Apple iPhone – $299
Apple iPod Touch – $150
Pocket Solitaire Game – $15
Spending quality time with the family over the holidays – Priceless!

Here is what you’ll need:

One 10 oz. Angel Food Bundt Cake
One 20 oz. can crushed pineapple
4-6 vanilla pudding cups
One 8 oz. tub of whipped topping

Step One: Break Angel Food Cake into bite size pieces into large mixing bowl.

Step Two: Drain crushed pineapple in colander and add to bowl with angel food cake.

Step Three: Add 4-6 vanilla pudding cups, 5 always seems to be my maximum.

Step Four: Fold ingredients together, then spread in a 9×13in pan.

Final Step: Spread whipped topping on top.

It can be served right away, but I always allow it to chill in fridge overnight or at least a couple hours. Use serving spoon to dish out.

I started making this at 12:15am and was finished at 12:30am, it’s that quick and easy. And it is soooo yummy. Very light and refreshing. You can even tweak it now and then by adding chopped nuts, or chopped maraschino cherries or crushed mandarin orange slices. If you make this for a get together, be sure to have the recipe with you because people will want it. I always bring a few copies with me.  This dessert can also be made as a diabetic dessert or low calorie dessert. Just use sugar free angel food cake, sugar free pudding cups, lite whipped topping and make sure pineapple has no added sugar.

Enjoy!

One thing I do miss, that I can never have back, is my babies. Today, while packing up for the sale, I picked up a tiny tiny pair of little baby booties. One of them could literally just fit over my thumb. I actually began to well up inside. My babies are gone. Those little tiny beings that use to curl up in a little ball on my chest are now running through the house and talking and trying to escape every saftey obstacle I put in their way.

I knew the twins would be my last. And I swear I’ve tried to cherrish every single moment. I try hard to not miss a thing. I’ve relished every milestone. And even though I know there’s so much more of them yet to come. I still miss their infancy. And oh.. oh.. oh.. that smell!!!!

They’re on-the-constant-go toddlers now. Forever investigating every little thing. They’re imitating real life things now. One of their favorite things is to help me clean. They won’t let me craddle them anymore. But they will sit on a lap for a story couple pages from a book.

I can’t help remembering how tiny and helpless they were just 19 months ago. And as I sold their baby stuff in the sale today, every article that exchanged hands, I relived the memories that went with it.

One week old in a cast of my pregnant belly.

This “spring forward” thing is a whole ‘nother ballgame though. Who would have thought an hour lost would completely mess with my world. The twins are still on Standard Time. So everything about their day is an hour behind. And that’s screws with my day like nobody’s business. Gavin starts kindergarten at 12:25pm. It’s during his 3 hour day at school that the twins are suppose to be napping. Today they didn’t go down until after 1:30pm. Even then they were talking and playing in their cribs for a good hour before finally boring each other to sleep. I had to wake them up at 4:15pm. I don’t know how I’m going to get them back to their 8:30am – 8:30pm schedule. It’s going to take at least a week to adjust.

Friday I paid to rent some space for a Mom-to-Mom sale at a nearby Trade Center/Flea Market. Hoping to get rid of a lot of baby stuff. I’ve been going through it little by little since Friday. Tonight I was sorting and pricing until 2am.

Here’s what my sorting looked like. See that tiny little bare spot on the center of the couch? That’s where I was sitting. Surrounded by a year and a half worth of twin baby clothes. If anyone was due to have twin boys in July, they could have all the clothes they’d need for at least the entire first year.

That was the beginning of a long night and what was soon to be a long week. Brady continued to throw up almost every half hour to 45 minutes. Every time he’d start to whine and do his “death roll” in the bed, I knew it was coming. I must have changed his jammies 3 times. I layed a huge beach towel down under him and grabbed a stack of recieving blankets from the closet. Blake slept soundly through all of this.

At about 6am, Blake started to stir and whine in his sleep. He didn’t sound too good. I picked him up and then suddenly “BLECH!” He’s throwing up. Most of the day Friday they weren’t keeping much down. They were only getting liquids all day. Just little sips every half hour until they could keep it down. They were miserable Saturday, Sunday and on Monday, the diareah started. They were on plain liquids again yesterday and so far neither has had a dirty diaper. I’m hoping that means it’s about out of their systems.

I felt so sorry for them. Blake’s fever went up to about 103F. Both of them have been clingy and irritable for several days. They’re still not running at 100% and I miss my happy babies. This morning they were back to fighting over the same toy, even though there’s a duplicate toy nearby.

Here’s a picture from Saturday afternoon of my recuperating boys watching their favorite Elmo video.

The first 45 minutes of being there, we got completely lost. We were just walking around, having no clue where we were going.   Most of it was because of Shannons fear of escalators (this I only learned about her less than a few years ago).  In order to get anywhere in the hotel and casino, you have to take escalators. The hotel and casino are 2 seperate buildings with a small connection between the two. And in order to get from one to the other, you have to take an escalator.  So most of our evening was spent looking for alternative routes so that Shannon could avoid the escalators. We tried several times to convince her that nothing would happen to her, but she insisted her phobia was serious.  But we had so much fun. I never rode so many elevators in one evening.  One elevator we got on was double sided. The side that opened was not the side we entered through. And when the doors opened this is what we saw.  Brenda decides to push every button and every floor looked the same. I turned around at the door we entered through, leaned my face against it and just started shouting “hello? hello? anyone there?”  Brenda and Shannon were hysterical. Every where we went it was completely deserted. We were so far deep in elevators, it was like a maze. Finally the opposite door, the one we entered through, opened. And we were back where we started.

We finally found our way to the casino and more importantly, the buffet. I never ate so much in my life. It happened to be Seafood night at the buffet. By the end of our meal we had a mile high pile of crab leg shells on our table. I only wish I had snapped a photo of it. The three of us started reciting lines from John Pinette’s famous “Chinese Buffet” skit and laughing so hard we about peed our pants. You can see all the crazy pictures here.

In other news. My little problem solver is at it again.

The thing is a monster nonetheless. It’s nice though that the organization recognizes those that played a part in support of our Wings. Below is a picture of the actual ring that the players recieve and then pictures of Dave’s ring. Then last, I took a picture of it on my finger just to show the pure magnitude of this thing. Mind you, it doesn’t look as big on Dave’s hand as it does on mine. But it’s still huge.

January

Solid foods officially become a part of Blake & Brady’s daily routine, time to move up into the high chairs.

February

Gavin turned 5.  Two days after this picture we had a huge party with friends and family at his favorite place, Pump It Up.

Blake & Brady are 6 months old.  In an attempt to save some money, I took their 6 month photo myself.  They were very cooperative and had fun sitting in the basket.

March

I think this was the last time the boys all laid still long enough for me to get a decent shot of the 3 of them.  After this, their newfound mobility would not allow them to sit still for more than a few second.

Both Blake and Brady cut all four top teeth at once. That’s 8 teeth! Ugh, we were all miserable that week.

April

Blake and Brady are officially hooked on Baby Einstein videos.

May

Blake and Brady are introduced to Jungle Java for the first time and they have an absolute ball! 

Gavin graduates from preschool and we have a fun picnic at the park with his class & teachers.

June

Gavin goes to work with Dave.

Dave drives Niklas Kronwall in Detroits Stanley Cup Parade.

We attend a Stanley Cup party at Dave’s work.

July

Blake and Brady turn one year old.

August

My dad visits from Texas. The last time he was in Michigan was for my wedding in Sept 2003. It was so wonderful having him here.

We take our 2nd road trip to my sister, Renee’s in Indiana. This is as we were pulling out of the drive way to head back home.

September

Gavin starts kindergarten.

Gavin joins the mini-mites hockey team.  This was his first day.  Three weeks later, he was skating like he was born to skate.

The Stanley Cup comes to our house for a visit.

October

We all enjoy a family day at the park.

Blake and Brady are introduced to Great Wolf Lodge for the first time.

Gavin is the Incredible Hulk for Halloween, his most favorite holiday ever.

November

My great aunt passed away and Gavin & I go to Northern Michigan for her funeral.  This was taken at the Mackinaw Bridge before heading home.

I reach that 40th 29th milestone birthday.

December

We attend Dave’s company Christmas party downtown. Gavin had fun skating on the home ice of the Detroit Red Wings.

Our Christmas family photo.

Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season. Happy New Year!