Mowing, Decorating and Candy Making

Jackson and Molly work me up bright and early this morning. I waited until 8:00 a.m. and went outside to mow my lawn. Dan and Kara were coming over tonight and I did not want them to be greeted by the jungle that was my lawn. I was able to get the lawn finished in just under 2 hours which allowed me to avoid mowing in the heat of the day. The yard looked good and mowing went fairly well except when I was stung by a yellow jacket on my left wrist. I will have to be careful next time I mow.

After a quick shower Becks and I headed to church to help decorate for Vacation Bible School that begins on Sunday night. I built “camp fires” in each of the classrooms, helped Charlotte decorate her room, assembled the registration tent and helped apply cowboy stickers to the hallways. We were able to finish decorating by 12:00 p.m. and everything looked really good.

At 5:30 p.m. Dan, Kara, Steve and Charlotte arrived at the house for dinner. I made burgers on the grill (they were huge and tasty) along with a salad and baked beans. While dinner was cooking Dan, Kara and Charlotte shelled pecans. The plan was that once dinner was finished we would make the pralines for the Vacation Bible School volunteers. We needed 4 ½ cups and have more than enough in the bag I collected from Mr. Wilder’s yard.

After dinner we started making the pralines. None of us had ever made them before and we had no idea what we were doing. Cooking the sugar/cream combination over medium heat took forever and eventually Dan and Kara had to head home because it was getting late. I finished watching the pot boil and when it reached the magical 245 degrees Fahrenheit (hard ball temperature?) I scooped the pralines out onto parchment paper. I hope the pralines turn out okay. Overall, it was a fun night and we had a good time hanging out with Dan and Kara!