Blue Bell in the Mail

When I was in high school, my Dad had this friend who would drive down to Amarillo, TX to get this special ice cream that was only sold in the South.

I thought it was pretty crazy, personally.

Then, when we moved to Mississippi a few years ago, we discovered Blue Bell ice cream.

It was delicious.

My parents came to visit (frequently), and it turns out that this was the special ice cream that my dad's friend would drive to Texas for!  We were pretty special, living in Mississippi...

I have to admit, I developed a fondness for the stuff.  Especially The Great Divide, Dutch Chocolate and Old Fashioned Vanilla - the good stuff.  So I was kind of disappointed when we moved to Virginia, and couldn't find it.  Apparently Virginia isn't "South" enough to carry Blue Bell...

I think I got over it...mostly...but then a few months ago my Dad called and said he had really exciting news.

Can you believe it?  A grocery store in Colorado was going to start carrying BLUE BELL ICE CREAM!

Then, seriously, everyone in my family who still live in Colorado (so my parents and sister) started TEXTING me pictures of this ice cream when they'd buy it.

Whoo hoo!  Yea...them?

Fast forward to my birthday, in May...

My parents told me that they had just mailed a box to me for my birthday, and it was going to arrive on a specific day.  Each day for the next 2 or 3 days they'd call me to remind me about this box, and that I should open it right away, and not wait till my birthday.

I think my response was usually, "yeah, sure, whatever, Mom and Dad..."

Well, when UPS came by with that box I dutifully opened it up, right away, and found this:

What the heck?!?  Did my parents send me fish, or meat or something?

(Which would be totally out of character for our family.)

So I tore through all the plastic wrapping, and opened the cooler...

and still couldn't figure out what the heck they had sent me, or why was it dripping.

When I suspected it was chocolately (when I first saw it I thought it might be blood, going back to the fish/meat thing.  And, YUCK!), I wondered why they'd send me chocolate milk...

So once I pulled the gross (but non-bloody) brown paper sacks out, I saw a sad sight:  

Melted ice cream.  A full gallon of it.

Darn it.

I called my mom for the scoop (ha, ha, pun intended), but I felt so bad telling her that it was all melted.

They had really wanted to send me Blue Bell ice cream for my birthday.  My mom spent a whole afternoon gathering up supplies, researching how best to send something frozen in the mail, figuring out the restrictions on dry ice (the butcher at the grocery store had assured my mom that they sent meat on 8 lbs of dry ice all the time, without the meat, or the ice melting).  My parents were pretty excited about the whole thing.

It would have been awesome, had it worked out.

But I felt pretty loved anyway.

My parents are the bestest.

Fridays

I love, love, love Fridays!

Lillian goes to preschool Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for four hours, but it takes us 20 minutes to get to her preschool.  So by the time I buckle three little kids in the car, drive to her school, get the kids out of the car, take her into class, put the two little kids back in the car, drive home and take them out of the car it takes a whole hour. 

Then, 3 hours later we have to do it again.

So despite the long time she's at school, I really don't have time to do much when I have to factor in the eating and sleep schedules of a 4 month old baby.

So I LOVE Fridays.  Generally we have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Perfect!

And I get to spend time with Lillian.

Lately she's taken an interest in baking and is always asking if we can make bread or cookies.

I'm usually on board with this.

Friday night is also our stay-at-home movie night with all the kids, so Lillian and I thought it would be fun to make some Muddy Buddies.

They are just so tempting, all spread out on the counter.

I tried to appease Lillian (and myself) with a banana,

but then relented and let her have some Muddy Buddies.

We needed some quality control, right?

Next we made some Smore's Cookie Bars.

Oh my!

These call for Marshmallow Creme, which I can eat straight out of a jar with a spoon!

Add in the chocolate bars, and a surprisingly good graham cracker cookie layer and it was a heavenly treat!

Mmm...delicious marshmallow creme!  It's really a good thing we had friends to help us eat these that night.

Now during this baking extravaganza, Mason was peacefully playing.

And making a HUGE mess.

She got into our game cabinet and pretty much tossed every piece to every game we own all over the family room.

But very quietly.  I had no idea she had been doing this.  In the room next to me, where I could see her if I turned my head slightly, no less.

But at least since it was Friday, and I had nowhere to go, we got that cleaned up nice and quickly.



So apparently Mason has mastered these toddler-proof locks, and I should keep a better eye on her.

Cookie Delivery

I told Andy that I didn't think I'd be making Christmas cookies to deliver this year, because I didn't want the hassle and stress of it with a new baby.

Andy said that he'd make them.

I guess he really wanted to stick with our traditional Holiday deliveries!

So while my mom was here, we got to work.

Actually, my mom did most of the work... 

Ashton was pretty excited to run around to our neighbors and deliver the cookies.  And eat the cookies.

Then we all split up, Andy took Cayden and Lillian, and I took Ashton, Mason and Colton and we visited friends, spreading our brand of holiday cheer.

And because I can't resist taking pictures of my little guy, here he is, one week old, all bundled up and ready to head out!

Thanksgiving

We got to have lots of visitors for Thanksgiving this year!

Jason and Marcie came up from Mississippi to spend the week with us, and the Ingram's came on Thanksgiving.

We had quite the full house, and way too much food, but it was wonderful!

I loved planning our menu, and finding some good recipes to try out.

I had planned to spread out my cooking over the week, but of course that didn't happen.

Andy and I made and prepared about half our food Wednesday evening, and then finished everything on Thursday.

We had 10 kids in our house, so I tried to find something fun and Thanksgiving-ish to entertain them.

I came across these cute turkeys, and we sat the kiddos down to make them.

They had so much fun!

Just look at the big smiles!

The boys sat, eating appetizers and talking about work (do men ever talk about anything else when they get together?) while we worked on the turkeys.

Almost done... Not quite as cute as the sample, but fun anyway.  The kids could not wait to eat them!

And finally, it was dinner time!  We actually had seating (with the help of our outside-kid's picnic table, and kids play table from the basement) for all 16 people in our small kitchen!

Of course, the actual meal didn't even compare to the lure of those oreo and candy turkeys!

The kids devoured them!

Cayden named his turkey Oscar Hunt, in honor of his friend Oscar Ingram (sitting next to him).

He still ate the turkey, though.

Mason got admirably messy; good thing it's so cute on a 2-year old!

And we had our Thanksgiving artwork to decorate the house.

Lillian was pretty proud of her turkey.

I thought it was pretty cute too.

And we can always trust Cayden to contribute to the artwork.

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

I hope you did too.

Food Appreciation

Lillian has been quite adventurous in her food choices lately.

And I love it!

All of our kids usually will eat what we put in front of them, but sometimes it is usually accompanied by whines and complaints of "I don't like this!"

Then we make them eat it anyway.

But not Lillian!

She usually likes it all.

On our last Thursday together, before the older kids got out of school I took the little girls, in the midst of our errand-running, and stopped in to Panda Express.

Now I LOVE Chinese food.  Andy does too.  And we've been searching for a good Chinese restaurant since we left Colorado.  We didn't even like the ones in Hawaii.

I think we've figured out that we don't actually like Chinese food.  We like American Chinese food.

So YEA for Panda Express, and when we have the time and money, P.F. Changs!

Well, Lillian had never been to Panda Express, or had much Chinese Food.  But I figured we'd try it before school ended and we were stuck with McDonald's if we wanted lunch out.

And Lillian loved it!

What's not to love about their Orange Chicken.

(I think my niece used to call it 'Candy Chicken' when we lived in Hawaii.)

In fact, she kept repeating that over and over.  "I LOVE this, Mom!  YUMMY!"

Thank goodness for my sweet girl, who allows me to go where I want!

Mason did OK too.

She can be picky off and on, but is usually happy when I give her something good to drink.

Now a funny story about Mason, while we were there.

She has recently noticed that her diapers have Mickey Mouse on them.  And since she can actually say "Mickey", she gets really excited about them.

I let Lillian choose our seat while I was getting the food, and Mason was following me around.  When I turned my back on her to get the high chair, I guess she lifted her dress to look at Mickey. 

When I turned around, I saw her standing in the middle of the restaurant, with her dress up to her chest, completely naked underneath.

I was seriously so surprised. None of my kids have EVER taken their diapers off by themselves, let alone in public!  But she had done it!  I was always glad that I didn't have to duct-tape my kids into their diapers like some of my friends have had to do.

I scanned the floor for her diaper, and it was sitting by the door.  Some poor man was just stepping over it to walk out the door.  He didn't appear to be too disturbed, though.

Thankfully it was only a slightly used, unoffensive one.

But still, it was sitting in the middle of the floor and Mason was standing naked. 

And there were a bunch of teenage boys watching.  I was embarrased. 

So I quickly gathered it up, and strapped it back on her.

And to Mason's defense, she was looking pretty surprised to find herself missing her diaper.  I don't think she intended to take it off, but was just grabbing it to see Mickey.

Silly girl.

Anyway, back to our meal.

Good stuff.  I'm ready to go back.

Even if I have to force it on Cayden and Ashton.

And duct-tape Mason into a diaper.

Strawberries

Over Memorial Day weekend we went down to Southern Virginia to visit the Segalla's.

Our kids were excited; we were excited.

Our first stop on Saturday was to a strawberry festival to pick our own berries.  The day was warm, but overcast.  Certain ones of my kids complained a little (I'm sure that is to be expected in ANY situation), but mostly they had fun.  And ate a LOT of strawberries!

Look at this industious crew!

We gave all the kids buckets, and instructed them only to pick really red berries.  Of course they didn't follow those instructions, so Andy had to do some quality control.

We ended up with two full buckets of fairly decent berries, but we had to work for them!  The fields had been picked over pretty well by that time, and the area had recently recieved a lot of rain which resulted in mushy, moldy strawberries.  But the good ones sure tasted good!

Here are our girls and boys, hard at work:

Mason had come down with some virus the day before, and was running a temperature of 105 the night before, so she required constant cuddling and plenty of strawberries to keep her happy.

But she sure loved those berries - all the kids did!

The Hunts:

The Segallas:

Julie made a delicious strawberry pie and some homemade jam with the haul of strawberries.  So good!

You can also thank Julie for most of these wonderful pictures, which would also explain why she isn't in any of them!  Next time, I suppose...

(Here's what Julie had to say about our strawberry adventure.)