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Do you remember back in January or so when we were without water for like a year or something?  I think it was three weeks, but sometimes a year can fit in three weeks, ok? Well, i remember the moment the water mysteriously stopped coming in our house because i was, at that moment, in the midst of using a pitcher to get water from the bathtub faucet to pour in the back of my toilet.  Our poor commode had all but stopped filling up at all.  Every once in a while, it would give a little extra effort and fool us, but for the most part, it wasn't really working. Then we got our water back, remember?  OH HAPPY DAY! It turns out that when the well gets fixed (get your pencils out; you might need to know this) the toilet does not mysteriously fix itself just to be cooperative. My husband thought it was fixed momentarily.  He had given something in there a jiggle, which inspired the mechanics in there to work, but then i made the horrifying mistake of putting the lid back on the ba

O.k.  i know you've been waiting for pictures of Babypalooza day.  I just got them, and i am in awe.  In fact, i am so in awe that i'm not showing you all of them right now.  And also, DeAnna, please know that if i am ever a famous blogger making lots of money for blathering on about myself, i will pay you a LOT of money if you will be my personal photographer.  Seriously.  I should probably let DeAnna put these in some more coherent order for you, but since she isn't yet on the payroll, i'll do it myself, and you'll be happy whatever order they arrive in. Oh yeah, and then on Tuesday (yesterday) east Texas had a late February snow storm. !!! Ridiculous. Anyway, here are some pictures of my snow-accented yard. I also attempted to take this video for you before the snow actually started sticking.  The snow flakes were really big, and that's what i'm attempting (probably unsuccessfully) to zoom in on.

Today, i was reading Pioneer Woman's blog , and found her latest recipe here .  It sounded interesting and inspired me to do something else, which i'll tell you about here.  I used ingredients that i actually had in my house at the time.  That's the main difference. The Pioneer Woman was making a pasta dish with thin spaghetti, the makings for a thin alfredo sauce, for some reason diluted with chicken broth and white wine.  The sauce also included (to my delight) mushrooms and bacon.  Yum! Here's my version.  You're going to need mushrooms, cloves from two garlic bulbs peeled, butter, bacon, angel hair spaghetti, dill, salmon, and alfredo sauce. I started early working on the garlic.  Then i used my Quick Chop.  Yes, i own a Quick Chop, and yes, i use it. See how nice that is? Next i cut a whole package of bacon into pieces and heated on medium heat.  Pioneer Woman uses what looks like an aluminum pan for this, but around here, we dig some cast iron. Then

What happened to pictures from babypalooza?  I am waiting to find out.  I didn't really take any.  Correction:  i definitely didn't take any.  Sometimes it's silly for me to take pictures when the great photographic eye of DeAnna is present....and also, i was spending a lot of time in the kitchen.  When i was done being in the kitchen, i was too tired to think about taking pictures.  So there you go.  I have no doubt that there are some great ones though.  7 or 8 hours of puppy adoration cannot have happened without great pictures. Oh, and let me tell you about the food.  My hungry man planned the menu.  And i (silly me) thought that meant that he was preparing the meal.  I was so wrong.  He ran the grill.  I did the rest, except for the part where the chip bowl ran out of chips, and he refilled it.  Here's the menu for 5 adults and 2 bird-stomached children:  Shishkabobs with shrimp, steak, mushrooms, and onions; steak; grilled asparagus; extra shrimp that was grille

Today's palooza was fun and wore us all out even the puppies. There was so much food! Refrigerator is full. No shopping this week. Hubby is sleeping and snoring on the couch now, me too very soon. It's good to visit with family and friends too. We need each other. Thanks for coming here and getting worn out with us! Again very soon? Maybe next time we'll play with dominoes like we said we would today. Writing a story in haiku form is fun and pretty easy too. Tomorrow is church I must go to bed or i will sleep through my class. Good night faithful friends God bless you and keep you and give you peace and joy.

Today, i acquired 7, two-day-old baby chicks. These are added to my one week old puppies. So tomorrow, hubby's brother and family are coming for Babypalooza....in which small children will be very excited about very tiny helpless animals, and grown women will take lots of pictures while grown men ..... i don't know  - they'll do whatever they're doing. And then we'll eat. But while it's today, i have recently been chastised because there are not enough current pictures of the tiny creatures at my house published on the world wide web for the world to see and adore.. So here you go.  Prelude to babypalooza.   Hope that makes you giddy!  Have a great weekend! Every good thing given and every perfect gift is [John 3:3; James 3:15, 17] from above, coming down from [Ps 136:7; 1 John 1:5] the Father of lights, [Mal 3:6] with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. ~James 1:17

O.k. peeps, here is the scoop on beans.  Or at least what i do with beans. Start with fatty meat.  Beans are always better with some fatty meat.  I used a third of a package of maple flavored bacon.  I just cut it up with kitchen shears (which i was sure to wash thoroughly afterwards) and heat on medium lowish. While that's going, i grabbed a half of an onion.  Here's one of you don't know what they look like.  And i chopped it up.  No special pattern...just in smaller pieces. When the bacon looks like this.... ...add the onions and stir it up. When the onions and the bacon look like this - ten minutes or so later... ...add beans and water.  For this pot, i used 32 ounces of pinto beans, which is about all you can make in a 6 quart stock pot like this one. Do you remember my rule?  Low and slow is the way to go.  It goes for beans especially.  I keep it at a simmer at as low a temperature as possible, usually low to medium low.  Keeping the lid on helps it not t