Iron Bowl

It will be a miracle if we win, but hey we still say WAR EAGLE in this house.

Gobble Gobble!

Yesterday we had a great day full of amazing food and lots and lots of eating. It was only my 2nd time cooking the Thanksgiving meal but I think I did pretty well. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, baked macaroni and cheese, chicken and dressing, Sister Schubert rolls, lemon pie, and pumpkin cheesecake bars. We all ate WAY too much.

I'm usually pretty nervous about how the turkey will turn out, but this year I had a Jennie O Oven Ready turkey, so I had no worries. These turkeys come already prepared, cleaned, and seasoned. You don't have to worry about thawing it for a certain amount or anything. You just take it out of the freezer and put it in the oven. Basically the only work involved is opening the bag! I had plenty of time to prepare all of the rest of the food without having to worry about the turkey being thawed correctly or having to check it every few minutes. It was so easy!

But how did it taste? We all thought it was moist and delicious. I will definitely be ordering these turkeys for Thanksgiving from now on!

Happy Thanksgiving

I'll be busy today...cooking, eating Thanksgiving dinner with the fam, and going to see Twilight finally! with my friend Erin, but I thought I'd stop in and share this card with you all.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

www.someecards.com

Awesome!

5 Minutes for Mom is giving away a Sleep Number Bed.

How awesome is that? Go check it out.

But try not to win it, because I need it. K? Thanks :)

WW: Our Little Family

All I can think about is food, so I think I'll post a recipe

I love to make this cake. It is absolutely delicious because the layers are so thin that the chocolate just seeps through...yum!

12 layer chocolate cake

BATTER:
1 cup peanut oil
2 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 cup milk
3 cups self-rising flour
2 tsp. vanilla

Mix ingredients. Put 1/2 cup of batter to a layer. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 6 minutes.

I find that the exact amount of baking time depends on the oven you use but it is usually somewhere between 4-6 minutes. I use 4 cake pans to reduce the amount of time I spend standing in the kitchen :)


ICING:
3 cups sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
9 teaspoons cocoa
1.5 sticks butter/margarine

Mix ingredients (in a pot). Bring to a rolling boil at medium heat, then continue heating on low heat. Spread between layers and on top of cake.

My brave little man

Jackson had his second set of vaccinations today. He didn't even cry! The nurses were all amazed. He's 5 months old now, weighs 17 lbs 11 oz and is 27 inches long! He is just getting so big I can hardly believe it. Everyone thinks he is so much older than he is and I've had people ask me if he can walk and/or talk yet. Then they stare at me blankly when I explain how young he is. He got lots and lots of compliments today though, from the doctor, nurses, and plenty of random strangers in the waiting room. It amazes me how happy he is in public. He smiles and laughs at everyone and quite a few people have told me how lucky I am to have such a happy baby. But I think he is teething. He has been super cranky most days and screams every time I try to put him down for a nap (no matter how much cuddling/rocking/feeding/singing, etc that I do to try to calm him down). If he would just start taking his naps again we would be okay!

WW: Christmas pic preview

Here are just a few of the Christmas portraits we had made of Jackson.

I may have overreacted a little bit.

Last night my son tried to give me a heart attack.

His bath time has always been just a little scary to me, every since I realized that my Nanny's saying "You can drown in a teaspoon of water" actually made since when you're talking about a small baby. It doesn't help that the words "INFANT MAY DROWN" are written in bold on the side of the damn baby bathtub. Freaks me the hell out every time.

I was giving him his bath, and as I was rinsing his hair he turned to the side and got a mouthful of water. I panicked as he began choking. and by choking I mean he coughed once and I FLIPPED MY SHIT.

I picked him up immediately and began patting his back to get the water out. The non-existent water apparently since he was absolutely fine.

I realized he wasn't coughing anymore, so I looked at his face and he just started giggling.

Isn't that just great? He's 5 months old and he is already laughing at me for being completely ridiculous.

Homemade Birthday Gifts

Nanny & my aunt Dede's birthdays are coming up soon and I wanted to make them something special. It's hard to find gifts that are personal and unique without spending a fortune, so I made them each a mini-scrapbook of them with Jackson.

They are sort of plain but I really hated to use a lot of extra scrapbook-y type stuff on this album when it is so small (6 x 6). I didn't want to take focus away from the pictures. I really like these mini-albums because you can put them on display and then when you get tired of them you can just fold it back into a book and put it up.

This is Nanny's....

Dede's birthday isn't until December, but I went ahead and made hers too while I had all of the stuff out...

You can also find another homemade gift idea and see some cards that I handmade.

Winner!

The winner of The Lucky One giveaway is....


#1 Mandy from Life's About a Dream

Congrats Mandy! Shoot me an email at cassie at jmcgraw dot net with your address and I'll send it to you!

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Dead Until Dark

Twilight fans, have you seen this picture?

I saw this on her blog yesterday. They both look hot as hell.

Since I'm done with Twilight I started reading the True Blood series (actually Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mystery series that was turned into the HBO show True Blood). I just finished the first one last night but I have 4 more waiting for me on my dresser. I saw one episode of True Blood, and I wished I hadn't. I like imagining the characters for myself while I read them, not Hollywood's version of who they should be. But I will say that I do like Anna Paquin, and this guy...



He's older and not as cute as Edward, but I don't know, there is just something about him that I like. I told Jason that I want a vampire boyfriend, and he just laughed at me.

So if you liked Twilight you should read this series. It's not written for teenagers and there is definitely more sex and a bit more violence. It was a good change from the irritating lack of sex in Twilight though. I mean, is it even possible to have that much passion and not act on it? No. Ok, maybe it is possible, but what's the point? I spent half of the books thinking, "JUST DO IT ALREADY."

WW: Pumpkin Butt

My little pumpkin is 5 months old today. I can hardly believe it! In some ways it feels like I just gave birth, but at the same time I cannot imagine my life without him...

LOLbaby

On thebump.com message boards they have a picture of the week contest every week. This week the theme was to go to I Can Has Cheezburger and use their LOL builder to make a captioned photo. Well, I got a little carried away...

Playtime

Sorry this is sideways, I had no idea how to fix it. This is one of the many random videos I have taken of Jackson during playtime. He was trying to eat his feet but as soon as he sees the camera he decides he wants that instead!

Cards & Carrots

Jackson has been doing pretty well with his solids, but last night he decided he didn't really want to eat his carrots. He'd rather eat his hands, chew on his bib, and blow raspberries whenever I put the carrots in his mouth. This is what ensued....


You can see the faint smears of carrots on his forehead and in his eyebrows.

A few weeks ago I was at a scrapbooking party and I won a card making kit. I usually don't do things like this because it seems to take too much time, effort, and money, but since it was free I decided to try to make a few. I'm not that creative so they are pretty simple but I like the way they turned out...

The Lucky One: Review

I just finished reading Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One. It is a wonderful story full of romance and suspense. Logan is a Marine who finds a picture of a woman in the desert sand and thinks it is his lucky charm. After he survives the war, he goes on a journey to find the woman in the picture, feeling that he owes her something for saving him, and that she is the key to his destiny.

I've read and loved all of Sparks' books, and this one did not disappoint. I loved the grandmother in the story. She reminded me of my Nanny, with her wit and ways of telling it like it is. This book was a really good read, and had me crying at the end. Don't be alarmed, I cry easily, but that is a pretty good indicator for me that the story was well told. I felt like I was right there in the middle of everything that was happening. This is definitely a book that should be on your reading list.

Random thoughts

I didn't post for a few days because we had friends in town. It was nice having them here. It kind of got me out of the funk that I had been in. We didn't do much...drank some wine, watched some movies, got pedicures, and talked about old times.

Jackson's sleep training has sort of regressed. He was doing good for awhile but while our friends were here I started giving him his pacifier to help him get to sleep quicker and letting him nap in his swing during the day. He fussed a lot when I tried to put him to sleep and I think it was because he wanted to be around everyone. He really liked Alicia & Erin and all of the attention they gave him :) But now I guess I'm going to have to take his paci away again and I know he will cry a lot more.

He has started rolling over the other way now. He was been rolling over stomach-to-back for a few weeks, and now he can go from his back to his stomach. I haven't actually seen him do it, but I keep putting him down to sleep on his back and when I go to check on him, he's on his tummy! He's doing pretty well with solids, too. He likes carrots now. I'm trying to take it really slow because of his tummy issues, but he seems to be doing fine with all of them.

I love this time of year because I love all of the holidays, but it gets kind of hectic of course. I've already bought all of Jackson's presents (we're only getting him a few things because well, he won't remember anyway, and we know both sets of grandparents are aching to spoil him!) and I think Jason and I are going to buy Rock Band and consider it a present to each of us from each of us. A lot of birthdays in our family falls during this time of year. My MIL & Nanny have birthdays in November, plus we exchange Christmas ornaments on Thanksgiving, and my aunt's birthday is in December. So I really need to start doing some shopping! I really want to go get some family portraits done too, but Jason's schedule is crazy as hell right now. He went in to work at 5 am yesterday morning and won't be home until Monday. It sucks. He's only 20 minutes down the road and yet I won't be able to see him for 5 more days.

We'll be moving again sometime in January. We don't know the details yet, and probably won't know until a few weeks beforehand. Jackson and I will probably end up back in Alabama for a few weeks before the move. We'll let Jason handle everything on this side, and I'll handle everything in Georgia. It will be easier on me that way, but I am such a control freak that I kind of want to be here to make sure everything is done. I know he knows how to do it all, he just works so much that it will make it hard for him. I think my family will keep Jackson while I do all of the moving in and unpacking though.

Alright, back to the real world.

Hope

I was not an Obama supporter. I don't agree with many of his policies, but now that he has been elected President, I can only have hope.

I hope that he will do what is good and right for our country.

I hope that his #1 priority will be to make America safe. I hope that he will listen to his military advisors, and when he starts to pull the troops out of Iraq, he will do it in the best and safest way possible. And if that means that we need to keep some troops in Iraq for awhile, I hope that he will listen.

I hope that he will keep our military strong. I know that he has talked about plans to add members to the Army and Marines, and to give those branches more benefits. I just hope that he remembers that there are other military branches that work around the clock to keep our country safe as well.

I hope that his plan for education will work. That is one of his plans that I have believed in from the beginning, and I hope that it will be high on the agenda. Our public education system needs change, and I hope that it will not turn out to be a half-assed effort like No Child Left Behind turned out to be.

I hope that his plan for health care does not end up taxing us all to death.

I hope that Americans will step up. I know that there are plenty of ignorant, racist idiots out there that think Obama is a terrorist/the AntiChrist and they will be happy to show their asses. I can only hope that the media will choose not to cover whatever stunts they decide to pull, though God knows they probably will.

I've had my doubts about Obama from the beginning, but I sincerely hope he proves me wrong.

Drag Queens Attack McDonalds

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