Five Brown Kids

It's a tradition to meet up with these favorite school friends during the breaks. It always seems to involve getting wet and getting dirty.

Black Bean and CousCous Salad BBQ Chicken Pizza Greek Salad Chicken Cacciatore Eggplant Parmesan Sweet and Sour Pork There are others that I love of course, but these are my top six dinners. I'm a Ripple and like really intense flavors (dilly beans anyone?) These suppers totally float my boat!

Friday at lunch time Emily and her girls showed up all the way from Boston and we partied all weekend. We ate yummy food and cooked smores on the fire pit. We walked down the trail, and enjoyed a Fancy Nancy Tea at the library. Isabelle and Scotia tried to catch up on four missed months of playing babies and kitchen. Emily and I had a serious girls night out and enjoyed every last minute of our free time. Sunday we went on a nice walk and wrapped things up with a little dessert party with some old ward friends. The weather was made to order all weekend and the company better than ever. See you again in just 8 weeks Emily!

Spring break is flying by. Taye participated in the First in Fitness 100 yard dash and placed fourth this year. ( Last year and 2009 ). We watched Jaxon at soccer. Or Jaxon played soccer and I watched Scotia. We went to Scotia's art show at preschool. All of the kids got to go to Farm Days this year. The timing just worked out well. They loved, loved all the animals and the fresh, free ice-cream.

Thanks for your help with the survey . We tested all the cars and the one with weights in the back won! Weights in the middle was not far behind. Then Taye and I typed (Taye is a veryyyyy slow typist) and printed and cut and glued for hours one evening. I was in the midst of gluing duty and my daily blog catch up when I saw a post about these amazing bar stools and since they totally blew me away I copied the link and forwarded it on to my sister in law Carrie who is busy decorating her new home. Less than 30 seconds after I pressed send my Skype line was ringing. Carrie has had the stools on her short list for awhile now and already knew a purchase source. She is always three steps ahead of me. Taye's project looked great! We had fun, and it's one more thing crossed off the list for the month. It was science day at his school - so after the fair Dan the Animal man showed up with his python (I didn't like that so much) and then Ms Karam...

Take a look at my parent's winter pictures here .

I've tried other granola bar recipes but none as good as this. Wow! My kids were not thrilled with the heavy peanut butter flavor though or all the seeds so I'm going to try an almond butter, chocolate chip and coconut version next. Homemade Chewy Granola Bars 1 cup peanut butter (the recipe said to use Jif or similar and not a "natural" brand) 2/3 cup honey 1/2 cup coconut oil (I found it at Fresh Market, it's a must for the recipe) 2 cups rolled oats 2 total cups of a combination of coconut flakes, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, raisins, dried cherries mini chocolate chips to sprinkle on top In medium size sauce pan melt together peanut butter, honey and coconut oil. Remove from heat and add oats, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and coconut. Stir well. Press mixture into pan (9 x 13) and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Chill for 2 hours in fridge and cut into bars. (I chilled them in the freezer and they turned out perfectly.) Reci...