Happy 7th month birthday!

I meant to post this yesterday (the 25th) since that is really her birthday but didnt get to it, but I thought I would post it anyway.

Happy 7 months little Gracie. You are such a cutie pie and such a sweet baby. I cant believe you are already 7 months old. I love it when you bury your head in my shoulder and squeeze me back when I hug you. And how you kick your arms and legs like crazy when I come to get you out of your bed. And your sweet baby breath. And how you put your head on my shoulder and sleep after I feed you at 3 am.

Writing this makes me want to go wake her up and play with her. But I wont. Here are some pictures of the 7 month old little girl.

Recipe of the Week #3

Well maybe I should rename this post to recipe of the month, because I have not done one since Halloween. Oh well, I will try to be better at doing one every week. But here is one of my favorites. Pecan pie is probably my favorite pie. Especially if it is done correctly. (Done correctly to me is whole pecan pieces on the top and little chopped up pieces floating around in the heavenly filling. I think that my mouth is watering just thinking about it!) And if you really want to have a treat you can get a pecan cobbler a la mode from the Whistle Stop Cafe in Kennesaw, GA. Anyway back to the real reason I was posting. This is a recipe that you can use for Thanksgiving if you are wanting to limit your Pecan Pie intake. (But who would want to do that.)

Pecan Tassies
24 tarts

Shells
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 oz cream cheese, softened
1 c flour
Filling
2 Tbsp butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped

For tart shells, beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add flour; mix until a soft dough forms. Cover; refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place balls of dough into ungreased cups of mini muffin pan. Dip a tart shaper in flour; press into dough to form tart shells. (If you dont have a tart shaper you can make an indention with your thumb or the back of a spoon.)
For filling, microwave butter on high for 30 seconds or until melted. Stir in brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Chop pecans, stir into filling. Using a small scoop, fill each tart shell with a scoop of filling. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool in pan for 3 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Is there anyone at home?

Well, I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately, but that isn't because life is boring. So I thought I'd at least get on and post a little something. I've been plenty busy at work lately. In what I do, we have up and down periods, usually every 2-3 monhts or so I might end up in between projects, but I've been busy for 2 months now and have work through the end of January, so that's very nice.

One of the big things going on for me lately is that I sprained my ankle really good playing volleyball about 5 weeks ago. I grazed someone's leg coming down at the net and rolled it all the way down. I've rolled my ankles (both) multiple times playing basketball, but this was a really good one. I was on crutches for close to a week, and now 5 weeks later, I'm still tender and maybe only about 70%. It's sucked, because I miss my volleyball, basketball and tennis. They're my get away. I thought I'd include a picture or two of my bruising and swelling from a couple days after the sprain, but I don't want to show off my hairy feet. :) I did swell halfway up my calf and down to my toes and bruised from above my ankle to my toes. The swelling had spread out nicely by then. About 3-4 hours after the sprain it was just like I'd hidden a softball in my ankle.

This past weekend, Tara and Grace and my sister in law went up to Nashville to a time-out for women and met my sisters there. They had a lot of fun, and me and the children went and spent the night Friday at Wes's house. We had a lot of fun there too. I brought my TV and Wii, so we had two TVs and two Wiis so we played lots of games and Wes and I watched Iron Man that night. We also went and bought Wii Music on Saturday, and it is quite a fun little game. There's a lot of different things you can do with it. We're learning that Carter has quite an ear for music has he plays a little music game called Pitch Perfect. He's really good at it.

Pearly Whites

Last week was the week of teeth. Grace got her first tooth; actually teeth. She got her 2 bottom teeth in one day. She had been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and I just could not figure out what her problem was. Then one morning she was chewing on my finger and there they were. It took a few more day and then they were completely out. Here is a picture of them.Then, a few days later Hallie FINALLY lost her snaggle tooth. Her front top tooth has been sticking out because her adult tooth was coming in behind her baby tooth. It looked horrible. I told her that if she did not get it out by Friday that I was taking her to the dentist to have them pull it. On Thursday night she was at soccer practice and a boy that was defending the goal kicked the ball and it hit her in the mouth! Knocked the tooth right out. I told her that she needed to thank him for saving her from having to go to the dentist and get it pulled.

Jackson Votes

Today after I picked Jackson up from preschool, we went to the grocery store. When we gott there he wanted to take his Weekly Reader that he got from school in the store with him so he could trace the letters. So we go in and go shopping and when we are waiting in line at the check out I started looking at his Weekly Reader. The cover of it has a little kid with a flag and it says Ready, Set, Vote! So I am look at his Weekly Reader and talking to him about it. On the inside of it there is a section that says "Who Will Be Our President?" and there are pictures of John McCain and Barach Obama out on the campaign trail talking to people. There is a little box on each one of the pictures and Jackson had colored in one of the boxes. The following is our conversation.

Me: What are these little boxes for?

J: We voted for the Prophet.

Me: Oh, you mean you the President.

J: Yeah, we voted for the President and he won. (pointing to McCain)

Me: Oh, why did you decide to vote for him?

J: Because he wears a tie!



In the pictures McCain is wearing a suit and tie and Obama is wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top botton undone.



So there you go. Go out and vote and choose the one that wears the tie!

Grace's First Food

Grace had her first food this week, with some rice cereal. Here's a pretty good video.

Soccer

Tara's been bugging me for a while to blog about the kids playing soccer and post a few pictures. We signed the kids up for soccer to play in a league at a big subdivision in our neighborhood. We signed them all up 2 weeks into an 8 week season, so they missed the first couple of weeks. They've now had 4 weeks, and seem to be doing better each week. Jackson scored a goal last week! Jackson's league is just chase the ball back and forth to the goal. Carter is one of the youngest in an under 8 league, but he seems to really enjoy it, and just runs around. Hallie was very timid at first but she's getting more and more relaxed and in to it as the weeks pass. If she'd get over her fears and try hard, I think she'd do well, because she's actually very athletic. Here's some pics of Carter and Jackson, we don't have a good one of Hallie because we've forgotten the camera a couple of weeks, and didn't get a good one before.