Homemade Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies

Yum, who doesn't love girl scout cookies? This week I get to cross 'thin mints' off my list of recipes to try. This recipe is very delicious and tastes close to the real cookie. Yum yum.

The recipe we used can be found here.

You will need:

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon mint extract
chocolate candy coating (we used dark chocolate mint, yum!)

The how to:
1. Beat butter until creamy. Add the sugar and beat until well mixed. Beat in egg and mint extract.
2. Sift flour, cocoa, and salt together in bowl. Add flour mixture slowly into the creamed mixture and beat until well mixed.
3. Divide dough in half. On a lightly floured surface roll dough into two 1 1/2 inch diameter cylinders. Wrap each in waxed paper and refrigerate for about an hour. Then put into the freezer for half an hour or so.
4. Preheat oven to 350. Slice cookies into 1/4 inch pieces and bake 10 to 12 minutes. We baked ours until they were nice and crunchy.
5. Melt chocolate (you can add mint extract to your melted chocolate if you desire) and frost cookies, dip cookies, or drizzle chocolate over cookies - whichever you prefer. Place on waxed paper to harden.

So photogenic!

Happy Birthday Kate!!

The sisters weren't complete until this little bundle arrived

Happy Birthday to the little sister! Best for last! Wishing you many many more fond sister memories to come! I love you!

Wait! Get back here, we're having our picture taken!!

Sisters all grown up :)

Employed Officially

After the end of the summer I began looking for work closer to home to be able to accommodate watching foster children. I was hoping to find a family to nanny for that would allow me to bring another child to work, or have their child watched at my house. That did not prove successful! In October I reluctantly decided to pursue other options. I was hired mid October (pending background clearances) for a position as a therapeutic support staff (TSS), and now 2 months later (after the longest hiring process I've experienced) I am now finally an official employee. As a TSS I will be responsible for implementing a behavioral treatment plan for children with special behavioral challenges, cognitive disabilities, and children on the autism spectrum. Which means I will be working one-on-one with kids to teach new skills and shaping behaviors to a desired outcome. I'm really excited about this position, but not about the part that means I will have to put our foster kids in daycare or hire a babysitter. I wanted to give our foster kids as much stability as possible, and putting them in daycare is the furthest thing from what I had envisioned. But this is a job I will really enjoy and will also give me a lot of new skills that will be useful for working with foster children, so it's hard to be too discouraged about it.

On another note, one day I could not find Smokie anywhere. Where did he go? This is what happens when we do not make our bed.