Cookies and Darts and Cold, Oh My!

I'm a terrible blogger.

I promise to be better.  Even when stupid work and life get in the way of my precious blogging time.

But this is the 100th blog post, so Happy 100, Blog!

Updates:

We had a fabulous time in Pittsburgh.  I have bunch of side stories, but here are the highlights: I totally rocked the bake-off (although Amy did make a good showing).  I made my famous banana bread with a streusel topping, Peanutbutter Bombs as my cookie entry and classic Whoopie Pies.  It was the first time for the Whoopie Pies and they were awesome.  Recipes will begin to be posted in the Cookie Princess blog tomorrow (yup, Kate--that's a promise).

Gooey but delicious

Our Dart Battle Royale was hilarious.  In the past we'd done teams, but this one was really an every man for himself situation.  There were some alliances, but at one point my niece, Elyse, encouraged anarchy.  When little Abi said, "I thought you were on my team," Elyse responded, "There are no teams!"  Hilarious.

Dave & Nate using the "I'll just sit here and shoot whoever I can see" strategy

JR is street, yo

Aidan decided the tree-stand method might be the best attack mode

We even gave my mom a little single shot Derringer-style dart gun.  She had to wait until someone else hit her to reload though.

But the best is the machine gun.  And the fact that my 4-year-old niece took control of that beast immediately.  She couldn't reload it though, so she would hand it to one of the grown-ups (usually Grandpap) and then go around collecting all the ammo.  The gun only held 20 darts, but she would pick up like 50 and bring them all to my dad.  The nice thing about being little was she could go into the battle zone to pick up ammo and rarely got shot.

Power Up

Unloading on Uncle J

Oh, and the Steelers won that weekend.  Also awesome.  Then the Jets beat the Patriots (can't say I'm sad about that).  Then last weekend, the Steelers beat the Jets and now they're going to the Super Bowl.  I'm totally stoked.

Yes we're wearing the same shirt.  No that wasn't planned.  Yes we're awesome.

But then I found out I was living in the arctic.  Seriously, I thought I was going to see penguins outside.  This was the temperature when I went to bed on Sunday night.

And this was when I woke up on Monday morning.

Seriously?  It never got above 0 on Monday.  That's absurd.  So since I really can't complain about the snow (even though we're having storms of 6-10 inches twice a week), I won't hesitate to complain about the cold.  Freakin' cold.  Ug.

Bake Off and Dart Battle

This weekend Dave and I are headed to Pittsburgh to visit my parents.  JR will be there with his daughter and Amy is coming with her family.  It'll be a fun time. 

What's that?  You remember a bake off challenge posed to my sister and I, instigated by my brother?  Why yes, this would be the opportunity to settle the score.  I'm not sure what we're calling it--Baker Death Match seems a little extreme.  but we will have three rounds (cookies, banana bread and baker's choice dessert).

We decided JR had to come up with judging criteria and a scoring sheet since he started all this.  He responded that he would and the judging would consist of all factors, including bribery.  Lucky for me I had already planned on giving Elyse my old laptop.

I'm so winning this bake off.

Additionally, we have a bit of a Nerf dart gun challenge to settle.  I think we have about 300 rounds of ammo and some sort of Nerf blaster for each of us (my parents included).  We had one of these battles last Christmas (2009).  In November 2010, my dad found more rogue darts around the living room.

This isn't the exact one I have, but it's a rotating canister.
And safety glasses?  Really?

Perhaps we should have the bake off after the Nerf challenge.  Between being hopped up on sugar and the possibility of Amy gunning for me from kicking her butt, I may not survive.

And the answer is yes, the adults absolutely have more fun than the kids.