March 19th, 2012

For the most part our week was pretty uneventful.  We are now less than a week away from when we pick Ben up at the airport and we are so excited!  We have missed him so much.  The beginning of our week was pretty quiet, but things seemed to pick up a little towards the end.

On Thursday we headed into Mbabane with Joe and Joey to try and take care of some paperwork stuff.  I needed to get a Swazi license because my KY is about to expire.  What a process!  Anytime you have to deal with the government here it seems to be a process!  We called ahead to make sure we had all the important documents we needed, but apparently this was wasted.  As soon as we got there I found out I needed copies of more papers and they needed to be certified from the police department.  Luckily I had everything I needed, but ended up running around town for a couple of hours trying to get it all taken care of.  And in the end, I still don’t have a license in hand.  I had to leave all the paperwork and then come back in 1-3 weeks to pick it up.  Crazy!  Oh well, at least I got the bulk of it done.  Just seems silly to drive two hours to pick up a license!  But such is life I suppose!

As most of you might know, Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day.  I am not Irish, but I thought it would be fun to host a St. Pat’s dinner anyway.  So we had the "Americans" over for dinner on Saturday.  Joe cooked corned beef and cabbage, the sisters contributed some potatoes complete with all the fixings and I made Irish Soda Bread.  I also made some rainbow cupcakes.  These have been on my radar for a long time, but they are time consuming so I never got around to making. 

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Irish Soda Bread – four ingredients, no rise time and some of the easiest bread I have ever made.  Plus it was pretty tasty.  I think we will make this one again!

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These guys didn’t the layering I had hoped they would, but they still reminded me of a rainbow.  And what is more important is Mikayla had fun helping to mix the colors up!

In edition to our St. Pats treats we also made granola bars (my friend Lara’s recipe) and my first ever quiche (courtesy of Betty Crocker)!  Both were tasty and hits with those that we shared them with.  I love quiche and it was amazing to me how simple it was.  The hardest part was the dough for the shell, and even that was pretty basic!  I would say I would be making again soon, but unfortunately Ben doesn’t like eggs so it might not happen for awhile.

We got some very exciting news from one of my best friends in BG this week.  I am not sure I can share the news yet, but just know that it was so exciting I actually started crying when she called to tell me.  That doesn’t happen too often!  Congratulations again friend!

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We finished off our Dr. Seuss unit this week and Mikayla had so much fun.  I made some finger puppets for her and they just had to be a part of cooking!  Too cute.  Here she is showing Thing 1 how to add spices in!

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Sporting some new jammies and a book sent from her Mimi and Poppy.  They sent her a couple of outfits and we spent a lot of time on Saturday trying them on over and over.  Plus they sent a really fun Cat in the Hat and Franklin video that she loved.  Thanks again!

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For Steve

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