Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

DRY INGREDIENTS:

1 c. old fashioned oatmeal
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. chocolate chips
1 c. unsweetened flaked coconut
1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. equivalent sweetener (splenda or other, or you can use 1/2 c. of sugar)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

LIQUID INGREDIENTS:

1 stick butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 med. sized egg
1 tbsp. milk

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Soften butter at room temperature (or in microwave) until very
soft, but not melted.

3. Measure and place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, starting
with the dry ingredients and finishing with the liquid ingredients on
top.

4. Mix all ingredients thoroughly until dry ingredients are all
completely moistened.

5. For easier handling, dough may be chilled for 20 minutes prior to
shaping, but this is not necessary.

6. Form into walnut-sized balls (approximately 1 heaping tablespoon).

7. Place on ungreased cookie sheet 2 inches apart.

8. Bake at 355 degrees for 9 minutes on top rack of oven.

9. Remove immediately from oven and place sheet on wire rack.

10. After 5 minutes, remove cookies from sheet with metal spatula and
place directly on wire racks to finish cooling.

Cookies will be very soft when hot. They will break if removed from
sheet immediately. Do not bake until firm or they will be hard when
cooled.

(I found a recipe online and altered it to come up with the above.)

David changed our server hosting and thus photogrove was down for a few days.  The transfer is now complete – yay! – and so I’m posting some new pictures! The snow-day pictures are actually from the snow last weekend, we’re currently getting another snowstorm now.  And, we may get another one on Tuesday.  Its been quite a winter!!

Since we’ve had so much time at home, I’ve been sewing!  I have two quilts that are about halfway done for the Etsy shop, and I finally pulled out the famous Walkaway dress pattern from Butterick and made it.  I love it! I got the fabric to make another one, and I will be offering them as custom-order pieces in the Etsy shop.

I absolutely looooove my house. Its perfect for us, it has the perfect layout for our family, the space is all usable space, etc. There are some things I would love to do here, though. I don’t know when we’ll be able to do them all – this is a list for about the next 10 years!
-stucco the basement walls. Right now they’re cement blocks, and stucco would look a lot nicer.
-finish the basement floor, its painted cement, and I’d love to put some padded tiles in – like at a gym.
-get rid of all the carpet. We only have carpet in the office, playroom, and master bedroom – but I’d love to get ride of it all. David wants light maple laminate flooring in the office, and I want hardwood tiles in the playroom and bedroom – we have hardwood tiles in the kids’ bedrooms, family room, and hallway.
-more exterior lighting. We don’t have any outdoor lighting on our back patio.
-Bathroom remodeling – the bathroom on the main floor needs a new shower, and I’d like to get rid of the wallpaper in there and add sockets and different light fixtures.

Since we just had to replace the heat pump I don’t see us having the budget to tackle any of these in the next 12-18 months, but hopefully sometime in the next few years we’ll get a few of these things done!

David wants us to build our retirement home, and I told him I want to use the same floor plan we have now, with just a few minor changes. We’d like to be a bit further out in the country and have some more land – one a dirt road with at least 10 acres would be ideal. I would like to stay about 10-15 minutes from town, though. Originally we wanted to live down around Check/Copper Hill because its closer to Roanoke, but we really love living in the Floyd/Willis area because its closer to both our parents’ homes.

Sometimes I’m just so blown away by how lucky we are – we have a wonderful family, we love our house, we love our community, we love our jobs… I’m certainly not complaining, just looking forward to making our house even better for us!

Ellie wanted an angel on her face, like the ones that Marcia Fleischman paints – she was one of our pastors in Kansas City, and every parent should order Angels Everywhere, her children’s book.  I think I did an okay job:

So, I try not to focus too much on physical appearance…. but isn’t Ellie just one of the most beautiful little girls in the world?

Then she wanted to return the favor, and painted a bee on the back of my hand:

Don’t worry, cleaning the playroom is on my to-do list.  Today was all about catching up on dishes and laundry.  Now that those are under control, tomorrow will be about tidying up the house.

So, Jen during the high school years….

Obviously, I was a geek.  A band geek who went to govenor’s school to be more specific. And who also twirled baton… the sad thing is, I realize I probably peaked at 15 years old!  Thank goodness that’s when I met David!

So, here’s a few highlighs:

For those of you who were at my wedding, you probably remember a somewhat racy story Amit told about how the first time he met me we went out dancing in the rain and I was wearing a white shirt.  Sadly, ’tis true.  This is the photographic evidence.  This was at the Clinch Valley College summer gov school.  I had a wonderful time and was lucky to meet Amit there.  Lucky because Amit has been a wonderful friend for half my life now, and also because it was Amit who introduced me to David a few months later. I owe him!

This was taken my senior year before a parade in Vinton, I think.  My high school band director, Mr. C, is standing next to me.  If anyone doubts that a high school teacher can have a major impact on a student’s life, then you weren’t lucky enough to have a teacher like Mr. C.

One of the absolute highlights of my high school career was my senior year when, due to gov school, I ended up only being able to be in the 8th grade band class.  Instead of making me feel bad about it, left out, or penalizing me, Mr. C put me in a position of leadership to help teach the 8th graders to march and to play.  I got to conduct the warm-up every day, and I got to conduct the 8th graders in “Carol of the Bells” at the winter concert that year.  I met so many wonderful kids that year and still keep in touch with a lot of them.

Here I am at graduation (yes, its a terrible picture, but the only one that’s not in a frame and therefore easier to scan!) with my friends April and Amanda.  I was happy when graduation came, I didn’t cry, I was excited to move on to the next part of my life.

I knew I would love college, I’d love the freedom, I’d love the chance to be more independent.  I did love those things, but I didn’t count on how hard it would be to go to a school where everyone was smarter, richer, thinner, and prettier than me.  I didn’t know how hard it would be to not loose myself in the stress of trying to keep up.  I didn’t know how hard it would be to go from being a big fish in a little sea to a little fish in a little sea.  (University of Richmond wasn’t that big, after all.)  However, I did grow stronger during college.  I did become more independent.  I did learn a lot about myself and about my true friends.

Looking back, I can appreciate high school more than I ever thought I would.  I was lucky to have some amazing relationships (both with boyfriends and friends) that helped me learn a lot, and though I hated not being totally independent and self-sufficient I’m old enough now that I can look back and appreciate the innocence and ease of being 15 year old – without kids, a mortgage, or jobs. I love my life now, I just wish I’d appreciated all I had when I was a teenager.  And that is including, but not limited to, the awesome abs I had back then!

Or, alternately titled, a brief history of Jen.  A current trend on Facebook is to post an old picture of your self (flashback week), so I found some old pictures and scanned them in…

Every picture I see of myself as a child, all I can think is that I look like Killy with different hair… In the baby pictures I have a lot less hair, in the older-kid pictures I have longer hair.  Did I really look so much like a little boy?!  Even though I think Ellie looks  a lot like David, I can see in the resemblance to Erin that people comment on.

Up tomorrow – pictures from high school!