One Great Day!

First, a recipe, and I really ought to take a picture but I’m tired and don’t feel like it but seriously, these are delicious!

My variation on an easy banana bread recipe:

3 c. all purpose flour
Slightly less than 1 c. whole wheat flour
1 T. ground flax seed
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. kosher salt
3/4 c. sugar (the actual recipe called for 1.5 cups but it’s fine w/ less!)
6 very ripe bananas mashed
about 2/3 c. orange juice
4 eggs
1 c. vegetable oil.
1 tsp. vanilla extract (optional)
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

Spray 2 loaf pans w/ Bakers Secret (cooking spray w/ flour) or just regular cooking spray (I couldn’t decide which would be better so I used the first one and one cupcake pan (12 muffins).

I added fresh blueberries to the muffins – about 1/2 a cup I guess – didn’t measure. Left them out of the loaves though.

Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients and bake loaves for about 50-60 min and muffins for 20-25 at 350 degrees.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, so that’s what I did this morning and then we threw some stuff in a cooler, grabbed our swimsuits and took off! We went to the zoo. It’s very tiny but it was fun and bonus, almost FREE since I bought a membership earlier this year. The girls had fun even though they’ve been there before and you can be all around the zoo twice in less than an hour. It’s *that* small!

Then we had our picnic in the shade and they played on the playground for a bit. There is a rock wall that you can climb and then a slide to go down. It made me kind of nervous watching Cate on it but luckily there were no accidents. I just kept thinking she was going to fall.

We came down the mountain and I was feeling wild and crazy so we went to the pool at the gym. Again, basically FREE. The girls both played in the pool for a few hours and were fearless. It was great. I sat on a chaise lounge and watched them and got in every now and then. It was such a different experience from last year when they were smaller. So much more relaxing!

Starting tomorrow I’ll be taking the girls to Vacation Bible School in the mornings for a week. Three friends of mine are members there and two of them will be teaching Emma’s class so I’m feeling pretty good about it. It’s at a Baptist church and we are not Baptist but it’s a pretty laid back church and the three women I know that go there are all really great people which says a lot about the type of church it is.

I’m so excited about my three hours of freedom tomorrow. I have no idea what I’ll do with myself but it will be wonderful! I’m feeling really good and happy about my life today. Oh, and did I mention the girls are both taking a late nap? Yep, life is good.

(Sorry, Stephen, if you’re reading, I realize this is another boring post.)