Fun at the playground

Recently Ace has started to climb.
He can climb off the bed and the couch, but not back up. But he is able to climb on the foot stool since it is lower to the ground. And he can climb stairs up and down. The latter he is always doing backwards though - with one foot carefully testing/searching for the next step.
Really cute.
So since we now have a monkey on our hands, we have started to go with him to the playground.
We have a really nice one close by that has a big jungle gym with plenty of stairs for Ace to climb.
It also has 3 different slides, but in the past Ace didn't really show any interest in those at all. Every time we tried sliding with him, he had been totally indifferent. Basically he could not care less.

Well, this has changed. A lot.
I am not sure how it happened, but Ace suddenly figured out that you can slide backwards on your belly as well.
And this is the result:









This is the smallest slide by the way.
It's still pretty crazy for a 14-month old guy and everybody I talked to agreed with me.
Apparently, Ace thinks a little different about that though cause 2 nights ago, he decided it was time to upgrade and he went for the TALLEST slide. I could not believe it when he started to head towards it.
Neither could the other parents on the playground.
1 minute ago they were reminding their kids "to be careful with the baby" since Ace is always the youngest one there... and the next thing you know, the "baby" was at the top of the tallest slide, turned around, stretched his legs and woosh! made his way down that slide while having the greatest time. Crazy!
One of the other moms actually looked like she was going to pass out. LOL.

We definitely have to take a video of Ace and this sliding adventure as well.

Stay tuned...

First cheesecake

I love to bake. After preparing the batter and waiting for the cake to do its thing in the oven, it is just fun to take it out, see how nice it looks and let the cake aroma fill the kitchen and living area. Not to mention that it is very rewarding to see when people are eating it in delight once it has cooled.  :)

I have never tried to make a cheesecake though although in our house that kind of cake is certainly the number 1.

Until yesterday. 

I've been collecting different recipes for a long time.. years even. But yeah, it stayed with collecting since we had not been blessed with a proper oven in the past apartments. They did the job with baking fries and the occasional banana bread since Markus likes the latter very moist anyways, but after an apple pie disaster a few months ago I pretty much was too upset to try anything again. 

But now we moved to a new place and we finally got a stove/oven that works well. Yay! Additionally, I stumbled upon a new blog full of appealing recipes: My Baking Addiction

And sure enough, the first post I saw was about Jamie's recipe for The Best Cheesecake.

So I decided to give it a try since it looked easy enough and indeed it was.

I had no issues, except that I was a little unsure about when to take it out so that it did not have to much "jiggle" still. This caused the cake to get some brown spots on the top since it was in the oven for 5 min too long. But the taste was not affected. ;)

Last night at midnight, the cake was ready to go into the fridge to chill.
The recipe asked for 5 hours before serving. So I went to bed and was looking forward to check it out in the morning.

I had planned to take pic of the cake before we cut it, but while I was asleep, "somebody" had to "check" if it was ready by poking a hole into it... (I am assuming it was either the snake or the bunny.) So because of that, I can only show off the photo Neal took of his slice at work.. ;)

In any event - this cake is soo good! Definitely a keeper!