Traveling Tales

We had a nice trip home a few weeks ago to visit... Slight coincidence that we were there for both Jeff's presentation AND the championship softball game.  Both were excellent to watch. Although, I can tell you I understood a lot more about the softball game than the software pitch! All in all, it was worth the long drive.

We had a great time and took lots of pictures.  We got to meet the newest addition to the family, Layla. She only gets to hold that title for a few more weeks though.  Sawyer only has another eight weeks to cook.  With that scary fact in mind, we have gone into overdrive on nursery prep.  The next post will likely be filled with before and afters of his new digs.  More to come!  

Dog House Rocks! !

OK! So Jen has told me over and over that until I post its not a "family" blog its hers. So I guess its officially a family blog. Over the past week or so we have been transforming our back yard a little. We had a pretty shoddy, ghetto, redneck (choose your adjective) deck/sunporch thing that was torn down. The wood and other materials will be used to fuel our imagination in projects. The first of these projects was a new house/bed for our two girls. I think it turned out well, they seem to like it, or at least they have not complained to me. Alright thats it for the first one from me. They are more pictures of the dog house on our pics page and deck pictures to com soon. If your reading this and have not voted I will find out and you will be sorry. Love most of you and miss you all!

Rainy Day

When you combine rainy weather and slight homesickness... add in a little hungry prego chick and now we are in need of some comfort food! My plan was to make a plain old roasted chicken, just about as basic as you can get, right? We had one that was only about 5 lbs. that I set out to thaw while I cut up potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery. I must have been hungry when I set out the veggies, because even after stuffing the bird with a bunch of the onion and celery there was WAY too much. A 9 by 12 baking pan was standing in as our roaster. And I quickly realized that there was no way all the veggies were going in with the bird.

So we ended up with boiled and smashed potatoes, and everything else went in the "roaster." The house smelled awesome! The chicken was really juicy, with nice crispy skin, of course. But that's not the best part...

The BEST part was the fabulous gravy I made from scratch! It tasted great. It wasn't lumpy. It rocked. And if you couldn't tell from the picture, that belly loves gravy :)

Because the leftover bones were so small, I don't know if I could even use them to try and make  stock. I am saving half the grease for a cheesy casserole tomorrow with the leftovers and some broccoli. Let ya'll know how that one turns out! 

Newly anointed domestic goddess is happily accepting recommendations for new recipes, or tips and hints. More pics online if you follow the link to the right.

Houston, we have power...

What a fun afternoon! We have a new reciprocal saw, that was put to great use in the back yard. Anyone looking for a great fire, you can find one every night for the next year at our house!  We always get into trouble when we head out to the Home Depot. Maybe that's why they sent us the nice coupon : )

Major bonus, TN (and probably other states) has designated weekends that are "tax free."  The timing seems to be centered around the back-to-school crowd. However, virtually everything that is normally taxed, like oh say saws..., can be purchased tax free this weekend. With all this in our favor, how could we deny? 

By the way, starting finger count; all 10. And two of mine crossed it stays that way!

Two days in a row!

Well, the experience of adding photos to the blog... more difficult than expected. For now I guess we are going to just use a separate site and application. (Still Google, of course!) As already mentioned, we're pretty new to this! Anyone more savvy, feel free to suggest a better way!

Happy Friday to all! I'm heading back to the painting, and Lee is off to work.