Taking the dreaded Christmas Photo

Every year we take a Christmas Photo.  This photo is sent out with the annual Christmas Letter.  Both of these are painstaking for my mother.  First, she hates being in pictures.  Even if she isn't in the picture, she gets annoyed with my brother and I because about 3 pictures in, we start goofing around.  We, needless to say, enjoy having our photos taken.  (We think we must be adopted)  Second, my mom hates to brag (again, I must be adopted), so you can imagine how difficult it must be for her to write a letter to our nearest and dearest that basically outlines how perfect we are.

I love getting other people's Christmas letters, seeing the painfully perfect photo and how much people have changed and read about their year-in-review.  I hope all of my faithful followers (like all 3 of you) are now inspired to write your own Christmas Letter and will be sending it to me!

Coming to a Christmas Card near you!

Aren't we angelic?

Maybe Mom has a point about the messing around...

Merry Everything!

I'm baaaaaaack!

Don't worry, I'm back.  I apologize for my absence.  I have officially settled on this as my blogging platform...please update your bookmark, again.


To win you back over, I will entertain you with what I have dubbed, the "Pie Debacle."  On Tuesday, we had a Thanksgiving lunch at work.  Obviously, I signed up to bring pie.  To clarify, I am not a cook; I dabble in baking, emphasis on dabble.  I decided to use this fabulous recipe I had to make a Pecan Bourbon Black Bottom Pie.  I figured, how hard could it be?  I mean I can make a mean pan of brownies (no, not from a box), so I can handle a pie.  I was getting cocky.  I decided to wear my ADPi apron that has an embroidered pie in place of the "Pi."  Cute, right?  And, there was a KU basketball game on, so I was all like, Rock Chalk!  In retrospect, the game may have been a distraction.  


So, on to the pie.  I preheated the oven and got out all my ingredients.  First, I tried to put the pie crust in a red Paula Deen pie dish.  The pie crust did not come to the top so, I decided to use a glass dish.  Well, I went on my way and mixed everything and put it in the pie dish.  Well, the filling was exactly at the top, so I tried to scoop out a little bit.  I decided that it would probably be ok.   After 10 minutes in the oven, it was apparent that I was wrong.  The filling began overflowing, taking some of the pie crust with it.  All that sugar, then began burning in the bottom of the oven.  That burning then created smoke.  I didn't want my pie to taste like smoke, so I let it out of the oven and then had to open the doors and turn on all the fans so that the smoke alarm didn't go off.  That was all I needed, the fire department showing up.  Well, my mom wasn't home so after several phone calls, she came home and it became apparent that this pie wasn't going to work out.  After removing the charred overflow from the bottom of the oven, I had to have a second go.


The second time was much better.  I realized that I had used 4 times the amount of butter I was supposed to in the first pie.  Oops.  When I managed to follow the recipe exactly, the pie turned out spectacularly.  Lesson learned: Don't watch KU basketball while trying to make a pecan pie.


I hope you enjoy my misadventures :)