Great Book

We got up nice and early, well, ok, not that early, on Saturday morning to go pick up a couple of copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Then we proceded to spend most of the day reading it, then we got up on Sunday and read the rest of it. It was soooooo good! I continue to be amazed at how JK Rowling created this whole world in her head, including history several hundred years into the past, and development of very minor characters, then weaved it all together into this cool story. That's all I'll say about it, in case some of you haven't finished this book, or ever plan to read the series. I highly recommend reading the series, if you haven't, by the way... It's a great story of good vs. evil, hate vs. love, etc. that is along the same lines as CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This series is a little more "kid" oriented than Lord of the Rings, but the books grow up in style and theme as the characters grow up, which is what got all of us adults hooked, I think. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go ahead and reread this book as soon as I finish one of my other books, it was that good!

Miscellaneous Ramblings

I really don't have anything to write about, so I'll just randomly muse on a few subjects and post a picture of something. Sound good? Good.

Less than three days to go until the last Harry Potter book comes out! I'm sooooo excited! We're actually taking the weekend off from traveling to my mom's house to work on stuff there so we can stay home and read the book. Don't worry, I won't put any spoilers on the blog. I'm still trying to convince Jeff that we need to buy two copies of the book so we can read it at the same time and finish at about the same time and discuss. I read book six first last time, and I just couldn't keep my mouth shut about the end of that one and I was just about bursting when he finally finished it a few days later. Luckily, my boss also read the book over the weekend, so there was some small relief with being able to discuss the outcome with him while I waited for Jeff to finish.

We need a weekend off, anyway. We have been up there every weekend since she passed away to work on getting the house cleaned out. It's going pretty well - we have gone through almost everything and all of us kids have taken what we each want to keep, and we've given a lot of other items away, and started marking the rest for garage sale. We helped my brother, Dan, find a duplex to move to early next month. It's actually really close to my friend, Kansas', parent's house. Maybe they can keep an eye on him for us. LOL There's a link to her blog over on my sidebar. And since I'm rambling, Happy Birthday, Kansas! The big 3-0!

It's officially summer here now. It's been 90+ for a few days in a row, and it hasn't rained for a while. So, here's a summery picture of my boys for you all to enjoy. It's a page from the calendar I made for our mothers this year. Enjoy!

C is for Cookie

Ok, here's the chocolate chip cookie recipe I promised you all a while back. It comes from the cookbook that came with our oven, and every time we give someone else the recipe, it fails. So, it seems that there's something magical about our oven that seems to turn out these wonderfully yummy things. I suspect it's the fact that it's a convection oven, and everyone we give the recipe to uses non-convection ovens to make them. It's much more fun to claim that we have a magical realm surrounding our oven. :)


Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies
makes 20 cookies

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 sticks (170g) unsalted butter, melted
1 Cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 Cup granulated white sugar
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 Cups chocolate morsels (we usually use 50%-70% dark chocolate, which makes for a more grown up flavor)

Preheat oven to 330 deg F.

Grease two cookie sheets.

Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda in a medium sized bowl.

Combine the melted butter and sugars in a large bowl and mix in the egg, extra yolk and vanilla extract.

Add the dry ingredients and chocolate and stir until just combined.

Divide the dough into 20 even sized pieces and roll into balls. Place evenly on two cookie sheets. Don't flatten the dough balls as they will form cookies that are soft and chewy in the middle.

Bake for 12-17 minutes and allow to cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

The cookies should be ooie gooie in the middle when they're done, and crispy around the edges. If you take them off the tray too soon, they tend to deflate a bit and start to fall through the cooling rack, so make sure you let them rest on the tray for the full five minutes.