Some March 2021 Random Family Fun!

April's Birthday Visit

April wanted to do a girls weekend for her birthday, so she drove up with my mom and we hung out.  We ate at China Star and had shakes from Rocky's.  We shopped at her favorite Dollar Tree, and Hope Avenue (which closed down only a few weeks later), and D.I..  In Vernal we ate at Don Pedro's.  My mom and girls joined April in doing facial masks that foamed, and manicures.  We also had a fun regency tea party and ball.  

We discovered Wiki Wiki Malasadas and LOVED them.  They fill their fresh, soft, sugar-coated donuts with your customized fillings. We got almond joy, Boston creme, mango cream cheese, guava cream cheese, Bavarian cream, chocolate, coconut cream, strawberry cream cheese, key lime... seriously, the flavors go on and on, they have over 20 available.   

We took April to the Mexican Food place in Vernal called Don Pedros.  She and Amara recreated the picture in the lobby so well.

Cooking Challenge Entries

In March we participated in the Marco Polo Lauret Cooking Challenges.  April had issued the challenge of making a family meal for 6 under 10 dollars.  I am such a frugalista that this challenge really excited me.  I wanted to do a full gourmet-style meal and dessert under $10.  

I tried my best and did pretty well.  The hardest part was doing all the math to determine the actual cost of ingredients used such as flour, salt, butter, etc..

For my menu, I served turkey Salisbury steaks smothered in French onion gravy, homemade garlic knots, herb stuffing, spaghetti squash, and broiled asparagus.  For dessert, we made homemade individual banana cream pies. Ahem, it was the pies that put us over the top and brought us a WIN!

The next challenge was issued by us, and Amara was the one who decided what it should be.  We issued the MINI FOOD CHALLENGE! We like to participate in our own challenges, so we decided on a mini picnic.  We had mini hotdogs (little smokies) with homemade mini buns, a mini bowtie pasta salad, mini chopped salad, mini s'mores, and mini lemonade.  The food was so cute!

The s'mores were made with mini marshmallows that we roasted over a little candle and sandwiched between mini fudge striped cookies.

Pi Day Contest Entries

Because of the pandemic restrictions, our library did an online contest for Pi Day.  Amara and I decided to enter a couple pies.  Amara made a cookies and cream Oreo pie.  I made a lattice-topped apple pie.  We both did a great job and we both won!  We got Amazon gift cards!  Truly, I think what gave us the upper-hand was the lighting in our pictures.  So many pictures of people's pies were dark which makes the food look unappealing.  Since judges were not even tasting the pies, it was important to make the pictures look their best.

Other Good Times

We enjoyed roasting marshmallows over a candle so much for our mini food challenge, that the girls would do it almost everyday thereafter until we ran out of marshmallows.

Amara got a cute basket given to her from our friend, Iris, that she put on her bike using zip ties.   We would often help Iris with her chickens when she would go out of town.

My TEAMS for TEENS class continued strong.  We enjoyed playing games with other homeschooled teens.

Amara got into painting nails.  I loved the galaxy nails she did on me.