Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

Happy Christmas Eve! We just finished up our traditional x-mas eve dinner of Hawaiian Steak (like the one from Houston's restaurant). This year, we paired it with tarragon mashed potatoes and tomatoes in ginger soy dressing. It was excellent.

Each year at Christmas, we'll take a picture of Cady with this book her GG made for her. It'll be fun to see how much she grows.

Here we are, wishing you and your family a very happy holiday!

Crawling around the room

That's what she likes to do. Today, I made her model a hat I made. A lady in Ohio ordered it custom for her daughter from my online Etsy shop. I think it turned out really well! Anyway, the top two are of her in her hat and the bottom two are of her crawling around her room. The pictures are a bit blury and low resolution, sorry they aren't super clear, you get the idea though!

Looks what's happening now...

We walked in to Cady's room to see what she was doing. We were hoping she was about to take her nap. Nope, she was standing there, in her crib, laughing. So we're lowering the mattress today. We're also doing a lot of holiday baking. In the oven now, is a two-colored squash bread and butter pecan cakes. Later, more toffee crisps and some chocolate chip cookies.
Here's Cady's 7 month picture. We've been taking pictures of her on the 7th of each month, here she is in December! Two teeth (on the bottom), sitting up very well on her own, crawling (she goes a few steps then lunges forward), and now, pulling herself up to standing regularly.

Cady and her tree

Too cute. She loves being in her room and crawling all over it, from corner to corner and back again. She's trying really hard to pull herself up to standing. I'm sure it'll happen for her very soon. We put a tree in her room and she loves looking at the lights before she goes to sleep. We don't let her watch TV, or have any of those toys with crazy lights (not yet anyway), so this is kind of a special treat. Thank you GG for the ornaments!

Happy Holidays from our crib to yours!

We started decorating last night and finished most of it today. The trees are up, decorations are out and the baking was in full swing today. I made pumpkin cheesecake muffins and the first batch of what has become my signature holiday sweet, nutty chocolate toffee crisps. Lots more batches to do.

We did a little rearranging in Cady's room today, and in the midst of that, we decided to play around with her and some lights. We love the way it turned out. She's wearing our favorite PJs too. You may remember them from this post. We loved them so much that we found them in a bigger size and bought them. Lucky us, they were on clearance!

Thankscamping Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving weekend camping with our neighbors at Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest. We are thankful to have such good friends in our neighbors, especially when we can't be with our families. We are lucky in so many ways, and have so much to be thankful for. We're so glad Cady's first Thanksgiving was something fun and memorable, maybe we'll make it a tradition!

We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving, with friends and family! Here's a few shots of our weekend. Clockwise from top left: 1. The Thanksgiving table with campfire cooked ham and turkey, fried turkey, stuffing, yams, potatoes and gravy, broccoli casserole, corn casserole, salad, green bean casserole, rolls (with homemade herbed butter with herbs from our back yard), pumpkin and pecan pie. 2. Dan with a sleeping Cady at the table. 3. Claire and Chico overlooking the lake. 4. Half of our group on a hike: Maddie, Lisa, Claire, Rod, Garrett, Jack, Mike, Connor, Danny, Kevin and Denise. 5. On the hike.

The Holiday Baking Begins

When Dan and I worked in Sharonville, I organized a "baked goods" silent auction to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It was a fun twist on a traditional bake sale. People donated a baked good and the bidding started at $1.00. One of the donations was a lemon pound cake from our co-worker Kellie who worked with me on the conversion in Greensboro, NC. Kellie's cake went for something like $35. I couldn't imagine what made so many people bid on it, and what made it go for that much money (I mean, isn't a cake just flour and sugar?). Well, after having had some of the cake when the generous winner shared it, I understood.

I have asked Kellie for the recipe at least five times, and have always misplaced it, or deleted the e-mail she sent. She sent it again when I was on bedrest and I finally wrote it down for my little vintage recipe box. I made it for our neighbor Dave's birthday, which we'll celebrate on Friday.

Here's the recipe, it's super easy and sure to be a crowd pleaser. The outside gets nice and crusty and the inside is dense and delicious. It's excellent. Thank you Kellie!

3 cups of sugar
3 sticks of butter (I know, I know...Paula Dean would be proud)
cream the butter and sugar together for 2-3 minutes
add in 3 cups of flour gradually, mix well
add in 5 eggs, one at a time, and mix well
fold in 3/4 cup of lemon-lime soda and 2 tablespoons of lemon extract
pour the batter into a greased bundt pan and bake at 325 degrees for 1.25 hours
let the cake cool, then flip it upside down, get it out of the bundt and let it cool
taste it, and tell me how good it is