News — family

The other night I was watching TV with Rory and an Olive garden commercial came on and he asked me if I remembered when we used to go there to eat. Now the last time I remember going to Olive Garden we were still living in Charleston, so that brings the time back to 2009 or earlier. He talked for a good 20 minutes about how he loves that you can have lots of soup and breadsticks. Now Olive Garden style Zuppa Toscana  has been on our menus at least monthly for YEARS probably since 2006 maybe earlier. It’s one...

Rory and Finn had so much fun at the zoo it was all they talked about. Steve was coming up for the weekend from Key West and I mentioned that maybe the following day we could all go to the zoo. The kids LOVED that idea. I also decided to bring my telephoto lens instead of my standard lens on the second day. I’ll spare you the eleventy billion animal pictures (except a few I can’t resist) that I took. I thought a picture with the peacock would be a nice tradition. Then we rented one of those pedal car...

It was a busy week around here baking, baking and more baking for Lexi’s Hunger Games inspired party. I have never seen my girlie this excited about anything. I really loved being able to surprise her with this. I think one of the biggest surprises for her was our dear friend Diana also dressed up as Effie Trinket as Lexi dressed like Katniss on reaping day. Don’t they look wonderful? If you have read the books you know that foods especially breads are discussed so much and play such an important part of the story so that is what I...

I can hardly believe as I sit here and type this that my little girl is now a teenager. It seems like it was just yesterday that she was scurrying off in the store to hid under clothing racks, or climbing into my bed during the night. For a few weeks I’ve been planning a Hunger Games inspired surprise party for her, no easy task to do when she is my helper and home 24/7 but it was slowly happening. Unfortunately some plans fell through and she wasn’t going to have a sleepover where I could transform everything so I...

If I thought for a minute that March was busy April was even more of a whirlwind. Most of the pictures I have for you today are food based. Apparently I really take that food = showing people how you much you love them to a new level. We had some AMAZING white “lasagna” I will call it that even though I really used wavy noodles because that’s all that was in the pantry that day OOPS.  It was so YUMMY! Easter was a quite affair. We invited our great friends Julie & Steve over for dinner. I love that...