A Message a Day Until Valentine's Day

For the past few years, I have left the kids a message a day from February 1st-14th. I have done inspirational quotes, memes, video messages from relatives, and others. This year, I found some scratch-off hearts at the Dollar Tree, so I decided to use those for my messages. 

I made a big card for each kid and put 14 heart spaces on the paper. I wrote a message on each heart and then covered the message with the scratch-off sticker. 

The kids will scratch off one heart a day until Valentine's Day to receive a message from me. 

4th Annual Carlsie (Dundie) Awards

 

We hosted our 4th Annual Carlsie Awards over Christmas break. This has been a fun annual tradition for our family. We all love The Office, so we decided to have our own yearly award show. Rachel always picks the award categories and the recipients. We have our favorite Chili's copycat recipes and watch one of the Dundie Award shows from The Office. This year we had Texas Cheese fries, chicken/bacon quesadillas, mozzarella sticks, chips and salsa, and skillet cookie cake. There were blue lagoon drinks as well (blue Hawaiian punch and Sprite with gummy sharks). 

Recipe: 

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Melt the butter in an 8-inch cast iron skillet. Remove from heat and add the sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Beat your egg in a bowl and then add it to the pan, mixing well. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt to the pan. Mix well. Add the chocolate chips, being careful not to stir too much so your chips don't melt. 

Bake 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. Top with ice cream.