A Great Weekend

Yesterday we took the day and drove back down near the city of Milwaukee. The occasion this weekend was a family reunion with my Grampas family. The last time the whole family was together was 10 years ago, so this was a weekend not to miss. It was especially important to me, as Grampa and Gramma are my only grandparents. After saying goodbye to Grandma earlier this year, it made it even more important to me to get to this reunion. And then in the last few weeks we've had cancer make an appearance with my Grampa. He's doing well, and the doctor is confident that it is gone, but all the same... I really wanted to give my Grampa a hug and tell him that I loved him. :-) And the whole trip was worth it specifically for that sole opportunity. So it was very nice to see them. It was truly wonderful to see family, and this was one of those opportunities where I wished we could have spent the whole weekend. Here to the right is a "family tree" of sorts. Abigail and Zander are here in the tree with MY cousins, if you can believe that. Here we have my cousins Cole, Brittany, McKenna and Sarah. The kids all had a blast playing together and enjoying the outdoors- brisk as it was yesterday. My kids fell asleep about 10 minutes after hitting the van, they were so tired.

For the reunion I brought along a salad and a dessert. The dessert was awesome, and was one shared with me by my online pal Val. Caramel Frosted Chocolate Chip Zucchini Sheet Cake is incredible. It is exteremely fast to throw together, and tastes fantastic. Plus there are 2 cups of zucchini inside, so if you close your eyes, you can pretend that you are eating something healthy and good for you. The Broccoli Tortellini Salad was one that I found on my Mastercoook program. Sometimes I forget that there are tons of recipes on there that I didn't put in, that there are cookbooks that came with the program. This was from the Vegetarian cookbook, and was really pretty good. And it looked nice. I love tortellini salad, but usually I make it with pesto. This one uses bottled marinara, and had a very nice fresh flavor. I did add sliced black olives, but otherwise I stuck with the recipe as it was. The only change I would make would be to use more fresh basil next time. Other than that, it's a keeper, and a nice change.

Well, that's it for tonight I think. We had our Sunday Company Dinner tonight and had a fantastic Indian meal, but I think I will save that for tomorrow, it deserves a post all on it's own.