My Favorite Youngest Niece

I may be the last one to see her, but I can be the first one of us to post a pic!! :D Isn't she so sweet? She looks like her brothers! And sister :). I want to hold her so bad!

Oops, almost forgot! Becky and James had a baby last night. Her name is Kristina Noelle and she weighed about 9lbs. and is 21 inches long. Born at 9:50pm on Dec. 16.

Chocolate making!

Here is the basic recipe for my favorite kind of chocolates:

Chocolate Cheesecake Truffles (aka "Cookie Balls")

1 package chocolate sandwich cookies

1 8oz package cream cheese

chocolate flavored almond bark- brown and white

Run cookies through blender until they're fine crumbs. Mix in cream cheese. Roll into balls and refrigerate until hard. Dip in either white or brown chocolate and drizzle with opposite color.

Now I heard that a certain young lady in my family (who shall remain anonymous but whose initials are ANNA!) had a little bit of difficulty with this recipe, so I thought I would also post detailed instructions on precisely what I did today in hopes that this may be helpful to her. Please pay attention Anonymous One, and take notes if possible. The rest of you may read this if you feel you may benefit from it.

Chocolate Cheesecake Truffles (in 66 easy steps)

1. Put apron on (I got one in the mail as a gift and its sooooo beautiful!!! Thanks, Mrs. F! I didn't have one until now!)



2. dig blender out of back of cupboard.




3. open package of cookies and eat one. (I got the Great Value fudge filled cookies at Walmart)




4. Depending on your mood you may eat up to 3 cookies. I ate only 1 today.




5. Put approximately 1/6 of the cookies into the blender and turn on.




6. Turn it back off and jiggle blender pitcher around trying to make it actually get the cookies.




7. Turn it back on.




8. Repeat steps 5-6 about 15 times, then give up and dump it into your Kitchenaid bowl.




9. Repeat steps 4-6 5 more times to blend the rest of the cookies.




10. Fish around in the bowl with your hand feeling for the big chunks of cookie that are still in there, and dump them back into the blender for one last attempt.




11. Turn blender on and off and shake it around occasionally for about 3 minutes.




12. Dump back into Kitchenaid bowl and feel around for big chunks, and this time, EAT them!




13. Look at hands. Decide that since they're all covered with chocolate, you may as well save a dish.




14. Open cream cheese package and pull off chunks of cream cheese with your hand and drop into bowl until all the cream cheese is in there.




15. Turn on faucet, being careful not to get the handle gooey with cream cheese and chocolate.




16. Rinse stuff off hands and turn water back off.




17. Turn water back on, wash off faucet handle and rinse slime off again.




18. Turn water back off again.




19. Turn on kitchenaid and scrape sides until the cream cheese is all mixed in.




20. Wash cookie crumbs off counter while mixer is running.




21. When it is completely mixed, turn off mixer.




22. Get out cookie sheet and cover with waxed paper.




23. I did not have waxed paper, so I used plastic wrap which is also acceptable.




24. If tray has sticky stuff on it that will not wash off it looks gross but helps keep the plastic wrap on.




25. Begin rolling mixture into balls about 3/4" in diameter.




26. After about 10 chocolates, look at the palms of your hands.




27. If appropriate, inform anyone who walks past that you just used the bathroom and show them your hands.




28. Continue rolling balls until cookie tray is full.




29. Wash hands.




30. Put tray in the refrigerator, being careful to keep it level.




31. Get out your other cookie sheet.




32. Cover with plastic wrap and start almost wishing that this one were sticky too.




33. Set the tray down so its sitting on all the edges of plastic wrap so it will stay on.




34. Begin rolling balls again, still about 3/4" in diameter.




35. Continue until all the mixture is used up.




36. Be sure you scrape the sides of the bowl so as not to waste any of that precious chocolate!




37. Important Note: DO NOT EAT ANY CHOCOLATE THAT IS ALREADY ROLLED INTO A BALL! If you must eat some, make sure its some unshaped lump out of the bowl. It tastes better after its dipped and its crazy to waste the labor of rolling it into a ball if you're only going to eat it without dipping it.




38. Place tray in the refrigerator.




39. Pick up ones that fell off when you tipped it and put them back on the tray, carefully forgetting which ones they were.




40. Try not to look at the gross stuff in the bottom of your refrigerator that the chocolates landed in.




41. Close refrigerator door.




42. Wash dishes, take apron off, then go rest for awhile.




43. The following instructions are not mandatory as the above ones are, chocolate dipping is different for different people.



44. Put apron back on.



45. Put on Snap-On hat that husband brought home from work but doesn't want.



46. Get out dipping chocolate.



47. Put 3 cubes into a mug and microwave approx. 1 minute.



48. Stir with a fork until all the lumps are melted.



49. Get 1 tray of chocolates out of the refrigerator.



50. Using your left hand, pick up one chocolate and drop it forcefully into the mug.



51. The chocolate will cover all but the very top of it.



52. In one smooth move, scoop some chocolate over the top of your truffle and pick it up out of the warm chocolate.



53. This should be done as quickly as possible so as not to melt the cream cheese and make the dipping chocolate really messy.



54. Scrape the bottom of the fork off on the rim of the mug until its not dripping off in big chocolate globs.



55. Let truffle slide off fork onto its original place on the tray.



56. Do not worry if there is a little bit of fork mark showing.



57. Repeat on all your other truffles, melting more chocolate and getting out more trays as needed.



58. Melt 1 cube chocolate (opposite color you dipped them in) in a sandwich bag.



59. Cut off one corner on bottom of bag.



60. Use like a frosting tube to drizzle over the already-hardened chocolate on your first tray.



61. It is possible to slightly cameoflage strange looking fork marks with this chocolate.



62. Eat a chocolate as soon as one hardens, to make sure they're ok.



63. Eat another chocolate just to be sure.



64. Just in case, you'd better try three... you never know about these things. (Best out of 3...)



65. Keep refrigerated when not in use, but they do taste better at room temperature.



66. Enjoy!!!

Whew!!! So now my next project is to make TOFFEE!!! I've never made it before. :D Somehow last year Alex got to try some of Becky's and he really liked it, so what else can I do? :) I just have to run across the street to Rite Aid and get some butter, since I used all of it up yesterday on sugar cookies.

Ketchup

Its almost been a month since I updated last!! Time sure flies when you're having fun. Lets see how much I can remember from the past three weeks... :D

Thanksgiving: We had a wonderful Thanksgiving- we spent the day with Miss Virgie and Todd, and Alex's friend Carl came and spent the weekend with us. We mostly sat around, and I was again amazed at how weird men are. After driving 3-4 hours to get to our house, what do they do? Sit at seperate computers playing seperate games, or read books. Ok, that's not ALL they did, but that's how they spent the majority of their time! :) We also watched movies, and I got to hear a bunch of their crazy ALERT stories. We had a really fun weekend though, even if they are both weird :). I took one pic the whole weekend... aren't they cute? :P

Christmas shopping: Um... well... :D We went and spent most of a day shopping and didn't get a single gift. What can I say? We're both last-minute people!! Don't worry though, I went to a craft fair last Saturday with a friend and I found 2 gifts, so the gift-finding has officially begun!

Becoming a Native Southerner: The day before Thanksgiving Alex's boss took us all out to a fancy restaurant for lunch... and I actually tasted alligator, and oyster. I am still alive, however I do not plan on risking my life again anytime soon on either of those. :D There are many people plotting against me though, and I have been forced to promise to try various other things. I did NOT promise to try possum.

Accent changes: I have caught myself a couple times recently saying something in a Southern accent completely unintentionally, but for the most part I still speak normally :). Yesterday I accidentally said rufe instead of roof, but that's just Alex rubbing off :P. I never pronounce it with a long "U" :P. Oh yes, and I say "care-a-mel" when I'm talking to Miss Virgie because the first few times I said it just regular (two sylables!) she didn't know what I was talking about.

Weather: It is NOT supposed to be 80 degrees in December... I don't care what everyone down here says!!! :P But wait... while we're on the subject of weather, it was raining a little bit yesterday and even though it was Sunday I had a sudden urge to go check our mail (I hadn't checked it on Saturday!!) So Alex and I got an umbrella out and stepped outside... and there was the hugest, most intensely colored, most gorgeous rainbow I have ever seen in my entire life. It was so amazing! Alex took some pictures but of course you've got to see it in person to really SEE it. It was awesome!

Check it out... in this last one you can kind of see the second rainbow just above it towards the right side. It was sooooo beautiful!

Awana: Attendance is down right now, but for the most part Awana has been going well. One little boy asked me how old I was, and so I asked him how old he THOUGHT I was. He looked thoughtful and asked, "Fifteen?" When I told him I was 23 he was quite impressed. So then he wanted to know, "Do you have a boyfriend?" I told him, "Nope, I don't need one... I have a husband!" He looked confused and one of the little girls pointed Alex out and said I was married to him. He looked at Alex and then back at me and said, "He's your boyfriend?" I told him that he was my husband... and he was quite shocked!! This was last week... fast forward to this week... when we were leaving Alex came around and opened the truck door for me (he's such a gentleman!) and when Denver saw that, he hollered, "She can't even get in the truck by herself?!?" I guess he's keeping an eye on us! :D

Christmas tree: We finally got one on Saturday! The weird thing about Christmas trees down here are... they don't grow the kind I'm used to! Its more like a bush. I will have to take a picture and get back with y'all on it, but trust me... they're very strange! We finally have all the lights and decorations on it, so now I can use up all the rest of the lights around the house :). Woohoo!!!

Sweet Swap & Ornament Exchange: The church is having a fun night for the ladies tonight! Everyone is supposed to bring a batch of cookies or candy or whatever, and they divide it up so everyone can take some of everything home. We also have to bring a wrapped Christmas ornament and then we get to take a different one home :). It should be fun. Alisha and I went shopping together on Saturday and ended up getting some crazy Christmas headgear, and I solemnly promised to wear mine tonight. Here is what it looks like:

Alisha also informed me that we WILL have our picture taken together, and that picture WILL be displayed on the overhead screen thing for the whole church to see :).

Jambalaya: There is a meal at this party tonight, and the main dish is jambalaya. Yesterday morning in church it was announced from the pulpit that I have never had jambalaya before, which amazed everyone there. One of the girls at Awana last night was quizzing me about it, "Why haven't you ever had jambalaya before? Do people in MI think its bad to eat it?" I had never heard of it before moving down here, so just in case y'all are as ignorant as I was... Jambalaya is mainly rice with chicken and sausage (there are many different variations of it, but this is the one we're having tonight) in it, and it is spicy. Its a Cajun food, I do believe :). So anyways, that's all I know about it because I haven't tried it yet!!! I'm not too fond of rice, but other than that it sounds fine.

Well, since I have now written a book instead of doing housework like I was planning on doing this morning, I guess I will bid y'all farewell. Toodleoo, adios, and all that :). I hope you have a wonderful day and don't need glasses after staring at a computer screen for so long trying to read all this!

Happy Birthday to me.....

I'm an old lady now!!! :) And today I'm going out for lunch with Miss Virgie! Woohoo!! :) I believe we're going to Sammy's. I have never been there before, so I don't know anything about it. Last Friday we were going to go to Sammy's and on the way there she was telling me about this restarant that she went to once that is owned by someone she knows from her bowling league. She couldn't remember the name of the restaurant or where it was, but she was going to find out sometime so we could go there to. When we got to where she thought Sammy's was, there was Rogers... and that was the very place she had been talking about! So we ate there and she now has directions to Sammy's also :). So that's my plans for the day!

What you've all been waiting for...

Our first visitors from MI are coming this weekend... Mom, Andrew, and Rachel!!! Yay!! :)

Oh yeah, and I also have... Wedding pictures!!

Amanda wants to be a bridesmaid like Aunt Rachel someday :).

Those were our table decorations ;).

Other than getting a bazillion GREAT pictures (thanks Lisa!!) and DVD of my wedding (Thanks, Mr and Mrs. E!) I've had a pretty boring week. Mostly I've been cleaning up and reorganizing again, in preparation for my family to come visit. And they'll be here tomorrow!!! YAY! I'm so excited. They're on the road already but they're going to stay at some friends' house overnight. So they'll be here tomorrow afternoon sometime!!

Last weekend our apartment complex had an Octoberfest. It was basically a potluck with games (twister, bean bag toss) a costume contest, face painting, crafts, and apple bobbing :). Hardly anyone showed up... there was Alex and me, our landlady, and another guy and a couple other adults showed up later, and then about 10 kids. We still had a great time.

I was the official face painter because I confessed that I had done face painting in the CEF booth at the fair. But we only did a little picture on the kids' cheeks there... this was the WHOLE face! :)The apple bobbing was great fun... to watch :). Alex bravely decided to get an apple... even though he doesn't really like them :).Looking for one without tooth marks...

Yay!!! :)

So that's pretty much everything exciting for around here, except that I might've forgotten to tell you all that Mom, Andrew, and Rachel are coming down for the weekend!!!! WOO HOO!!! :) I can't wait!! ;)

Happy Birthday to Alex!

Yup, yesterday Alex was officially 31. Don't tell him I told you though!! :) Just kidding. Now because its his birthday, I'm going to post some of my specially reserved blackmail pictures here. Just kidding!

Time for an Update!

What have I been up to lately, you may ask? Well, obviously not blogging! Here are a few things that have been occupying my time:

1. Work: I work at the church from 9am-2pm on Mon, Wed, and Fri and Miss Kay is not quite feeling good enough to come back yet. She was hoping to come back last Monday but still had a fever, so now she is hoping for this coming Monday. So my job could end at any time. I am just playing it by ear right now. While I am here (I'm at church right now) I type the bulletin, update the prayer list, answer the phone, answer the door, sort the mail, and delete all the emails. Well, almost all of them :). I also play games online (www.popcap.com has some fun games!) and email people while I'm here because it gets rather boring at times.

2. Friends: I have made a new friend down here. Mrs. Bridges is Alex's co-worker's mom and we have a great time together. We usually go out for lunch and spend the whole afternoon together on my days off, because she is home by herself all day too. Both of us are 1-vehicle families, so usually she drops Todd off at work and we go out partying and Alex and Todd just do lunch together and come to our house after work to meet us. Yesterday we had a delicious Italian lunch of Calzones (and Tiramisu for dessert!!!), then we went to Walmart and the library! I suddenly felt like listening to a "Hank the Cowdog" book on tape, so I got "The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game" while were at the library :). I was too embarrassed to go asking the librarians, so I was just going to search till I found it, but Mrs. Bridges went and got help :). What a loyal and brave friend! :D

3. Church: Alex is the T&T director in Awana, and I am one of the leaders in his group. Well, sort of. I'm not officially in any one club yet but so far I've been in T&T almost every week. Last Sunday night I helped out in Sparks because they were short-handed though. Anyways, we have a great time with the kids. And we also have fun planning the council time lesson every week. Its hard to try to balance it so that it is interesting for the kids and keeps their attention, but not so interesting that the object lesson or examples are distracting to the real message. I think Alex is doing well at it, and he is improving all the time :).

4. Saturdays: Well, that's my favorite day of the week because there's always a chance that Alex won't have to work that day :). Last Saturday he was positive that he was going to be working because his boss really overbooked them for the next couple of weeks, but he said that they kind of snuck out of work right on time Friday night and Gerald didn't really get a chance to ask them to work :). So we got to go shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond and get some necesary items, like a sillicone muffin pan, pastry blender, skirt hangers, and... maybe that was all. We won't be so fortunate this weekend though, Gerald asked them all on Wednesday to work this Saturday. So there's no escaping it! :)

I think that about covers every day of the week! So now you all know what I am doing. And when I'm at home after work I usually do a lot of emailing and whatever housework that is desperate to be done. Usually I don't do the housework until its desperate :D. Oh yes, and cooking. I love the cooking stuff :).

And Alex's birthday is coming up next Wednesday, so I'm trying to be sneaky about his gifts :). I picked up a very practical one at Walmart yesterday. I don't know if he will consider it to be very practical, but he really needs one! :) And I ordered a less practical one off Amazon :). I hope it comes when he's not at home!!

And if Alex's birthday is coming up, you all know what that means. And just in case you don't, I'll tell you... MINE IS EXACTLY 3 WEEKS LATER!!! So mark your calendars... only 26 days till my birthday! I haven't updated you on that countdown for quite a while now :). I'll be an old geezerette... 23 years old! Goodness gracious! Next thing you know I'll be wrinkled and grayhaired! Anyways, that's about all I have to say for now. Adioodles!!!

More Pictures!

Okey dokey, here's some pics from our kayaking trip! It was perfect weather- nice and HOT!!! Great for splashing each other :).The water level was quite low on the river and we ended up getting out and towing our kayaks quite a bit. In this pic, I got stuck in the shallow water and the ground was just this huge rock and it was really slippery. When I got out to pull my kayak, I was being very careful not to fall on it, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on my behind!!! I started laughing so hard (it REALLY surprised me!) that I kinda just flopped down on my back and laid there in the water laughing my head off!! :)
This look really makes you wonder what he's up to, doesn't it?
And just in case anyone out there is worried, we did finally get the hang of all the kissing stuff :). Heh heh, I took this pic myself!

Air conditioning is a WONDERFUL invention!

Well, the reason it got so hot in the apartment on Monday was because the AC was broken! So late Tuesday afternoon some guys came out and fixed it, MUCH to my relief! :) It was a tad bit warm in here!

Ladies and Gentlemen (and Andrew) I am pleased to announce that I've been through my very first tropical storm. Or something like that. I guess it was a hurricane and then they changed it to a tropical storm. Anyways, basically that just means it rained all night Wednesday and all day Thursday. The good part of it was that Alex's boss sometimes gets pizza for everybody if its raining during the day, so Alex came and got me and I had pizza with him and his crazy coworkers! And they are DEFINITELY crazy.

The centerpiece at the pizza party was, of course, Alex's famous pizza. Before we were married, but after he got his new stove (i.e. RECENTLY!) he put a frozen pizza in the oven for supper. Well, anyone who knows Alex knows that he can fall asleep in no time at all, so when he woke up in the morning he remembered his poor pizza. It didn't set off the fire alarm or burn down the apartment, but it is completely black. You can see the black outlines of his pepperoni and peppers and stuff. So he was very proud of his carbon pizza and brought it in to work with him. Gerald (his boss) asked if he could keep it, so Alex generously gave him his precious pizza. Fortunately Gerald forgot to bring it to the wedding (he was planning to set it next to the cake!), but when we walked into the office for lunch on Thursday Alex couldn't resist grabbing it and putting it out with all the other pizzas, much to everyone's amusement ;).

Today I went over to the church and worked with Miss Kay again. I made the bulletin for this Sunday! And it looks rather spiffy, if I do say so myself :). I even got to put a little cartoon in it! It was fun looking on the website for something to put in that space. So now starting on Monday I'm on my own over there! And believe me, I have the keys to prove it. A huge ring with about 345,809 keys on it, and I have to remember which ones that I'm supposed to use :). I also got to answer the phone a few times today and I got to use the intercom and hit a button to let people in too!

The intercom and lock thing is pretty fun, but Miss Kay says to be careful, and if I don't know the person then maybe I shouldn't let them in. The only problem is that... I don't know ANYONE! And its hard to understand the Southern accents over the intercom. AND most people know Miss Kay and when she answers through the intercom they goof off and tell her all sorts of crazy stuff because they know that she knows who they are. So I had the air conditioning man today being all goofy and saying he was George and stuff (he was a little embarrassed when he got in and saw me in there!!). So hopefully I can remember who everybody is really quickly and I won't have to worry about all that stuff :).

Well, I'm going to go now. I just noticed the carpet could use a good vacuuming! So I'm back off to my slaving duties. Hahahahahaha, that was a good one, Uncle Phil!

I'm still alive!

Well, after the honeymoon I dropped off the face of the earth, right? WRONG! :) I'm still alive and kicking (not Alex, of course!). We've been getting organized and settled in the apartment. With twice as many people here as there was before, it's been taking a bit of work!

After our first trip to the laundrymat we went out and bought a stackable washer/dryer set at Sears. The only problem was that when they came to deliver it, it was damaged! So they took it back and said they would get a new one. They called with a new delivery time, but never showed up. So Alex called them and they said that the new one came in, but was also damaged. So finally on the 3rd attempt we missed Sunday School yesterday and got our shiny new washer and dryer :). And after spending most of his afternoon working on it (and 2 trips to various stores later...) Alex finally got it working! So today I have been doing laundry non stop, and it is somehow heating up the apartment :(. So the thermometer says its 93.9 degrees outside and it feels like AC to me! The inside thermometer says its 98 degrees. I'm on my last load of laundry for today and I hope it cools down in here before Alex comes home again! :)

Today I spent most of my afternoon trying to plan a weeks worth of menus. Why can't I think of anything just off the top of my head? It seems like when I NEED to think of something, my mind goes blank! So I have 3 cookbooks and 2 instruction books from some of our gadgets (they have recipes in them too!). And I also looked all over the place at tasteofhome.com's bulletin board. That is one of the best recipe websites I've ever seen! It's so great. So if you don't know what to make, just search the bulletin board for "weekly menu" and there's a huge thread where everybody posted their week's menu. I found that to be very inspiring, even though I didn't really choose anything that they were serving :).

In about a week, Miss Kay (from church) is going to have surgery, and then I will be filling in for her as the church secretary for about 4 weeks. So that will be fun! The church is right across the street, so I can just walk over (very handy when I don't have a car!), and I will have all kinds of keys so I will be able to run over and pound on the piano if I ever feel like it! I don't mind going awhile without playing sometimes, but I'm really starting to get desperate for one. :) Hmmmm... maybe I should practice my flute occasionally instead. The trouble with that is I left ALL my music in MI :(. For piano AND flute.

So that's what I'm up to, in a nutshell. I will post more pics someday when I figure out how to get them off the camara :P. I keep forgetting to ask Alex! Anyways, if you're ever bored, drop me an email!!!!!! I have lots of time for emailing right now :). Adioodles!

Honeymoon

Ok, I'm an old married woman now!! Here's a few pics from our honeymoon. We went to the Buffalo River area in Arkansas and stayed in a cabin in the mountains :).

This is me. Driving a stick shift vehicle!!! I didn't stall it that time, but I turned some heads in the gas station with my major tire squealing. :) It was very exciting!

Check it out!! Alex shaved :). Doesn't he look cute without his facial hair?

The Countdown

Only 5 weeks till I'm an old married lady!!!! Is that a scary thought or what?!?

Fun With Burrells

Alex came up Wednesday and stayed till Saturday!!! We had a great time with him :). On Thursday Mr. and Mrs. B and Alex and I went miniature golfing, out to ice cream, and to Lake Michigan and Mrs. B took a BUNCH of pictures.
The golfing was accomplished with minimal cheating... To protect the guilty people's privacy, their faces are not shown here :). And just in case anyone was wondering, neither of these techniques got the ball into the hole. Both times it was a complete miss, thus proving the well known fact that cheaters never prosper :).
And here we are...The Champions!!! Just kidding. I didn't win, but Alex whipped us all :).

Next on the agenda, we went out for ice cream. And my ice cream almost melted while we were posing for pictures. That's why I'm scarfing mine down :).

Alex kept tickling the back of my neck with a long piece of grass while we were trying to take a picture here :P
I guess we both finally held still at the same time :).We thought about jumping into Lake MI, but decided not to :).

Other miscellaneous pictures from the day:

So that's all for today folks!!! Anna's computer loads pictures WAY faster than our regular computer, so I guess I'll have to borrow it next time I post pictures!

Oh yes, and David and Terry came over on Friday night and they took a bazillion pictures of us too, but I don't have them yet. Anyways, we're going to use one of them in our wedding invitations!! Yes, I know the wedding is in less than 7 weeks and the invitations are supposed to be done by now, but... oh well :). Y'all know when it is, so just don't schedule anything for that day and your invitation should be coming soon :). Ok? OK!!! Adioodles!!!

Road Construction

Our road is getting paved this summer, and boy is it ever a mess!!! Just past our driveway is a HUGE sand pile that we went and climbed on last Sunday :).
This is from down in B&J's yard.

And this is off the top looking back behind us. They're digging the road out and filling it in with sand from the sand pile.

I've recently discovered some camera settings, and so now I always have to play with them :). Doesn't that look cool though?

That sand pile may look like fun to play on, but I am soooooo ready to get rid of it!!! I have to go around the block every day to get to work because of it. And then as if that weren't enough, there's another huge construction project going on my way to work too. Fortunately both lanes are open during the daytime, but it's still solid orange barrels, sand, and machinery everwhere I look. Good grief! Do these people realize that I won't be around here much to enjoy the final product? Obviously not, or they would have postponed all this messy stuff until I moved away. :) Hahaha. Just kidding.

Other than that I guess we haven't had too much exciting and unusual things happening in our neck of the woods. Andrew has some big news that I'm sure he'll post on his blog as soon as he gets home and is awake enough for it ;). But I won't spoil it for him. Also Alex is coming up in less than a week!!! That's definitely exciting and unusual!! :)

Speaking of which, I need to go to bed!!! It's quite early (in the morning) and I am dead dog tired ;). And I'm going to work on packing tomorrow, so I need to store up on energy!!! Goodnight!!!

Kodak Moment

I came home from work the other night and all the kids were here because it was Becky and James' night out. They were all lined up on the couch watching Charlie Brown! :)

Showers of... pigs and john deere hats?

I had a wedding shower on Sunday!! It was with the Hansens (Mom's side of the family), and it was very fun!!! Check it out!!! We got a kitchenaid!!!

I had to post this pic because of Terry's face :) Everybody take note!!!! Haha. That's what you get for picking on Alex so much!!! :)

Just what EVERY bride dreams of getting... a John Deere hat. Uncle Eric is very upset because Alex got me a pink John Deere hat last summer and he is very jealous. So he tries to cover up his jealousy by pretending that he thinks pink is an inappropriate color. His card says, "Here is an appropriately colored John Deere cap. You may now want to discard the other, scandalously inappropriate one." Unfortunately, I can't do that. I have discovered that the pink one goes nicely on my head while the green one is wonderful for draining spaghetti. And Alex just LOVES spaghetti!!! So I thought it was a very kind and thoughtful shower gift!

We got this cool sillacone (however that's spelled!!!) pot holder!!! Isn't it spiffy? Becky and Amanda picked it out for me :). Aren't you all jealous?

So that's all for tonight!!!! Oh yes, in case anybody didn't know, Sara (my sis-in-law) is VERY pregnant and you can see her in the background of a couple of the pics. She's due just about anytime!!!! Technically in about 3 weeks, but you know how that goes. So isn't that exciterating?!?!?