On the Sunday Liz was here, she treated me to an afternoon off. She and Amelia did all the cooking and washing up, and even entertained the kids for a while by baking cookies with them. What a super nice treat. The original plan was to go to the grocery store with Amelia and Simon and have a little adventure trying to figure out what the ingredients they needed were called, and see what things we have that they don't, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the drive back from Ballenberg Open Air museum took much longer than they had planned on, and the stores were all closed before they got here.
So they went shopping in our food storage instead, and ended up making delicious chicken noodle soup. With homemade noodles, I might add. Her recipe is just slightly different than the one I make, and I liked the extra flavor the carrots and herbs that she used gave to the soup. I will have to keep that in mind the next time I make it. Of course, any meal you don't have to cook yourself always tastes extra delicious to us moms. 🙂
Liz had brought us tons of full little Halloween and Thanksgiving treats and decorations, knowing that we can't really get those kinds of things here. She and Amelia set the table really fancy and placed a treat bag on each of our plates filled with Halloween stickers and Halloween peeps! I LOVE peeps, and was so excited to see them grinning back at me in all their orange sugar gorgeousness. (There were pumpkins and ghosts.) There were also adorable felt cat and witches masks, as well as a few turkey hats for later. And did I mention the 3 HUGE bags of candy corns she brought over? The kids seriously thought they had died and gone to heaven. A lot of American stuff they don't miss, because they have never lived there and so don't know that it even exists. But thanks to their papa, they know about candy corns and crave them just as much as he does. We have been doling them out in increments of 2-3 ever since, and still have a healthy stash leftover to make the turkey cookies at Thanksgiving like we did last year.
The chocolate chips cookies she and the kids made for dessert were the.best.ever! Chris says the next time they get our name for Christmas, all we want is the secret recipe! :) He ate so many, he literally got a stomach ache, they were that good. I had to set aside a few for the children for the next day.
Liz is definitely a very fun Aunt, and the kids will remember this visit for a very long time. I am so glad she and Simon could come over and make these memories with us.