A bit of randomness...

~We've been waiting for this moment for so long, and finally, yesterday, it happened....Gracie turned 18 months old and went to nursery!!! Hooray! Doin' a little dance! She is, by far, our child that has been the most attached to me. She LOVES church though, which is great! She won't go to family, she is such a stinker about that. She likes all of them at a distance, she just doesn't want them touching her. At church, though, she becomes a social butterfly. She is hilarious! Everyone oohs and aahhs about how pretty she is all the time and smiles at her and they even indulge her when she touches their scriptures and other pretty things they might have. She has even run her hands up ladies' legs playing with their silky pantyhose and they just let her. She is funny! But I wasn't sure how she'd handle being in nursery...alone. She cried for just a minute until the leader held her on her lap during their little singing time. Then she had the most terrified look on her face and had her little hand shoved in her mouth for comfort which completely tore my heart out. Seriously PAINFUL for mom to watch secretly through the awesome little window in the door! She is so sweet I really hated for her to be so scared and sad. Then there was snack time. She LOVES food and water in her own little cup. She was in heaven at that point. My friend, Sherelle went in there to help the leader who was in there alone, and Gracie knows Sherelle well enough that I think that helped her out. She didn't cry again and did really well. YES!!! We'll see how she does next week when she knows we'll leave her again but so far so good.
~Have you all seen the commercial for pistachios where "Snooky", whoever that is, eats a pistachio off of a tanning bed? Do y'all remember when I worked at Steph and J.J.'s tanning salon? Yeah, I used to clean tanning beds. Do you know how many butt cracks and hoo-hahs slide across that part of a tanning bed in a day. DISGUSTING!  I am such a germaphobe, as you know from previous posts, so I REALLY scrubbed those beds down after someone used them. One time a coworker came out so quickly when she was supposed to have cleaned a room. You have to spray the little plastic rug and wipe it (that person could have athlete's foot or who knows what else), spray and wipe down the chair (umm, yeah, someone could have sat their in all their glory, you just never know. And their undies were just sitting on it and I don't even want to know what could be on that chair if you don't sanitize it), spray and wipe down the bed. I had to give her a little "cleaning the room" demonstration after that because ICK!!! So, watching someone eat a pistachio, or anything else, off of a tanning bed, that I'm sure was EXTREMELY sanitized, makes me want to hurl every time it comes on. WHAT were these advertisers thinking. SERIOUSLY nasty!!!
~WHAT do these young girls see in Justin Bieber? I "get" the attraction to Joe Jonas, and Zac Efron, but Justin Bieber?! Just don't get it! We had so many "hot" guys to have crushes on when we were growing up.  Maybe that's it. Maybe there just isn't enough manmeat out there for them to crush on so they are DESPERATE! I just don't "get" it!!!
~Max has his Thanksgiving Feast at preschool tomorrow. This morning Brian reminded me that when Zack was little he called it the Thanksgiving Veast. Loved that!!
~So, we get to speak in church again Sunday. We are SO thrilled about it. We're praying that lots of people are still out of town for the holiday. We are forcing our children to each speak too to take up more time. Aren't we nice parents!? They were like, NOOOOO!!! So I said, ok, here are your options...either you give a little talk or you sing a song together. They decided the talk would be better. I was like, seriously dudes, you just had to do your parts in the Primary program and you did AWESOME!! And you have to give talks in Primary so you can give a little talk in Sacrament Meeting and it won't kill you. We need to settle in one place and never move again if for no other reason but to avoid speaking in church so often.
~Brian made this yummy dessert the other day that he got in an email the other day. You make it like you do a cobbler in the dutch oven. It's best to mix the cake mix some with the butter so you don't have clumps of uncooked cake mix just like a cobbler. He just cooked it in the oven in our big pot and he didn't line the pot with foil. He cooked it at 350 degrees for about an hour. It was really good!!!

Pumpkin Pie Crunch

Ingredients:

1 can solid pumpkin (15 ounces)

1 can evaporated milk (12 ounces)

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp. salt

1 pkg yellow cake mix

1 cup butter, melted

Optional 1 cup chopped pecans (we did not add these)

Line dutch oven with heavy-duty foil and spray well with cooking spray. Combine the first 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Pour into oven. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over pumpkin mixture. Sprinkle with pecans, if desired. Pour melted butter evenly over whole cake. Place 6 hot coal pieces in a circle under the Dutch oven and about 20 pieces evenly around the outside of the lid on top for 50 to 55 minutes. Cake is done when the pumpkin custard is firm. Lift the foil out of the Dutch oven and place on a large dish to cool.