New Life

Shana, Lauren, and I had the privilege to be present at the birth of Eli. It was an amazing day! Charles, Maggie, and Andrew are such a sweet little family and they have now grown by one! I cannot wait to see Eli grow up.

Maggie and Charles have done such a good job preparing Andrew to be a big brother.

Christmas With Marcy's Family

As you can see, I have added a slide show to the right of the pictures I took at my dad's house and at the nursing home during our visit with Meme this past Saturday. Some of these pictures are particularly funny and I feel they deserve an explanation. There is one picture where Paul is playing with Kristyn's Barbie. I just felt this was funny, so I took a picture of it. I am not sure if he was actually playing with it or trying to do something for Kristyn, but I took advantage of the opportunity. Ha! Next, you can see that Emily is heading into that teenage stage of not wanting her picture taken. We have many pictures of her trying to keep her picture from being taken. So, there is one picture where Scott got her unaware - eating a cookie. He was quite proud and earned an especially dirty look. Hehe. My dad and Stephanie have two LARGE dogs, Sadie, the dalmation, and Jack, the Great Dane mix (apparently mixed with some other breed of large dog). Well, these two are quite hyper and Daddy and Stephanie are nice enough to lock them out of the house while we are there. I can't stand it when they jump on me because dogs' nails don't retract and I end up looking like I have been abused. But, Sadie apparently did not appreciate being locked out and she kept jumping up on the back door and scratching at the screen door. At one point in time, I peeked out the window from the office and both dogs saw me and looked right into the camera for me. It was a cute picture. Kristyn loved to stand in the doorway and watch Sadie scratch. She even took a video with my camera. Lastly, you will see how many attempts it took for us to get one good family picture. The first few ended up looking like we were separated into "family groups" and the second group is funny because of my Daddy. He only really smiled in one of them and in one of them, notice the surprised look on his face as the picture took just as he was finishing scratching his nose! One picture is particularly funny because Scott forgot to set the timer and he accidentally took a picture of all of us "preparing" for the picture. We also took a "silly picture" so that Kristyn could give her dad reindeer antlers! The picture at the top is of my sister Wendy and me. We don't look anything alike, do we?!

Here is the video Kristyn took of Sadie scratching at the door. Most of her scratching fits were much longer than this. You can hear me in the background trying to torment the dogs into scratching so that Kristyn could video them. Poor Sadie and Jack.

Well, that just about sums up our visit in Dallas this weekend. We had dinner, presents, and family time. Scott, Paul, and Daddy even got to watch football while we ate.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone is enjoying today! Scott and I have had a wonderful Christmas so far. Our weekend was great as well. All of our family gatherings were a lot of fun! I took a ton of pictures so I am going to have to pick out the best ones and do a slide show soon. The ones of Scott's family are going to require quite a bit of red eye reduction as they all have blue eyes. My family, on the other hand, being brown eyed (except Paul and one of his daughters, Kristyn), are much easier to photograph! This picture is of my family. The back row is Daddy, Stephanie, Me, and Scott. The front row is Emily, Wendy, Paul, and Kristyn. (Paul is my sister's fiance and Emily and Kristyn are his daughters).

Sunday's church service and Last night's Christmas Eve service at church were wonderful. Pastor Lee talked about how it is okay to enjoy the secular parts of Christmas as long as you are not allowing them to get in the way of your worship of Christ. If that is the case, you are making them idols. He also discussed, last night, the incarnation of Christ. I am so amazed and so thankful that God would take on human form and come and live as one of us in order to save us from our own sin. How awesome!

Scott's parents and grandma came to our Christmas Eve service last night and then we went out to eat at the Waffle House. Mmmm. Gotta love a patty melt plate!

I enjoyed exchanging gifts with our families as well. I love giving gifts. It's so much fun to see people react to the things you bought for them. But, I must admit that I also enjoy receiving them. I received so many great gifts this year. I have completed my collection of Tim McGraw CDs (I was only missing the most recent one), I have the entire Bible (ESV version) on MP3, I received a new Bible in the NASB version, which is what Pastor Lee uses, and I received both of the sewing books that I wanted. I think that I am fully prepared to start attempting to sew. I have received many other things that I also really wanted, but those are the highlights. Scott got lot of new things too. He received all of the books from Christian Books.com that he wanted, his GA Tech windsock that he had been wanting (exactly like the other one he had bought for himself recently, thanks to Tailgaters Alley Stores(Discover Mills and The Avenue at Webb Ginn), who are owned by GA Tech graduates, and he received both of the movies he has been talking about wanting since they came out: Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Also, his boss had given him a gift card to Game Stop for his birthday and Scott went out and bought a game that I had almost bought him for his birthday, Super Mario Galaxy. He is playing it right now...and he played it quite a bit yesterday while I was at work. He loves it. Scott's boss also gave him Harry Potter 5 (the movie) for Christmas. Yay!

I am leaving you with a little video I took of Sam trying to fit all 5 of the cars that Scott and I gave him for Christmas in his hands at one time. So cute.

Small Group Christmas Party 2007

I finally got all the red eye I could removed from these pictures and got them uploaded to Slide. I hope you enjoy!

This, That, and The Other

Hello all! It has been a while since I posted. So much has happened! First of all, I will say that one of the biggest reasons I haven't been blogging much lately is that my computer was sick for a while and it was just not fun to play on. Some of my more recent slide shows were done on Scott's computer. Scott has fixed my computer, though. We had to wait until he was done with his classes before he could work on it. He just decided that since my computer is about 6 years old, the operating system had gotten corrupted over time. So, he wiped it clean and reloaded everything. My computer is much happier now! It is great to have an in-house IT guy!

Well, the season of Christmas parties is in full swing! Scott and I went to his office's Christmas party at the 1818 Club on Sugarloaf Parkway in the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce building on the evening of December 2. I must say that I was not looking forward to this one. I really did not enjoy this one last year...but, it turned out a lot better this year. We sat with some really nice people and it was just all around more enjoyable. On December 9, we went to a Christmas party for everyone at my office at one of the VP's, Wayne's, house. Not everyone from the office came, but it was fun and Wayne's mom was there and we were just all able to sit around and chat. Then, this past Wednesday, December 12, we had our Ladies' Bible Study Christmas party and gift swap which was a ton of fun as always when we get together. Our church small group Christmas party was Saturday night (December 15) at Amy and Josh's and that was a lot of fun, too. We had a white elephant gift swap. If you don't know what this is, it is when everyone brings a gift (we set our limit at $10) and wraps it and everyone draws numbers. Person 1 has to unwrap a gift and then person 2 can steal his gift or unwrap a new gift and then person 1 has to unwrap another gift if his is stolen, and so on and so forth. It is really interesting to see what people bring. Follow is a list of the items brought to ours: fireworks, a gingerbread house kit, a twin pack of enemas, a nail glam kit, a miniature bowling alley, a Starbucks gift card, a little snowman that wore bling and sang "Ice, Ice, Baby" while bobbing his head and moving his little hands around, a little ceramic pill box that had Jesus on the lid, a crazy green hat with an attached veil, a calendar with the ugliest dogs you have ever seen on it, a little reindeer on a keychain that pooped cola flavored candy, and an insulated back pack complete with plastic place settings, corkscrew, and bottle opener. So as you can see, a lot of crazy stuff! Scott and I came off pretty well - we got the miniature bowling alley and the gingerbread house kit (which we brought, actually). Then, tomorrow, Scott's office is having a "holiday lunch" and my office is having a "holiday lunch" on Thursday. Saturday, we are visiting and swapping gifts with my immediate family (which will include a visit with Meme) and then on Sunday we are visiting and swapping gifts with Scott's immediate family. We will probably go to Scott's cousin's house on Christmas day out in Monroe and then we'll see my extended family in January.

Scott and I made our gingerbread house on Sunday afternoon. It is very cute. The picture on the box is kind of deceptive, though because it shows this huge base with plenty of room for two gingerbread people and two trees, but you really only have space for two out of the four. So, we took pictures with everything there and then ate the trees. Mmmmm. My friend from college, Mary, has also made gingerbread houses with her husband. She has pictures on her blog, which you can visit here. Below are pictures of our gingerbread house. One with and one without the trees. Please, no laughing. We have never claimed to have artistic talent...I mean, we are a Network Administrator and a CPA for goodness sakes!
















Our house is all decorated for Christmas! I love it when we decorate for Christmas! I just realized that I haven't taken any pictures of the house yet this year. I am going to run out and take some so that I can post at least the night-time view here...be back in a minute....okay, I am back, and frozen. I mean, it is officially cold! I was getting so tired of the cold weather and then it heated back up into the 70's for about a week and then all of a sudden, it got super cold again. Brrrrrr!
Here's the best picture I could get of our house. I had to take it at an angle because the for sale sign was in the way, so it looks like Scott only hung lights on half of the entrance, but there are lights all the way around our entrance. The deer are a new addition this year. We have been wanting them for years, but could never find them the day after Christmas, so we bought them this year anyway.

This wreath is an example of the wreaths we have on each window of our house. They look really cute during the day.

Thankfully, we got some rain this weekend! We have a rain gauge in our front garden and we got about 1 inch this weekend, which is really good! Did anyone else get rain recently?

I really enjoy buying Christmas gifts for people. It is just so much fun. In the past, Scott and I have not really exchanged gifts. We usually just don't get anything at all from each other with the basis being that we buy ourselves things we need and want throughout the year. Last year we bought our digital camera, which as you can see, the newness of that has NOT worn off yet. But, this year we have wish lists and so that makes it much easier to just click on the things we want when we think of it, so it is a lot easier for us to save those little things we want instead of trying to remember them for when someone asks us for a birthday or Christmas list. So...we are actually going to exchange gifts! I don't know if you have checked out wishlist.com, but if you click on one of our wish lists to the left, you can see what I am talking about. It is like the wedding registry at most stores, only it is not store specific. You can find what you want online and link to it but the buyer does not have to buy it from that spot, they can simply click "buy it" and put in their email address and then go to the store and buy the item there or find it on another website cheaper. Also, you can give the same list to multiple people and not be afraid that you will end up with duplicates because a responsible giver will mark the item off. The beauty of it all is that when I sign in to my wishlist, I CAN'T tell what anyone has bought me! I have not even looked once, which is saying a lot. All of the ladies in my Bible study have a wishlist too. We are all big fans! I had finished all of our Christmas shopping except for my gifts for Scott, so I took this past Friday off work to do all that. It was really nice to just have a day to drive around Snellville and Loganville and shop. I even went grocery shopping and got to grab lunch at Moe's, of which I am a big fan!

Here is our Christmas tree. I like the picture with the gifts the best, because it looks more complete, but I had to show you all the picture of the tree about 5 seconds after I had put down the tree skirt...Sampson claimed his spot under the tree!

Okay, so this has been a long blog. Sorry. But, it has been a while. I will post a few pictures in this post, but I'll probably do a couple of separate posts following this one to post a couple of slide shows from our various events.

**Just as a note, I really did not misspell the word "This" on the title of my post. I looked at it at work today and it was spelled correctly and now it is spelled "Thia". I have corrected it now. But, I have had an "s" in one of my posts turn into and "a" in the past and not been able to correct it. Has anyone else had this problem?

Scott's Birthday Celebration

Last Saturday (Dec. 1), we had some friends over to celebrate Scott's birthday. We had a potluck dinner and everything was delicious. Scott and I made Dr. Pepper Tenderloin, which is a recipe out of my Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine. We ate, talked, and ended up playing Wii. I think we all had a good time! Below are the pictures.

Happy Birthday to Karen!

Last Thursday, Cathy and some other ladies threw a surprise party for Karen's anniversary of her 21st birthday (I won't say which one, since she doesn't look anywhere near her age). It was a lot of fun. Gayle is really good at "table scapes", as you'll see. Karen's birthday is on December 10 (next Monday). Don't forget to wish her Happy Birthday when you see her this Sunday!

Here are the pictures:

(I did them like an old film...hehehe...if you want to see them in color, I think you can just click on the link to the slide website and view them there).

Monkey Bread

I don't have any pictures of Monkey Bread to post with this. But, a recipe this good doesn't really need a picture. Most of you who read my blog have had my monkey bread anyway and know what it looks like.

Monkey Bread

Preheat your oven to 350

2 Cans Hungry Jack biscuits, cut into quarters
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Shake the above three ingredients in a gallon size ziploc bag until all biscuit quarters are evenly coated. Dump them in a greased bundt pan.

1 stick margarine
2/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon

Put the above three ingredients in a small sauce pan and stir until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved. Keep stirring until you have it just right (it will bubble and stuff, but don't let if burn.)

Pour the melted butter and sugar mixture over the biscuits in your bundt pan.


Bake for 30-40 minutes, until biscuits are done. You will want to turn it out immediately or you risk it sticking. If some pieces stick, just pull them off the pan and stick them back where they belong...no one will know and even if they do they won't care.

I can't seem to find Hungry Jack biscuits any more so I get the big cans of Grands...usually the buttery ones.

Yum-o!

Various Ramblings

Scott and I went to Scott's parents' house for Thanksgiving. His whole family was there. We took a lot of pictures, which I want to put in a slide, but I can't right now because Scott is doing school stuff and we (well I) discovered the other day that if I am trying to upload pictures to a website, it slows down not only my internet connection, but Scott's too. That's because we share an internet connection. I thought two cords, two connections, but oh well...I can share...

Anyway...I'll post our Thanksgiving pictures of our family some other time. For now, I will just post one picture (apparently this picture was enough to cause enough drag to cause Scott to say "Are you uploading something?" I can't get away with anything :oP-) Scott's parents threw a mini birthday party for Scott and SaraBeth since their birthdays are both in November. Scott's parents got him this George Foreman grill with removable plates off of his wishlist. Yay! We used it tonight to make Stuffed Fiesta Burgers. A word to the wise: don't use a George Foreman grill to make burgers stuffed with cheese. The grill seems to squeeze the burgers...and all the cheese squeezed right out. I scraped it off the grill and onto the top of the burgers. They were still good and there was still some cheese in there...but I don't know if we'll do that again. We are still pumped about the grill. Scott is especially because he doesn't like to grill in the freezing cold.

I have some random thoughts of late.

First, our house: Our real estate agent included our house in an article in the Rockdale paper about how resales are better than new homes a couple of weeks ago. The day before the article came out, someone came and looked at our house, but we have had no one else come look at it. I think our house is really cute, and our yard is really nice! Oh well...someone who appreciates our hard work will come along.

Next are just random thoughts from Marcy:

Friday night we went to see a movie with Shana, Josh, and Andy. Scott hadn't been feeling well and we were running out of Advil Cold and Sinus, which we love, plus that will keep you awake. So, we stopped by our Kroger, which is open 24/7...yes, folks, way out here in Loganville. Anyway, we go to pick up some Advil Cold and Sinus and some Nyquil (so Scott could sleep and breathe), and there were no boxes of Advil Cold and Sinus on the shelves...just these little cards that looked like the box. So, we take our little card and our bottle of Nighttime (which is the generic brand, but my daddy always says it's just as good, and he knows about these things) up to the pharmacy counter and the poor pharmacist tells us that the federal government passed a law in September that causes anyone who sells this stuff to enter the purchasers into their federal database, but they provide no funding. So, Scott has to fill out this form with all kinds of information, including the exact time he is there purchasing this stuff...and give his birthday so that he can buy the Nighttime. Apparently, people were buying up tons of Advil Cold and Sinus because it contains Sudafed and you can use Sudafed to make Meth! How scary is that?! Did you know about this? How do people find this stuff out?

Wednesday, I had to stop by the store on the way home to get whole milk, because that's what I needed to make macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving and I had forgotten to get it at my big grocery visit. I also needed my eye makeup remover and I had allowed myself to get into an emergency state and I am not brave enough to go to Walmart the day before Thanksgiving to save a few cents on eye makeup remover. So, I went to Kroger. I am a fan of Kroger, what can I say. So, I go to the area with all the face stuff and right next to my normal Neutrogena Oil Free Eye Makeup Remover is a pump bottle of Neutrogena foaming facial cleanser and eye makeup remover all in one. I think, "no way". I flipped the bottle over and the back of the bottle plainly states that it easily removes waterproof mascara. I think...this is too good to be true...but I bought it anyway. I hate eye make up remover. I always rub forever and still end up rubbing half my mascara off with my towel after washing my face and still get out of the shower the next morning with mascara somewhere around my eyes. So, I tried this soap stuff. I figured Neutrogena is a trusted brand, right? Well, I have used this soap several times now and it smells uncomfortably similar to the OXYclean foaming cleanser that we clean our carpet with when the cats cough up a furball and my skin definitely feels clean after I use it...but very dry. I think I might compare the ingredients on my facial cleanser to the bottle of carpet cleaner. Oh, and it got about as much mascara off my eyelashes as the eye makeup remover does, maybe a teensy bit more! So, that brings two questions to my mind. First, should I keep using this stuff if it smells like carpet cleaner? I mean, I haven't broken out and while my face initially feels dry, it isn't dry once I have put on moisturizer...no flakes or anything. And secondly...does anyone ever actually get all of their mascara off without feeling as if they have caused undereye wrinkles worse than their grandmother's? This may seem insignificant to some...but wrinkles worse than my grandmother's and a dirty face seems pretty serious to me every night when I battle with myself between which fate I must face.

So, that was a long post about nothing really...I hope you enjoyed a little look into the random thoughts I have quite often. Please feel free to let me know about the meth and the mascara/facial cleanser situation.

Happy Birthday Scott!

Today is Scott's 30th birthday! Yep, the BIG 30!!! We went to Provino's for his birthday lunch after church because Provino's gives you a free entree and free spumoni icecream on your birthday. It was really good. Scott's birthday present came much earlier this year when we bought him his Wii, so I didn't give him anything today. But, we did get to go to church and spend the whole day together. Happy Birthday Scott!

An Early Thanksgiving

Last Sunday night we went to the Stringer's for a "small group" Thanksgiving dinner. We had a great time and got to sample everyone's best recipes!

Silly Scenes With Sampson

Where's Sampson?

Here He Is!

(If you click on the pictures, you will be able to see better, then hit your "back" arrow on your browser to come back to the blog)

Football

Well, I am sure that you have all seen the tailgating and football "slide show" I have over on the right side of the blog. Scott and I have been to three games this year at GA Tech. The last one we had tickets for this season was this past Saturday against UNC. The game was at noon, so we brought breakfast foods for the tailgate. I brought sausage balls and monkey bread. The monkey bread was a big hit. I always forget how much most people like monkey bread. I will post the recipe on the blog soon. I didn't take the camera because I was tired of keeping up with it. We also ended up not sitting in our seats, but sitting with our friend Rob who has REALLY good seats on the 42 yard line. Plus, I am sure it was nice that Scott had someone he could talk football with. I enjoyed it because I wasn't worried about the drunk people that we sat next to the last time and I didn't really have to pay that much attention to the game since Scott could talk to Rob about it. Altogether, it was probably my most enjoyable tailgate and game this season. Thanks for inviting us to sit with you, Rob! This coming Saturday is the annual UGA vs. GT game. Can Tech break the losing streak they have had against UGA this year? We'll see...

Anniversary (Post 2)

Scott and I did have a great anniversary. Thanks to everyone who wished us happy anniversary on the blog, in person, by email, on myspace, or by sending a card! Scott brought me flowers to the office on Thursday. They were beautiful daisies, a mixture of yellow and white. They are still as beautiful today as they were on Thursday! I love daisies. On Friday night we went out for our "annversary dinner" to the Texas Roadhouse, which is a really good steak restaurant that opened up a while back in Snellville that we had been wanting to visit, since the one in Hiram is so good. It was fun and super yummy. I had the best steak I have had in a restaurant in quite a while on Friday night. We also had excellent service. I would definitely recommend Texas Roadhouse to anyone!

Happy Anniversary To Us!

Today is mine and Scott's anniversary! Yep, 4 years ago today (Nov. 15, 2003), we were standing on the altar getting married. It does not seem like 4 years have gone by yet. I can't imagine how quickly the next 50 will go by! Here are some of the pictures that I already had in digital format, thanks to my friend Emily and her dad, who was our photographer. He took some pictures of the ceremony using her digital camera.

Yes, I Still Have a Job

I just wanted to let everyone know that yes, Pike has filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (voluntarily), and yes, I still have a job. We were told that our pay and benefits will not be affected. Thank you all for asking. Thank you all for your prayers. This drought affects all of us and we need to be in prayer for all the people that are affected by it. And, PRAY FOR RAIN!

Chicken Pot Pie-Super Easy!

Scott's sister Tracy gave me this recipe, sort of. She gave me a recipe that had a Bisquick biscuit dough crust and used frozen vegetables, but I love pie crust and I like the fact that Veg-all has less little green peas than frozen vegetables. So, here it is:

Chicken Pot Pie:

Frozen Pie Crust (double)

1 can Veg-all (drained)
1 13 oz. can of chicken

1 can cream of chicken soup

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Mix the last 3 ingredients together and pour into the bottom shell. Pull the edges off the second shell and flip it over onto the top. I like the crust, so I just put the edges on top. It doesn't look as pretty, but it's good. You'll want to poke a few holes in the top too. Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven. You will want the top crust to be pretty crunchy and for the sauce inside to be bubbly. If you don't get the crust done enough, the leftovers might be a little soggy. Let it rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy! Let me know if you try this and if you like it!

Last Weekend

Last weekend was very busy for us. On Saturday, we went to visit our friends Jeff and Adriene who recently had twins and then we went to a shower for my friend Arlene, whom I have known since elementary school. Arlene got married this past Saturday and she lives in Maryland. So, she came down for a shower with her GA friends.

Jeff and Adriene's twins, Erin and Gracie, are too cute! At nine weeks old,they are just now getting to be the size of a newborn at about 8 lbs each. Erin looks a lot like Adriene and Gracie looks a lot like Jeff. They are too sweet. We really enjoyed our visit with the family. We even got to meet Adriene's parents.

Erin is on the left and Gracie is on the right.

Arlene's shower was given by another friend from high school, Jennifer, who we all called J.K. There weren't many of us there, but we enjoyed ourselves. We painted pottery at a place called Just Kiln Time in the Marietta square. I painted Arlene and Josh a plate with their wedding date on it. I was glad to meet Josh. He seemed like a really nice guy.

In order, Me, Arlene, and J.K.

Here is a picture of the whole group.

Nosey

They say curiosity killed the cat...well, it didn't in this situation, but it did give him spots in his eyes for a few minutes! Hee hee.

Lunch with Lindsey and Ruby

Last Wednesday, I met one of my best friends, Lindsey, and her daughter, Ruby, at Moe's close to my office for lunch. Ruby will be one year old this month! I can't believe she is already turning a year old. Ruby is one of the happiest babies ever! I walked into Moe's and Lindsey was holding Ruby wearing her cute Halloween t-shirt and I said hey to Ruby and she smiled and laughed and waved at me. So cute! I left my camera at my office, so Lindsey sent me some super cute pictures of Ruby in her Halloween costumes. Lindsey's mom had gotten Ruby a ladybug outfit, but Ruby wasn't a big fan of the wings hitting her arms, so they dressed her up as a dog. So cute! It was REALLY good to meet up with Lindsey for lunch. She lives in Canton, so we really don't see each other as often as we used to when we would hang out every week almost. Well, enjoy the fun pictures of Ruby!

Halloween at Pike

For Halloween, we got to dress up at work. I was meeting my friend Lindsey and her daughter Ruby for lunch (yep, I left my camera on my desk at work, so I didn't get any pictures, but I will post some picture of Ruby once Lindsey sends me some in her costume that night), so I didn't exactly want to dress up to go out to lunch. But, several people did and I got some good pictures.

This is my immediate supervisor, Chuck. He dressed up as a pirate and walked around all day saying "ARGH!" to people. He has four sons!

This is Sherri and Toni who, obviously, dressed up as cowgirls. Sherri does AR and I have to work closely with her. She is very nice and helpful. Toni is in charge of training all the store employees. So, she knows what they are talking about when they call and ask me questions about what they do in the software and I have no idea what they are talking about. She also knows a lot about gift cards, which have been a real pain for me thus far.

This is Kymm, who also does AR. She dressed up as Foxy Brown. I think that is a character from Austin Powers. She looked really good in this outfit! She is also very helpful to me, but fairly new to the company. She is really nice.

This is Jolie. She works in HR, but the funny thing is that she lives in Loganville and teaches kickboxing and step aerobics at the gym Scott and I used to be members of. I had her classes many times! It's a small world!

There are also 6 other people in the accounting department who didn't dress up and the VP of Finance and Accounting and our admin. So, it takes a lot of people to coordinate 29 stores! I am getting used to being at a new place. I am still getting used to the work. But, I know that in time I will settle in.

Fajitas

Scott and I had Fajitas on Friday night. I got this recipe from a friend of mine from T&U, Leslie. I hope that you try it out and enjoy! Let me know if you do.

Leslie says that she uses skirt steak, but that if she can't find it, she uses flank steak. Both of these are kind of expensive, but we have found that London Broil is much less expensive and works perfectly well if you cut it into small strips after you cook it.

Put the meat in a gallon ziploc bag with the following marinade overnight:

World Harbors Mexican Style Fajita Sauces & Marinade (at least half a bottle)

1 Lime, cut in half, squeeze the juice out and then throw the rind in there

Several drops a soy sauce (at least a good splash or two)

Some Orange Juice (maybe 1-2 tablespoons)

A couple of drops of liquid smoke

Grill the meat.

Slice up peppers and onions thinly and cook them on the stove over medium heat with olive oil.

Serve with flour tortillas, shredded cheese, and guacamole (we never use guacamole, but this is what Leslie suggested).

I recently discovered from one of my neighbors that Kroger sells a frozen 3 pepper and onion blend, which is usually on sale 4 for $5. This is a lot cheaper than paying for a green bell pepper, red bell pepper and an onion! I ususlly use two bags because they cook down and there is enough meat to go with two bags. This is what it looks like:

Church Membership

Sunday night, Scott and I and joined Christ Church of Metro Atlanta along with about 60 other founding members. We had a nice dinner and several people gave testimonies. It was a really great night. I know that our elders worked hard to plan the event an we appreciate it. Pictures from the night are in a slide show on the left.

Visiting Friends

Saturday Scott and I visited with our friends Eric and Kari. Eric and Kari have recently had their first child, Evan. He is just so cute! It was fun to hang out with Eric and Kari and I got to hold Evan a lot! He is a very good and content baby. The picture above is one of Evan when Kari was trying to wake him up so that she could feed him. She would tickle his lips and he would pucker them out like that. Too cute!

Harry Potter Cat

Shana sent me this picture in an email. It is really funny. That poor cat. I wonder how they got it to sit still. Maxwell would not have stood for that! I don't even know if Sampson would have! But, it is still cute.

Great Picture

This is my favorite picture ever. It is a picture of my parents taken after they were married but before my sister was born. So, that would be ca. 1972-1973. They were just so young here. I think that this is my sister's favorite picture too.

Easy Cheesy Chicken Chili

EASY CHEESY CHICKEN CHILI

2 Cans Great American Beans (Kroger brand is ok)
1 Can chicken broth
1 large can chicken breast (drain)
1 jar medium salsa
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Dump everything – except cheese into a large pot
Simmer for as long as you like
Right before you serve – add cheese – stir until it melts


Freezes well – but, if you make it to freeze – leave out the cheese
Add when you thaw and re-heat

Sherri at work gave me this recipe. She calls it Easy Chicken Chili, but I am renaming it to Easy Cheesy Chicken Chili because it is really cheesy. It is super good...and it really is easy. I just threw the ingredients in our crock pot on low while I was cooking our lunch and let it sit all day until we were ready to eat. Then, because it makes so much, I spooned half of it into a container to freeze before I added 1 cup of cheese to the half still in the crock pot. We ate it with Fritos, but you don't have to have anything else to eat with this chili. Just FYI, I had never heard of "Great American Beans", but they looked like Navy Beans to me, so that is what I bought.

This is what it looks like before you add the cheese.