Summer of Fun: When Life Moves By In a Blur, There’s Always Time for Pie

Oh my goodness, I can’t believe more than a week has passed since I last posted. I guess asking where the time goes is definitely something worth asking in this instance.

Time is flying by, as it always does when the boys are here. It seems like we never have enough time together, although it never does, does it?

It has always amazed me that once I had kids just how fast time started moving. If I blink, they’re doing something new or different and here I thought they never sat still as toddlers. Whew, the teenage years are much faster moving or so it seems.

They want to run here, go there, have this friend over, go to that friends house, visit this, go see that, oh and then add a girlfriend into the mix and things get just a bit more crazy!

It’s all okay. This is why we raise kids, right? We raise them to be independent from us; we raise them to be confident and sure; we raise them so they can become fully functioning adults who love boldly and charge after their own dreams. The trouble is then we have to learn to live with the success of those things. It’s a struggle some days, isn’t it?

This is what we do as parents.

That of course to say it doesn’t mean we have to like it. Oh no. It’s difficult at times, watching our kids set out on their own, making decisions we pray will work out, knowing they’re going to fall and wondering if we can still be there to catch them (if they still want us to catch them) or a least pick them up, dust them off and send them on their way once again. Laying in bed at night knowing they’re out there making choices and praying what we’ve taught them speaks louder than the world.

Yes, this is why we raise them. I can tell you, this seems a lot harder then when they were small.

But, life continues to move forward and all we can do is take another step, move in any direction and keep loving them with all we are.

The dynamics are changing around here but we’re doing okay, and we’ve had some fun stuff going on.

The 4th was fantastic!! Well fantastic that is until I got the call from my oldest that he needed to go the ER. You can bet I was making my apologies to my family at the BBQ and in the car in less than a flash!

To say I had some heart pounding nerves going on would be an understatement.

We arrived at the hospital and I watched as my son answered every question, asked really good questions and was completely calm during the whole process. I, on the other hand, was a hot mess even if it wasn’t showing on the outside!

It’s weird seeing your baby do all the grown up things…holy crap, when did he become such an adult?!!

Long story short, he will need to go through further testing and a surgery to determine what exactly is going on. Just say a little prayer for him.

The rest of it is a blur. So many things going on and nothing all at the same time. We spent much of the week hanging out around the house. The boys have a new gaming system so there was that. I love watching them as they maneuver through the games and show me all the ‘cool’ stuff they can do. It can be difficult to connect with our kids as they get older and I, for one, believe sometimes the best way to connect is to enter their world. Experience things they like to do. Gaming for us is one way I enter their world and get to know them on their turf. It’s not that bad, really. Hey, they even let me try to play and then laugh at me as I struggle with my inability to work all the buttons. They make it look SOOOO easy!

Beyond that, we did a lot of every day stuff: cleaning, laundry, taking the trash out, dishes, taking them here and there, visiting with nana, and just enjoying the simple pleasures of summer like swimming and evening walks.

While we’ve been extremely busy, and haven’t had much success in pulling off our summer of fun activities 😦 (life happens and well sometimes there are other things that need to be done) thankfully, it hasn’t been a complete wash, we did manage to do some baking!! YUM!

I found a peanut butter pie recipe that is to die for over at Flippin’ Delicious !! It was an absolute success here and I think you’re going to enjoy it too!

I made a few alterations to the original recipe because of my, “I don’t like chocolate”, issue. Yes, you read correctly, I DO NOT like chocolate! ICK!

You can find the original recipe HERE which has the crust made out of crushed oreos and then you can see our version below.

As I was strolling through the grocery looking for something else I could use for the crust, I happened to notice some gluten free peanut butter cookie dough!! UM, YES!!

Picked that simple little package of goodness up and put it in the buggy!!

From there, the process was easy peesy lemon squeezy.

First up, lay the cookie dough chunks in the bottom of a pie plate and pat them down into the shape of the plate (be sure to come up the edges just bit so you have an edge for your pie). Then bake the cookies. I started checking the cookie crust at the lowest time they were supposed to bake as individual cookies (8 minutes) and then checked about every minute or two until it looked baked through. In our oven it took about 13 minutes.

Let that beautiful cookie crust cool completely. Here’s a little tip for you. I don’t own a cooling rack *gasp* *choke* oh the horror 🙂

So what I do is, lay two of my wooden spoons (they’re flat not round) down on the counter and set whatever I need to cool on top of the spoons. The spoons keep whatever you want to cool up off its bottom and allows air to circulate underneath just like a cooling rack!! Oh what a great tip!!!

While the cookie crust is cooling you’re going to begin mixing up the filling.

First, grab the heavy whipping cream out of the fridge. It needs to be cold, cold, cold. Whip it until it forms soft peaks and then set it aside ( I put it in the fridge so it stayed firm)

Next you’re going to want to mix the cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, butter and vanilla extract together in a new bowl. I’m so glad I have two bowls for my Kitchen Aide mixer – thanks grandma for passing that beautiful piece of kitchen equipment down to me!

Once you have everything good and mixed together, go grab that whipping cream from the fridge and fold it into the peanut butter mixture. Oh it’s starting to look soooo good!!!

Now it’s time to fill that beautiful cookie crust we made earlier and that has completely cooled. Oh my mouth is starting to water!! I can all most taste it already. Oh, wait! It was my son you has already tasted it 🙂

OK, now that we’ve licked the beaters, lets fill the pie shell, shall we?

Once the shell is full of every last morsel of goodness and every little piece of goodness has been scraped from the bowl. Set it in the fridge to set. It didn’t take long. I promise!

Once it’s set, grab some forks, plates, and whip topping and dig in!!! YUM!!