we love our puddin'

Pudding Cookies that is.

I got up early yesterday morning to make some cookies. Leah was going to the lake with some friends and needed a contribution for their lunch. These are easy, yummy, soft and chewy, and never last very long. I got this recipe from a Mom of one of the boys Austin played tennis with in high school. She would bring them to the tennis matches and the boys would swarm like flies. In fact, so did the coaches.

And well, yes, so did I.

The basic recipe can be customized to fit your particular tasty craving. The 'special' ingredient that makes these so soft and tasty is pudding. Yep, just one box of Jello Instant pudding added to the batter. So, you see... depending on what kind of cookie you want... just change the flavor of the pudding.

These were made with chocolate pudding and chocolate chips. They will satisfy your chocolate cravings. They seem to be our favorite. Other combinations we like?

Chocolate pudding with peanut butter chips.

Vanilla pudding with chocolate chips.

Add nuts. How about m&m's. That works. How about chocolate pudding with white chocolate chips? Or nuts, chips and m&m's with vanilla pudding? See what I mean. Basic recipe tweaked to your particular craving of the day. It all works. And they are always good. I always double the recipe.

This is the original recipe that she gave me. It is for a basic chocolate chip cookie.

Pudding Cookies

1 c. soft butter

3/4 c. brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 pkg. instant pudding

2 1/4 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

optional:

2 cups chocolate chips

1 c. nuts

Cream together until fluffy: butter, sugars, eggs, vanilla and pudding. Add the flour and baking soda. Mix together. Add chocolate chips and nuts. Bake @350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

As I said, you can add just about any goodie to these to fit your taste or occasion.We have found, for edibility purposes, anything works. I started making these before I even had breakfast yesterday. So, sampling them warm out of the oven took the place of my breakfast.

That works too.

capturing the sun

When you hold the sunshine in your hands...

... you will always find warm love.
Hold on to it forever you two.

photo credit goes to these two sisters.

It is always a treat to load pictures on to my computer and find surprises like this.

photo monday

Even the birds are choking on the heat.

Or is he coughing up a dust ball?

Happy monday everyone!

celebration highlights

Now that all the hullabaloo over the haboob has mostly been swept away... how about a few photos from the graduation celebration? The day itself was great, with all our families and friends here to honor our graduates. We thank everyone that traveled near and far to spend the day (and week) with us. It means so very much to us.

Now. A few highlights.

Team Sisters. Without their help I would have been a frazzled hostess. "Go Team!"

The graduates. Without them...we would not have had a party.

"Go Graduates!"
One of my photo tributes measuring how quickly they grow. Inch by inch. Year by year. sniff.
The dessert table. Because that is what it is all about. And yes...we pretty much ate them all. "sah-weet!"
Cupcakes!
Our night-before-the-party bull riding extravaganza!
Pool race extravaganza!
Our Arizona event would not be complete without this early morning visitor. Evidently, the heat was getting to this guy because he had wrapped himself around this plant pot and was drinking water out of this dish. Sssspecial.

Our post-party-day fun at the lake with cousins. Way fun!
The Minute-To-Win-It game night. It ended with this girl getting tossed into the pool with one of her uncles!
And then, our Tie-Dye t-shirt event.
Hooray!

Again, we thank all of our sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpa, sons, daughters, cousins and friends that came from near and far to help celebrate our graduates.

It was fun!

haboob

It is Arabic for "strong wind". It came through Phoenix on tuesday night. We saw images like this one on the news and were amazed. It blew through here after dark, so we did not see the full impact of the rolling dust. All we could see was the dust in the wind. Lots and lots of dust. It was really weird. Here is a picture I copied from the internet.

It left a big mess in its path. Today, two days later we are still cleaning up. I think the pool will take a few more days to filter it all out. We had to put extra treatments in to ward off bacteria that they say will grow pretty quickly in your pool. Also, I learned that this phenomenon can cause Valley Fever. Now, that is just awful.

Here are a few photos that I took. This is the palm tree/pool view on a normal day:

Here it is after the haboob.
This is another night shot during the "storm". I did not spend much time outside for obvious reasons.
Here is the pool yesterday morning.
This is what the sky looked like for most of the day. No sign of the mountains at all.
This is the coating of dust that is on everything! I commented..."you know if this was a snowstorm it would all just melt away."
This is another one of those... "I've lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this before!" We have heard comments like that already. (Put it on the list with the gila monster sightings.) We, at least, did not lose our power as did some in Phoenix. A whole night without air conditioning after that would have been miserable. The floors inside the house had an extra layer of dust yesterday, so they got a thorough cleaning. It looks like I will need to do it again today based on the foot prints I see across the floor.

I guess we can say it is kind of cool that we experienced something that will be talked about for a long time.

Haboob.

Funny name.

Strange experience.

monsoon

This is the view of the palm trees in the backyard at 10:00 tonight. The weather we experienced is what they call a monsoon here in Arizona. This was the tail end of it. We did have some rain, but what you are seeing is dust. Those are not rain drops that the flash is reflecting off... just dust. Actually...I will call it dirt.

It rolled in after dark where we live, but we are seeing some pictures on the news of what it looked like in other parts of the city before the sun went down. I have never seen anything like this before. The pool is filled with it. In fact, I think I am seeing it in the air inside the house. It looks very eerie outside. They said on the news that this monsoon would hit the national news channels by morning.

So, watch for it. The pictures are impressive.

fourth of july

Happy day !