Recent Trip Home

The kids and I took a recent trip home for my Dad's 50th birthday party. It's always nice to see all of my parents grandkids get to play together... and my sisiter's baby is growing so fast! (Notice what the girls were doing at 12 noon (reading w/my sisiter) and the boys at 12 noon (craziness w/my brother-in-law).

At my Dad's party he had my brother and I cook-off: We got random ingredients and had to make an main course and a dessert right there on the spot. My brother won but that's no shock. (He makes his living as a chef :) People did like my chicken though (a non-fried crispy chicken parmesan).

If you want to know which dish is mine and which is my brother's: His dish is the one with 3000 calories and the danty rose made out of a lemon peel and mine is the HEALTHY, fill you up, and not make you die young, meal! :) (Just jokin' bro.) From the pictures you can tell that he's the food artist and I'm the I made it so shut up and eat it type cook!

All in all a good trip home.

Thanksgiving at the Abell House

We decided to do something different this year. We all selected our favorite food to have: Our son wanted ham, our daughter wanted cereal but then changed her mind to pasta, my hubby wanted mashed potatoes and I wanted my favorite food - black bean soup. So we made all of that and had a feast. But of course Mommy has been so frazzeled that I had bought everything but - you guessed it - black beans. (Nice.) So I just made some soup with what I had and pledged to make myself black bean soup sometime soon. We still had a really great time.

The kids are always asking me to help them dress up and usually they request simple things like my son here who asked to be a mouse. No problem I thought.. some ears... a tail... no biggie. But then there's my daughter, "Mommy, can I be a pink crayon?"

"What?" I thought. I tried to talk her into something else but she really wanted to be a pink crayon so.... I think I did ok... :)

New Camera

My awesome husband just bought me a digital camera and I've been testing it out around the house...

I told you you shouldn't...

Well, I have been having this problem with my 3 year old son. I am always catching him licking the top of our condiments - the mustard, the chocolate syrup.. etc. (Yuck! I know!) And I of-course am always scolding him for it but so far have not actually been able to make him stop. Well, one day this week he came to me with a guilty/sheepish grin and said "Mom, I need a drink." I said, "Why do you look like that?" and his answer was "Well, that was really hot" (he spoke as his tongue was hanging out of his mouth). I made him show me what was hot and he lead me to the fridge and the Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce! (Rob and I like our food pretty spicy). I burst into laughter, "I told you not to lick things, didn't I?!!!" He giggled a little and said "Yeah" as he gulped down his milk.

Another quick cute one... He came to me, out of the blue, yesterday and said "Mom. I didn't use the scissors." To which I replied, "What didn't you use the scissors on?"

He's a pill. :)