the grandparents a break, we have had to cut back on activities by 100% or so, so anything big like this goes on a credit card so it takes a lot of decision making to decided if we do expensive activities. SO after a lot of conversation with the mister and friends we decided to go to the Ringling Brothers Circus and I'm glad we did!!! After we finally got Jewels to understand that all the commotion was being done for something huge to about to happen she was such a trooper! Once the show finally started (I insist on getting places early so we were about an hour early if not more) she was in amazement and had such a blast!!


Here she is cheesing it up!! 'CHEESE' With her cup of popcorn - that cup was originally a $10 snow cone that her Auntie bought her.

4th of July I started my new job, if you want to call it that, I now work for Gold's Gym Child Activity Center. I know its a total oxy moron that they would hire a fat person to work in a gym but I guess being its taking care of kids, it doesn't matter. I tookt he job for a few reasons, first and foremost, I get to take Jewels with me which is fantastic because she isn't really around any other kids so it will give her the social skills she needs. Second, Bry, Jewels, and I get free memberships. Third, I get free child care when I work out outside of my shift. It was an interesting day to start (a holiday) but believe it or not it was busy, these are some hardcore exercisers and I plan to use that as motivation.

Last night my bestie Nacole video taped me without me knowing on her cell phone and when I watched that video I was in shock!! I do not feel as fat as I look. I was so embarrassed. I am the person that I see on tv and think to myself how they can let themselves get that way. I am so ashamed of myself. Enough of the pity party....

So on the Fourth we had a huge monsoon storm, which I normally love, but it was a bad one! There was a powerline that went down a couple of blocks away and knocked our power out for 4 hours and of course it was dinner time. SO we decided to make the best of it and went to dinner then over to Nacole's house to relax before fireworks. We ended up going to one of the baseball fields in town where they were doing a show and waited, and waited, and waited - for an hour and a half. Just as we were about to go because it was so hot, humid, and late - they started. Last year Jewels slept right through the fireworks but last night she was terrified!!! Good thing we waited all the time for it to only last 15 minutes. I'm just thankful I got to see some - I LoVe me some fireworks!! BUT the storm also put a damper on me wanting to do sparklers with Jewels. SO we ended up doing them tonight. Jewels, Bry, Nacole and I went onto our driveway and lit some pretty fun sparklers, Jewels wasn't too thrilled about holding one but can you blame her? Nacole had never seen them so she had the most fun!

Tonight I also made the most delicious cookies ever! I'm not a fan of Nutella, though Bry and Jewels eat it on everything, but there were the best cookies especially if you like chocolate! I found the recipe on a fellow bloggers' site - its easy, quick and delish!!!



Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
1 egg
1 cup of flour
i cup of Nutella
1/2 cup of sugar

Mix all the ingredients together, the mixture will seem dry but mix to the best of your ability

roll into 1-2 inch balls and press onto a pan sprayed with non stick spray or lined with parchment paper

bake for 5-8 minutes

enjoy!! My family ate the whole dozen in 15 minutes, they are that good!