Love "happies" for friends

I'll give those who read a break from the boring autobiographical stuff. About this time every year, I get the baking and "goody" bug and before I know it I am in the kitchen turning out things, trying new recipes or perfecting old ones. I am not a sweet eater so what to do with all the stuff I make/ bake?! Well, some of it gets gobbled by Aaron and the boys and some I have to give away to keep everyone in the house from going into a sugar coma. One thing I love is to share with those I have developed great friendships with...it is my way of showing them how much I cherish their friendship and that they mean alot to me. I am talking about a group that I met online...most I have known more than 7 years...some I have actually met offline but there are those who I haven't been able to physically meet but I can't imagine that making any difference in the way I feel about them or my "closeness" to them. I refer to these great people as a "group" because that is pretty much how we were all introduced...many of them I "met" at the same time as we all are fans of Tim McGraw. The man (as we refer to this hunk of man) and our love of he and his music brought us together but the bonds we have formed will last a lifetime. I love these people like family and would do anything for them. Getting sappy and emotional here as I think of all we have been through together...I'll save those stories for another day...especially since I prefaced this post to tell you no boring autobiographical stuff...LOL.



Anyway, I say all this to show you the treats I made for these friends...those are bats and pumpkins on the "balls".






And here they are all packaged and ready to be shipped...





Now, I am off to make a rum cake...

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

HUGS!!

Better late than never!

Well, I finally made it to the blogging world. I have been a reader on many different blog sites for a long time but never thought my life warranted having it written about for everyone to see. Can you say BORING?!? I am married with two sons and we live in a small town in North Central Texas where almost nothing ever happens. I don't work outside the home at this point of my life other than taking care of my Nanny (my maternal grandmother) who will be 92 next month and my aunt who has many health conditions including CHF (Congestive heart failure) and diabetes. She had triple bypass last March after a massive heart attack and hasn't been able to get back to doing some of the things for herself that she was able to prior to having the heart attack. My Nanny (and my aunt's mother), however, is the picture of health. Her only health conditions are peptic ulcers and a slightly elevated blood pressure. She is an amazing woman and I am realizing it more and more the older I get.

I mentioned I do not work outside the home but in the home, I think I am quite productive. In addition to the tasks any domestic engineer (sounds so much better than housewife doesn't it?) would perform, I also homeschool our two sons who are 12 and 8. We withdrew them from the public education system about two years ago and never looked back. They have grown and flourished so much in the past two years. My nervous, stressed out and bullied oldest son has grown into a confident and totally different (in a good way) young man. Our youngest is doing great as well. Both are sponges when it comes to learning...they love it.

My husband, Aaron and I have been married for 13 years, 14 in February. We were only together a matter of a few months when we knew we should get married and almost 8 months to the day, we were. When we met he was active duty Navy and was TAD (temporary duty) in Dallas until about two months before we married at which time he returned to his regular duty station at NAS Corpus Christi. Those were to be the longest two months of our lives...that is/was until May of 2004. I will explain that later. When we married, I moved to Corpus Christi to start our life together. In June of 1996, we had our first son, Tristan. In 1998, when his contract was up, he decided to separate from the Navy and become a civilian so we moved back here, to my hometown. The transition to civilian life wasn't easy for him, he had spent 8 years in...it was all he knew. He joined right out of high school and here he was 26-27 years old and thrust into a new way of life. I know he must've went back and forth in his mind on whether he should have gotten "out" or not but he never said anything. We had our second son, Tyler, in April of 2000 and soon after I returned to work, while Aaron decided he wanted to utilize some of his military benefits (GI Bill) and go to college. He got a degree in computers and then 9/11 happened and it seemed it threw the country and the economy into a tailspin for a while. He couldn't find a job anywhere. And, the events that took place on that fateful day left wanting to do something for his country...and so he reenlisted in the Navy, this time in the Reserves. He also returned to college to pursue his first love, medicine. I failed to mention previously that Aaron was a corpsman in the Navy. He was stationed on a ship for two years (during Desert Storm) and performed many of the tasks a physician's assistant would and on land, he was a lab technician performing many kinds of tests for the doctor's on base. Anyway, he began the nursing program full-time and would graduate with his LVN, get a job and return to school to earn his RN while helping to support the family...well, that was the plan anyway.

That's enough for now. Look at this, my first post and already I have written a book. Hope I haven't bored anybody who MIGHT be reading this, too much. What am I saying, if you have ventured here, you are already probably bored or else you wouldn't be here! LOL.

Toodles for now!

HUGS!!