The Coolest Aunt Ever!

So today, I impressed both my niece and my nephew.

First, I dug through a tin of alphabet cookies so I could spell out my nephew's name while he was having a snack. He got so excited you would have thought I told him he could have ice cream for dinner.

Second, I opened a jar of sauce and my niece squealed, clapped and said "You did it!" I guess she heard me say that a few too many times last week in my attempt to get her potty trained!

That was my self esteem boost for the day! I can spell and open jars!!

Something yummy!

I thought I would share a recipe that I have made several times and just love! I LOVE sweets, and this is definitely sweet!

Cinnamon Roll Cake

-yellow cake mix

-4 eggs

-1 cup sour cream (I use fat free)

-3/4 cup oil

Mix together and pour in 9x13 pan.

-1 cup brown sugar

-1 tablespoon cinnamon

Mix together, then spoon into piles on top of the cake batter. Then take a knife and swirl into the batter. (I swirled too much this time and it looked kind of silly when it was all done baking!)

Bake at 325 for 30-40 minutes. I usually check at 30 minutes, then every five minutes after that if it isn't done.

-2 cups powdered sugar

-4 tablespoons milk

Mix together and pour over cake after it has cooled for 10 minutes. I think I have decided that I will actually cut the icing in half (1 cup powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons milk) because it was a bit much tonight! Let cool a little longer then DIG IN!!

I hope you enjoy trying out this recipe!

3 Years Ago Today...

We got married!

It sounds cliche' but we both do say that we married our best friend. We still laugh and joke and talk like we did on some of our first dates. Our love has grown more than I would have ever imagined it could! Here is a journey through our anniversaries...

Oh my, I did it again didn't I?  I didn't realize it had been 5 months since my last post.  That is really sad!  Well, most of the people who read this have facebook and kind of know what has been happening during this time that I've been AWOL, so here is the last several months in bullet points! (I've been dreading the long, drawn out "I'm back" post.  So if I can just get through this one, I'll be much better about posting regularly.)

• February - I turned 25.  Yes, I feel old.  By the age of 25, my mom had already had all the kids she was going to have.  In case you haven't picked up on it, I've produced no children.  I feel quite behind, even though Tim says I shouldn't! 
• March (get ready for it, it's a doozy!) - My car got stolen.  Yes, my car we bought less than a year before was stolen from out of our driveway.  Nevermind the fact I left the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition!  But really, I had done this all winter.  I would start my car to warm it up, run inside to do a few things and get my stuff then leave.  Well, this morning I was running late and I turned it on and ran in just to grab my purse and tell Tim I was leaving, I went outside and it was gone!!!  Let me tell you, that was a WEIRD feeling.
• Later in March - The police find my car in the parking lot of some abandoned apartments.  The people who stole it did not take the brand new tires we had just put on it or my pink umbrella, but they took everything else.  My beloved Garmin, the 10 water bottles I had just put in the car the morning it was stolen, my reusable Target shopping bags, the air mattress that was still in the trunk from my birthday weekend when we were in Arkansas, the OWNER'S MANUAL, and all of our insurance/tire warranty paperwork and various cords.  I immediately decide we are going to sell the car and I'm going to get something else.  (After praying about it, we realized that would be an unwise decision since we owe more on it than it's worth...)  Oh, and since my keys were in the ignition, they had our house key, my work key, our friend's apartment key, and my only key fob (remember, the other one was flushed down the toilet on New Year's Eve!). So we had to change our locks, the Doctor had to change his locks (because he was convinced I was being stalked and they would come break in the office for allergy medication!!) and we had to buy another key fob...and those aren't cheap.  I sure know how to handle my keys!
• April - We go on our annual California trip for Spring Break.  We had a great time and were able to spend an entire week out there instead of just several days like last year.  Thankfully my car was found before this trip or I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all.
• Mid April - My sister-in-law (Tim's brother's wife) needed someone to help take care of her the kiddos and help with the cleaning and cooking while she recovered from shoulder surgery.  I thought, what the heck, I'll ask the Doctor if I can take off two months without pay and still come back to my job after that.  He said yes (I think I asked him on a good day!!). 
• End of April - We meet my parents in OKC to give the CR-V back to them (Oh, the day my car got stolen I was convinced I would never see it again, so my parents met us in OKC that night and let us borrow my uncle's CR-V that they are keeping for him.)  Then we made the trek to Dallas for me to start my job as a nanny/cook/maid!  
• May - I've loved being able to help with the kids.  I feel like I'm making some great memories with them and I love to have a part in their lives.  I'm so glad Willy and Darlene gave me the chance to do this.  They've been great!  I don't think I would do well with having someone in my house for a long time, but they are being wonderful!  They understand my need to escape to the beautiful aisles of the Super Target with a large Diet Coke and a bag of popcorn.  I'm sure the workers there wonder why I'm there so often!  But Target just makes me smile!!  It has been a lot to get used to.  My nephew is quite the talker...from the minute he wakes up (I have NO IDEA who else did that as a child...Mom, do not make any comments on here!!)  But we have some sweet times that I hope he always remembers.  My niece is the cutest thing that has ever been on this earth!  I can't get over it.  When I would pick her up at preschool, I would stand in the doorway of the class and she would say "That's my Randi".  Yes, I had to mop up my melted heart off the floor!!

Well, that brings us to June.  I will do better at posting.  So many funny things happen throughout the day, I have plenty of material!!

Love,

The old, childless, 25 year old!!

A must see!

You have to watch this now!! Be sure to have your volume on!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCYaw5tGYAs

We are trying to figure out how to teach Leo how to do what the last dog does. We know that's what he's thinking when we put him in his kennel!

Enjoy!

I love to cook!

I have decided that when I don't think I have anything to post about, I will post one of my recipes. I would not consider myself someone who takes risks and makes elaborate creations, but I put my own twist on pretty traditional recipes. My recipes are also either low fat or nonfat. I have never used real cream or real butter in a recipe, and I use very low fat ground turkey in recipes instead of ground beef. We also use ground bison for our hamburgers instead of ground beef. We are definitely not health nuts by any means, but since we like to indulge and sometimes overeat, we like to know that we are at least eating a healthier version than if we were to go out to eat and order the same thing!

So for my first cooking post, I am going to start with some of my favorite tools I have in our kitchen. Now, our kitchen is very small, so I'm sure once we have a house with a larger kitchen, I will have many more favorite tools! I think these are some basics that make cooking and baking easier and more fun.

First, my Grape KitchenAid stand mixer.

My wonderful college roommate, Mandy, got all of our friends to go in together and purchase this wonderful appliance. And, I must say, I probably would not be likely to bake as often as I do if I didn't have this! You just put all your ingredients in, turn it on, and it does all the work for you!

Second, my Pampered Chef stoneware.

My mother-in-law gave me my first piece of stoneware, which was a casserole dish and it is great! This Christmas my sister-in-law got me two more pieces. What is so great about this stoneware is you cannot burn the bottom anything! Just try! You can bake cookies 15 minutes longer, and the bottom will not be burnt. I love anything that is foolproof. When you bake cookies on the stoneware, when you take them out of the oven, only let them sit on the stoneware for about a minute, then loosen them up and remove them. The longer they sit on the stoneware, the harder they will be. That really goes with anything you bake on the flat stoneware.

My next favorite is another Pampered Chef item. It is the medium scoop.

This scoop allows you to have the perfect round cookies that are all the same size. It's wonderful for a mildly OCD person, like myself!

Now, on to my favorite ingredient to use: Land O'Lakes Light Stick Butter.

I like to use this for several reasons. First, it has less than half the fat of regular butter and the taste is the same, if not better (in our opinion). Second, by have less fat in the butter, your cookies and biscuits are going to be chewy. Not just chewy when they are right out of the oven, but chewy the next day and the next day. I personally do not like crunchy cookies, and I have learned that cookies made with real butter tend to be crunchy after they have cooled and been stored.

If you haven't figured this out by now, I am no expert on cooking or baking, I just love to do it! I never cooked or baked much growing up, I have only found my true love for baking since I have been married. My mother was not a big cook. We would always tease her that she could burn water! Probably, I should attribute my appreciation and love for cooking to my great-grandmother, Grandma Pug.

The first time I ever cooked anything, was in her kitchen. She passed away in December 2007, and I miss her very much. I wish I was able to share recipes with her and learn more from her years of experience in the kitchen.

Hopefully, I have not bored you to death! My next post will be an actual recipe, with my tips and tricks I have learned all the way. I love to bake more than I love to cook, but I will try to post an even amount of posts on each of them! If you have any specific dish that you are interested in but are scared to try, let me know. There's a good possibility that I have made it and have a recipe that I have tweaked a little! The only thing I don't make is fish, only because Tim isn't a fan of it. So, I have zero experience in cooking fish, except for the fish sticks I used to make in high school, but I don't think those count!

Now, everyone sit on the edge of your seats until my next post! ;-)

Nothing too exciting...

I bet all three of y'all who read my blog would love it if I posted something more than just once a month! As I was thinking about what to post, I got a little frustrated because nothing exciting has happened to us lately. THEN when I started thinking about that fact, I realized that I would rather not have excitement, because it would probably end up something like this! We all know we don't need anything like that happening again!


I guess you could consider Leo waking up twice in the middle of the night last night barking at absolutely nothing exciting. The odd thing, he has really been maturing lately. He sits at the front window watching the kids play outside or our neighbor walking his dog, and Leo doesn't do anything. He doesn't bark or try to break through the window or anything! I was very proud of him when I took him for a walk on Wednesday and he didn't bark at a single dog that we passed! Now, he did growl at a guy who was walking a little too close to us. I'll definitely not complain about him doing that! We were beginning to give up hope that he would ever become mature enough to not break things or go crazy when someone walks by the window. The first thing he learned to do in the training classes we took him to was to sit. And boy does he sit! We say his name, and where ever he is in the house, we hear him sit down. If we get on to him for something, he immediately sits down, I guess to distract us from whatever he has done wrong by sitting down beautifully! He does still tear off his toe nails trying to get inside when he hears the trash truck. He has now ripped off three in the last month or so!


Other than that I can think of nothing to post! Oh, have you ever wondered what a loofah looked like all pulled apart? Have you never even thought about it until now, since I said something? Well, this is what it looks like:


Oh, so don't buy the $.96 loofahs at Target, or this might happen to you in the middle of your shower!! It just fell apart in my hands! Who knew these things were like 10 feet long?!


Ok, in all seriousness, if you haven't noticed my new little button on the left side of my blog, look now. This is Kelly Stamp's blog and she is just the sweetest girl in the world. After several years of struggling to have a baby, her and her husband were blessed with a precious little girl. But when she was born she had immediate breathing and heart problems and was taken to the NICU in Tulsa (they live in Bentonville). She is progressively getting better, but it is going to be a long road. Please pray for them as they are coping with all the ups and downs of having a baby with serious health problems. Kelly is keeping very upbeat but I know she is tired and just wants to take her baby home with her!


I hope you all have a great weekend, and if anything exciting happens to us, I'll be sure to let you know!


Randi