I really haven't forgotten that we have a blog

My goodness, but has life been wickedly crazy for us lately. We spent the last few days of October and the first few days of November wondering if Annika had caught the H1N1 virus. She hadn't, but that didn't stop her from being one sick kid for a few days with a "regular" flu. There really isn't much worse than seeing your own child sick or injured and knowing there really isn't much you can do except try to make them feel as comfortable as possible. We had an adorable lamb costume ready for her to wear on Halloween; instead, she wore her jammies and carried around a cloth diaper so we could wipe her nose every time she sneezed. Most kids run off at the mention of a nose wiping; not our kid! She continually ran up to us with the cloth diaper or a tissue saying, "Yuck! Yuck!" after one of her rather impressive sneezes. Halloween wasn't a complete loss; we did carve our pumpkins, and Annika enjoyed "helping" by putting the pumpkin guts back inside after I scooped them out.

On an up note, she's now back to her practically perfect self - full of P&V and all of the silliness that is a 2-year-old. Her vocabulary is still growing by leaps and bounds. Eric and I have noticed how her language skills are evolving. Just a few short weeks ago (maybe even a few short days ago), she'd say "banna" for "banana" and "are you?" for "where are you?". Now, she's saying "banana" and "where are you?" - still cute, but proof that she's maturing and growing up a bit.

On Halloween, a couple of girlfriends and I took a chocolate truffle making class through the N. Seattle CC's continuing education department. It was a 6.5 hour class that flew by. Since them, I've been working on the skills I walked away with. I see cooking skills much like a foreign language. If you don't use it, you lose it. So, I've been a ganache and tempered chocolate fool as of late. It's been a lot of fun to figure out what works and what doesn't (like the white chocolate and citrus ganace truffles that wouldn't all come out of the mold last night - the evil buggers!) All-in-all, it has been a fun adventure and I'm greatly enjoying the creation process.

Helping Daddy cook


Carving our pumpkin


The take-home goodie box from of my chocolate truffle class


The current view inside our fridge: yes, we really do have 5 plates full of truffles in there!