This week has been pretty crazy. I thought that last week would have been the week that I pull my hair out. What with Dave's birthday on Monday and then Bradley's birthday AND the Iron Dickson Cooking Competition on Saturday. The amount of to dos was never-ending! Monday we had plenty of getting out and checking items off the "out of house" checklist. It was long and painful but we got through it. Frankly the rest of the week is a blur of monotony. Saturday came bright and early with Bradley opening his door and saying, "Hello? It's my birthday!" We let him eat cereal and watch a movie that he picked out for his birthday. I love that he is still young enough that it is a treat to pick out a movie and cereal. It makes my job a little easier. I was running around so much trying to get the house clean and organized for the competition that I didn't get to sit down and watch it with him. Before long (definitely before I was ready) it was 3:30pm and it was time to put the cleaning supplies down and move away from the kitchen. I ran upstairs and got myself presentable. Everyone filed in around 4pm and we all hung out for a bit and got cozy. The competition kicked off around 4:10 with an opening ceremony including "pre-fight doughnuts" for everyone. Then another 2 1/2 hours of blur. Here is my dish:



I made apple cornbread and southern fried apples. The secret ingredient was apples, if you couldn't tell. All of the dishes were amazing and my house smelled incredible through the next day. Lisa is compiling all of the videos that Dave took during the competition and putting the together in a video. Hopefully it went well enough that we can continue to do this on a fairly regular basis and maybe we will have our own mini tv series!

In the apple spirit, Shayla brought "Apples to Apples". It's a vocabulary card game. It was sooo much fun! I thought we were all going to kill over from laughter! It was the best!

On a side note, I made the birthday cake for all of the January birthdays. We have made carrot cake the traditional January birthday cake since Bradley turned two. We learned the hard, carb-overloaded way not to have a birthday cake for each birthday in January. Dave and Bradley are five days apart and I have tell you.... You CANNOT eat a whole birthday cake in time to eat another one five days later! We have tried it a few different ways. A cookie cake for one and a regular cake for the other, a pie for one and cake for the other, etc. We decided that it was in our best interest to just make one for the two birthdays and we just have it on Bradley's birthday. This year I decided to play with my recipe a little. We bought a coconut for Bradley to try so I used some of the coconut milk in the cake batter and I baked coconut flakes into the bottom of the cake. Of course when I had to take it out to ice it the coconut flakes were on top but I think it was still pretty good. I made my own cream cheese icing and was pretty proud of it.

Everything went pretty smoothly that day and I was very impressed with everyone's dishes. Plus my cake was THE BOMB! I was a bit nervous about it but I will definitely make that one again!! Bradley had a wonderful birthday! Thanks to everyone who made it happen!!

Where's the fluff setting on this thing?

We have a fairly good schedule for our morning routine at the moment. I say at the moment because we have a problem keeping schedules. We have tried and tried over the past 5 years to make and keep to an orderly schedule. Something always seems to come up. We have an early morning or a really late night and can't seem to pull ourselves out of bed at the right time. I say "we" but it's usually me. I'm sure most of you know that once you slip or stray from your routine just once -even if you have a REALLY good excuse- you suddenly realize how good your bed feels and covers are just right and well just this once you want to stay in bed for another 10 minutes.... Well, there goes your routine. Yep, did you see that ghost-like figure fly out your window just now? That was your sanity. He didn't want to hang around for all the mayhem that is about to ensue from that 10 minute deviation. Now you are 10 minutes behind schedule (20 minutes if you are like me and took your sweet time pulling yourself out of bed and getting dressed) and you race around like a crazy person all day trying to get that 10-20 minutes back. Good Luck!

That is exactly how my day started on Tuesday. We have had a pretty good schedule since about half way through December. So it lasted almost a month. That's a pretty good record for us during the winter season! As I was saying.... Tuesday started out 20 minutes behind schedule but hey no big deal, right?! I got my list of to do's and headed downstairs. MAKE BREAKFAST...check! OPEN BLINDS...check! UNLOAD DISHWASHER.......



It took about another 20 minutes to coax her OUT of the dishwasher. Needless to say, my day never got back on track and one day I hope to find the time-space continuum that fixes this routine problem.

The Saturday Concoction

Today's adventure began when I loaded my dishwasher and thought to myself, "Hmm I don't have enough dishes to start a load yet, what can I do about this conundrum?" Within about 30 minutes and with the help of some facebook friends, I had a rough idea of what I was going to do with my day.
I successfully baked my first pie (peach) about a week ago and I'm still getting over the ego boost from it. Thus, mini apple pies were born.



Dave is going to a LAN party tonight at a friend's house so I thought they would make fun little treats for them to eat with their pizza. It didn't come out quite how I envisioned them, but I don't think they are bad for a first try. As I become more familiar with pie dough I will start being more creative. Plus, all I had to make the mini versions was a cupcake tin. Next time I make these I would like to have a tart tin. We shall see. I think they taste pretty good, which IS the main point of food, right? I should have brushed the tops with butter or egg yolks but they work just fine like this.

This is the first time I have ever "posed" food for it's photograph. So, don't laugh... yeah, okay you can laugh. I don't have much space or lighting so I did the best I could. My neighbor has a studio in his basement, but he is not here at the moment so I used what I had. I thought the block of wood was a nice touch. What do you think?

A day to remember a year

I can't really expect anyone to follow my blog in any form of regularity given that my posts are occasional at best. I do what I can to write when things of interest arrive, but generally it is just a passing thought that is then forgotten until I realize it has been months since I've written anything. Once I sit down to write a few paragraphs I end up sitting in front of a blank screen wondering what I have done with my life. Being a stay-at-home mom is wonderful at times and heartbreaking other times. By the end of the day I just can't put words down on a page. Day to day things seem monotonous and uneventful and the extraordinary things are usually too big of a mess for me to clean up. Once again I have arrived at a new year with the same resolution: To blog the memories so we have more than just pictures to rely on when we want to take a walk down memory lane. Don't get me wrong pictures are wonderful, but you can't capture everything in a picture. You can't capture Bradley saying, "Oh barnacles" when he is working on a problem. All you see is a kid with his mouth open and a quirky look on his face. So, here I am on the first day of a new year, trying once again to capture more of life this year than in years past. I will do my utmost to post at least more semi-regularly, and I will also try to not start out every post by apologizing for the lack of posts. I am sure you understand that life gets in the way and sometimes I am just too lazy to post. However; I will try this year to not think of the everyday tasks as mundane but as a peek into our life as a family. We maybe inexperienced and a totally out of our element as we raise Bradley and try to shuffle life around as need be, but we do the best we can and I can't wait to see how this year unfolds.