German Chocolate anyone?

Every year at work we pull someones name out of a "hat" and then we put together all the things for their birthday (cake, card, flowers). This year I pulled Karen's name out of the hat. Karen's favorite kind of cake just so happens to be German Chocolate. If you've ever had a homemade German Chocolate cake you will know that the ones they sell in the store are not an acceptable substitute. I've never really been a huge fan of coconut, but this cake made me forget that all together; kind of like those girl scout cookies with the coconut, they are my favorite!

Here is the link to the recipe I followed:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2005/09/german_chocolat_1.html

So, I don't recall ever having made a cake from scratch, they have these ones that come in a box that are way easier nowadays, and they don't create nearly as many dirty dishes. But, I must say this cake was certainly worth the effort and might just have me rethinking the whole boxed cake thing. The fact that the recipe looked like it had so many steps didn't really bother me, I've always been pretty good about following directions, it's when I have to improvise that recipes go wrong, hence I'm much better at baking then cooking. It was a long night but well worth it, here are my posts from facebook while baking the cake (did I forget to mention I made this cake on the hottest day ever recorded in Seattle). Notice the time I started and finished this thing... yikes!

Amy Davis is toasting coconut and pecans... it's way to hot for this... July 29 at 6:34pm

Amy Davis isn't sure how to make things "room temperature"... everything is just hot... the temp in my kitchen is 88.8 degrees.... not exactly room temperature for baking. July 29 at 7:25pm ·

Amy Davis has all the pieces to the cake done... now for them to cool down so I can put it all together. :) July 29 at 10:03pm ·

Amy Davis doesn't think the icing will ever be room temperature enough to ice with... ugh. I put it in the fridge, hopefully that'll help... now I have to figure out how to put the cake in the fridge. July 30 at 1:13am ·

Amy Davis Lets hope it tastes good... but it was so worth making on the hottest day EVER in Seattle. :) July 30 at 1:30am ·

P.S. This cake tasted amazing! There wasn't a piece left at the end of the day other then the two Karen was taking home. Long story short, if you like German Chocolate cake or if you know someone that does; make this cake, it's amazing!

Watermelon, Jello Cake, Water Balloons and Fire(works)

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, and for the second year in a row we decided to host the family at our place for a BBQ and to watch the Fireworks that our neighbors light off (and maybe to light some off as well). I started the day off doing a bit of last minute cleaning, running by the store and attempting to cut the tip of my thumb off. Unintentionally of course, thank goodness for nails that's all I have to say! I suppose there just might be a good reason Dani always takes the knife away from me when I cut potatoes, to bad she wasn't here yet when I was preparing them for the BBQ. No worries though, it'll be awhile before the nail grows out enough to not have a cut there, but it'll heal up fairly well I'm guessing, though I'll probably have to keep a bandaid over it for awhile to keep from catching things on it.

We had said, show up between 3 and 4pm, being my family the first person got here around 4pm and they trickled in from there. In the end we had nine people here including ourselves, nothing huge but it was great having people over to celebrate with. Before people started showing up I had been thinking how the Fourth at my house is nothing like it was at the lake growing up. It's sad to think that we won't have another Fourth at the lake with Grandma, as the lake is just not the same without her there.

After sitting around for awhile talking and catching up with each other we finally decided to start the food! And the Fourth of July food is always the best summer food! We had watermelon, grilled corn, potatoes, hamburgers, hotdogs and various other snacks. Richard grilled up the stuff on the grill while the rest of us proceeded to dowse each other with water balloons. With as hot as the day was the water felt wonderful!

Following the food we moved out to the front to watch fireworks, and light off a few as well. I'm not big on lighting them off myself, my neighbors do such a good job of it there really isn't a huge point, my neighborhood sounds like a war zone on the 4th. Cassandra brought a few fireworks however so we did have a few to light off. In the process of lighting various things they managed to light my front yard on fire, nothing major but it really did remind us just how dry it is out there. We also had a firework tip over and shoot right into our neighbors yard and start a tiny fire there as well (it also went flying into our yard right at the cars as it spun around launching explosions up and down the street).

All in all it was a fun filled day! I quite enjoyed myself!

The last day in Niagara Falls

For the final day I woke up bright and early, it was the only day I set an alarm and I actually was up before it ever got to go off. I wanted to run down to the Falls to get a couple pictures of the travel bugs I had brought with me with the falls in the background, for some reason I had been forgetting to get the pictures every other time I was down there. We grabbed breakfast at the hotel again and then headed down to the falls for a couple more pictures. After walking back up the hill for the last time we checked out of the hotel.

Next we went to Dufferin Islands, I had been wanting to go and there was a neat sounding multi cache on the islands that I had wanted to do. We went to the islands and wandered off to see what we could find. My tummy wasn't feeling all that well so I wasn't really feeling all that much like caching but we went to the first way point to see what we could find. And what did we find? A frog and that's about it. I did manage to get a couple more bug bites while searching and then I decided that if there were five way points in all and the first one was taking this long that I really didn't want to do this cache, at least not when I had to get to the airport that evening. So we took my travel bug which I needed to place before we left and headed off to find an easier cache that was in the area.

After finding the cache we decided to head towards Niagara-on-the-Lake and see the McFarland House. As I said in one of my previous blogs, I recently read Pride and Prejudice so I found touring a house that would be fairly similar to where the book took place to be pretty fascinating. The house reminded me just how much junk we have nowadays compared to what people had before. Having things like books was a sign of wealth, something that most people didn't have. And to think of being taxed on every closet you have since taxes were done on doors, crazy I tell ya! After touring the house we had tea and strawberry shortcake scones out on the patio, it was quite enjoyable indeed, a very pleasant day and it gave me quite the feeling of being in a different, simpler time.

It was then time to head to the airport and head home. So sad. The border crossing was more of what I had expected each time, there was a line up of cars wanting to get back into the USA. Richard said, "make sure to pick the right lane", and our lane had been moving pretty well until we were about three cars away and then they closed our lane, after a little while they finally had someone come out and direct our lane into the ones on either side, it reminded me of the parting of the sea to watch the cars go back and forth into the lanes next door. We got through the border crossing pretty quick after that and proceeded to the airport to wait around for our plane.

We had another layover in Atlanta, this time it was much shorter, when we were told the gate it turns out we were getting off the plane we were on, to get right back on it when they called for boarding. After getting back on the plane we had just gotten off we had to sit around at the gate for what seemed like forever, one of the landing gauges needed maintenance when we were there and apparently there is quite a bit of paperwork that accompanies fixing anything on a plane. Finally we were in the air and on our way back to Seatac, a little while into the flight I looked out the window and saw lightening in the distance, quite an amazing sight to see! Yet again more awe inspiring views on our trip! Then a few hours later we landed without a problem and drove home. Thankfully I took Monday off so I was able to sleep in and feel rested for the rest of the week!

Yet Another Day of Vacation!

Once again another late morning, but I can't help but think it's way earlier on the west coast and I'm not very good at getting up early there either. We were so late waking up that we missed breakfast at the hotel. We decided to go next door to Smitty's for breakfast, the food was okay but nothing spectacular.

After finally eating we decided to head down and go on the Maid of the Mist tour, if you only have time to do one tour while in Niagara Falls this would be the one I recommend. The boats take you right up to the base of the falls, the wind and mist is incredibly intense. The sheer power of the falls is mind numbing, purely breathtaking, simply amazing, there just aren't enough words to describe it really, I can only imagine how intense it must have been before they started lowering the amount of water that goes over the falls. Once again I'm at a loss of words, the Falls are certainly something amazing to be seen.

We then headed down river and went on the Whirlpool Aerocar, somewhere along the line of the river carving out the canyon it met a much softer material which carved out a large basin area. When there is more water in the river it creates a constant whirlpool, when the river is lower which was the case when we were there it just slowly spins around the basin (or something like that). There is an Aerocar that goes across the river and you get a beautiful view up and down river from the whirlpool as well as a view straight down on the whirlpool basin. The Aerocar was a nice little trip, nothing compared to the Maid of the Mist earlier, but I do believe it was worth doing.

From there we headed back to the hotel, we stopped on the way back at Tim Hortons and I had hot cocoa and a donut. I wish we had these around were we live, they are quite enjoyable little coffee and lunch type places.

Next we headed out to see The Niagara Falls Movie: "Legends and Daredevils" at the IMAX. We got to go over the falls in a barrel, walk a tight rope and the story about Lelawala. I found the Lelawala legend the most fascinating of the whole movie, I've always enjoyed learning about legends of the various tribes native to our lands. The movie was good, though I think it could use a tiny bit of updating someday, it was made in the 80's after all.

On the way back from the IMAX movie we stopped at The Keg for dinner, probably one of the more expensive meals I've had in a VERY long time, but it was very good and it seemed like a good choice of places to have an anniversary dinner. I had a very tasty Teriyaki Steak meal that came with a Caesar salad and then I followed dinner up with a creme brulee. Very tasty and a very good end to a very enjoyable day.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to pack everything up and get some sleep before checking out on Sunday. I decided to attempt to make our 2 checked bags fit in one bag, I managed to get everything to fit and saved us a tiny bit of money. It amazes me that they charge for one checked bag, how do they expect people to go on vacation without needing to check a bag? I mean really?

Happy Anniversary!!!

June 19th: Happy 5 year anniversary to us!

We got a bit of a late start today, Richard woke up at a decent time but I didn't seem to want to get out of bed, I'm guessing it was all that walking yesterday, every bit of me hurts. Richard was a sweet heart and went down to get breakfast for me from the hotel breakfast before they quit feeding us.

We decided to go to New York today, I figured it wasn't a trip to the falls without seeing both sides, everyone kept saying the Canadian side is so much better but I had to see for myself the difference. Turns out everyone was telling me the truth, the Canadian side really does have a much better view. Though I quite enjoyed the park like setting on the New York side, much less commercial feeling. I had a few caches to do on Goat Island which is where we spent most of our time in New York. Most of the caches in around Niagara Falls seem to be earth caches or virtuals, which is probably good since I've been having a horrible time finding the caches that actually require searching. So we headed out to Terrapin Point, collected the required information, took a picture for a couple that I'm guessing were from the south somewhere based on their accent and they took one for us as well. It is pretty amazing to be so close to the water as it plunges over the falls, Gods power at it's finest! Then we went over to Bridal Veil Falls (and the American Falls) and enjoyed the top of them as well.

The park like setting I was talking about is where the next two caches we went searching for were located, the Three Sisters Islands. These islands are tiny little things just off of goat island they were pretty, had a nice little walk and a great view of the river before the falls. One of the caches here (the one that required finding an ammo can), I didn't find, and we searched for quite awhile. I did manage to get a bug bite or two while searching however. The other one was another earth cache so I just needed to figure out some info and take pictures, I can do the picture thing.

After leaving Goat Island we went looking for the Porter House, or at least the foundation of it since it's no longer standing. Judge Augustus Porter was one of the pioneers of Niagara Falls, there was supposed to be a cache located on the foundation but I'm fairly sure it's missing, I can't be THAT blind. Having struck out on another cache that required finding something I decided to try for one more before heading back to Canada. We went to one that was located by a very yummy ice cream place, I had a waffle cone with a scoop of orange/pineapple and a scoop of black cherry. There was a food place there too and I had intended on eating before the ice cream but they didn't seem to want to bother coming to take our order so we gave up and had ice cream with no lunch. I found the cache there fairly easy, I was starting to worry about my cache finding abilities after not finding the last three physical caches I looked for, it has been quite a few months since I did any caching. Back to Canada we go!

Next we headed out to see the Niagara Clock, they have planted different designs around a clock that is actually keeping time, if I remember right they change the design twice a year. Very pretty to see indeed, did I mention there was a cache here too, seems we had a very cache filled day today. From here we headed back to the botanical gardens that were by the butterfly conservatory just to walk the gardens for awhile. The gardens are kept up by the School of Horticulture, very pretty grounds. Walking around here made me think of Pride and Prejudice which I read recently (and watched two versions of the movie), certainly made me feel like I was stepping back to a simpler time for a little while.

So then we went on to do a tiny bit more caching at Great Wolf Lodge, there was actually two caches by here to find but after finding one I really was tired of caching and said "let's forget it and not even bother looking for the other one". Richard being no much of a cacher to start with was more then willing to be done caching for the day. Great Wolf Lodge looks like an amazing place to bring a family, if/when I have kids I think it would be a wonderful place to vacation. So we took our sun burned selves back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and to go watch the fireworks over the falls.

After getting ready we left to go get dinner before heading down to watch the fireworks. We went to Bostons Pizza and I got a small cheeseburger pizza, I felt like trying something different from my regular Hawaiian Pizza. It was pretty good, maybe I should venture out a little more and try new things from time to time. Our waitress took FOREVER to get us our bill, unfortunately as we were leaving the restaurant there was a huge stream of people coming up from the falls, turns out we just missed the fireworks. I was pretty bummed that we missed them but I do believe I'll live. The falls are amazing all lit up at night with the colors constantly changing. Richard found it rather amusing and unnatural that they lit them up at night.

And finally it was back to the hotel with achy feet and a very tired Amy.