My Cradle

This is my cradle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Timothy slaved away for a couple weeks before Christmas, to MAKE me this out in his room, can you believe it!!??

Its the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life, and it means SO much more because it was handmade by my big little brother-in-law :D

Micah loves it too, and I love seeing him sleeping in it. I keep it down the kitchen now, so he can quietly sleep while I tend to the household chores. *Sigh* its so beautiful!

Micah's Eyes

Micah's eyes are so unique and yet plain at the same time! People are ALWAYS saying "oh what pretty brown eyes!", and "Goodness you have such blue eyes!", and we are like, "Uh....What???"

The truth of the matter, is that every picture seems to make you think, "Oh, you can't really see what color his eyes are", when in reality, you can!

They are GREY!

Pure, plain, Grey...like the color of a solid grey slab of rock. Its incredible! If you look closely, you can see slight darker grey flecks towards the pupil of his eye, but they are solid grey! :)

However, I have no doubt that they could change, because although they've been this way for a couple months, he does have about 3 tiny flecks of dark brown RIGHT by his pupil (it has to be really bright outside for that part of his Iris to show...), so they could turn brown, but for now I am just shocked at how beautiful grey can be, when usually the world would call it "Plain.

Sweet baby eyes...

Our Christmas Eve Tradition

The first Christmas as a married couple, Jon and I were living away from our immediate families, in North Carolina. I was almost 6 months pregnant with our first baby, and we really felt so lonely and bored, that we didn't know what to do with ourselves!

So.....We decided to do what anyone would. Go to the mall! I guess in a way, it kinda simulated the chaos that goes on at our families' houses at Christmas Time :)

So, then was born a tradition, that every Christmas Eve, we go to the mall! We took Grace last year, and this year we took Timothy!

This was a miracle from the Lord!
I remembered to bring my Moby, Lunch, Cookies to snack on while resisting Cinnabon, and a huge carafe of Hot Chocolate...as well as a couple bags of clothes for friends, and to donate, and little Christmas treats for Uncle Carlton, and some other friends.

What Did I forget? OH YEAH! A stroller. NOT cool.

So, when we walked in, we saw where there are these sweet car-stroller thingies. I asked Jon to walk over and see how much they were to rent for the day, while I put on the Moby. He comes back with THIS!!! A beautiful red 2-seater car stroller that is super easy to push, and has a place for our diaper bag! Apparently, when Jon went over there to see prices, and found out it was $5 for the day, but you get $1 back when you return it, a man approached him and said that we could use the one they were just returning, and that they had gotten MORE than $5 worth use out of it for the day! Praise the Lord!
He knew we would need something, and He provided it. Isn't He good?










A tradition with the little boys: Get a bag of candy at the candy shop!







Tyler loves holding onto, or touching, the hem of any garment you wear. Its a weird little fetish, but its so cute, and I have no idea why he does it!
He found Timothy's pants loop (hammer holder), and just hung on for awhile, it was so cute I had to capture it :)


Our bag of candy


After a long day, the boys slept the whole way home

Heather's Sponge Story

"H A R K... I AM AN OLD WELL USED SPONGE, AND I AM FALLING APART"

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"Wait."
"What is that."
"Is that....a new sponge????"
"Am I being REPLACED??????????????"

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"Why do I feel a sudden surge of inferiority??"



"Well....." (Says the new sponge)

"Shut up newby."

"Arrrrr......." Does that taste good, little puppy??

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Will be posting TONS of pictures later....enjoying family right now, and looking forward to a good night's rest!

And, in protest of Christmas being over, we will be leaving our Christmas music playlist on until January, along with our Christmas decorations :)

Delicious recipe 2

This one is called, "Heather's Easy Turkey Bake"

Its super good, and we had it tonight. We all STUFFED ourselves, to finish off the dish, if that give's ya'll an idea of serving size (Timothy was stuffed, and he can put down almost 2 boxes of macaroni and cheese!)

Preheat oven to 350

4 cups leftover cooked turkey
1 cup sour cream
1-1/2 cups shredded cheese
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 box turkey stuffing
1-2/3 cups hot water

Cream together turkey, sour cream, cheese, and soup, in a baking dish (cake-pan size, or large corningware dish), and level

In bowl, mix package of stuffing with hot water until just moistened, then pour over turkey mixture

Bake for 30 minutes, and serve hot! :)

Delicious recipe 1

This is what I call "Sweet Cinnamon Hoe Cake"

For some history on this: I guess Hoe cake is like, a HUGE southern thing. You need only a few ingredients, and it can be pre-mixed, then you just add oil/butter and water/milk (depending on your fridge contents, tastebuds, and food budget).
Field workers, slaves, and Indians, would take this pre-mix to the fields with them, and when hungry, they would add some water and lard to the mixture, and drop the batterish dough on their hoes, basically "baking" them over a fire! Isn't that awesome??

So, a couple weeks ago we were slim on groceries, so I remembered that Allyson once railed off the recipe to me and said her famous "Oh, its SO easy! You just......" etc, etc. So, I looked it up online, and she was right! It was really easy and had simple ingredients.

One time though, I had some extra cinnamon/sugar mixture left over from another baking venture, so I tossed it in, and UUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!! SO good! We all adore it now, and I make it fairly regularly. Here it is!

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Sweet Cinnamon Hoe Cake

Preheat Oven to 425

Place your baking dish (pie dish or 8x8) in the oven while it preheats, WITH 2 TBSP OF OIL IN THE BOTTOM (The idea, is to basically fry and bake your hoe cake in the oven)

Mix together in a bowl, in this order:
2 Cups Flour
1/4 Cup Sugar
3 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Salt
2 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Cup Oil or Softened Butter or Shortening
1 Cup Water or Milk

Batter should be wet, like drop biscuit dough

Remove your dish from oven (oil should be VERY hot), and pour your batter into it...it should sizzle! :)

Place back in the oven and bake for about 20-15 minutes, until bottom is well fried/medium brown, and the tops peaks are well toasted.

Remove from oven, immediately turn out onto plate, then return UPSIDE DOWN to baking dish. Cut, and serve hot with apple butter, apple jelly, or just plain butter!

Delicious!!!!!!

Micah Scooting

Micah pushing up on all 4's

These are Micah's woolies :) Sorry for the "No-shirt" look...but it he was in his "cozy blanket spot" by the fire, so he was really warm!!! Plus, dontchya just love his rolls?

Laundry Time!

I did a load of laundry that had LOTS of socks in it, so when I un-crunchied them for 10 minutes in the dryer, I wasn't relishing bending over to get every single little sock out...literally!

"BOYS!! Mommy needs your help! Can you get all the laundry out, and put it in the basket for me?"

"Sure mom!" they both yelled, with joy in their faces.

5 minutes later, this was the sight:

Jon's Buck

Yesterday, Jonathan decided to go out hunting in the snow...although he didn't seem to really think he'd get anything, he just wanted to know what the deer were doing in the snow (if they bed down, move around alot, etc..).

After about and hour or two, we heard the gunshot. Jon only had one bullet, so we knew he'd be coming back in just minutes whether he shot something or missed. I saw him walking up the road, and was so disappointed. I guess I expected him to be bare-chested, dragging a big deer up with the gun over his shoulder...lol!!

Timothy came to look out the window, and I said, "I don't think he got one, he's going too slow and sulky". Timothy said, "Yeah. Well, wait...he's looking down too much. That means he's trying to hide his face! I bet he got one, cause he knows we'll be watching, and he doesn't want us to see his face."

Sure Timothy..........whatever.

As Jon came to the window, he looked at me, and then I was convinced...he had a DEFINITE twinkle in his eyes, then a huge grin on his face, and he nodded his head. I guess Timothy really knows his brother!!!!! :)

We all got flashlights, as it was dusk, and went out with the wooden wagon down the road. Jonathan "fixed it" so Jason would find the deer first, which was a HUGE highlight for him! It was a 4x4 buck! Jonathan has been on cloud 9 since then!

Here are some pictures......