Chocolate Chip Cookies

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to bake. I'm not much of a cook (and trust me there's a big difference). Lately my old chocolate chip cookie recipe has been failing horribly. I found a recipe online that looked promising. So I tried it out and HOLY COW AMAZING! These cookies could easily pass for bakery bought. They're big, chewy, and have tons of chocolate chips. I like this recipe so much that I wanted to share.

Big, Fat, Chewy, Chocolate Chip Cookies (with this name who wouldn't want to try it out?)

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt. Set aside.
2. Cream together melted butter, and both sugars until well blended. Beat in vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in dry ingredients until just blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes. Until dough is stiff.
3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease cookie sheet. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto prepared cookie sheet about 3 inches apart.
4. Bake for 15-19 minutes or until edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

*hint the top of the cookies will appear slightly uncooked when you pull them out but will harden up a little while they are cooling. Yields 15-18 cookies.

Wow!

As of today Madi is 9 months old! I can't believe that my baby is so close to being a one year old!! Here are some pictures of when Madi was first born and some pictures of now.

Over the Holidays

Christmas is always an exciting time of year. This year even more so because we have Madilyn to celebrate with. She wasn't that interested in the whole unwrapping gifts thing but she did like to play with the paper and boxes afterword.
We celebrated Christmas in Delta this year with my family. We opened presents a day early because my dad had to work Christmas morning. It was fun watching all the kids play with their new toys and became addicted to my mom's new Wii.
The next day (Christmas day) we just hung around Delta, played games and ate junk food. We also took a drive out to Sunstone Knoll to collect rocks.
Then Saturday we headed over to Cedar City. It was a rush trip but still fun (if you ignore the fact that both Aaron and I were coming down with the dreaded GongBoo!). We visted with my grandma, had lunch with a bunch of friends at Brad's (Yum!), and then hung out with some more friends for a little bit before heading back to Delta.
We didn't really do anything for New Year's. Aaron wasn't feeling the best so we stayed home, ate pizza, and played Scrabble.
That about sums up our holidays! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and good luck in 2010!! (Does anyone know what happened to 2009?)

Too soon!

I was folding laundry in Madi's room and turn around to see what she was so happy about. And there she is standing up! What the HECK! I am so not ready for this!! Here is a quick clip I took before I lowered her crib....again.

More?!!

This clip is cute and funny!

Change of Scenery

It's a little after 1am and I'm bored...but not sleepy. So I've decided to change the background on our blog. And since I'm posting something I might as well include some pictures of Madilyn. I can't believe she's already 8 months old! I used to think that people who talked about time flying by were weird. But now I totally get!! It really does fly!

Small update.

Here is a video clip of Madi clapping. The last 10 seconds or so are the best. Sorry I don't know how to video edit or you wouldn't have to watch the whole 30 some odd seconds! But really its not that bad!

Among other things Madi can:

Roll both ways ( she's been doing this for awhile now)

Army crawl (she can get around pretty well and is really close to the real thing)

Sit up

Can say mamamama, dadadadada and babababababa.

She has one tooth with another one trying to pop up.

She loves eating from her highchair, especially when she gets to feed herself.

She has great balance and can stand with assistance and loves to walk around, also with assistance (duh!)

She had a doctors appointment and as of today she weighs 14.1 pounds and is 25 inches long. She's in the 5th percentile for her age which is much better than her last appointment when she didn't even make the charts! Talk about a slow grower, but at least she's healthy!!