Saturday.

We had a nice, low key anniversary celebration yesterday. Originally we had planned on camping for the weekend at nearby Chain O' Lakes State Park. The weather has been terrible around here lately and the Fox River, which feeds the lake, is at flood stage. We were watching the hourly forecasts obsessively for the past few days and decided late Friday night that it probably not the best idea to go. There was an 80% chance of thunderstorms with some severe predicted for Saturday. (It is worth mentioning that the last time we camped at Chain O' Lakes we had to evacuate when a tornado tore through the south end of the park.)

I am fairly angry to report that the weather was beautiful Saturday with no rain to be seen. I am trying to convince myself that the severe storms still took place 30 minutes away from our blue sky.

Our little party turned out to be just as fun as camping and was very 'us'. We had hot dogs with corn on the cob for dinner, played a stack of board and card games, watched Star Trek, and had yummy desert and beverages.





A few of the games were Ticket to Ride:


(Which I highly recommend.)


and Monopoly Deal, which is an addictive and quick Monopoly-based card game that has all the fun of the original Monopoly without the tediousness of a three hour game.

I made a special super sweet and unhealthy desert - S'mores Brownies in honor of the missed camping trip.





The recipe is from Picky Palate and definitely worth a try if you love gooey s'mores or ridiculously sweet deserts (there are four full size Hershey Bars in that 8x8" pan). I did have a little trouble telling if they were done with the melted marshmallows on top, and ended up over baking them slightly. But no worries as they are still delicious.