040 ~ Treats

Sunday, November 28, 2010

(almost made it...)

Saturday Becca made her first batch of....

Rice Krispies Treats!

And also on Saturday...

Jessi made her first batch...

and second batch of...

Good Old Fashioned Fudge!

Here are close-ups of the fudge, above - 

and the Rice Krispies Treats, below.

It was quite the day for both of them!

They both have been wanting to make some sort of simple dessert for quite some time now.  CJ however, has been doing lots of baking, so there have been more than enough treats around here lately!  For first-timers, on their own, more or less, the goodies turned out fairly well.  As the girls gain confidence I'm sure we'll see more of this.  Most of their experiences in the kitchen thus far have been related to meal-making rather than snacks and treats.  We had a few minor snafus... Becca's mixture was cooling faster than she could get it all mixed together - but we fixed that.  Jessi's first batch of fudge was burnt so we set it aside and started over.  Later she used the slightly burnt batch to create a very rich hot chocolate for everyone playing Monopoly - Then and Now version - that night. :)

I think I've had more than enough sweets for quite awhile now!  ;-)

It is quite a treat for me to see these two maturing more each day!  They are my babies!  The very last kids I gave birth to... identical girls from a set of quadruplets, the other two being identical boys of which only one survived.  As much as any of my surviving babies, these three owe their lives to Jehovah God.  So many things went wrong during the pregnancy that doctors were amazed we had any survivors at all!

They are not unscathed: both girls had holes in their hearts at birth (fortunately they closed on their own without surgery) and both girls have congenital Arnold Chiari Malformations (an issue with how their brain stems and spinal cords are formed).  Their early childhood was filled with doctor visits, hospital stays, and numerous therapies!  For the first six years, right up until my injuries (related to domestic violence) left me unable to do so, I learned and applied many therapies upon both girls.  Without me doing that we would have had to travel an hour one way, daily, in order to do all that was needed for each of them.  With four other children and their special needs it just wasn't possible to spend 2 hours on the road and 2 hours in therapy sessions plus do all that was needed for the other four kids!  Even with homeschooling most of them, which I did for a number of years ~ until forced to put them in public school during and after our acrimonious custody battle in court ~ there were so many hours of therapies needed by all the kids it just wasn't practical to spend 4 hours away from home every single day!  Most of their therapists were very willing to teach me what they needed.  We would go in once a month to check on progress and make a few changes to what I was doing with them at home.  It worked quite well until things with their dad got way out of control. :(  To this day he still doesn't accept that any of our kids had or still have any special needs... even after the judge ordered full medical evaluations on each of them and the results not only proved they did have all that I had said they had, it found MORE issues for us to deal with (some of those really should have been caught long before this!).  I still remember the judge telling him that he needed to make time to get to know his kids' health conditions better if he was going to be a good parent to them.  Too bad it didn't make any difference as far as he was concerned. :(  But, you know, even with all they had to struggle with I'm very proud of how far these two girls have come!  They may start off slow but once they get going...

look out!!!

It is such a treat to see how far they've come...

and to watch how far they'll go!!!