A wonderful weekend.

Got the tree decorated last weekend.

Shop shop shop. Wrap wrap wrap. Super Saturday was spent getting Christmas together. Now there are some presents under the tree.
 I even got that package to Erica mailed. Yay me. She should get it right before Christmas.  We will have to make the next package for New Years. Even though she's not all the way in Korea anymore it feels as if she is. We miss her so much.And every time I see something that reminds me of her in the store I can't help but want to buy it. She wont be able to come home for Christmas again this year but at least she will be able to drive up to my sisters and be with some family. That's the life of a soldier I guess.

The Magic Pirate Cake just before it was loaded into the oven.

I finally got that cake baked. It has to be aged and then with one bite I'll be on my way to that pirate treasure. If it taste anywhere near as good as it smelled it will be a treasure. I'm not sure how long to age it. Some other cake recipes have the cake being aged up to 5 years. I thought a month would be a long time. I don't know if it will last a month. Next time I'm definitely making two.

The fruited rum. Yum.

And of course we had to taste the rum that was drained off the fruit. Most of it will be saved for a glaze but yum was it good. I think this is why pirates were always drunk and drinking rum.

Check out the recipe page!  I plan on posting a composite of the recipe and what I did. If anyone would like to try a rum cake made by me.... just let me know. I may go into business if this cake turns out as good as I think it will.

Lou's big New Years Eve party.

We arrived around 4:00. No tent to set up this year. Since we didn't have the kids with us we decided to sleep in the mini van. We removed the back seats and put in a blow up mattress. We were excited to meat Lou's new girl, Robin. She was very nice and ready to party, and even though she wasn't a very outdoorsy type I think she had a good time. Except for when this weird bug was attacking her.

Lou had the pit for the fire all dug before we showed up. It was around 8 to10 feet across. The bigger the better.

Shortly after we arrived we enjoyed some hors devours. Kim made brunshager or something like that. It's a dip made out of liverwurst. Chris really liked it. Bonnie and Charlie brought rum balls and mince meat pie. We had some chips. It was all good. The best thing was the 15lbs of smoked pulled pork that Lou cooked up for dinner. Kim also made his famous chili. And Lou had his black eye peas in the slow cooker. No one can ever wait for New Years day for them and they get sampled all night.

Soon the Christmas trees were dressed in women's underwear with beer box hats. Then with a big kaboom the fire is lit by dowsing the trees in gasoline and shooting them with roman candles.

Chris was king of the fire till he fell in. Which is a after school special about being intoxicated and making redneck hot air balloons in a fire big enough to cook a man as big as Chris in.

Don't worry. He pushed himself out right away and escaped with only a small burn in the palm of his hand. Which is a good experiment of the effects of adrenaline on intoxicated people. Everyone suddenly wasn't.

This is some of the fireworks that we had that night. They were amazing.

All in all we had a great time and survived into the year 2010. Although the next day we woke up in a van. One of my teachers way back in high school use to love to say. "Your going to end up in a van down by the river."

Happy New Year 2010!!!

Click here to see a video of the fire being started.

http://s372.photobucket.com/albums/oo165/maimom01/?action=view&current=NewYear09057.flv

Christmas 09

We had fun decorating the tree. It didn't take long at all this year as we used a PLASTIC one. (yuk) Usually we get a permit from the forestry service and go out and cut down a sand pine in the forest but Chris thought it would be easier to go with plastic. Less mess. No sap on the carpet. And it was. But as I said we have not had a plastic one and there was a little difficulty putting it together. We got it used with no directions. Chris never reads them anyway. He jammed the pole into the base. We had to buy a base for it cause the original was missing. So when it didn't fit exactly we continued on. The real ones never fit right. We matched the colors on the branches to the trunk one row after the next. Then Veronica noticed they were getting bigger as the went up. "That's because the bottom is smaller to fit presents" Chris assured her. They got bigger and bigger till finally Chris had to admit "I think it's upside down." Which would have been great but it was too wobbly.

There was a flurry of getting things ready and before I new it Christmas had arrived. The girls tore threw the presents with their usual gusto. The dog was, hands down, the happiest one as he had gotten a stocking full of new toys. He took each one and piled them up. It was cute. Then he spent the rest of the day begging for ham. We enjoyed eating snacks of the season. Cakes, cookies, fudges, dips, crackers, cheese ball, brownie, breads, ect. We had some of all that stuff. When the dinner was done we could hardly move to eat it. But the ham came out really good so we did. Aunt Patty stopped by with Evan. Jessica had to work so they were going to have their Christmas start late. But really they had already had their Christmas about two days earlier when Even go to go shop with a cop. It's a program that the Mt. Dora police provide to kids that have lukemia, like Evan. He was suppose to go earlier but he had come down with a fever of 103 and couldn't. But they didn't forget about him they made a special trip just for him. So... Hat's off to the Mt. Dora police. They really made a differance for little Evan.

We all love to see Evan. He is always so happy and full of life. We got him some parachuteing toys. Him and the girls had fun playing with them in the living room.


All in all I'd say eveyone had a great Christmas and we are looking forward to next year.