Wordless Wednesday: Up in the Air

My Birthday Love

I was not thinking much about my upcoming birthday.  Really, in my opinion, it was just another day.  Another year marked.  I have no anxiety about turning 35.  It was just my birthday and I was hoping to just get a nice dinner.

A week before my birthday I knew something was up.  I was told to keep Friday evening open by Lora and Lamar was asking weird questions.  I figured out that Lora was throwing some sort of party for me, but was not sure of the details.  Friends started to arrive at my house and I was quickly seated in a vehicle and taken away.  We arrived at Willamette Valley Vineyards.  Lora had arranged for a private dinner party for me and seven of my friends.  It was a wonderful surprise.  The room was so beautiful, the view amazing and best of all, I was surrounded by wonderful friends, food and laughter.  The evening was great.  It was so wonderful to be surrounded by so much love from my friends.

On Sunday, my actual birthday, Lamar made arrangements for us to go up in a hot air balloon.  This was so much fun.  We got up really early and headed to Newberg for the launch site.  We could not have planned for a more beautiful morning.  It was clear enough to see all 5 mountains.  What a great treat!  The day ended with an impromptu party of even more loving friends.

I had so many wonderful things happen to me over the past few days.  I am really feeling the love from my friends and Lamar.  They all went out of their way to make me feel special.  I am so thankful that I have all of them in my life.

Wordless Wednesday: Smores

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the best MAN and DADDY I know!  We love you Lamar!

10 Months

Sweet baby Calum is 10 months old today.  Calum is such a happy, laid back baby.  He is so busy exploring his environment.  I can always find him in the house by following the sounds of his laughter.  Just this past week he sprouted 4 upper teeth.  He is so happy to spend time with his big sisters.  He has finally decided that solid food is not a bad thing and devours anything that I put in front of him, except peas.  He is growing so fast, I just want him to stay a baby for a while longer.

Wordless Wednesday: Softball

Good Bye 5th Grade

Shianne and Nora Beth performances

I have had all sorts of problems uploading video to Blogger recently.  After several attempts, I threw in the towel and just uploaded to You Tube.  Now Blogger won't let me embed the video in the blog.  Argh!!!  So here are the links to the videos.

Shianne Piano Recital playing Frolic by Bennett

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC6GphRrxgY

Nora Beth Ballet Recital
 
Good Ship Lollipop

New Wave Teddy Bear  (video is sideways...can't get it to rotate)

Dancing Ribbons

I have a great video of Calum falling asleep in his high chair while we were in Hawaii that I will link to later.

:)

Privacy

I was hoping that it would not come to this, but recent events are forcing me to make a change with my blog.  I have not been posting much lately, for many reasons. 

First of all, I am barely keeping my head above the water with the girls softball schedules and chasing after Calum.  This is my last week of crazy schedule, having to be in three places at one time and balancing it all.  School and sports are coming to an end. 

Second, the blog is being spammed.  I have been receiving quite a bit of unwanted attention from not so scrupulous sources.  I have turned off my comments until the blog is privatized to avoid any future spamming.

Third, I am launching a new professional blog and I want to separate my personal life from my professional life.  Until I decide how much I want to blend the two together I want to keep thing separate.  Don't worry...I will soon post a link to the new blog/website.  Lots of great new things are in the works!!
 
Finally, I am feeling quite watched.  I know, I am the one putting myself out there, but that is not what I mean.  There are many voyeuristic elements of having a blog.  It is a way for others to see into our life and a way for me to document our life.  Unfortunately, this blog is being used as an avenue to find out what I am doing without being involved in our lives.  I am feeling very watched by a certain population and I have had to censor myself on what I really want to be saying.  I no longer want to be censored!!

I know who my regular readers are, and don't worry, you are still going to get your Up On Lavender Hill fix on a daily (ahem..semi regular)  basis.  You will just need to sign in with your e-mail address to access the blog.  I do not have e-mail addresses for all of you.  Please send me an e-mail at   stacelynne (at) comcast (dot) net so you can be included.  Do not assume that I have your e-mail address...send it to me anyways!  I hope this is not a permanent change and life will go back to my normal, under the radar, basis.

I will privatize the blog in one week.  So, send me your e-mail address if you want to be included.  I really do love my readers!!

This Too Shall Pass

I do not know what she was thinking.  Nora Beth comes downstairs and quietly tells me that she swallowed a quarter and that her chest hurt.  It was such a random statement from her that I almost did not believe her.  I then remember seeing a quarter on the floor this morning when I was in her room.  That is when I realized that our afternoon was now taking a different direction.  Lamar called our doctor and we were advised to take her to Urgent Care.  I load up Calum and Nora Beth.  Lamar and Shianne stayed home to get ready for Shianne's piano recital that was in two hours.

Fortunately, we were seen quickly.  The triage nurse giggled when she saw Nora Beth's profile.  The last time we were in Urgent Care with her she had stuffed beads up her nose...in fact she did it twice in one day!  While waiting, Nora Beth asked me if the coin would stick to the gum that she swallowed earlier.  Oh my, she ALSO swallowed gum!!!!  A quick X-Ray later and it is determined that there is a quarter in her.  Fortunately, it passed the tricky areas of her esophagus and is happy in her stomach.  Looks like I am on poop patrol for the next few days until George shows up!

Wordless Wednesday: Playing in the Sprinkler

Gastric Overload

I have been seeing blog posts on many of the food blogs that I follow about the "Bacon Explosion."  It looked just crazy enough that I had to try it.  The recipe comes from a new cookbook called BBQ Makes Everything Better.  (I have to admit that I am very disappointed with this cookbook.  The recipes really lack imagination, rely heavily on bacon and sausage and does not give sauce options that have the same flavor profile as the ones that the authors try to get you to purchase on every page.  The pages feel cheep with the paper quality that was selected and the photos are all in black and white.  I want full color photographs in a cookbook.  I want food to jump out at me, not get lost in shading.)

Now to start this recipe off, I have to say that there is NO NUTRITIVE VALUE in it.  It is just pure pork decadence.

You start off with a basket weave of thick sliced bacon...MMM BACON!!!!

Sprinkle a sweet BBQ rub over the bacon.  I made my own up.

Cover bacon with an unhealthy amount of ground sausage, an additional pound of cooked crumbled bacon and slater in BBQ sauce.  I used a sweet Kansas City style sauce.

Roll the sausage and cooked bacon up.

Then encase it in the bacon weave.  What you have here is a two pound bacon stuffed sausage roll, rolled in two pounds of bacon.

Sprinkle on more of the BBQ rub and you are ready to cook.  This is where I deviate from the recipe.  The author states cooking in a BBQ smoker.  Well, I do not own one of these and I am waiting until I can afford the one that I really want before I run out and just purchase any old smoker.  I knew that my gas grill would incinerate the bacon/sausage creation so I opted to bake in my oven at 350 for about 1.5 hours.  I covered it in foil so the bacon would not get overly dry.

Now, I got distracted by our friends and some wine, so I did not get a picture of the final cooked product, but it was the conversation piece.  Cooked perfectly, drizzled in even more sweet BBQ sauce.

I made three of these things for our party.  I have to say that it was a hit.  Pure pork product overindulgence.  There was just a little left over so I decided that it should be seen again as breakfast.  Just add a dozen eggs, a half loaf of bread and a pound of grated cheese and you have a breakfast casserole made for a Hormel King!

Now, I thought that the above concoction was enough out of my norm, but I am not yet done with the crap food indulgence.  We had yet another party to go to on Monday afternoon.  My mojo for cooking was at about zero at this point of the weekend.  I joked with Lamar that I should just make a Twinkie cake to take.  The next thing I know, he has gone to the store and brings me home THREE BOXES OF TWINKIES!  Nora Beth was so excited to see these.  She had not seen that many Hostess products since Jan and Kenny were here three years ago when we went to Greece.  She remembered what came in those boxes...Fluffy cake with cream filling.  Even better, a tub of Cool Whip appeared.  The food in my kitchen is just going downhill...FAST!

As I laugh my way through it, not even sure if I can bring myself to actually present this at a party, I start stacking up the Twinkies and slathering them in Cool Whip.  I did have some fancy Pinot Noir Raspberry Chocolate sauce that I drizzled over the top and added some fresh raspberries.  We coined this the "Officers Delight!"

With nothing else to take with me to the party, I just brought the Officer's Delight.  At the party our friends were in complete disbelief that I would actually admit to making something like this.  They obviously do not have the food issues that I have since this was devoured in minutes...even before the food was taken off of the BBQ.

We will now be spending the next few weeks detoxing from this weekend of gluttony!

Wild Weekend

We had been planning for Lamar to go to Iowa for the long weekend, but it turned out that he stayed home.  I was looking forward to a weekend with no plans, but that quickly changed.  A list of house projects was created, a party was thrown, we attended another party, went fishing and ate way too much.

A weekend of house projects will never be complete in our home unless Lamar sets something on fire.  Here he is trying to win the war with whatever is tunneling through our yard.  It is a persistent little creature, but so is Lamar!

Lamar and Joe went ocean fishing out of Newport.  They had a great time despite their limited sleep and the fact that their heads were still pounding from the festivities the evening before.

The boys each caught their limit of rock fish and were very happy with themselves.  Here, Lamar is proudly showing off his catch that was not quite up to par with what Joe caught!

Calum was his normal happy self the whole weekend.  He is just happy to climb, crawl, plow and bulldoze his way through whatever room he is in.

Shianne enjoyed some relaxing time on a hammock while at a friends party.

Lamar seems to think that BBQ, Beer and trampolines go together!!  I was sure he was going to be feeling the pain of this one!  Would anyone purchase the video  "Lamar Gone Wild"...probably NOT!!  ha ha ha