1.  I love lists.

2.  I love cake.

3.  I love lists about cake.

4.  I digress.

5.  I have not written in over two weeks.

6.  I wanted to write sometime the end of last week but I couldn't.  Because I could not peel my face out of the Hunger Games books long enough to care for my children or sleep, much less write something myself.  I could.not.put.them.down.  All I have to say is "wow".  Just "wow".  How in the round world a person is creative enough to come up with all of that is beyond my comprehension.  It was incredible.  That is all.  No spoilers here people.  Go get them.  Read them.  Come to terms with them.

7.  I have a daughter who is adorable and awful and precious and exhausting.  That daughter loves suckers.  We went through the bank drive through the other day, and she received a dum-dum sucker.  Root beer flavored.  She is the first person I have ever seen to actually eat a root beer flavored dum-dum.  She was still eating it when we got home.  As I was unloading things from my car and she was playing in the garage, I looked up to see my daughter holding our dog Sunni down, feeding her the sucker.  Sunni was going to town on that thing.  Apparently, australian shepherds also like root beer flavored dum-dums.  When my daughter decided that Sunni had had enough, she removed the sucker from the dog's mouth.  And placed it back in her own.  My daughter loves her dog. 

8.  I need a week or two that is entirely kid free so I can do nothing but work on projects that I steal from pinterest and or create in my mind.  I am currently only about a quarter of the way through a project that I began last year of turning old funky fence into shutters for my house.  I hope to get them done before the wood actually decomposes to dust.  I am also about half way through with a wreath covered in fabric rosettes.  I hope to get it done before fabric rosettes become as uncool as avocado refrigerators and navy, hunter green, and maroon hunting scenes in a gold frame over striped wallpaper in the same hues.  And the coffee table I have done nothing but dream about yet?  Fugettaboutit.  I do however have high hopes and dreams of painting my toe nails this week.  Baby steps.

9.  I occasionally take my children to the street behind our house to walk because it's a dead end that doesn't see much traffic and the weather has been lovely lately.  Plus it helps me justify eating the fudge we bought the other day if I walk that whole half of a mile at one time.  But last week something happened.  Something momentous and a tiny bit (ok, a lot) frightening happened.  I finally caught a glance of the guy who lives with his mother on our street.  You know the house.  The one where no one answers if you're selling cookies or candy bars or wrapping paper or whatever, even though you hear the tv on and the cars are in the driveway.  The one that if a kid ever dares to venture onto their grass, all the parents immediately begin to scream, "get out of their yard!  What are you doing?  Come here before they see you!".  That house.  And after catching a glance at the son, turns out all our concerns have been completely warranted.  Because, you see, as it turns out, we live down the street from the Unibomber.  Please don't tell anyone.  Information like this is never good for property values.

10.  I sometimes wonder if I am the only person in the world that feels the need to have a couple of more babies, just because I've fallen in love with another name and feel as if it is too good to not be given to someone in my life.  A few weeks ago we visited some dear friends who have a new cat named Estelle.  I now feel like if I don't give birth to another daughter so I can name her Estelle, after my dear friends' cat, then I will forever suffer with a small hole in my maternal psyche.  I also feel very strongly about the name Birdie (even though husband talked me out of it last time), and Owen all for a girl.  I honestly don't care if you feel the need to use these names yourself, as it is well documented on this blog that they were all my brainchild.  Just don't be offended when I have three more kids and name them these names as well.  And let's not even bring up little Shep.  He'll be there too.  I think of all these things some times and I let it eat away at me.  "poor cute names with no one to label.  poor cute wasted names".  Then I remember the horrors that are colic and breast feeding (I realized this was not a horror to many of you - probably exclusive to me) and I regain all sense of reality and give my baby names away on this blog.  Dear world - your welcome.  I would love to see a picture of your Birdie the first chance you get. (see that doesn't sound weird at all........)

11.  I had dental work done today.  It was actually quite painless.  However, the real ordeal was the fact that a large chunk of my face and half my nose was numb for hours to follow.  You have never lived until you have shown your friends how you can flare only one nostril.

12.  I have to wear a fancy dress this weekend that is too tight because I didn't walk more than a half mile at a time.  I am considering wrapping my body with seran wrap so my belly button indention does not show.  I hear this is a tactic in beauty pageants and such.  Have any of you ever done this?  Is this something that will actually work or will I end up sweating like a stuck hog 46 minutes into my fancy dinner that I cannot swallow because there is no room for food?  Advice please.

13.  Red velvet with cream cheese icing

14.  Chocolate with holes poked and sweetened condensed milk pour over while hot.  Then topped with whipped cream cheese icing once cooled.

15.  Angel food covered in cool whip and crushed butterfinger

16.  Birthday with big piles of icing

17.  Wedding

18.  I told you I love lists about cake.

    Then there was the time that I was about to walk into one of those hoity-toity stores, you know the kind - the ones with the insanely priced shoes, perfectly coiffed salespeople, and the clothes that only go up to a size 8 because people who are stylish and able to afford nice stuff should not be fluffy.  I was about to walk in and my baby said, "hode zhu mommy" which means "hold you mommy" in D-speak (which actually means, "these shoes are like two sizes two small and are killing my tiny feet so would you please pick me up and carry me because you love me as a person more than as an adorable model for overpriced baby clothes that may or may not fit appropriately").  So I leaned over to pick her up, and was looking at her as I swung her onto my hip, and my foot caught the inch and a half of concrete that was cracked and uneven beneath my feet, and we went flying.  Like slow motion, "blaaaaaaaaaaaaabgh", across the pebbled sidewalk, purse sailing, went flying.  And the thing is, the time when I went flying, I was holding my adorable little twenty-eight pound, two and a half year old nugget and was falling straight to the ground on top of her.  Her going head first into the concrete of course.  Needless to say, I am apparently a ninja in training because somehow I managed to throw my hands and arms around her while projecting my body away from her so that she walked away with nothing really wrong except a scratched elbow and a deathly fear of ever being carried by her mother again.  I on the other hand currently have a scratched up forearm, gashes in what I think may be a sprained hand/wrist situation, and a gaping, bloody rip in my only, best, and favorite pair of blue jeans.  It was super awesome.  And by awesome I mean awful.  And deathly embarrassing.  That's all I could think about was Carrie from Sex and the City the time that she was shopping in Paris and went flying in the Chanel store.  Except I did not then proceed to max out my credit card.  I instead bought one pair of Tiny Toms and limped away.

    Then there was the time on the same day as the day I went flying while holding my baby, that I was pulling into a parking lot of a store to buy a new pair of jeans, and a policeman turned his lights on and followed me.  Turns out I have not bought a new car tag since November of 2011.  Turns out I am a disorganized hot mess.  Because it had already been sort-of a rough day, and because it was rainy, and because my arm was hurting, and because it's better than crying, I started laughing.  And I could not stop.  I laughed so hard that I couldn't breath and I had tears pouring down my face.  That poor policeman thought he had pulled over a woman on the verge.  I'm not sure what on the verge of per say.  But definitely, he was sure I was about to loose it.  So when he walked back to my vehicle and said "maam, today I am only going to give you a warning ticket" and then I reached out my hands and said "can I kiss you?  on the face?"  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when he didn't even crack a smile and replied, "no maam.  You can't".  Then I definitely shouldn't have been shocked when I then asked if he would take a picture with me for my blog and he said, "no. no maam.  we can't.".  

    Then there was the time that I decided God doesn't want me to buy expensive shoes even if I am an aspiring ninja and I probably shouldn't make policemen think I'm insane.  Then I came home and ate two Cadbury eggs.  The end.

An entirely true story,
Cassie

    I am about to lay on you, one of the yummiest, most wonderfully delicious, and easiest recipes for bread that you have ever had the pleasure of laying your taste buds on.  Now I know when you first read it, you will be thinking, "But Cassie, I don't like mayonnaise.  But Cassie, I'm not a green chili fan.  But Cassie, if I eat stuff like this all the time I am going to end up with long term insulin therapy for type 2 diabetes." (no?  that last one just me?)  Well I'm here to tell you to push past those thoughts and fears.  Look at mayo as your friend, embrace the green chili, and love yourself in your plus size jeans.  Because baby, this bread is worth it. 

When Aaron and I got married nearly ten years ago, I was fortunate in so many ways to gain such a lovely new family.  But there was one, major, big problem.  They can all cook.  I'm talking cut-up-and-fry-the-best-chicken-you-ever-put-in-your-mouth, homemade rolls, slap-your-mama-sweet-potato-casserole, cook.  I know that might not seem like a problem to you, but to me it was serious.  Because my new husband was used to that sort of thing.  To delicious, rich, southern meals on the table nearly every night that he didn't have to cook or hand money to a waitress for.  Well bless my sweet little twenty-one year-old, eager to impress, newlywed heart - I didn't know how to cook one single, solitary thing.  See, at the house where I grew up, my mother didn't home-cook much of anything.  She did everything else under the sun - cleaning like a beast, volunteering for every organization in the history of good deeds, farm bookkeeping, wagging four kids (one of which is severely disabled) to every activity ever invented from school time to bed time, all while living thirty minutes from the nearest Walmart.  And she did it all well.  But cooking.  Not so much her thing.  Oh she tried.  One time my parents threatened that we could eat our carrots or get a spanking.  I held my nose and woofed them down, but my brother took the spanking.  Just stood up and took a beating.  The carrots were that bad.  And the family joke was always that the food was done when the smoke alarm went off.  If it weren't for the frozen food section at Sam's and the Schwans man, we likely would have starved to death.  So while I learned lots of amazing things from my phenomenal-at-most-stuff mother, separating eggs was not one of them.  And the point of all this is to tell you that when we got married, everyone knew I couldn't cook.  So they gave me lots of cookbooks and hand written recipes.  (don't you just love a hand written recipe?  I have one from my grandmother that is just for some random dessert, but I cherish.  Because she wrote it just for me and it's a piece of  her that I still have.)  And when I was going through my recipe box the other day, I came across this gem from Aaron's great aunt that I apparently had forgotten I have, because I've never made it before.  And now that I've taken the eight minutes to cook it, it brings a tear to my eye to know that I've spent the last ten years without this creamy goodness and it's been under my nose the whole time.  Aunt Alta, I thank you.  My pants don't so much thank you, but my tongue and my belly - they most definitely thank you.  Big much.

To get cookin', you will need 1 cup mayonnaise, 1 stick melted butter, 1 small can of green chilies (I don't know how many oz. because  I don't have a can here at the house to look at.  But you know what I'm talking about.  They come in two sizes - big can or little can.  Use a little one), and shredded cheese.  The recipe calls for 1/4 pound, but I always just pour however much cheese makes me feel good inside on that particular day.  Sometimes it's a skoash-a-bit more than the recipe calls for.  But just a skoash.  And the best kind to use is a Monterey Jack/Colby blend or a Fiesta blend.  But I'm sure whatever you have on hand will work if you forget cheese at the grocery store.
     And this recipe calls for 2 loaves of french bread.  I also like to use the italian loaf because it is yummy and carb-y and makes me feel fluffy, but it's up to you.  The best thing to do is to buy a loaf that is already sliced up.  But if your Walmart's bakery oven is out like mine is, and there are no more presliced loafs like at mine, and you have to go to the Piggly Wiggly to buy a loaf, then slice the loaf yourself.  Preferably with an electric carving knife.  If you don't have one of those then just hack at it with a serrated knife and make a huge mess, and vow to never again do this without presliced bread or an electric knife. Or however you want to do it.  Just have slices.

Then mix up all the goo (I forgot to add the cheese before the picture because I'm a doofus but I'm sure you can wade through the tricky process that is "stirring in cheese" all by yourself.)  It will be a pretty runny mess that doesn't look entirely appealing, but proceed anyway.

I use a small spoon to put the filling between each slice because it is quite runny.  And I'm generous with the goo.  There is quite a bit of it, and more goo makes it more better.  Then I put it in the oven at 350 until it is hot.  I usually check around 10 minutes.  Then I get it out and I secretly eat one whole loaf.  Then I tell my family when they compliment me on how delicious it is, "Why thank you.  I just wish that I had fixed more than one loaf tonight".  Then I burp.

I hope you try this, and I hope you love this, and I hope that I find more deeelish, handed down, great aunt recipe cards in my box soon.  If I do I'll let you know.  In the meantime, good luck and happy cheese bread.
2 loaves of french or italian bread (sliced)
1 stick melted butter
1 cup mayonnaise
1 small can green chilies
1/4 pound shredded Monterey Jack/Colby blend cheese

Mix it, smear it, cook it, eat it.  Enjoy!
Cassie