Yesterday's hike

My daughter climbing the fence


I took the kids on a hike yesterday. My husband can’t hike anymore because he has a bad knee. We packed up a little picnic after church and my sweet hubby dropped us off at the trail head. This was going to a new set of trails I had found the other day. We had our two little schnauzer dogs along too. We had to climb over a couple of fences, and it was getting a little hot out, but we made it to the creek just above a waterfall and had our lunch on the bank of the creek where it was nice and cool. One of our dogs, Seamus cooled off by standing in the creek the whole time!

See, there are green places in Utah our lovely desert state!

We were only halfway up the mountain, but the view was great! Here's my kids, and my daughter and me.

The other day I found an idea for a cookie plate, so the kids and I headed to our local second hand store (D.I.) and we found 2 plates and 2 candlesticks and we hot glued them together and Viola!

Yesterday morning before church my son helped me make these yummy cookies. We found the recipe on The Oatmeal Cookie Blog .

This is a fun recipe to make and it made the house smell yummy! There are no eggs in this cookie too.

XXX Strawberry Cookies

½ cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

Cream these together in a mixer.

½ cup sliced fresh strawberries

3 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon sugar

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Cook these ingredients in a small pan, stirring and crushing until evenly read. I used my potato masher. Let cool.

2 cups oatmeal

*1/2 cup white chocolate chips (I would use 1 cup)

1 cup finely ground Nilla Wafer cookies (I put mine in the blender)

¾ cup flour (next time I’m going to use 1 cup)

¾ cup dehydrated strawberries (I cut mine up into little pieces)

Add the strawberries mixture to the creamed mixture and mix well. Add the dry ingredients. I split the dough here into two bowls and added ½ cup white chocolate chips to one and ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips to the other. Drop onto cookie sheets, about 2 inches apart and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. (I baked mine for 13 minutes.) Remove from oven and let cool for 2 minutes. Then place cookies on wire racks.

Here's some more pictures from our hike. There were lots of wildflowers to see! I know, and in the desert! I wish I could share the smells too!