Cravings

For a few days now I've been craving buffalo chicken wings. Now while a Chili's has just opened down the street, I couldn't justify the expense of eating out yet again. So with the support of my trusty foodie Pioneer Woman I set out to make my own buffalo chicken wings.

Although I live in the South, I haven't been here long enough to soak up the true art of frying. I resorted to my back-up foodie that specializes in Southern food, my sister Andrea. She walked me through the nerve racking process of trying not to burn my self while frying wings. After a little trial and error I finally got those wings frying away.

I think I fried them a little too long, but they still came out looking nicely golden brown and extra crispy (thanks to the bit about frying them too long).

Then I whipped up the simpler-than-expected buffalo concoction of cayenne pepper sauce and butter:

(Terrible photo!)

Then came the moment of truth. Would they be good enough to satisfy my craving?

Well they sure looked good, and that ranch blue cheese combo doesn't hurt one bit. And the final verdict? DELICIOUS (as Andre would say). Anton has declared I have to make them again. These were much easier to make than I expected and they were beyond good. We looked like we hadn't eaten in years the way we were slurping them down. And they weren't too hot either. Just a nice pleasant burn, but no runny noses. Yummmm. And here's the aftermath:

While it was tempting to lick the extra sauce off the plate, I resisted. And to finish it all off? Blue Bell Cookie Dough ice cream of course. I had to balance out all the spicy wingness. What a great dinner combo. And yes, that's all we had.

Craving satisfied.

Let the Festivities Begin!!

Halloween is the beginning of my favorite holiday season. Between it and Thanksgiving and Christmas I don't think you can get a better time of year. Throw in some nice cool fall weather and I'm sold. We began our Halloween festivities yesterday. We don't get big into decorating or the trick-or-treating, what we love about Halloween is the pumpkins!

First step, get the pumpkins. We usually like to go to a pick your own farm, but with all the rain we'd been getting, we decided we would just get them locally. We went to a church that had a bunch out front, but after seeing the prices we ended up getting one little one there. But we let the kids run around and have fun.

Alex kept trying to pick up pumpkins that were at least twice his size. He usually just managed to pull them over on himself. It was really cute. Ella picked out at least 10 pumpkins that were the perfect one for her. She finally narrowed it down to the small one we ended up getting.

She insisted on carrying it the whole time. On the way home we stopped by the grocery store to get pumpkins for the rest of us. Alex just got a little bitty one:

He likes holding it, and of course, chewing on it.

Last night was the great carving ceremony. This is a big deal to us. We don't do your normal everyday pumpkin faces. The harder the pattern the better. Though this year I decided to take it easy. Ella has never carved pumpkins before.

She was really excited to get started and carve a "happy face" as she kept declaring to everyone. She wasn't so sure about having to clean out her pumpkin. She kept saying, "My hand is dirty." I had to convince her that when it comes to pumpkins, messy is OK.

Now Alex is a whole 'nother story. He had no problem sticking his hands right down into the piles of pumpkin goo.

We actually ended up putting him in his highchair and plopping a big pile of pumpkin filling in front of him to play with. I think he ate quite a bit of it. Not surprising. Not to be outdone by his son, Anton had to get in on the action too.

Silly daddy.

We had to take a break from our elaborate pumpkin carving in order to put the kids to bed. And what better way to leave things than like this?

That was Anton's pumpkin. It looks like it's been murdered.

But after much cutting and sawing and scraping and more sawing, our pumpkins were finally done. Wanna see?

Ella was already in bed so we didn't get a picture with her and her pumpkin. Her's is the middle one. See how happy? She picked out exactly what shapes she wanted and where to put them and I carved it out for her. Now you want to see them looking really cool?

Mine is on the left and Anton's is on the right. I think they turned out pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Such fun.

The fun continued on this evening when we went to a Halloween party for church. Anton wasn't going to dress up but I insisted. So at the last minute we were brainstorming like crazy. I think we ended up doing pretty good.

Do you get it? I am the tower where the princess is being held captive by the dragon and Anton is the knight in shining armor coming to rescue her. Cardboard and aluminum foil are the homemade costume designers best friends. We ended up winning best family costume at the party. Alex and Ella were so cute in their costumes.

Alex was enjoying all the candy to be had.

And this girl has to be the pretties princess ever. What a doll!

Our friends Andre and Tonia had the funniest costume ever.

She's got the bun in the oven and he is the baker. How hilarious is that? They actually used parts of their stove to make it.

I also won the best pumpkin contest. Even though they tried giving the award to Amelia. Amelia, Amanda, I guess I can see where one would get confused. :o)

But the fun had to come to an end when it started getting too cold and Alex dumped ice water all over himself. But we'll get to do it again on Wednesday for the real thing!

On a non-Halloween related note, what is it with little boys and getting hurt? I don't think Elle ever managed to hurt herself as much as Alex does. Of course, Alex has Ella to help him too. But yesterday he went face first into the corner of the desk. And as the good mom I am I made sure to snap a picture.

Look at that welt on his forehead. Poor baby. But he bounced back quick and was his usual chipper self.

I hope you all have exciting things planned for Halloween! Have a good night!

Higher Elevations

It had been awhile since we went on a spur of the moment adventure trip, so today that's just what we did. We headed off to the highest point in Florida, also commonly known as Britton Hill. It was about an hour and a half drive to get there and Alex thought it would be fun to cry most of the way, but other than that and some bad directions from Map Quest we managed to get there OK. So here it is folks, the highest point in Florida:


Now in case you can't read the small print let me show you just how high we were:

Our noses were bleeding, the air was hard to breathe...OK not really. Actually, the highest point in Florida is the lowest highest point of all the states. Now if you want to get technical this granite marker was really the highest spot:

It just wasn't as cool looking as the big sign. Ella did her best to be impressed but really didn't care. Alex was so unimpressed. He was much more interested in the airplanes flying over:

There was a series of trails in the park so we decided to head out for a little hike. It was a beautiful cool day and the hike was through a nice green forest (note the fact that everything is still green at the end of October!) free of visible large arachnid life.

The kids were having a great time running around playing in the woods. We let Ella have free reign of the old camera and she was snapping pictures like a pro:

What a cutie! The kids were making all sorts of discoveries. They had never seen moss before and were really entranced by it.

They sat there stroking this patch of moss for quite a while. Alex came up at one point carrying this odd piece of moss:

It was spongy and covered sections of the forest floor:

He like ripping it apart. He also was loving the acorns all over the place. Of course I wasn't loving him loving them because his way of loving them was like this:

Yes. That is an acorn in his mouth. He likes to chew on them. I'm going to get all his teeth pulled so he has nothing to chew with.

Ella is loving having a little brother right now. I'm sure this will change sometime soon, but she always holds his hand when we are walking around:

She'll stroll along singing "We are a Happy Family" which is so cute. Except of course when we are in the grocery store and she's singing it at the top of her lungs over and over and over....you get the picture.

There was a lot of green and brown on this hike, but I made it a point to hunt down whatever color I could. And this proved to be easier than I thought thanks to the fact that it seems to be fungus season in the forest. This one here was my favorite:

It was a good foot across. Huge! And bright orange. So fun! But I managed to find something in almost every color of the rainbow.

Red:

(Not a fungus, I know, but red nonetheless.)

Orange:

(I wish I'd gotten it dripping. Would've made a really cool picture.)

Yellow:

(More fungus!)

Green:

(That was one determined fungus to push up through that moss.)

Blue:

(Now which way were we supposed to go again?)

No purple, sadly. But I did get a cool brown:

(A feast for Alex.)

It was a lot of fun to wander the park and experience such high altitudes. And since we were already up there we decided to venture into Alabama for lunch. We stopped in Florala (Florida + Alabama, the real name, I kid you not) at the local Hardee's for some mediocre food. There was a really beautiful lake there though. Then another long, crying fest of a drive home. Good fun!

And on a side note. Anton went to the doctor this morning because his ribs have been hurting since he fell off his bike mountain biking last week. Nothing broken. Just badly bruised. Nothing a little Tylenol with codeine can't help.

Have a good day!

Our Budding Photographer

With our fairly recent acquisition of a couple new digital cameras we found ourselves with an extra older camera. And what better thing to do with a camera than give it to a 3 year old? Ella loves taking pictures. There were over 200 of them when I pulled them off the chip onto the computer. She takes pictures of all sorts of silly things. For example:

Ceiling fixtures are one of her specialties. She's quite good at them.

Alex is also a central subject of her pictures.

Sometimes we get really special ones like my rumpus when I'm still in my pajamas in bed trying to sleep. Or,

Daddy peeking over the shower cutrtain while mommy is showering. (naughty daddy)

But of all the things in the world that there are to photograph, Ella has 2 absolute favorites, herself:

and her feet:

Now it doesn't really matter where or when, but the important factor of a good Ella face shot is,

the goofier the better. Silly faces are a must.

And the closer the better.

Odd angels? You bet.

And her feet? Well you better believe she gets pictures standing up,

sitting in chairs,

or at the top of the stairs,

and sometimes...

even upside down!!

She is destined to be a fabulous photographer someday. Now lets just hope she can find some new subject matter before then! She's such a doll, I love her to pieces!