Endometriosis Awareness, Fireworks, Fish, and Rambutan

I am SOOO far behind posting... These will be short and sweet as a result.

57. Give a gift a month (9/29)

I am super excited to share June's gift of the month with you! For my gift, I purchased two endometriosis awareness bracelets and gave one to D to wear along with me. A very close friend of ours had a complete hysterectomy a little over a year ago at the age of 25. She suffered with endometriosis for so much of her life and after having her first child she so bravely chose to give up the ability to birth any more children in order to end her pain and live a happier, fuller life. She is so strong for sharing her story and I want to do my part to raise awareness about endometriosis in hopes that this information will reach that woman suffering in silence and unaware that she can find help.

Please check out the website for the Endometriosis Foundation of America for more information: http://www.endofound.org/.

Here is the link to Pura Vida bracelets where I purchase our bracelets. $1 of every bracelet purchased goes to the Endometriosis Foundation of America: http://puravidabracelets.com/store/charity/women-causes.html/

61. Dinner/lunch date with friends once a month (9-10/29)

The same night that I gave D her endometriosis bracelet, D, her mommy and I had another fabulous Maggiano's date. We enjoyed our usual fabulous meal followed by some shopping at the Denver Pavilions.

For my July dinner date, I hosted our monthly Bunko night at my house. A group of 12 of us get together once a month to eat, drink, and play Bunko. It is ridiculously enjoyable and if you are lucky you may just walk away with some cash or the themed loser gift (this month was a picnic basket with picnic related goodies stuffed inside). The host provides dinner, drinks, dessert, and the setting to play the game. The dessert that I made was a new recipe: Cheesecake-Topped Brownies. You may have noticed that I missed a month for a new recipe. To be fair, I did make a new recipe in June but didn't actually try my creation so I didn't want to put in up on the blog. I will make up for June's missed recipe by trying out two new recipes one month soon. But I digress... Here are my beauties in the picture below. I thought they were very tasty. Very sweet, but really good. My one complaint was that they were a pain to cut. The cheesecake layer liked to separate from the brownie layer when I was picking them up out of the pan. It was worth the hassle of cutting though.

Here is the recipe that I used found in my All-New Bake Sale Easy Breads cookbook:

Ingredients

1 package fudge brownie mix
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp margarine
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate frosting

Directions
1. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Prepare brownie mix as package directs. Spread into well greased 13x19 inch baking pan.
2. In large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, margarine and cornstarch until fluffy.
3. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk. Add egg and vanilla, beat until smooth. Pour cheesecake mixture evenly over brownie batter.
4. Bake 40 to 45 minutes. Cool. Spread with frosting and cut into bars.

46. Try 10 new interesting foods (8/10)

Yesterday at work I was walking by my co-worker's desk and saw a bag of something sitting there. It was so abnormal and unrecognizable that I had no choice but to stop and ask what it was. She had a bag full of rambutan and longan fruit that her brother brought back for her from Florida. Rambutan and longan are both tropical fruits primarily found in Asia. When she asked if I wanted to try them I totally jumped on it with full blown enthusiasm. You eat rambutan and longan by peeling off the outer skin and eating around the seed in the middle. They were both fantastic!

Rambutan! When I sent the picture to E he asked if it was alive...

Longan

65. Go to the zoo once a month for a year (13/33)

We made it to the zoo in June for Father's Day. As we always do, we went first thing in the morning and entered the zoo at 8:30 AM, thirty minutes before the zoo opened since we are members. E really wanted to get there early because the brand new 3 day old zebra was there and we wanted to see her before the crowds showed up. She was prancing all over the place all awkward and slightly bambi-like when she was running.

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house(13/33)

E brought home these flowers for me in June because he saw them and loved how colorful they were. My favorite thing about these flowers is the fact that they turned the water royal blue.

31. Go to a Rockies fireworks game

For Father's Day this year, C and I got E tickets to the July 3rd Rockies fireworks game. C stayed the night at Grammy's house and E and I had a nice evening out enjoying the Rockies and watching fireworks. As all Rockies games are (even though half the time they eff it up halfway through the game and lose) the game was a ton of fun and the fireworks afterward were spectacular.

32. Bait, hook, catch, and unhook a fish

Why yes, that IS me HOLDING A CATFISH right after I caught it and unhooked it. Last year I quit being such a girl and started baiting my own hook with disgusting frozen shrimp and this year I am actually touching the fish. I did this TWICE in one fishing trip and didn't even get stung. Daddio seems to think that I need to add cleaning a fish to my list. I disagree. I highly disagree. 

64. Go swimming once a month (9/29)

Look at that face. He clearly was not having any fun. My child, quite obviously, hates when we make him go swimming. Big news! He totally goes all the way under the water on his own now!