Seattle Visit and Chambers 520 Reunion

After visiting Jasmine and John in San Francisco, I had the chance to make a quick trip to Seattle to visit my Uncle Tony, Aunt Joni, and cousins Alyssa and Jared, as well as to catch up with my girlfriends (and roommates) from college.

It was a very quick visit. Aunt Joni and my cousins Alyssa and Jared met me at the airport, and then we went to visit Uncle Tony's offices at Microsoft, where he works in the XBox division. It was a special treat-- not only did we get a hands-on demo of the latest Microsoft product, which is a large table with interactive software for editing and collaboration, but we saw the offices decorated for Halloween. These weren't your average decorations. Instead, it was another world! Uncle Tony said that each group/division competes to have the best decorations, and that in the past some groups have even hired professional movie set decorators for assistance! Uncle Tony's hallway with a moving ghost was definitely making a strong showing.

I had a great time with Alyssa and Jared. They showed me their Wii program, and we did some ski jumping. The part of the program where you can make your own character was really fun. We saw the Uncle David guy, which looked just like Uncle David! We worked on making a character for me, which wears all black (naturally) and has short spiky hair and glasses. Now I will be another face in the crowd when Alyssa and Jared play their games. I loved seeing how much both of them have changed, and I hope I get to host Alyssa next summer in New York City when "Cousin Kelly Camp" opens its doors for its first visitor.

At the top is a picture of my roommates and me. We all lived together our senior year in college. We were quite a large entourage-- 5 adults (actually, six-- Megan's mom was visiting from Kentucky and took the picture) and 3 kids-- ages 3, 2 and 1. Coincidentally, the weekend we all decided to meet in Seattle, which is where Megan and Claire live, was the weekend of our 10th college reunion. Time really flies by. I love that although we have very different lives, different interests and are scattered across the country, we still have a connection that keeps us close.

Goodbye, Mother's Animal Cookies

Sadly, Mother's Cookies filed for Chapter 11 last week. I'm hopeful that another company will buy the recipe and continue to make the beloved pink and white frosted animal cookies that I love. They remind me of our elementary school days when Penguin's frozen yogurt was a new and exciting novelty. The ultimate treat was a vanilla frozen yogurt with Mother's Cookies broken up and sprinkled on top.

The news inspired to me make my own version. I used a sugar cookie dough recipe. I thought that I had either made a mistake or used a bad recipe because after creaming the butter, sugar and egg as directed and incorporating the flour and baking powder, the dough was very crumbly like sand and did not come together into a "smooth dough" as the recipe directly. I was contemplating adding more butter or egg, but then I remembered from my days of watching Auntie Mable make Christmas cookies that the dough comes together by pressing it into a lump and refrigerating. All those years 0f Christmas baking paid off. I squished the sandy grains together, and the heat of my hands melted the buttery crumbs into a smooth ball. After being refrigerated for about 2 hours, the dough rolled out smoothly.

I didn't have any animal-shaped cookie cutters, so I used my butterfly and star shapes instead. The small cookied baked quickly, and once they were cooled I gave them a quick dunk in some bright pink royal icing and liberally sprinked them with those little rainbow-colored rolly balls. Although they weren't a complete replica of the Mother's cookies, they were crunchy and buttery. Yum!

Welcome Tyler Jackson!

Welcome to the world, Tyler Jackson! Tyler was the rare baby to have made his appearance on his expected due date, which was October 6, 2008. I couldn't wait to meet the newest member of our family. I went to visit Jasmine and John in San Francisco a week after he was born. He was so cute and tiny, and I forgot how strong newborn babies are. After only one week in this world he was able to lift his head and let everyone know that he was HUNGRY.

His big sister Ella gets so excited when she is around him-- she stamps her feet and says "ooh ooh ohh!" She continues to grow and amaze me. Ella has a great memory; she remembers that I always wear boots, and when she came in the door she pointed to my boots and said, "Kelly shoes!" That's her walking around in my boots.

What a great looking family.