Old Blue Eyes!!

I had to put a picture of Maverick on here since I put that video of Bailey. Maverick is such a beautiful little boy. We really enjoyed seeing him this week and getting to snuggle on him for a little bit.

Bailey Shows Off

Here's Bailey showing off for Grammy & Pop. I wanted GG & Paw to see this. He's so funny and so smart and he's beginning to pronounce words so well you can actually understand him. Enjoy!!!

Bread Pudding

I could write a book about the bread pudding recipe I got from my mother in law, Carolyn, a few years ago. I have never liked bread pudding, so when she offered me some that she had made when we were at her house visiting, I turned it down. Kirby, however, had some and talked me into tasting it. Have you ever wondered what food in Heaven tastes like??? This is as close as you can get on earth. We got her recipe and later that year when Jen and Jake came to visit us for Christmas, we made some. They both loved it, of course, and a few weeks later I got an email from Jen asking for the recipe so she could surprise Jake with a pan. It wasn't long after that she made some for her church, and she and the bread pudding became an instant success. We had already had the same reaction at our church, with so many requests for the recipe that I lost track of how many times I printed it out.

Last year, at our family reunion, one of my many cousins made cookbooks for everyone with lots of family favorite recipes and I gave her the bread pudding recipe.

Now, for the point of this whole story. Today I got a call from another cousin in Alabama who lives in an assisted living home. She has not been to the family reunion for several years because of her poor health, but she got a copy of the cookbook from her sister. One of the cooks at the home has been trying out some of the recipes and she made the bread pudding. My cousin told me that everyone at the home went crazy for it and when the cook said they needed to save some for later, they all insisted that they wanted a second helping NOW. She thought it was so funny she had to call and let me know that the recipe was a big success there, too.

So, a big thank you to my mother-in-law for a recipe that has become a legend in several states. And just in case you haven't had the pleasure of tasting it, here's the recipe.

6 Eggs
2 Sticks Butter
3 Cups Sugar
1 Can Evaporated Milk (12 oz.)
4 oz. Hot Tap Water
1 tsp. Vanilla
8 Slices of Bread
Cinnamon

Break up bread slices in a 9x12 cake pan and set aside. Melt butter and add eggs, sugar, milk, hot water, and vanilla and mix well. Pour mixture over the bread. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
Bake at 350 deg. for about 45 minutes.

Presidential Candidate Calculator

Here's a link to an interesting little survey you can take and it will tell you which candidates agree with your positions on a number of issues. It only takes a minute or two to answer the questions. I thought it was pretty neat.


http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html

High Tech Rednecks!!

I thought I had heard it all, but today my husband and nephew topped every crazy thing they have ever done. They actually bought a motion activiated camera to hang from a tree to take pictures of deer. They put deer feed out all the time and the deer (or something) are eating it. But they are never there to see who or what time the feasting is taking place. So, today they bought this camera to spy on the deer, take pictures of them, and time and date stamp the pictures. I have a feeling they are going to have hundreds of pictures of some curious little squirrel trying to look into the lens. If they could only get one of those predator drones, they could hunt and never leave the couch!!

In other news, the weather today was beautiful (until it started to rain late this evening). It was in the 60's all day. I noticed that lots of people put up Christmas lights today and now the trip from my house to WalMart is lit up, pardon the pun, like a Christmas tree. We added some falling star lights that we found in the closet to our front porch. I think I bought these on clearance a few years ago, but I'm not sure we ever used them. Sometimes you can click on pictures and enlarge them. If you can click on this one, you can see the dog's eyes glowing down on the left hand side of the porch. She doesn't know what to make of the tree in the living room and all these packages. Mostly she just makes lots of excited barking noise. That big white circle that looks like a full moon on the roof must be a drop of rain on the lens. Looks pretty neat, though.

BABY, IT'S COLD INSIDE

No, that isn't a typo. We came home today and found our heater not working. It was about 45 degrees outside, and about 40 degrees inside our house. I actually left the front door open for a while to try to warm up the house!! We had to call someone and thankfully, they were here within a couple of hours. We have a little electric space heater and that helped a lot while we were waiting. Anyway, it was just a bad breaker and nothing wrong with the heater itself. Still cost $85, but compared to replacing a fan motor or something on the unit itself, that was way cheap.

The Grand Boys!!!

I haven't been able to post for two weeks because of work, but thank goodness for work because we got to see the grandbabies this week in El Paso. Not too many Grandparents just happen to be in your neighborhood when you live 2000 miles away. But everytime we go to California, we come back on I-10 and pass within a mile or two of their house. This trip we found a perfect place to park when we get a chance to visit. There is a K-Mart with a huge parking lot perfect for our big truck. Bailey is getting so tall and he is talking better and better so we were able to understand a lot of what he was telling us. He is especially good at saying "Stop Pop!" He loved saying it so Pop did everything he could think of to make Bailey have to tell him to stop. We are still amazed everytime by Maverick's oh so blond hair and blue eyes. I could go on and on about them, but I'll just say that they are the most beautiful and most intelligent little boys I have every seen!! And really, I'm not just saying that because I'm their Grammy.