Mom & I (circa 1970)

 In 2000 I found out that I was high-risk for both breast and ovarian cancer. It was during this time that I felt alone and dealing with a subject not many people understood. Thankfully I found FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered. FORCE helped me connect with other women that were going thru the same issues. To give my thanks I’m doing an online fundraiser. Please click on this link to learn more about FORCE, my involvement with the organization and/or to donate. I’d love your help.  You can make a difference.

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We traveled to Branson, MO for a little R&R over the Labor Day weekend.  It had been years since we (suit and I) had been there, and this was a first for our boys.  Although this trip had tentatively been planned for several month we hadn’t made any decisions about what we were going to do once we got there.  We wanted to wing it.  We had coordinated this trip so we could make a stop to see the newest addition to the family, little Baby Anna, our niece (who by the way is as sweet as could be!).  After snuggling with her for a few hours we made our way to Branson.  Since we were really only going to have one full day here we decided to get the most for our money and time we should go to Silver Dollar City for the day. 

I was a little concerned, wondering if the boys were too old for this park and wondering if they had enough to keep us entertained for the day.  I’m happy to say that Silver Dollar City didn’t disappoint.  We started the day by going thru Marvel Cave.  It was very cool, both literally and figuratively.  And, yes there were bats.  We had to travel thru a couple of pretty tight spots and in one section the ceiling was pretty low.  Hanging from this low ceiling was a tiny little bat.  Had I not seen him I definetly could have hit him with my head.  What surprised me was he actually kind of cute!   Tiny little thing, tiny little eyes.  When we got done with the cave we toured the rest of the park.  We partaked in eating lots of different foods and sampling lot of candy.  Salt water taffy is now a new fav of our families. 

That evening we went out to dinner and ran into one of my college roommates who I hadn’t seen for 18 years.  Turned out her husband is a facebook friend of one of my friends.  Such a small world! 

Unfortunately I only have one photo that covers this weekend.  We went low tech thanks to my forgetting our camera and our unit not having internet connection.  I have to say it was a nice relief. 

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Found a new recipe at Allrecipes.com called Snow Flake Cocoa which was a huge hit at our annual Halloween bonfire last night.  Although I did decide to change the name to Hot [White] Chocolate.  If I would have told everyone I had made some Snow Flake Cocoa they would have said, “What?”.  So I decided to avoid any confusion and give it a more descriptive name.  Speaking for all of my neighbors, we have decided to give this recipe a rating of five stars. (I can speak for them since they drank my entire batch!)  I will definately be making this again and look forward to tweaking it to see what other flavors we can come up with.  Although you could just follow the link above I’m going to repost it here to make things a little easier on you.  I’m also going to share the tips I learned throughout the night.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups whipping cream
6 cups milk
1teaspoon vanilla
1 (12 oz) package white chocolate chips

OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS:
whipped cream
candy canes or peppermint pieces
bailey’s mint chocolate irish cream
peppermint schnapps

DIRECTIONS:

1. Stir together the whipping cream, milk, vanilla and white chocolate chips in slow cooker,
2. Cover and cook on low for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, shirring occasionally, until mixture is hot and chocolate chips are melted.  Stir again before serving.  Garnish with whipped cream, candy and/or liquor as desired.

I doubled the recipe which fit perfectly in my 6 qt slow cooker.  The initial batch did take 2 1/2 hours to melt the chocolate chips, with multiple stirs.  Once melted I filled a 3 litre thermos with the hot chocolate, leavng a small amount in the slow cooker.  Since I had picked up a few more bags of white chocolate chips I decided to go ahead and add one more batch to the slow cooker.  Since it had been on for 2 1/2 hours this second batch melted the chocolate much faster.  Turned out by the time we had emptied the first thermos full the second batch was ready to go!  

Oh, and by the way, I highly recommend adding the Baileys Mint Chocolate Irish Cream.  It was soooo good!  The whipped cream and one small peppermint piece just topped it all off.  YUM!

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