Happy 4th!

We had a get together last night with some of our wonderful friends, and had such a great time! We had done the fireworks thing on Saturday (Food, Fun, and Fireworks at our church, which was a BLAST. Eric was in charge of the sound tech music stuff, and he did a tremendous job... we are SO proud of him!! He put a lot of hard work and time into making that event run smoothly in regards to sound!) so decided a simple get together was in order. It ended up being a "deep fry party", in which people brought food items of all kinds to deep fry. I have to admit, I was more than a little apprehensive about this idea. I was of the mind to bring all sorts of tums and cholesterol meds and fresh fruit to combat the insane artery blockage that was sure to happen, but ended up bringing loads of fresh watermelon and calling it good. The chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks, and jalapeno poppers were excellent. I was not a fan of the fried oreos though, even after I tried a very small piece thanks to much prodding from the girls. Nasty! :p Squishy and greasy... not my thing.

The girls spent time outside watching the kiddies play in the pool, and the guys played Rock Band inside. Naturally, we gravitated indoors later and joined in on the Rock Band fun! What a great time. Here are a few pics that my wonderful friend Lesley took of my beautiful little monkey in the pool. Look how big she is getting!




Just for fun, here is a silly pic I took after Audrey kept saying, "Hat mommy? Hat mommy?" Sorry for the blur, but it's a cell phone pic so that's to be expected.


Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

Christmas Time is Here

Happiness and cheer, fun for all that children call their favorite time of year. I have certainly caught the Christmas cheer this year! I also rhyme, in case you didn't know. Anyway, it became obvious to me this evening that my case of Christmas cheer is particularly strong, when I hauled a stereo into the kitchen so I could listen to Christmas music while doing the dishes. You can hardly blame me... It has been very cold outside, snowing on and off. There are countless holiday movies on tv (most of them corny and lame, but somehow endearing). My decorating is done and my house feels cozy. I shuffle around in my nasty old slippers, drinking steaming coffee while watching snow fall softly outside. Meanwhile Audrey is rolling around on the floor, pulling ornaments off the Christmas tree and getting covered in dog hair from head to toe..... I have pictures!

Watching me decorate:

The wreath I made for the front door:

Before:

After:

Ornaments from my childhood:

My piano is standing in for a
fireplace to hang the stockings:

Here are some shots that I took from our small group Christmas party last night. We had a wonderful time eating, talking, watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, opening gifts and playing with Audrey. Everyone adores her! She's the life of the party. Naturally!

"Uncle" Zac and Audrey:

We did a white elephant gift exchange:


Shelby watched intently as Laura opened her gift...

Audrey was highly entertained by Zac's gift,
and refused to play with anything else for awhile.


Daisy = adorable!

Eric serenaded us:

Audrey in her "pre-crawling" stance. First time I'd seen it!
(She'll be crawling soon)

Audrey and Daisy were friends from the start.
They even rolled around on the floor together:

"Aunt" Jill and Audrey:

One of my faves:

More to come soon. I have some cute non-Christmasy pictures of the little munchkin to post. Good night fellow bloggers!

Yaketty Yak

My blog is in need of something a little less sappy than my last post. Back to my usual nonsensical antics!

A little background on this week's act of craziness. Our good friends from small group, Laura and Jason, recently returned from a mission trip to China. They had a wonderful, rewarding time blessed by the Lord, and we enjoyed hearing all about it last night at group. Along with many pictures and stories, they brought samples of packaged food from China, many of which were rather strange and some which were simply nasty (for lack of a better word). Being the daring person that I've been lately, I sampled a few of them.

This corn candy tasted like an old can of creamed corn:

After cleansing my palate of 13 year old creamed corn, I ventured to try something even more interesting.


In case you aren't fluent in Chinese, that says Yak jerky. Real, honest to goodness, overly dehydrated Yak meat in all it's glory. More than anything, I was overcome with curiosity to see what Yak tasted like. Why, I will never know. At first it smelled a little like grass. Then it smelled like something died in the grass. Then it smelled a little like something pooped and then died in the grass, after which it was cooked with spices that I simply couldn't make out. Despite all of this, I plunged on in my head strong desire to taste the Yak jerky. After I put it into my mouth, I started laughing and couldn't stop for quite awhile. As I chewed, the taste progressed much like the smell did. Laura smelled the package and shared my opinion... The scene looked like this:


I must admit that I didn't end up swallowing the Yak jerky as the taste wasn't for me. I did taste a few things that were good, like chocolate stuffed oreos, strawberry corn puffs, and strawberry candy that only tasted a little like plastic. Overall it was a great experience. I look forward to my next sampling of international cuisine!

Fun Weekends, and California Part 3

After a short day of resting from our trip to CA, we went up north with Dave & Katie, Zac & Jill to visit Katie's family. They have a beautiful home with lots of land and an above ground pool, which we all enjoyed. Dave, Eric and I beat Zac, Jill and Bud (Katie's Dad) in pool volleyball... not that it really matters, I'm just sayin. :p After spending time in the pool, the boys shot target rifles.


They set up a target and also used inanimate objects such as bottles, cans, rotten peaches, Gabby & Sasha... just kidding.



They asked if I wanted to shoot one of the rifles, and of course I had to try it. Eric assured me that it wasn't dangerous and there was hardly any recoil. I didn't do too bad for my first time ever shooting a gun! I hit a soda can 30-40 yards away.

The female sharp shooters got a picture together:

This is Katie's family's sweet old black Lab, Ebie. She is 16 years old and still kicking. She's selectively deaf, has really bad hip dysplasia, and can't see real well, but you would hardly know it. She's as sweet as a Georgia peach.


We made sure the doggies watched from an enclosed area, so that they wouldn't accidentally take part in target practice.

Sasha:

Gabby:

This is Molly's whiney face. She was whining here because Katie was giving Ebie attention, which of course in unacceptable. She cracks me up!


After the shooting fun was over, Bud made a fire in the fire pit out back, and we enjoyed yummy fry pies and s'mores. Zac dared someone to make a "suicide fry pie" and due to my constant need to be the center of attention, I accepted. What is a suicide fry pie, you ask? It is a hot sandwhich cooked over an open fire, consisting of a morsel of every item from the spread of ingredients on the table. This included various chips, pretzels, Hershey's milk chocolate, Reese's peanut butter cups, marshmallows, mozzarella cheese, meat spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, and last but certainly not least, peanut butter and jam. It looked like this before I cooked it... I didn't take a picture of what it looked like after it was cooked, but it tasted disgusting. I took 3 bites as agreed, and I'm proud of it! Ew.


After that nastiness, I attempted 2 or 3 different times to make a normal fry pie, and burned every last one to a crisp. Katie helped me make a perfect one finally. Sigh. (My camera battery died after that last scrumptious picture, so I took the rest with my cell phone.)

Eric threw a round of corn hole, while
Dave told Molly to lay down for the 859th time. :)

Here are the last pics from California. Farah and I:

Audrey watching tv with aunt Kim!

Four generations: Great Grandma Porowski,
Grandma Porowski, me, and Audrey.