The Amelioration

In April Philip's sister and kids came for a visit, only for her daughter to come down a few hours later with a terrible flu and had to leave the next day. We were feeling very gipped. So they came back for Memorial weekend. We had lots of windy, warm weather for kites, bubbles, trampoline jumping, barbecuing and our newish tradition of donut making.  And not one sickie!! She is also a very talented photographer and I am sharing some of her fantastic pics. It was almost exactly a year ago she came and took these (and I added one so you could see how much our kids have grown up in a year)

And this is them now enjoying our yummy donuts.

This is still my go-to, never fail donut recipe. This is also a good buttermilk old fashioned one I've tried twice fairly successfully. I did make it dairy free with soy buttermilk in exchange for the sour cream. I used the glaze for the old fashioned ones to glaze the raised ones and left the old fashioned plain because the dough is pretty sweet on it's own. Best fresh and warm, but if you have leftovers, freeze them and rewarm in the microwave per my sis-in-law's suggestion and they were YUMMY too!!

 And here are some fun action pics.

Amelia finished school. Here is a contrast pic of her first and last day.

It was so bright she is making a funny face, but we were in a rush to get to school so I didn't realize it. But you get the point. She has really lost that baby face. And maybe grown a little too. It was really important to her that she lose her first tooth in first grade at the school. Her teacher is the school's unofficial tooth puller and if you lose it there, you get to go to the office and get a plastic tooth box to put it in. Every kid in her class lost one and she was feeling a little left out. A week or so before the last day of school, her first one was a tiny bit loose. She spent the next 3 or 4 days wiggling and wiggling and wiggling that tooth. The night before the last day of school she was so desperate that she wanted me to try and pull it, but between the shrieking and squirming, I couldn't get it out. So finally on the last day after all the fun and all the kids went home, she asks her teacher to pull it. Sure enough it took 2 seconds and there it was. I could tell on Amelia's face that she wanted to scream or cry but did not want to do it in front of her teacher so she sat perfectly still. It was bleeding quite a bit and the teacher kind of screamed because it was so funny that it made her kind of embarrassed.  But pretty soon she was back to her usual grinning, confident self.

Hope my brother doesn't mind, but a few weeks ago he received his MBA. We went and celebrated and cheered Jared "Awesome" Hansen!!  And of course no celebration is complete without dessert.