Let the Cooking Classes Begin!

On the way home from church today, I told Tori that it was time for her to start learning how to prepare meals other than Top Ramen, and that by the time she's 12 I want her to be in charge of making the family meal a couple of times a week.  I never really learned how to cook while I was growing up, since my mom worked and we ate a lot of T.V. dinners and Prego.  So I decided that if I want her to learn, I need to start making a more concerted effort to teach her.  During the week, we're usually in such a rush for dinner that I'm too impatient to take the time to teach much, so we figured that Sundays would be a good day to have some mommy-daughter cooking classes. :)  I also thought it would be fun to keep track of our lessons.  Today's menu included:

-Spinach and Tomato Tortellini  from allrecipes.  Added some chicken and some cooking wine and adjusted the spices, and it was DELICIOUS!
-Olive Garden Breadsticks
-Green salad
-Grape juice
-Four layer Black Forest Cherry Cake

One of these days, I'm going to buy a nice camera and figure out how to take beautiful pictures of all of this food.  For now, we at least got a not-so-good picture of the cake:

 We went for "rustic" looking rather than bothering with flawlessness! :)  Everything was delicious and Tori and I had some quality one-on-one time.  She's a great little student, takes everything very seriously, and did a great job.  Her favorite part was shaving the chocolate for the cake and putting the cake together.

While I'm doing a blog post I may as well do a weekly update.  This week most of our news is about school.  Todd found out that his diligent studying and sheer genius have earned him two more scholarships for next semester, taking a load off our shoulders to the tune of $3,200!  I'm so proud of him and how hard he has worked for this degree.  This week was also conferences for the kids.  I don't have Tori's conference until tomorrow, but Aaron's went well.  His teacher said that he has a very loving heart and that he has improved tremendously since the beginning of the year.

Other than school stuff, we just had a normal week.  Todd and I won tickets to see the last Twilight movie in the theater on Thursday night, and that was fun.  We won the tickets from our pediatric dentist, who's also in our ward, so a lot of the people at the theater were also members of our ward or the neighboring wards.  It felt almost like a ward activity at a movie theater!

That big, wonderful meal is starting to hit me and I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard.  Probably best to end the post before that happens!