Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve and the Elves delivered new PJ's while we were at church.

Almond Roca Secret

So here's the secret to our Family Tradition...

1/2 cup almonds chopped and sprinkled on a baking sheet (pizza pan works great)

1 8oz. Hershey Bar with Almonds grated then sprinkled on top of the almonds

1 lb. salted butter

2 cups sugar

Stir constantly over medium heat.

It gets to the "fluffy" stage ... keep stirring!

It gets to the oily stage ... keep stirring!

at 300 drain off oil and pour over chocolate.

Spread toffee evenly over chocolate (the back of a stainless steel spoon works well)

While the toffee is HOT ...

sprinkle 1 8oz. grated Hershey Bar with Almonds on top of toffee.

sprinkle 1/2 cup chopped almonds on the chocolate.

Let cool until chocolate had hardened back up.

Crack using a sharp knife!

Enjoy! mmmmmmmm

20 batches done 1 to go!

We're ready for CHRISTMAS!

Christmas Fun

We enjoyed celebrating the Christmas season by decorating Gingerbread Houses with our friends the Richards.

There was plenty of candy to decorate with and eat.

They truly are works of art!

Aren't they a cute group of kids? So thankful for our friendship.

Christmas Traditions

Let the traditions begin!

We've grated 21 pounds of Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Almonds candy bars, chopped 9 pounds of Almonds, have 20 pounds of Sugar and 21 pounds of Butter all ready to go. You guessed it... we're prepared to make the famous "Zeek Family Christmas Almond Roca!" It's a good thing we only do this once a year.

The Girls decorated their Gingerbread House together. It's so nice that they can do it all by themselves including the clean-up!

Good Job Shari & Molly!

First Snow

We woke up this morning to snow!

The girls got busy making the first snowman of the season.

Thanksgiving

We continued our Thanksgiving traditions in Valley Center at "The Double-Wide" with quad riding, plenty of great food, games and good fun!

Everything was perfect with the exception of one missing food item. I always make sausage balls and apple pie, but apparently that's not enough anymore.... now everybody wants the breakfast "sausage ring" to be part of the tradition as well. No one had a problem letting me know that Thanksgiving was nearly "ruined" because of my failure to make the beloved "sausage ring." I knew it had become an Easter and Christmas staple but was not aware of the expectation for Thanksgiving! I wonder what would happen if I failed to make Toffee at Christmas??? We'll see if they all treat me right. I love my family.

There's so much to be thankful for..... God is good!

We Love Catalina

We're off to a weekend at one of our favorite places....Campus by the Sea on Catalina Island

Brandon is right on time to pick us up!

The guys start the process of preparing to scuba dive for lobster. There is a particular science to this I've learned. It begins with baiting the hoop nets.

Then it's time to take the baited nets out and set them to lure the bugs out from their rocks.

We all go out on the boat in the dark on this part of the adventure.

Four nets are ready to be placed in strategic locations.

Now it's time to begin the process of "suiting up"

Finally everyone is ready. The hunt is on!!! It was great for me to see how long this whole process takes so I don't worry when I haven't heard from anyone for hours.... Last time Zeek went diving "I had him trapped in some ship wreck at the bottom of the sea." Now I know what it's really like.

A successful trip for all. Check out Zeek's Tail!

The smaller of the two is just legal size. He's got quite a tail doesn't he?

We went on a boat run to Avalon and came across this pod of over 100 dolphin. It was so much fun. They swam along side us for quite a while.

The girls thought it was "probably the coolest thing they'd ever seen in their lives."

Scuba diving round two. Zeek and Brandon found a little octopus who played around with them for a while.

Kate, Shari & Molly went for a swim and played in the water for the afternoon.

Shari collected a few hermit crab friends, but is always sure to set them free.

All good things must come to an end. We had a great weekend!

Thanks to all our friends on "The Island." We appreciate you and love our visits. Looking forward to camp this summer.