Truly GREAT

 It was really cold this morning, the wind was blowing making the wind chill well below zero.  Mark got the wood burner going again early. The house was 3 degrees below the set point but that was more than likely the wind which was causing the furnace to not keep up. Thank goodness for wood burners.

Mark brought in the box of halters that had been delivered at the shop yesterday.  I ordered them last week getting 12 yearling halters, 12 small horse halters and 10 large horse halters. 

We go through a lot of halters each year.
When I opened the box and checked out the sizes. The yearling halters are much bigger than the small horse halters. Check out the size difference. The purple is the yearling.

Those yearling halters were stamped, made in India, Obviously India must have HUGE horses! They won't go to waste, those will fit the Andalusians.

I headed over to help Karin lift mom out of the whirlpool at 7:00 am except mom decided she didn't want to get out yet.  I left and mom stayed in until Ruth arrived. Mom was very sleepy today.  Mark and I left to pick up Nancy at 10:30 am. The first job on the list was to buy her a spring coat. We had to go to Costco to redeem mom's points on her card and found the perfect coat there. Nancy was thrilled with the coat.

From there we drove to Avanti's so Nancy could have spaghetti lunch. That is one of her favorite meals.

I had to ask for extra napkins but somehow kept her clean.  When we took her back I realized I had a thank you card still in my purse that was supposed to have been mailed yesterday.  I quickly googled all the post offices Morton, Bartonville and Hanna City only to find they were all already closed. About that time I saw a post office truck going through Nancy's neighborhood dropping off mail so chased the truck down, ran the card over to the driver who was glad to take it.  When we finally made it home Mark wanted to keep hauling the aquaponic equipment out of the basement so between the 2 of us we got that done.

At 3:30 I quit working to get the potatoes started for potluck tonight.  We left for Dean and Holly's at 4:50 pm and had a wonderful time. The food was good but the fellowship was truly GREAT! 

The meal really was exceptional and then came the desert. Holly told us how it was made and it really does have a secret ingredient which I will share here.

To make the chocolate sauce she melted York peppermint patties, added heavy cream and once blended poured on over the crumbled up mint oreo cookies.  The bottom layer is also made with mint oreo cookies that were put in the blender with a little warm butter. That was smashed on to the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, allowed to cool in the fridge while the second layer of cream cheese, powdered sugar and cool whip was blended together. The second layer was added and again the dessert was put in the fridge to cool. The next layer can either be vanilla pudding or chocolate pudding blended with whip cream. Allow the pudding to set after spreading it on top of the cream cheese layer. Then add more whip cream, crumble the cookies on top and pour on the chocolate sauce.  The mint cookies and the mint chocolate sauce gave the dessert a delightful deliciously cool minty taste.  Don't like mint?  The dessert can be made with regular Oreo's and instead of melting York peppermint patties just use milk chocolate kisses with cream. If anyone wants the recipe Holly was glad to share it.