I'm so ready for baseball

The season can't come fast enough.

C'mon Braves! Let's have a great season.

Not only for you, but for Bobby, too!

And for me?!?!?!?! :)

.

Amish Friendship Bread... turns into cake!

Have you ever had a friend or family member pass along one of those friendship bread "starter" bags. You know, the bags full of goop?

Someone at my Mom's school gave her a starter bag of Amish Friendship Bread. It's a cinnamony bread. It's delicious!!

But when you "feed it" before you make your bread, you wind up with 3 or 4 bags of goop to give away.

I tried Mom's bread and it was delicious. And I thought it would be really good if you added some shredded apples and chopped pecans and made it into a layer cake. With cream cheese icing.

So, Mom gave me 2 bags of the starter goop to make my cake. (I didn't think one batch would be enough for 3 layers.)

I mixed up the cake according to the recipe. I added 2 (peeled and shredded) Granny Smith apples and a bunch of chopped pecans. I like pecans!

It made 3 cake layers and 18 muffins!

I baked and let them cool. Before baking the muffins, though, I added some cinnamon and sugar to the top. It baked up all crispy and delicious!

Here's a few pics of the cake. (Sorry, no pics of the muffins.)




Want some? (and no, I didn't put the pepper in the cake...
I just have a reeeaaaally small kitchen)





Here ya go!






I did this a while back, but just now getting around to posting about it.

.

Busy week...

Hopefully next week will be better.

.

A very cool love story...

My online friend Denise has a very special brother in law. On May 7th, his 55th birthday, he will be getting married!!

Want to know what’s so special about him? Read on to see how Denise tells the story…

“He's very special, and has the purest and most loving heart I've ever encountered. I have never heard him say a negative word about his life...most of the time, his sentences are prefaced with "I'm so lucky..."

“Want to feel good about your life? He was born with cerebral palsy. After his parents divorced when he was a child, he lived with his mother, little sister, and my husband (his older brother) in a manufactured home. One night when he was 12 (a night when my now husband happened to be staying with their father), their mom left burning cigarettes in the trash can after a small party. The home caught on fire and his mother and little sister were trapped in the blaze and killed. Unable to walk or escape on his own, he screamed from his bedroom and firemen were able to pull him to safety through a window. He suffered serious and permanent lung damage in the blaze.”

“He's been in a wheelchair since childhood, and had to have a leg amputated due to diabetes about 15 years ago. He can do very little for himself, and has lived in an assisted living facility for many years. His fiancee (who also has an apartment in his facility), is a spunky little brainiac (also with CP) who is highly independent, works as an advocate for the physically challenged, and has been encouraging him to overcome his own boundaries by teaching him how to use the paratransit resources available to them...she is 52.”

"We just booked our plane tix to go to the wedding in 6 weeks, and I'm so psyched.”

Isn't that a very cool love story, indeed? Please join me in wishing them a lifetime of happiness and love.


.

Driving

Do you like to drive?

I do. I love for us to get in the car, with no particular destination, and just drive to see where we end up.

Now, that's odd, I guess, coming from someone who didn't get her drivers license until she was 24 years old! (Long story, maybe another time)

Now, once I got my license, I would drive anywhere, anytime. I'd take off to Atlanta to see the Braves. (Did I ever mention how much I love the Braves?) :)

I'd take an afternoon drive and end up somewhere I've never been. I once ended up in Spartanburg. Couldn't tell you how I got there, but it took me 5 or 6 hours. And I had to call Daddy and tell him where I was and ask how in the heck to get back home!

Then I learned to read maps. :D

Now, with all these folks with GPS systems (which are wrong sometimes!) I think people have stopped using their common sense.

And what's with people driving 45 in the "fast lane" (what ever happened to slower drivers keep right?)

And people pulling out in front of you when there's no one behind you. But they can't wait 5 seconds for you to get past them. Their time is precious.

Then they turn 3 driveways down the road.

Oh, and don't even think about anyone using a signal. Because if they do, they FORGET TO TURN IT OFF!

Anyway.... I do like to drive.

Do you?

.

What cancer CAN'T do...

It can't cripple love


It can't shatter hope


It can't corrode faith


It can't eat away peace


It can't destroy confidence


It can't kill friendship


It can't shut out memories


It can't silence courage


It can't invade the soul


It can't reduce eternal life


It can't quench the Spirits


It can't lessen the power of the resurrection


Please pray for everyone who is affected by this horrible disease.




.

Daylight Savings Time...

Boy, could I use my hour back! How about you?

*yawn*

.

So excited for a friend!

I have an online friend named Jenny. And, although we've not met in person, I've known her for 3 or 4 years now. (Might be longer, but I'm getting old and can't keep track of time.) She lives in California. She's as sweet as she can be and is beautiful, inside and out.

Her daughter just turned 15 in February. She has wanted to get into modeling (she's about 6' tall!) and last October, she signed with a talent agency. She had a photographer shoot her portfolio. Here are a few pictures.

Then, in November, she got a call from another agency. This agency is in San Francisco and is a much bigger market. They wanted to interview her. So Jenny took her to San Francisco. She interviewed for her first job later in the month. It was for a Sony PlayStation ad. She got the job! How exciting! Here are a few pictures from the set of the ad.

With the director:

On the set:

As Jenny said - every (teenage) girl's dream:

She's done some other things, too. Here are a few pictures from a fashion show she did:

Then, in late February, just days after her 15th birthday, she gets another call. Possibly THE CALL to shoot her to super stardom. (I can hope, can't I?) It seems Armani is doing a showing of his Niemann Marcus clothing line in San Francisco. And he hand-picked her to model! How cool is that? Here are a few pics (from Jenny's cell phone) from that event.

Hair:

Makeup:

The venue:

The star:

And here she is modeling the dress Jodie Foster wore to the Golden Globes.

And, just so you know, her daughter isn't the only shooting star in the family!

The day her daughter got the call about the Armani show, her son came in from baseball practice and shared something that happened at practice. It seems when he arrived, the coach asked him if he was ready to pitch. He said, "Sure, Coach!" The coach said, "I'm glad, because there are a few men here who would like to meet you and see what you've got." Then, the coach introduced him to two scouts - one from the Florida Marlins and one from the Minnesota Twins!!

Now, probably most of you reading this know how I am. I admittedly don't know anything about fashion. And I LOVE baseball. But I wanted to share Jenny's story. I'm so happy for her and her family. So I asked if it would be okay to share her story on my blog.

Please join me and wishing Jenny and her family continued success and many blessings!!

Love ya, Jenny!

Cute widdle pupples...

This is Petunia and BlueBelle.

Aren't they adorable? They are 3 years old already! Where does the time go?

.

Drowning in work...

Not that it's that interesting, just wanted to post *something* on the blog....

I'm drowning in requisitions. I have over 200 sitting out in the hold file.

Help!



Somebody?



Anybody!





Bueller?



*sigh* Back to work....


.

Ahhh, Monday.....errr.... I mean Tuesday!

Why is it that Monday's off are not as good as Friday's off?

I've never understood that. But I'm living it.

Today, although it's Tuesday, really feels like a Monday. And you know how much I just love Monday's.

*yawn*

Sorry!

It doesn't help that I have a backlog of work. Which I should be doing instead of posting here. But, hey!, it's my lunch hour!

So, I sent poor Tim an email this morning and told him he might be frying his own pork chops for supper tonight.

Poor thing. Yeah, I'm talking about the pork chop. Ha!

Oooh! A nice weather weekend for a change!

So, I hear it's going to be a pretty weekend! How will you spend your weekend?

Tonight, I have to decorate a cake for a baby shower.

Then tomorrow, we're going to Tim's parents' house. Tim's Dad just had cataract surgery on Tuesday and he's supposed to be taking it easy. So we're going to see if they need us to run any errands for them. There's also a bluegrass singing at a church not far from their house. Pa Cain mentioned going to that, so we may go there.

Oh, and I'm going to drop off a blouse to a friend. (It's too small for me and it needs a good home.)

Sunday we'll go to church. We'll also have fellowship after church on Sunday evening. It's going to be a potluck. Wonder what I should make.

Tim will probably say lasanga. Or shepherd's pie. Or stroganoff.

Hmmm.... wonder what I should make?

Never take a trip to the mountains when there may be bad weather!

Tim and I decide to go to Gatlinburg / Pigeon Forge this past weekend. We know I-40 is closed, but we don't normally go that way anyway, so no big deal right?




Wrong.





We normally go from SC into GA, then up to Cherokee, NC, then over the mountain (Hwy 441) into Gatlinburg. So... we go all the way through Cherokee and start up the mountain. But wait! There's a long line of stopped cars. Reckon why?




Oh! The road is closed.





They aren't wet or icy or anything, but they might get that way before we get down the other side of the mountain. So they're closing the road. Not normally a big deal. We can take I-40, right?




Ooops! No! It's closed too.



So... we're rerouted back through Cherokee and onto I-240 to I-26 to ASHEVILLE!!




Now, had we known this, we could have started out going to Asheville from our house and saved a few hours!




So, we take I-26 to Johnson City, TN, then take I-81 toward Knoxville, then Hwy 66 to Sevierville and on into Pigeon Forge.



The entire trip was 6 hours and 32 minutes.


One way.


So, I spend more than twice the amount of time driving to a little spur of the moment weekend getaway.



Good thing we had sustenance. Water and ham sandwiches and mini cherry Three Muskateers are a good thing when you're driving in the middle of no where and have no idea where you're going and you're trusting a little piece of paper with directions from a man, who says he's a park ranger, but who normally just works the mountain pass from Gatlinburg to Cherokee.



*breathe*




And when we finally get there? The little room had a bed and a TV. That's about it. And the bed was a double.



A DOUBLE?!?!?!


What hotel rooms nowadays has one double bed? Most of the time isn't there either a queen or a king if there's only one bed?




Lisa + Tim + double bed = not room to get comfy and sleep



And we forgot our pillows. So no good sleep for me.


We did have a really good breakfast at Mama's Farmhouse (or something like that) on Saturday morning. Bacon, eggs, pumpkin pancakes, biscuits, gravy.... and more!



Then we went to listen to a sales pitch to get a $75 prepaid Visa. That took an hour and a half.


When we came out the sales pitch was snowing!! Not a lot, but a few flurries.



Then Tim picked out this Italian place for supper. I'm picky. I know that. The lasanga had no mushrooms, so I ordered that. Let me just say, I'm not one to waste food, but I took 3 bites and that was all I could stomach. And an inedible salad. I don't know what these folks were thinking, but that was NOT food. Hey, at least the store bought breadsticks were edible.


Then back to the torture chamber.... I mean, room. For no sleep. Again.


The next morning, we left around 9:30 or 10:00 for the long trek home. We did, however, buy a map and was able to find a quicker and less "out of the way" way home.




Needless to say, I went to bed at 9:00 Sunday night. And slept til 7:00 Monday morning.




I need a vacation.




There were a few high points and a few more low points. But you get the picture.




Did I say picture? Here are a few. Maybe I'll post more later. Or you can find them on Facebook.

My Hunny:

Yikes! Ice!

Pretty icy trees at an overlook in Tennessee:

A view of the mountains from Pigeon Forge:

What am I thinking?

I really don't know what I'm thinking. Trying to start a new blog. The last one didn't work out so well.

I'll try to do better this time around.

I promise to try to post at least once a week.

But hopefully more often!

Not that our life is glamorous or anything. We're just plain folks.

Humor me a little!