Happy Birthday Papa: A Rhyme

Happy Birthday, Papa!
With apologies to Dr. Seuss...

We would like you in a boat.


We would like you with a goat.


We would like you on a train.


We would like you in the rain (or snow).


With a pipe! In a tree!


We would like you, yes indeed.


We would like you in a box and we would like you with a fox.


We would like you on a hike, even on a bike!


We would like you here or there.


We would like you ANYWHERE!


Here's to a year full of snuggles,


coffee,


tea,


video games,


And good books!

Ice Princess

Friday morning Autumn woke up saying, "hey, maaaamaaaaa," after having slept in by about 30 minutes. Instead of getting her to come to me like I usually do, I went in to say hello. And I saw this:


The first thing she said to me was, "I want to see Lainey and P'd." The second thing was, "I got crazy hair."


Sadly, I had to tell little miss that there was probably no Lainey and P'd in her future. We ended up getting iced into our house Friday and Saturday. These pictures aren't from Friday because we couldn't get out to play in the snow--it looked like snow but it was actually solid sheets of ice, much to Autumn's disappointment.


My friend Christy got Autumn this monkey hat. :D There are matching gloves but Autumn's hands are still so tiny that there are very few gloves and mittens that fit her. By the way, is Autumn's first documented fighting stance. ha!


This picture also seemed appropriate for an ice day recap...last year, Andi got Autumn and Sophia these snow princess shirts. She loooves this shirt. She's all, "I got princess!"


Anyway, this little interlude is to kill time before I get this video out. It's taking longer than I expected...my one easy little video has turned into two that need to be reallly edited down. :P I'm guessing that no one wants 6 minutes of Autumn singing the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song.

There She Grows...

Hey, guys! I am so sorry...I am working on a video and completely lost track of when I last posted. Things are busy as always here. I've spent this week doing some more serious than usual marvelling over what big girl Autumn is becoming. She can kind of pedal her tricycle now...back in November when she last rode, her legs weren't long enough to push the pedal all the way forward.


I moved the high chair out of the kitchen for the party a few weeks ago and decided just to leave it out. So we had an influx of what Autumn calls her "big girl" items--a new potty seat to replace the one that came with her training potty, a booster seat for the table, and a step stool that's taller than the one that her training potty converted into. She's thrilled to use all of her new stuff, of course, but the thing that tickled us is how the first thing she wanted to do with her new step stool was brush her hair in the mirror.


She's also been doing some awesome pretend play. Autumn's always had great imagination but now she's got a sheep that she calls the Mommy Sheep and she takes care of her "beebees" gently and caringly. "Okie beebees, it time for night night. Mama, zeza (Autumnspeak for zebra) is cold...have a balink (blanket), zeza, is that better?" :) Mike's family brought over the vanity and salon supplies they got her for Christmas so she's been cutting people's hair, saying "snip snip!" and "ok, be still!" And, speaking of the salon, we went to my mom's last week. While I was getting my hair done, Autumn spent a good chunk of the time saying, "mama, I'm about ready to go." We were like where did you even hear that??


Anyway, all that to say...little miss is growing up. :) And, P'd, don't worry...I'll have that video for you soon. Haha.

New Year!

And, with this post, I am pretty much caught up except for a video or two! :) Yay!

We usually have a holiday party every year. In the past, it's been a Christmas party but the last two years we've had a New Year's Brunch. It's been a nice change because there aren't as many schedule conflicts and that extra week or two to plan and clean is just wonderful.

This year I gave my camera to my brother who took a lot of really great photos. I am going to just link the album here if you want to see the pictures. For people who have seen these on Facebook, they are mostly the same photos plus some extra ones of people who don't have facebook accounts. (btw, if you click on the slideshow, I think you can see the pictures in a larger format)


This year's party was so much fun. Everyone seemed to find someone to talk to and everyone seemed to really enjoy the food. There were two recipes that people requested and I'm going to share them here. The first is:

Hazelnut Hot Chocolate

Heat 2 cups milk & dash of cream in a saucepan over med heat until almost simmering. Add 1/4 cup nutella & a pinch of kosher salt. Whisk vigorously until frothy. Divide among 2 mugs and cap off with a shot of Frangelico liqueur or a nip of vanilla.

I have found that it scales well and you don't have to be super precise with the measurements. Also, Kahlua is very good in place of the Frangelico. A special thank you to Andi for sharing the recipe with me forever ago.



The other requested recipe was for hash browns. I'm not a huge fan of the recipe with the condensed soup for hash brown casserole. I didn't care for how it scaled and how it kept in the chafing dish last year so I looked hard for something simple but good. When I first came across this recipe on Allrecipes.com I was kind of skeptical but it got so many good reviews that we tried it out on Christmas day and...wow.

I pretty much followed the original recipe for the party except I didn't use all cream--I did half cream and half 2% milk and would have used whole milk if I had it on hand--and I quadrupled it. The recipe scaled nicely. I was a little nervous about doing this but I layered it like a lasagna...I put down one layer of hash browns, sprinkled spices and cheese over the top, poured milk to saturate...and then repeated that until I ran out of ingredients. I did do some calculating to make sure I was using the right amount of milk, salt and garlic for the layer but I won't bore you with all that. :P If you don't like hash browns, still try this recipe sometime, seriously, it's that good. Also, for my vegan friends, Mollie tested the Hazelnut Cocoa with vegan ingredients so I can share her results if you like. I'm guessing the hash browns will veganize well, too!

Anyway, let me know if you want recipes for anything else. Except the quiche. That one is my secret. :D You have to come over for that.

Holiday Recap 2

So Christmas night we went to Mama Lainey and Papa D's house. This picture of the three of us seriously cracked me up. She's totally eyeballing the gifts.


Autumn and Tyler's big gift was a kitchen and grill set with all the accessories, including an apron and hat for each of them (which reminds me: I have a chef hat pattern for kids! I can't wait to try it out!). Autumn made us all laugh with her talking on the phone and bustling around the kitchen routine. I have no idea where she might have gotten that. Haha...


They ended up playing with the kitchen set while the grown ups opened their gifts. Autumn occasionally came out to help me with gifts. You can tell here from her WIDE OPEN EYES that it's getting late and she had been playing hard.


I finally got to give Nanny her apron and I could also finally tell her that the reason Autumn associates houndstooth with Nanny is because she had seen me working on that apron for a while! I think it looks great on her!! I'm super happy and it was worth all the work and learning how to do rick rack from internet tutorials. :P


Oh, here's a fun gift that Autumn got. It's so. very. true. Ha! I am, however, going to take some paint or something to the quotation marks around the big because it's going to drive me insane. Actually, what I need to do is submit this photo to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.


That weekend we also got to go to Houston's which is my faaaaaavorite restaurant. I got some really nice shots. This one is a nice one of Brad, Nanny, and Boppa but the thing that is the most interesting to me is that Autumn and Brad have the exact same color eyes. Isn't that neat? I think changing eye colors are really cool, I guess because mine are always the same brown. Autumn ranges from blue to green to grey and Mike is green to blue. My dad's eyes used to be green or nearly clear, oddly enough. Sometimes it's strange to see Autumn's eyes go clear grey like my dad's did.


I've already put this one on this blog before but I like it so much here it is again. I'm totally going to frame it.


I am almost caught up! Yay!

Holiday Recap 1

We had a really, really good holiday. It's taken me forever to post anything because I'm trying to get back in the groove of things. I think we're in pretty good shape right now, though. Anyway, let's hop into the wayback machine and head back to Christmas Eve...we dressed Autumn up in her Christmas dress of awesomeness. She loves every second of wearing that dress although a stranger would never know from the faces she made in the photos.


My family doesn't show up here very often but I promise they do exist, hahaha. This is my brother Donnie. Mike and I actually "see" him and his girlfriend Liz a lot...almost every night. In Warcraft. >.> Hahaha. Christmas Eve we got to see them in person and not just their avatars.


This is my sister Valerie and her husband Justin. They are just over 20 weeks pregnant with a girl whose name is to be determined. Justin is telling people her name will be Justeena Edweena. :P I remember for a little while I told people that Autumn was going to be Ilaraze: a combination of my name and Nanny's given name Ilawene. Boppa calls her Halla, teehee.


My mom pretty diligently avoided the camera that night so we'll move on to Autumn's Great Discovery: egg nog.


I won't bore you with the 2.5 million photos we have of Autumn opening gifts but this one is pretty funny. There's a wagon in that box. It is heavy. So heavy that we couldn't figure out how my mom got it up her apartment stairs. Miss Autumn thought she might be able to carry it to Papa who was going to help her open it. :D


The next morning, we did breakfast and gifts here at our house. My mom came over and helped critique some of the foods I was experimenting with for our New Year's Day Brunch. I made biscuits and tried out an apples and granola recipe as well as one for hash browns. I'll have to link those later because they were absolutely wonderful. Autumn rolled out some biscuits with me. She was all "I need apron! I need cook!"


We baked her creative biscuit creations, to her delight.


Ok, one last gift picture. This gift was the hit of the lot. It cost me $3.99. I got her this hello kitty chap stick for her stocking. Seriously, barely anything else existed after that...she would say, "I need lipstick!" and then whip out her little bag of chap stick.


That's it for now!

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. Or, at a minimum, a better holiday than Mike had:


Haha. He had a good holiday. He's just a little peopled out. I have a ton of really great photos but I thought I'd post a year recap like a few others have done. I thought it might be kind of fun!

In January, Autumn started Mother's Day out. And I had long black hair!


February brought the biggest snow I have ever seen in Memphis...I think the official Lakeland tally was 11 inches.


In March, we went to Colorado to visit Brian and Andi and their kids Nate and Sophia. We also went snowboarding which really could have gone better than it did, hahaha.


This doesn't have any particular story attached for April but I love this photo. :P This is her first documented icy stare.


In May, Autumn turned two. It's hard to believe she's going to be three in a few short months. Incidentally, I'm already planning her birthday in my head. :D


June brought Autumn's first toasted marshmallow experience.


July was a busy month. We went to Florida where Autumn decided she hated the beach but kinda liked the pool. My grandmother moved to the Philippines where she is doing well. And I made this dress for Autumn.


August brought Vegas! And in Vegas, Mike's mom found the first of the...Tink Dresses!


In September, I turned 29 and Autumn had her first school pictures made. In this outfit. Complete with the blue beads, lol.


October was a milestone month with Autumn. Looking at the photos, I'm seeing a lot of places where she really came out of her shell--she played with animals and in the bouncer at Tyler's birthday, she cooked with me and her Aunt Penny, she played great with her Uncle Rex at their first meeting, Autumn rocked out at the zoo, all kinds of things. I think October was the first time Autumn had her nails painted, too, which, if you have spent much time with her recently, you'll know was a major event for her. She loves some nail polish! "I got nails painted, mama! Lula paint nails!"


In November, we went to see the Playhouse Disney Live show (which was not super great, lol) and had all the family things around Thanksgiving, and some friends of mine and I went to see New Moon. :D Oh, and this Thanksgiving was Autumn's first year at the Big Girl Table!


I'll still have some December pics to post but here's one for you...


We hope you had a happy new year!