Convo at my House Tonight

Kent: I'm starting the no carb diet. I am eating a grilled chicken salad tonight and an omelet tomorrow. Are you going to do it with me?

Me: *sigh* yes

Kent: What you don't want to eat healthy?

Me: I'm a b!$#@ when I don't eat carbs.

Kent: You're a b!$#@ when you're on any diet.

Me: What can I say, I love food!?!

New Years at the Beach!

I have a truly unhealthy love for the beach! It just seems that I can't get enough, and truth be told, we should probably just live there! Maybe one day in the future I will own a beach house...

Anyway, we spent 4 blissful days at the beach with Kent's family over last week. As I mentioned before, we had a blast! We drove down on Wednesday and kicked off the good eating at one of our faves Bahama Bob's. Crawfish po boy-you are my friend! Here's Kenny and Donna on the way down-can you say Beverly Hillbillies!?!

Then Thursday we took it easy, ate a late breakfast at Big O's and headed to the outlets for some shopping! Friday, we cooked-all day! We started out cooking breakfast, then I assembled my apple pie and had to let it sit and marinate in the fridge for a while. I forgot to take a pic of it before it was cut but it was so pretty! It had stars all over the top!

At 3pm we started cooking the main meal. Kent had already smoked 2 boston butts, so we just had to heat those up. But oh my! We had mac & cheese, hashbrown casserole, cabbage, turnip greens, hoppin john, cornbread, potato salad, and rice. I'm sure I've forgotten something. It was a feast! It was oh so good too!!! The men did a lot of this:

And I got to hang out with my BFF Heather

We played spoons, pit, pictonary, scategories, put a puzzle together, played Wii, watched football, and read by the fire pit. But mainly, we just spent a great time with our great family! Some had to leave on Saturday so we all had lunch at Lulu's and headed to the state park pier. Can you say cold!

We got to see someone catch a big redfish and then it was time to head back to the house. We just ate leftovers for dinner and started packing up everything. Check out time was at 11, so Sunday we got Shrimp Basket to go and headed back to good ole Calera. We couldn't really go in anywhere since we had the dogs. People might frown upon us for leaving them in an extremely cold car by themselves. I really think that they enjoyed being at the beach as much as we did! So many people meant so much play time for them. They were pooped by Friday night!

Now it's back to reality! What a bummer! But this little face is so precious!

The rest of Christmas

Here are a few more pics from our family Christmas get togethers.

This is a truly messed up attempt at a family picture with Kent's family. This is unfortunately the best one since hubs decided to act a hot mess the entire time.

This was prior to all of the shenanigans-Kent and Donna (my mother in love)

This is Lauren and me:

Fortunately for me, Lauren is my BFF's sister who just so happens to be marrying Kent's first cousin. Therefore, Heather and I will be semi related. (Haha!)

We also traveled to Cullman for both my mom's side and my dad's side of the family. This is all of the grandchildren with our 90yr old grandmother. She's still feisty as ever! Take in mind that this was after I had been up all night working, so yes, I look a hot mess!

Aubrey cheesing for the camera:When Aubrey was first starting to make some decisions about who she liked and who she didn't want to have anything to do with, Uncle Greg was top on the list of her , "I do not like you" list! Every time he would come into the room, she would start screaming. I call this progress! She now loves him!

Happy 2010!!

We have been at the beach since Wednesday and it has been soooooo much fun! We have eaten way too much food, been way too loud and had too much fun-if there is such a thing. We rented a 6 bedroom duplex on Fort Morgan road with a wonderful view of the ocean. I haven't made it quite to the ocean yet, but I have thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the balcony with a cup of coffee reading a book. The dogs have had the time of their little lives. Sometimes Lucy doesn't quite know what to think with so many people around. Well, we are off to Lulu's for lunch so I will catch ya later! Hope everyone is having a great 2010 so far!

Big Green Egg

**Side note: this is the 4th time that I've posted tonight so scroll on down to start from the beginning.**

In the previous post, I explained how we surprised Kent with his present Saturday night. Well, here it is all put together. Kent had to cook on it Sunday afternoon and we had some delicious smoked chicken.

Lucy didn't really like the fact that we were outside and she wasn't...

First Family Christmas

This past Saturday, my immediate family came to our house for our Christmas get together. It was the first of many this week. I have 4 more starting Thursday night. Add in the fact that I am working night shift and trying to sleep and make all of the family Christmases, it's going to be a week of not sleeping! But that's okay, it's not about me! I've gone without sleep before! I started the prep early in the week trying to get some things done in the house. Friday night, I made a home made carrot cake. YUMMO! Then Saturday, everyone was coming around 4 to hang out, open presents then eat. I planned the menu a couple of weeks before hand and finally got everything together. The highlight of the night was watching our 2yr old niece open her presents. She had such a great time! She tore piece by piece of the paper off and had to hand each tiny piece to someone.

After she finished, we all opened our gifts and Kent was totally surprised!!! Both of our families had gone in together to buy him a Big Green Egg. It's a top of the line smoker/grill. If you know my husband, he LOVES to smoke BBQ and put anything on the grill. We own 4 smokers and grills so I was hoping that since he got the top of the line, we might can get rid of a couple. (Wishful thinking.) I had wrapped the nest and accessories for him to open and the egg was in the back of my sisters truck wrapped in a sheet. When he opened the nest, he just kind of looked at me. I asked him if he would like to go outside. He had absolutely no clue!!! Such fun! My sister got some good pics of him opening up the nest and his surprised face.

Then we ate...and ate...and ate. Our menu consisted of coconut shrimp, grilled shrimp, roasted potatoes, green beans, corn salad, and grilled corn on the cob. Plenty of desserts and some caramel apple cider to top off the night. After dinner, Aubrey had to dress up in her Cinderella costume and cast spells on all of us:Such a great night with such a great family!!!

My Christmas Tree

At the request of some fellow coworkers, I took some pics of my Christmas tree. I decorated our unit's tree and I thought it turned out really well. I've gotten so many compliments on it, but it's just not really my style. It's very classic, while my style is quite the opposite. Here's a comparison:

My tree at home:

My two favorite ornaments were a wedding present from my favorite patients-red and green polka dots with our initials in black and white polka dots:

The topper is just an explosion of sparkling snowflakes and dots. This doesn't really show you the true colors, but they are silver, hot pink and green.

I must apologize for the next pic, I totally forgot that I don't know how to rotate it so it's sideways, but it's a good pic of how it looks all lit up.

The rest of my decorations are just bright colors. I got my teal tree skirt from Pier 1 on clearance a couple of years ago and I still love it!

Here's the tree I decorated for work. Very classic, just red and gold.

I thought that the bells would be a different kind of topper and I love the fan of peacock looking feathers coming from behind it.