Amish Friendship Bread

Last month I received a "starter" for Amish Friendship Bread from a friend. 10 days later when it was time to bake, I baked and brought 3 of my 4 additional starters to work. Then 10 days after that I brought a few starters to work and so did the 3 other people that I gave starters to. By the third go around, I was stuck with 2 of the 4 starters and had no other choice but to bake them on day 10. Last Thursday night was day 10, so I baked A LOT of friendship bread. Here is the final count:
4 loaves of cinnamon bread
24 cinnamon muffins
1 8x8 chocolate cake
1 13x9 oreo cake

The majority are in the freezer. And I think Tom ate the chocolate cake in 3-4 days. I think I'm finished with Amish Friendship Bread for quite a while!

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!! Sadly, we did not make it home for Christmas this year, but we managed to have a pretty nice day here just the two of us. We woke up and I popped a breakfast casserole in the oven. We enjoyed coffee, exchanged presents, and watched the Yule Log on TV. Bailey opened her presents and she has gotten quite good at tearing through the wrapping paper! I had big plans for Christmas dinner, but unfortunately spent the whole day feeling under the weather so I ended up having chicken noodle soup and Tom was left to fend for himself. We spent the day just relaxing, playing with Bailey, and watching Christmas movies on tv.

Ugh.....

Today was awful, one of those days I just hate. One of the bad things about interacting with so many people throughout the day is that occasionally you are required to interact with truly awful people. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt because you never know what some people are going through, but the truth is there are just some people out there who are rude and ignorant. It bugs me so much that people can act this way but it frustrates me even more that I let these negative interactions bother me so much! I also hate that I'm having one of these days so close to Christmas. I want to be happy and carefree but I'm feeling seriously depressed with all of this negativity replaying over and over in my head. Luckily, I have great friends at work that know exactly what I'm going through and I have an understanding, patient husband who lets me vent all of my frustrations and helps me realize all of the positive interactions that I have every day. It's a shame that one negative exchange can overshadow numerous positive events and weigh so much on your mind.

Yet another Fun Holiday Weekend

We had another weekend full of fun holiday festivities. Friday night we went to Matt & Kendall's house to celebrate at their annual ChristmaHannaKwanzaa Party. We enjoyed some homemade fudge along with other goodies. Bailey made out like a bandit with our Dirty Santa gift. Thanks to Stacy, she now has a brand new rawhide, a Christmas bulb squeaky toy, a "stuffingless" pheasant which she somehow managed to get some stuffing out of later Friday night, and multiple other doggy treats (Thanks Stacy & Casper!!)Saturday morning and afternoon was spent running errands, doing a little last minute shopping, mailing off some gifts, and finally writing all of our Christmas cards! Hopefully you'll get them before Christmas. Saturday night was my work Christmas Party. We played White Elephant and this time we weren't quite as lucky in the gift receiving department. Although we ended up leaving with 2 gifts, one of them being the gift we originally received, Boiley. The other being an ugly plastic "champagne" set with candles inside that was obviously regifted because the "To From" label wasn't even completely scratched off! It may or may not show up at next year's Christmas Party.

Sunday afternoon we headed over to Stacy's house for a Glad To Give Cookie Bake & Swap. We spent the afternoon whipping up a bunch of different cookies and holiday treats while enjoying some warm cider and watching the puppies play Twilight.

Currently

Excited about Christmas parties this weekend, Christmas "vacation" (and by "vacation" I mean being off work Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday! *note sarcasm*)
Worried about a friend and a family member who are going through difficult times
Reading On Becoming a Leader (Okay so I haven't started reading it yet, but I ordered it and it's sitting in The Oaks office waiting for me to pick it up...if I can ever get home from work at a decent hour!)
Creating documents in Google Docs...my new favorite application (since mini-lappy doesn't have MS Word)
Loving that it's almost Christmas!!!
Hating that we won't be home for Christmas....and that it hasn't really felt like Christmas yet
Wondering where we'll be in a year
Craving ice water
Hoping Tom will get up off the couch and get me some ice water :)
Watching on TV (currently) Family Guy and then Will & Grace, (recently) ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas
Listening to Christmas music, All the Pretty Girls by FUN
Looking forward to watching all of the Bowl Games in Hi Def on the big screen!!

Happy 1 Year Anniversary with us Bailey!!

One year ago today, Tom and I left work a little early and headed to the shelter before they closed to pick out a puppy dog. We walked around and around, and then saw Little Miss Bails, sitting all pretty while all of the other dogs were barking like crazy because it was time for their evening walks. Tom said "Those dogs are good dogs" (meaning Bailey), so we asked to see her and before we knew it we were walking through SuperPetz letting her pick out a bobo. Here are a few recent pics of her! This first one is one of my favorites because I caught her in the act of switching from one rawhide to a second she had stashed under her leg.

Playing or sleeping...that pretty much sums of the life of Bailey for the past year. Oh, and she has definitely become a couch dog!

Holiday Happenings

We had an extremely fun Holiday weekend! Friday night we went over to our friend Stacy's house to celebrate with our friends Anne and Brian and their families. Anne's step-father is famous for his homemade margaritas.....it was a perfect way to end a stressful, busy week! It was so nice to hang out with good friends in a relaxed, cozy atmosphere. The puppies had fun playing too.

Saturday afternoon we went to Rojo to celebrate Brian's Graduation and Anne's defense. It was a pretty chill event, probably because everyone there was recovering from the above mentioned homemade margaritas from the night before! I didn't realize until we were leaving that I didn't even take any pictures! So I snapped one of Anne and Brian on the way out.

Saturday night our friends Erin and Angelina hosted a Christmas party at Angelina's condo. We got to hang out and catch up with a bunch of people from Tom's lab that happened to be there. There may have been a little too much wine drank during dinner where we came to the realization that none of us were wine connoisseurs.

It's going to be another busy but fun week! Stay tuned for updates!

Busy week/weekend

Just a quick update to let you know I'm still alive and I will have a lot to be posting about in the next few weeks! Our Google Calendar is packed full of fun Christmasy things! Yesterday was our friend Stacy's birthday so we went out to dinner at a fun little Italian place Leonardo's. They had a guy playing an accordian and he even came over to our table and serenaded Stacy for her birthday! He also had some audience participation from a group of older middle aged women complete with "noisemakers" and bad dancing :) It was a fun night!

Friday our friend Anne is publicly defending her thesis so we are going over to Stacy's Friday night to celebrate by grilling out and tasting some homemade margaritas! Saturday afternoon is Brian and Anne's "Congratulations-you-now-have-PhDs-but-we-are-so-sad-that-you-are-leaving-us" Party at Rojo. Then Saturday night we have Tom's Pseudo-Pathology Christmas party (you can read about last year's here - UAB stopped putting on a big Christmas Party so a few of the people in the program decided to take matters into their own hands and host their own party!) Then Sunday I will be baking all day for Tom's Annual Welch Lab Christmas Party held during lab meeting at 8 am Monday. More updates to come in a few days!!

Happy Holiday Weekend!

The first weekend in December has always been "Holiday Weekend" and it has been spent with good friends from college. This year, it was spent with good friends from Birmingham. I think as long as this weekend is filled with fun and exciting things, Christmas-y events, and good friends it can still be dubbed "Holiday Weekend."

Friday night we went out to dinner with a friend from work and her husband and then we went to see Train at Five Points Music Hall. Friday was one of those never-ending, crazy busy, have 3 minutes to eat lunch kind of days, so I was happy when we finally sat down to eat dinner! Serena Ryder opened up for Train, and they were both awesome. I was stressing out all afternoon/evening because I got out of work super late and the concert was supposed to start at 7. We got there around 7:30, and they didn't come on until after 9! It was worth the wait though because they both put on really good performances. Then, after it was over, we went outside, and it was SNOWWWWWWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we frolicked in the snow for a few minutes before going home.
Saturday morning we helped our friend Kelly move. (And we woke up to snow on the ground! It all melted in about 5 minutes. But still, snow in DECEMBER in Alabama is rare!) Anyways, I'm going to formally name this move the Best Move of All Time. There were about 10 of us helping out and from start to finish it was a little over 2 hours.

Later in the afternoon we had everyone over to watch the SEC Championship game on the big screen (and sorry guys - I didn't start playing around with the tv settings until after everyone left and I figured out how to make football look even more awesome). Stacy brought Casper over and her and Bailey wrestled and played "Twilight" while everyone else hung out and watched the game.
Today we went to buy our Christmas tree. Now, that was an experience. So, a few weeks ago when I was running errands I saw that some people had set up a Christmas Tree lot in a vacant building lot on Route 31. There were big signs up that said it benefits the Jimmie Hale Mission, which we like to donate to around the holidays, so we decided to go there to get our Christmas tree this year instead of buying from corporate Lowe's. Well, we pull up and there is only 1 other car in the parking lot currently getting a tree loaded on top. There are a couple guys standing around a giant trash can with a fire in it. We park and walk up. These 2 guys stop us practically at the start of where all the trees are and tell us they have a beauty for us - freshly cut. (The one guy was standing there holding it like they were waiting for some "suckers" to come walking up). They asked us what size tree we were looking for and I said "Um, 7 feet would be fine." And the guy said they the one he just cut is almost 9 feet. Tom said "Well, we do have a high ceiling" so we ended up going for the almost 9 foot tree he just cut. Then he said the price. Then Tom had to catch me because I almost passed out. Not really. Actually I just got really quiet and didn't say anything else until we were off the lot. I'm not going to tell you how much it cost because I'm kind of embarrassed that we paid that much for a Christmas tree (in all honesty it was only $30 more than we paid last year). And at least this benefits the Jimmie Hale Mission. Here is our pretty tree and here is what Bailey was doing while I was decorating the tree.

F-R-I-D-A-Y!!!!

It's FRIDAY!! It's been a busy week! And a good week. My tv was delivered on Wednesday. So awesome. It's so freaking big and I love every square inch of it! Also on Wednesday we went to the J. Clyde after work with a bunch of friends. The graduate student association at UAB was having some thing so we went, donated a toy, ate free food, enjoyed yummy beers, and caught up with some good friends. Tonight we're going to the Train and Serena Ryder acoustic show at Five Points Music Hall (I won tickets from Live 100.5!!) Tomorrow we're helping a friend move and then hanging out here all afternoon to watch the SEC championship on the big screen in high def and then whatever other games are on after that. Then on Sunday we're going to get our Christmas tree! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Hope everyone has a great weekend!