As things wind down to the end of the month we are all hoping that life will finally slow to a dull roar. We have Irish Fest next weekend and then just our usual summer business. We are all hoping for some rejuvenating rest before gearing up for the heart of summer.

My daughter has been in physical therapy (PT) now for the last four weeks. After St. Patrick’s Day she had another flare up of her tendonitis in both ankles. Normally the doctors and therapists just tell her to stop dancing for a while, give her a few ankle exercises, and tell her to rest and ice as much as possible. We finally said no to all of them. That is not the answer. She can rest her ankles but as soon as she starts dancing again all the pain and swelling comes back. Well, she finally learned that she is VERY strong but in all of the wrong places. When she goes up on her toes to dance she needs 105 degrees of flexibility in one joint and she has 70. In the other she needs 25-30 and she had 5. They are going to work with her on strengthening the correct ankle muscles and creating greater flexibility in her ankles so that when she is up on her toes the tendons are not taking all of the stress but rather the joints and muscles are doing their job. Finally, after three years some answers! So she is spending most of the summer in PT, retraining her dancing, and at music camp.

My son is already on his first adventure of the summer to Washington DC with his eighth grade class. They spend three full days in the Capitol area visiting monuments, the Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian and Arlington Cemetary. We are so glad he gets this chance to visit some of the places he has been studying in school. When he returns on Wednesday it is back to summer school, cello lessons and then music camp later in the summer.

So, with things still really busy for the next few weeks we are keeping meals simple and fast. Pancakes are perfect for this!

Verdict:

I like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. These pancakes are perfect for me because I found out I like the brown sugar/butter combination of the cookies better than I like the chips. You can add or subtract the chocolate chips as you wish. Switching out the white sugar for brown sugar made the pancakes better in my mind.