Lazy Days

We traveled to Georgia this weekend to visit Papa D and Gee Gee. It was a great time of lounging in the hammock, riding in the woods, catching up on Food Network, and eating lots and lots of yummy food.


Caroline definitely has her grandparents wrapped around her finger. She used her charm to talk them into giving her cracker upon cracker and tons of her new favorite cookie. She was definitely sugared up!!



My birthday was on Sunday so we celebrated with strawberries and pancakes for breakfast and then later in the day David presented me with a birthday cake. It was a last minute idea so you will notice the cake has an Irish theme and a very sad icing message. Evidently, it was so late at the grocery store when he bought the cake that only one person working was willing to try to write a birthday message on my cake! Then to top that off the only candles his parents had in the house were leftover from his grandad's 90th birthday party. So today, unexpectedly I celebrated my 95th birthday! Don't I look good for my age!!! ;)



The next picture will have to be explained. A DeWeil Family tradition is that the birthday girl or boy has to take the first bite out of their cake. Usually it's a year-long competition to see who can take the biggest bite. David was laughing at my pitiful effort.



All in all we had a great weekend! Thanks Papa D and Gee Gee!

Let the Creative Juices Flow

Isn't she a beauty? This was an early birthday present from David. I have wanted one for so long!!! There are so many fun projects I have on my mind.....now I just have to learn how to use this bad boy!

Mimi

Caroline is definitely a Daddy's girl. She's been that way since the beginning. Maybe it's because when she was first born David would dance with her every night before we put her to bed. OR it could be because he's so funny and always knows how to make her laugh. Whatever the reason she has always been a Daddy's girl. Because of that most days all I hear about is Dada this and Dada that and nothing about Mommy. I have to admit that was pretty tough when I thought about the rough days of morning sickness I went through while carrying her and the difficult sacrifices I make each day to stay home with her. All I wanted was some recognition from her....that's all. :) But now I can say it was worth the wait. Caroline has now started to call my name all the time. FINALLY!!!! But instead of calling me Mama or Mommy she has named me "Mimi". If she sees a picture of me across the room she will yell with joy "Mimi". The other day we were at the grocery store and David was pushing her around on the cart while I tried to quickly find everything on our list. When they turned down the aisle where I was, I heard an excited shriek "MIMI!!!!" It was awesome! So even though she is still a Daddy's girl at heart it's so good to finally have some recognition from her.

Oh Yum!

First let me say how happy it made us to see a table of Girl Scouts in front of the grocery store yesterday!!! After digging through all the loose change in my purse I came up with exactly enough to take home one of these......


and let me tell ya....one box is not gonna last long in our house! We broke them open as soon as we got to the car! We try to eat them when Caroline is napping so we don't have to share with her! Isn't that awful! :) We're very protective of our Thin Mints.

So last weekend David took me to this new (well new to me) restaurant where he ordered "Southern Salsa" and I instantly fell in love! So all week I've been on a quest to find a recipe for this stuff so I could recreate it at home anytime I wanted. Here's the first recipe I tried out last night that is called "Texas Caviar". It didn't have the kick the Southern Salsa had but it was yummy.
I also made Monster Cookies for the first time and I wish I had not waited so long to sample this recipe that I've had in my possession for years. Watch out these are addictive! Thankfully we had some friends come over Saturday night and they helped us eat some of this!

I actually remembered to take pictures of the process of making the cookies. Although I didn't think of it until after I began so all the ingredients are not pictured.

If you'd like any of the recipes let me know! I'm happy to share!

A Prayer for Caroline

It is my desire to be praying consistently for Caroline. Here's what I've decided to commit to praying for her.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ~Ephesians 3:16-19

Pickles

Caroline's newest obsession. She begs for them from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed. It must be genetic because from what I hear her daddy loved pickles too at her age. Guess I'll have to get used to vinegar scented kisses. :)

Snowy Valentine's

What an amazing weekend! Caroline went to visit Nana, Papa and Aunt Tracie for the weekend so David and I could have some much needed quality time together. He surprised me with flowers, chocolate and a sweet card when I arrived home.....what a great start! And with our new found freedom we headed straight to our favorite spot......Barnes & Noble, where we spent the afternoon reading magazines, looking at books and drinking yummy Starbucks. :) To add to the magic of our weekend and turn us into giggling kids something happened that is very rare here in the South......it started to snow!

And it kept snowing so that by the time we finished dinner the roads and everything in sight were covered! It was unbelievable! Here we are outside of the restaurant.

We spent the rest of the night at home walking around our neighborhood having a snowball fight and making snow angels. Such fun!

By the next morning everything looked like this.

The rest of our weekend was spent eating lots of good food (first ever fish tacos that were amazing) and having deep conversation about life. It was just what we needed.

Here We Go

So I've been reading and falling in love with blogs for awhile. I've been in awe of how they capture each person's life and tells their story in their voice. I'm not a fan of scrapbooking and have discovered I struggle with even keeping up with updating my daughter's baby book so I've decided that this outlet suits me the best to capture our story for her. So she can follow the real life adventures of our family. Recently I've thought a lot about how the walls of our home speak our individual stories of how we become the person that we are. The memories of a baby coming home or birthday parties and family dinners and laughter and tears. All the learning and growing and stretching of ourselves all resonates in our homes. So this will be our story....our journey of how we became who we are. Hopefully someday this will be a treasure for Caroline to read and have a glimpse back in time.