3 Things

Whew! We have had a whirlwind week! We left very early Tuesday morning to go to western Tennessee to spend Thanksgiving with my family at my brothers house. I will have more posts about all of that up later this week. Right now I want to talk about my goofy nephew, Jordan.

Jordan (everyone except me calls him J.T. so I guess I should jump on that bandwagon...) is a typical 12 year old boy. He is a lot like my brother in that he loves to tell jokes and loves to make people laugh. The only difference is that he is good at it and my brother is...well...not. Love you, Jeremy!

We ordered out yummy BBQ for dinner on Thursday (we had our Thanksgiving meal on Friday) and after everyone had eaten, we just sat around the table and talked.

This is what my nephew came up with:

"There are 3 things that aren't allowed in this house.

Animals with rabies.People with scabies.And crack babies."

Curly Sue

When I was little every Saturday night my mother would put my hair in sponge rollers. I would sleep in them and then Sunday morning my hair would be curled for Sunday Bible Class and worship services. At the time I hated it, but now, as a mother, I think it is wonderful to see little girls dressed up in their Sunday dresses with their hair in curls.

So last night, I put Chloe Jo's hair in sponge rollers. I honestly did not thing the rollers would last an hour, but I was pleasantly surprised to find them all still in her hair when I went to check on her before I went to bed. I had told her to leave them alone and just sleep in them and she was great about it!

This morning, 4 of the rollers had fallen out, but I had expected that. I wasn't sure exactly what her hair would do with rollers because it is thin and very straight. This was the result:

It turned out a little crazy! She did get several compliments on it at church services and as the day went on, it did calm down. I had sprayed it big time with hair spray so it kept the curls until she slept on it at nap time. My little curly Sue. I'm going to wait a while before trying this again since it was so crazy looking, but I'm hoping to make it a Saturday evening tradition like my Mom and I had when I was little. :)

The funny things my girl does

Chloe Jo is one of the cutest and funniest kids I've ever met (and I'm not biased...ha!)! Every day she does something that makes me laugh.

One of the things she has been doing lately is play acting with her baby dolls. She has been doing this for a while, but lately she has has started mimicking things that I do and it's so funny!

She loves to play with her Cabbage Patch Dolls. She loves on them and feeds them and undresses them (and then I have to dress the again because she isn't quite coordinated enough to do it yet). Last week she started playing like one of them is going to fall off the table, bed, couch, etc. She will hang them off the side of the furniture and say "No baby! You faw! No!" She will then persuade them to mind. They will fall off anyway to which she will reply "I tode you you faw" and then proceed to snuggle the doll to make it feel better.

Another thing she does lately is try to save me from whatever predicament I am in (or she percieves me to be in). Last week when Daddy was home I went to the bathroom. Our bathroom is a jack-and-jill between our two bedrooms. I proceeded to close both doors and since Chloe Jo was in her room playing, I locked that one (I don't usually lock the doors when I am home with just CJ). Chloe Jo tried to get in (like usual) and when she couldn't get in from her bedroom she cried "Oh no! Don wowwy Momma. I doming!" She then proceeded to run around to the door in our bedroom, open it, run in and give me a hug and pat my back and say "It otay." I guess she thought I was stuck in there. :)

Our baby girl is such a blessing to have around...and she sure keeps us on our toes!

My Recipe Box: Savory Cheddar Muffins and Mike Ditka's Official Tailgater's Pork Chops

As promised earlier this week, here are the recipes for the Savory Cheddar Muffins and the marinade I used on the pork loin. I hope you guys enjoy them as much as we do!Savory Cheddar Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 cup butter or shortening
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
2/3 cup raisins

Sift flour with baking powder, salt and paprika. Cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in remaining ingredients just until moistened. Spoon into well greased muffin pans. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.

Mike Ditka's Official Tailgater's Pork Chops

8 bone-in pork rib chops, 1 inch thick
4 cups orange juice
1 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1/2 cup Dijon-style mustard
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

In a mixing bowl, combine orange juice, soy sauce, garlic, mustard, honey and cayenne pepper. Mix together with a whisk. Place pork chops (I used a pork loin) in two resealable plastic bags. Pour about half the marinade in each bag and seal bags. Refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Remove pork from marinade. Discard marinade (I saved it so I could marinade again halfway through baking). Season pork with salt and pepper and grill for 10-12 minutes, turning once (I baked mine in the oven until done).

Playing in the leaves

Here are the rest of the pictures that I took yesterday out in the leaves. I'm really happy with the way they came out!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

It's Wednesday! I hope you all are having a good week! Here is what I'm loving on this hot November day (apparently South Carolina didn't get the cooler weather memo this week).

Today I'm loving that we have less than a week before we travel to west Tennessee to spend Thanksgiving with my family! I'm so looking forward to this trip!

I'm loving that our landlord hired a crew to come cut down the bit pine trees in our yard (a tornado came through our town last year, knocked over a pine tree and it landed on our house, hit a water pipe, flooded our house and we were homeless for about 3 weeks...glad to see the pine trees go!)!

I'm loving that Chloe Jo is doing great learning her letters! I've been really trying to work with her on them and she knows several and even the sounds for a few.

I'm loving trying new recipes. I made a marinade for a pork loin on Monday and it turned out delicious! I also made savory cheddar muffins and a fruit salad to go with it. Recipes for the marinade and muffins to come soon!
I'm loving that we are going to have my sister (hey Chelley) take the pictures for our Christmas cards over the holiday! I made a prop that I love so I'm really hoping they will turn out the way I am envisioning!

I'm loving that Chloe Jo and I went outside to have a photo session this morning! I think these 3 pictures turned out pretty cute!

What are you loving today?
Link up here!

God Made the Dinosaurs

Chloe Jo and I learned this song from her new Digger Doug DVD. I think Chloe Jo doing the motions is one of the cutest things ever!

And the winner is....

Congratulations!

Stay tuned for more giveaways in the future!

Music Monday

I have loved this song since the very first time I heard it!

Brad Paisley - Then


Don't forget to enter the giveaway! You have until tomorrow!

A growing girl and blogger issues

This week, I've had to put a couple of pairs of CJ's pants in the hand-me-down bag. We just bought these pants a month or so ago so I was very disappointed to have to get rid of them so quick. I can't believe how much she is growing! I measured her this morning and she has grown an inch since the last time I measured her a month ago. The pants I had to get rid of are size 2T, but the brand usually runs a little big. I now fully understand the term "growing like a weed!"

In other Chloe Jo news, a couple of weeks ago she decided she didn't want to wear a pull-up at nap time and hasn't since with no accidents. I'm so excited about this because potty training for nap time and night time has been hard. I finally accepted the fact that she just has to grow out of those two things and she is now officially nap time trained! She has also been waking up at night to go potty. She will usually get up once a couple of hours after she has gone to sleep, but then she won't wake up anymore until the morning. We are going to start limiting her fluid intake in the evenings and see what happens. Her pull-ups have definitely been getting lighter in the morning so I know she is getting close to trying to sleep without one. Our goal is to be night time trained by her 3rd birthday in April. Hopefully we will be able to do this!

One more thing before I sign off: I've been having issues with the newer blogs I am following. Within the last week, I have started following a few blogs and they keep disappearing. It is so frustrating because their posts are not showing up in my feed. I went to the Help Group and several other people are complaining about the same problem. Hopefully they will get this fixed soon because it is oh-so-annoying.

And that's the end.

Rocking Around The Christmas Tree!

Last week, we put up Chloe Jo's pink Christmas tree in her room. In order to do that, I had to get out the other Christmas decorations to find the ornaments I had bought last year for her tree. Of course, I probably would have gotten the Christmas decorations out anyway. I love putting everything up in the beginning of November! The rest of the Christmas stuff sat in our kitchen for a week until we finally got to putting everything out Monday evening. Chloe Jo thought this was great! She liked it last year, but she loved it this year!

This cracked me up so much! She got this little wooden tree out and put it where she thought it needed to go...
...and then stepped back to admire her work! HA!
We bought this Christmas tree last year and I'm so glad! It is the easiest thing to put together! Our last tree was the kind that you had to put each branch in the slot separately and then you had to string the lights. This one comes in just 3 parts and is pre-lit. Love!
One of our family traditions is going to pick out 1 new ornament each year. Russ and I started this our first Christmas as a married couple and have kept it up since. I write our initials and the year on them. I love going through and finding all of the ornaments we had previously picked out.

This year, Russ picked this adorable "Dad" ornament. I love it!
I picked this initial ornament
And Chloe Jo picked this ice cream cone. She wanted a football until I steered her to more girly ornaments...and then she ended up picking the ice cream. I'll take it. :)
Do you think she is excited about our Christmas decorations???
And our finished tree. I think it needs more ornaments and maybe some ribbon or something. And of course I love the top hat!

Virus Schmirus

Funny story this.

My computer contracted a virus a couple of weeks ago. Since then, it has contracted at least 4 more. I couldn't figure out why it kept getting these virus'. The scans were coming up clean. Russ switched my anti-virus program twice. Then I got a certain error message that led me to what I believe was the problem. After the first virus, Russ reformatted my hard drive and then renamed my computer. I hated the new name the second I saw it. The new name: True Hotie. For real, ya'll. He didn't even spell it right. 2 t's in hottie. 2. I asked him to rename it again. Preferably something that doesn't sound like a porn site. So far, I've had no more problems.