Sweet Tooth

Well the box of gigis cupcakes has been not calling but screaming my name since I brought it home yesterday.  I have been very good about staying out of the christmas goodies, but gigis cupcakes are a whole nother level!!  So I decided to start the day off with satisfying my sweet tooth!  The cupcake of the day today was a new one for me...the cookies and cream cupcake..and it was absolutely delicious.  I am such a sweet fan but for the first time in my life I couldnt finish a cupcake!!  Definitely a must try!  To all of my hometown friends you will be getting a Gigis in January off of richmond road...get excited!!

Almost time!

Well Christmas is nearing us by the second!  We are so excited to spend our first christmas in our first house together.  We bought out "first" house this year (this is our first home we have owned) and decided to stay here this year now that L is getting a little bigger.  We will have a whirlwind of visits to make starting mid day christmas, but we thought it would be worth it to start out own family traditions for christmas eve and christmas morning now that L is getting big enough to do things.  This is our first christmas to stay at home christmas eve since T and I have been together but we are so excited about it!!  

We took L to see santa at the mall last night and he was excited but a little unsure at the same time...he thought it was really cool with all the lights and huge christmas tree but he wasnt so sure why we were sitting him on the old mans lap, since we dont normally sit him on stangers laps on a regular basis!! :)  We dropped the 15 dollars on a less than great picture but we knew we would regret it if we hadnt taken him!  While we were out we got the last of our christmas odds and ends picked up...so I will be finishing the wrapping tonight after L goes to bed since T is on 24 hour duty tonight.

Today our good friend from playgroup Heather and her little boy matthew invited us to tag along to nashville for a trip to the mall with intentions of getting Gigis cupcakes...when she asked if I wanted to go all she had to say was Gigis to get a yes from me!!  We are enjoying the cupcakes and hoping that we can save some for T when he gets off work! 

We also had another exciting moment this week when we found out that we got free tickets to the Music City Bowl through the military!!  We were excited to hear that our team UK would be playing in a bowl game but hadnt wanted to spend the money to go with it being the holidays and a tight time of the year...but 400 tickets were donated to the soliders here so we were lucky enough to snag some!!  So after our christmas festivities we will leave little L with the grandparents and mommy and daddy will have a fun but probably cold trip to cheer on the cats!!

Hope you are all ready for a busy but exciting Christmas!!  I will post pictures as we take them and try to keep this updated!  Merry Christmas! Love L, T, little L and libby

Christmas Candy

Well 6 sticks of butter, 12 cups of sugar, 2 bags of chocolate chips, 2 bags of peanut butter chips, and lots more calories later--I now have 4 pans of fudge cooling on my kitchen table!  I tasted a little of each batch with a spoon out of the emptied pot and so far they taste good...we will have to see how the consistency turns out, but I am hoping for the best!!  Even through all this time that T has been in the military and the years I spent at college I have always seemed to be home for the holidays.  T hasnt always been so lucky, but for me this is my first holidays truly away from home.  We have grown to absolutely love it here, we have made the best of friends and settled into a wonderful home...but that being said there is just something about being away from family for the holidays.  We will be able to make it home christmas day, but for all the traditions leading up to we will be here at our home.  I kinda wanted it to be this way since T wont be here next year, and I wanted to make sure that we spent at least one christmas as a family in our first home, so it was our decision to do it this way.  But to try and make the holidays a little merrier, I decided to try my hand at homemade candy.  Neither of us need the candy, but T sure has a sweet tooth and I definitely enjoy my share!  So far I have used my moms recipe to make her famous peanut butter fudge and chocolate fudge...that was all my arm could handle so far but I still plan to make a batch or two of peanut butter roll and try out another recipe for white chocolate fudge!  But we are so looking forward to seeing family over christmas, and we may just be a little plumper this year from all the candy that the three of us will have eaten!

The Most Wonderful Time of The Year

This time of the year is one of my favorites with all of the fun activities and time spent with friends and family.  I always say that this time of year is busy, and truly it is, I am not sure why I thought it wouldnt be so bad this year.  Maybe I thought that since I am not working this year I would have plenty of time to get everything done, but for some reason I seem to think that I am busier now than I ever was when I was working.  With all the things I have taken on volunteering for and keeping up with L's school and playgroup activities I have been running around like a mad woman and have made no time to keep up the blog!

Since my last blog we have had a few significant things.  We first had our playgroup christmas potluck/book exchange/cookie exchange.  It was sooo much fun!  We had the event on base so T was able to come and meet us and help eat the huge ham Heather had bought to feed everyone!  So we all got lots of good food in our belly, a great christmas shrek book to read, and plenty of cookies that T has mostly consumed!  He told me he was helping me out by eating them all, since I told him I didnt want to eat them so I could fit in my ball gown!

Speaking of ball gowns...we had T's battalion holiday ball this past week.  I was a little hesitant and considering not going because none of the other wives from his platoon were going, but I am so glad we went!  We ended up sitting at the company's head table with the commander, xo, first sergeant and his wife, and our incoming commander.  We were invited to sit there for all the time I have spent volunteering within the company...it was so nice of them to invite us to do that, and it was nice to have people I knew to sit with to make the evening so much fun!  Military balls are always fun but this unit has lots of traditions that made the night extra special, and a night we will remember!  I have more pictures from the night but to protect T, since he was in uniform this is really the only one that doesnt show any of his identifiers.

Only 12 more days to go until Christmas, and little L is getting so excited!  I have started wrapping presents and putting them under the tree, a few at a time not to overwhelm him!  At first he was wanting to pick them up and mess, but we told him they were not for him they were for Libby (our black lab) and he has been ok with that, little does he know that they really are all for him!  But whatever works!  Lots of FRG trainings this week and L's last day of school before Christmas break, so we will be busy again!  We have been enjoying a 4 day weekend with T, trying to spend as much time with him as we can since he will be leaving in a couple of weeks for his big training trip!  Hope you all are done with your Christmas shopping, I hope to have mine done in the next couple of days!  Will update again soon!

L being sweet

Over the thanksgiving holiday we had the fabulous Kasey Moore take some pictures of L for our annual family christmas card.  L was not real crazy about the idea but she was able to get some wonderful pictures of him that we think are going to make for a great card!  Here is a shot that we didnt end up using for the card but I absolutely loved of L...T says I should send some pictures in to a modeling place and make some money off of him :)  (we may be just a little biased though!!)