Sometimes by choice.

Other times by circumstances.

We’re at that stage at the Humpfreeze house.

We are old enough to be empty nesters.

Yet, after being a family of six, we find ourselves with an only child.

An only child who has three twenties who come and visit.

The Grunter still lives here and commutes to college downtown and works so we don’t see him very much.

On the rare evening when all four of our lovelies have graced us with their presence on the same night, they are thrilled when I squeal for everyone to stand still so I can quickly try to capture a photo of this fleeting moment.

Obviously, we’re past the stage of wearing color-coordinated or matching {gasp} clothes for a photo shoot.

Boy, oh boy, have my standards changed. Note the gorgeous backdrop of our filthy garage.

Look at the cooperation in their faces when I asked that they stand in birth order.

It’s hard to choose which one to frame and hang in the foyer.

Like I said, traditions change.

Superbowl Sunday

Scary Baby’s only child status can make some of our old family traditions a little bit lonely.

The twenties all had places to be, people to see, so we were home with our new only child.

No squirt cheese in a can for Roger Leroy. Everyone didn’t pick their favorite junk food for mom to make.

Instead, we opted for Chili’s chicken nachos and chips and queso.

But we did have our knox blox in team colors.

I’ve been told some traditions can’t be changed.

That’s why I still put a wrinkled, white sheet on the coffee table so Scary Baby could eat on the floor in the family room. Very traditional.

We sent Roger Leroy back up to college with half of the knox blox and toothpicks and pennants.

She rewarded me with this sad little camera phone picture to confirm the darling twins did carry on the tradition.

Really, we’re all okay here. Scary Baby is every bit as much work, if not more, than the first three darlings we have sent into the world.

We hope we will not be too old and tired to enjoy the bored and quiet when it finally comes.

Saturday Night

Going backwards about our lovely weekend with the twenties…

Roger Leroy came home to work on her motorcycle. No comment.

Wizzy came home because she kindly coaches Scary Baby’s basketball team at church.

I continue to forget to take pictures during the games. Bad mother habits are hard to break.

It was fun to sit with Roger Leroy and while she got to be a spectator watching her little sister play and her twin coach the game. They won.

It was a special treat to take the twenties to dinner while Scary Baby spent the night at a friends. After an hour of bickering about what restaurant we would eat at because…

The Grunter doesn’t eat pasta.

Wizzy doesn’t like Mexican.

Roger Leroy will not go more than 5 miles for food.

We ended up in a smoky bar and watched some very interesting people.

We laughed a lot. The food was decent.

We really wanted to stay for the band but we just couldn’t hang in the smoke-filled bar.

It was a wild Saturday night. Not.

PhilBillPaul and I do our best to seize the moments when they are available and will have a meal with their old parents.

Side note: We know it’s because we’re buying.

Superbowl recap:

• We were all rooting for the Giants so it was a great game.
• Except for Madonna at halftime. Enough said.
• I was all ready to vote for Clint Eastwood for President…until I realized his moving words were part of a Chrysler commercial.
• Still love those monkeys in the careerbuilder.com ad.
• Second favorite commercial – Jerry Seinfeld for Acura was much better than the vampire party for Audi or the ridiculous Fiat commercial which is why we muted commercials for so many years and the Humpfreeze children only watched PBS

Tradition I miss the most…

Keeping them all in my bubble.

Its that darn it’s again. <<

I know there are only a few of us left who care. Thanks for caring and laughing with me.

You might be asking,

“How could it get any better than a little chocolate, a little fruit with pastry and a little cheesecake?”

Three words.

Mini Dessert Trio

Less guilt is what the “mini” implies.

But it really moves into a new category of B-L-I-S-S if you can choose your mini combination.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered this very mini dessert trio of my dreams when I was out of town last week.

Yes, I lifted asked if I could have another dessert card to take home and scan.

We picked the seasonal pineapple-upside-down cake because I never see that as a dessert choice.

I told the waitress that I had finally found my dessert bliss.

I also told her that the Bourbon Pecan Cupcake was NOT mini.

But it was soooo good, we went on my last day in town for one more cupcake.

Tony Roma’s wins!

I’m sure they will be thrilled to know of their victory in my personal, unpublicized, dessert bliss contest.

The only bummer is that I’ll have to fly or road trip to a Tony Roma’s to get a mini dessert trio.

There are no Tony Roma’s in Georgia.

Let’s be real – it’s probably best for me to not have one near me.

Tell me your favorite restaurant dessert…in case I’m still allowed to eat sugar after this week.

Edit: My feedburner email subscription does not always work right so if you get two emails today know that it is a fluke and I haven’t gone crazy. I do know it’s Wednesday even though email subscribers are getting Typo Tuesday on Wednesday. It was posted yesterday. Look at the chaos that happens when I start blogging again.

It may not be a coincidence that I’m writing a two-parter about dessert during the week I go back to the doctor to get the results from my blood work including a glucose test and depending on what you may not hear from me again. Just sayin’

I looked back in my archives feeling sure I had written about one of my most favorite desserts when PhilBillPaul and I go out to dinner.

In full disclosure, we do split one entree so we can justify this dessert. Not that you’d know if from looking at us.

If we have kids with us, it’s every man/woman/child for themselves and you would think they never get dessert.

Which you know is not true at the Humpfreeze House of Sugar.

I have said for many years that restaurants could do a booming dessert business if they would make a dessert sampler much like their appetizer samplers.

I have a hard time deciding and I often want a little chocolate and a little fruit and a little cake or pie. Yes, I’d like several desserts, thank you very much.

My dessert bliss happened back in April 2010 and I guess I forgot to write about it.

Leave it to me to report up-to-the-minute dessert news.

I searched and found this picture on my computer that I had scanned from the dessert card I lifted asked our waitress if I could take with me.

LongHorn Dessert Sampler

A shareable sampler of three favorites: Chocolate Stampede, Caramel Apple Goldrush and Mountain Top Cheesecake.

Here’s a belated shout out to Longhorn Steakhouse for this excellent dessert marketing.

NOTE: It is a chain. Even though we prefer to support locally owned restaurants, some chains get it right and Longhorn is one of those chains!

I guess it’s a winner if it’s still on their menu a year and a half later.

Try it, you’ll like it.

Stay tuned because tomorrow I’m going to tell you who beat Longhorn in my quest for dessert bliss!

Edit: My feedburner email subscription does not always work right so if you get two emails today know that it is a fluke and I haven’t gone crazy. I do know it’s Wednesday even though email subscribers are getting Typo Tuesday on Wednesday. It was posted yesterday. Look at the chaos that happens when I start blogging again.

Always makes me proud to live in the South especially when college football fans display a great sign for the world to see…

Thanks Steffani for sending this classic to me!

I would give credit to photographer but I’m not sure where it came from.

He buys reading glasses in bulk at the Dollar Store so he doesn’t feel bad when he loses them or breaks them. Which is often.

I tire of them being all over the house and never in the room he needs them.

We also all laugh as he pats his head and then pats his shirt pocket checking for glasses.

My friend Melodi recommended some cool reading glasses she had purchased for her husband.

They are called CliCs.

I love a good invention. You wear them around your neck.

Lots of cool people wear them. Super important to PhilBillPaul.

Okay, maybe not.

They have a strong magnetic closure at the bridge. Very cool.

Thanks Melodi for great product recommendation!

I finally got online to order them a few weeks ago.

Amazon has some great reviews on the glasses.

Only thing is – I want free shipping whenever possible. Otherwise I don’t feel like I’ve saved money not driving to the store.

I was also searching for a wire basket to attach to the wall next to my desk so I could put file folders in it. The bargain shopper in me wanted it to be less expensive than several I found online specifically for file folders. I also wanted it to be white because my cabinets are white.

Perfect shopping opportunity for me to combine two purchases for free shipping on Amazon.

I would order PhilBillPaul’s new, late Christmas gift and my wire basket.

After searching wire baskets on Amazon for way too long for anything to qualify as a bargain since the time I spent looking canceled out any savings…

I might have been a little tired and only paid attention to the price and dimensions of the basket and not much else.

When the box arrived, The Grunter opened it with my permission as I fully admitted I couldn’t even remember what I ordered.

He looked down and said, “Okay, momma this is going to take some explaining…”

Without missing a beat, I said,

“You know I’m a planner.”

And it was a good deal.”

Truly, I don’t recall anything about it being a wire basket for a walker.

In my defense, the picture on Amazon is not the picture on the box.

PhilBillPaul really likes his new CliC glasses.

Reading glasses and a walker basket. Are we showing our age?

What have you bought online lately?

It was certainly not my intent to blog just one puny time in December.

We’re all fine, fine, fine here in Georgia.

When I don’t blog it does not necessarily mean that bad things are happening at the Humpfreeze house or I have taken extra medication to get through the holidays.

In fact, December was medication-free and it was a very good month! It just went by entirely too fast.

I’d like to tell you it is because I’m busier than the rest of the universe. Especially in December.

But that would start my new year off with a big lie.

Instead, I decided to share a few of my favorite things from our Humpfreeze holidays where all six of us gathered in our house together for almost the whole month and we have all lived to tell about it.

For those of you who might not remember, that means 2 adults, 3 semi-adults (the “twenties” people) and one tween all lived under one roof.

At. The. Same. Time.

We squeezed in the baking frenzy for the teachers and grandmas. PhilBillPaul made 3 kinds of fudge, pecans and pretzels. Then I got busy with bread and cookies. Scary Baby helped wrap and organize her 5 teacher gifts.

Guess we forgot to take pictures of the cute packaging and gift tags this year.

Plus random photo of small Charlie Brown-like blue Christmas tree in Scary Baby bedroom. She loves it.

And one darling twin and a friend (hi Rowe!) helped with the packaging until 2:00 a.m.

Perhaps she helped (for the first time ever) because she wanted to send a giant care package to a soldier friend in Afghanistan.

That’s a pretty good ulterior motive in my book and I appreciated their help!

I traveled at the beginning of the month and when I came home, Scary Baby had done a superb job of trimming the tree that she and PhilBillPaul picked out at Costco from the Marines selling trees there this year.

It’s not Christmas until we take at least a few of the kids to Waffle House. We like to reminisce about the year we drove to Illinois for Christmas and Waffle House was the only place open so we had to eat there 3 times in 24 hours with three toddlers in tow. Super fun!

On Christmas Eve we stuck to our regular traditions…

A special thank you to Mr. Humpfreeze who took it upon himself to get almost everything ready for fondue. I only had to make the breakfast casserole and cheesy potatoes for the next morning.

Never happened before. Very nice. Think it should be a new tradition!

Opening one gift on Christmas Eve

Please take note of how dressed up my darling children get for Christmas Eve. It appears some of them are in pajamas opening pajamas.

They are always *shocked* that the gift is new pajamas. Correction – it is fuzzy sleep pants and t-shirts that don’t match because wearing a matching set of pajamas is very uncool.

We played a few games.

Then another darling twin actually helped me wrap. And announced,

“I’m tired of wrapping.”

To which I replied,

“Imagine that I’ve been doing this all by myself for the 4 of you for 20+ years.”

I liked the help. Another new tradition to add for next year.

Christmas Morning

Bad cell phone picture of sweet daughters keeping warm and sleeping a little more with their daddy while trying to convince Everett to get up.

This almost became our first Christmas where we weren’t all together on Christmas morning because Everett had to work at 7:00 a.m. Luckily, his shift changed at the last minute so he came down in his uniform and opened his gifts.

Our pumpkin has worked on Christmas day for the last six years. Remember to thank those people who go to work so you can see a movie or get gas on Christmas day.

My favorite Christmas gift…

My favorite Christmas gift I gave Scary Baby…

I ordered this print after seeing it many months ago online and being on a wait list for the next printing. I think it should follow her all the way to her college dorm room to remind her how much we love her.

During the holiday break, the darling twins took their darling little sister ice skating. Tiny cell phone picture not available.

PhilBillPaul and I also took Scary Baby and a friend to a movie.

War Horse ~ worth seeing but…the horses are quite large when you are sitting in the SECOND ROW of a very crowded, small theater.

This picture taken with my cell phone really doesn’t do justice to the view. No extra charge for neck strain. Or the bonus 4 year-old who joins your family to watch the movie with you talk to you during the movie. Repeatedly. His family didn’t seem to mind him walking down the row as he hopped from seat to seat.

This future blog topic on movie etiquette will be followed by a discussion on why I’ve become a recluse and no longer engage in public outings in small places and why people bring young children to 2-1/2 hour movies they are not suited for.

New Year’s Eve

Ours was wild.

Or not.

The darling twins went up to North Georgia for their own party. Everett and 3 friends came to hang out after a movie.

We went to the store because I declared “no more cooking!”

Frozen cream puffs for Scary Baby – her personal favorite. Store bought cookies and cupcakes. Leftover candy and fudge. Paper plates and plastic silverware. Frozen pigs in a blanket. Tablecloth? Nah, we were washing the sheet we had used at Christmas. Don’t judge.

Potato chips, dip, cheese, crackers – super fancy.

Scary Baby couldn’t wait to open the sparkling grape juice.

She washed a champagne flute she found that I had purchased at Target years ago. Clearance price tag on it said .62¢

We squeezed in a game of Bananagrams.

And toasted in the new year…

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and spent it with your favorite people…

More fun stuff to share but first, I have to try to figure out a manageable blog schedule for 2012.

Until then, please do tell how you spent the holidays and what you’re looking forward to in the new year!

After the DIY kitchen remodel, I was all over another DIY project.

Not.

Should I mention now that the kitchen is still not done?

Since I can’t even seem to blog once a week, I’m pretty sure that I shouldn’t try to paint the kitchen.

Instead, December has crept up on me along with our baking frenzy weekend. More on that later.

Back to transferring our home movies…

Darling twin Rachel was suppose to transfer all of our Sony 8mm tapes and VHS tapes to DVD for me about four or five years ago. I know that the tapes deteriorate over time and using DVD media would extend the life of our home movies.

I said it would be the best Christmas gift. Ever.

Somehow my friend Nancy in California got ahead of me in the line and she mailed all her videotapes to Rachel and she got hers transferred. I think it was the cash payment vs. gift for mom that got her better service.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then they broke the camcorder we bought to do the transfer.

Sadly, we couldn’t even watch the tapes because we had no working Sony camcorder.

Sony is not my friend.

Sony tapes only work in Sony equipment. It’s an endless, expensive loop of frustration.

After much research with my best friend, Google, I found a Sony DVD recorder that I could transfer all of our 8mm tapes to DVD.

Sweet.

Even sweeter, I found a refurbished model for the bargain price of $39.99 at Micro Center so we drove to Marietta to buy it. Which increased the price a wee bit because of gas prices but that’s just how much we don’t like to pay retail.

But don’t forget I still had to buy a Sony 8mm camcorder since ours didn’t work and their tapes are exclusive to their equipment.

The same weekend I found a used camcorder on ebay right here in Sugar Hill which is very near where we live. The nice seller let us come pick it up at his house after I won the auction at $70.00. I still saved quite a bit since the recorder AND camcorder were less than the retail price of the recorder which is $199.99.

It seems the stars were aligned for me to start this massive project.

Except you can’t duplicate the actual DVDs because they are still encoded with Sony blah-blah-blah.

I wanted to make copies of special tapes for the kids. Because I’m sure they will cherish them. When I’m dead.

This was a time-intensive DIY project. I ran the machine pretty much daily for about two weeks. I made duplicate copies of the tapes through the Sony recorder of some major events but I only have one copy of most.

It was all worth it. Absolutely precious video of their teeny tiny days when they were so stinkin’ cute. I can hardly watch them without welling up with emotion.

Because they make me cry now for entirely different reasons.

Sigh.

Priceless video of my dad, their Grandad Jimbo with them. I did make extra copies of that VHS tape that PhilBillPaul had made for me the year after he died.

So glad I finally took the time for this DIY home movie transfer to DVD. 62 DVDs later, I can mark that off my to-do list.

And now we can watch some of them during Christmas when everyone is home.

Next, I need to figure out how to share a few little clips here on the blog. DIY video editing on my list for 2012.

I know that I should put them in a safety deposit box before the four little piglets touch them, break them or lose them.

Do you have family movies? Are you able to watch them?

But that would be a lie.

I guess it took me a week to prepare to go to North Carolina.

Or not.

Mostly, November has flown by in a blur.

Granny flew in from Texas the week before Thanksgiving and we headed to a cabin on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

Here’s a pictorial from our week in Murphy, North Carolina…

Though not very high up in the mountains, the cabin was off the beaten path and lovely.

We were in a small cabin “neighborhood” of 17 cabins or chalets. Some people refer to them as luxury cabins or homes. I guess this is because some people’s definition of a cabin is a cement floor and an outhouse down the mountain by the creek where you draw some ice cold water to bathe in.

We have personally grown fond of a few more amenities and I’m not too proud to admit that. I’m all about running water, electricity and leather furniture.

We arrived in shifts on different days since the college kids still had classes and two of them had to work. I heard too late that the basement bedroom had the best bed.

The Grunter and I arrived on Sunday and Scary Baby immediately challenged us to a game of pool. She and Granny and PhilBillPaul had already been shopping in town which is where she scored the sock monkey hat that she did not take off during the entire week. (Except to shower – I confirmed this.)

The dog boys were very excited to accompany us on vacation and enjoyed many walks up and down some rolling hills. It was excellent physical therapy for Dudley.

The darling twins arrived next and the dogs are always excited to see them.

The dogs haven’t had this much attention in a very long time.

We also ventured out for some scenic driving and Scary Baby was excited to see wildlife a chicken from our car.

It got more exciting when she squealed, “Are those cows loose in the road up there?”

Yes. The cows were obviously loose as I jumped out to snap photos just like city slickers do when they see cows in the road.

The Grunter said he didn’t want to go on a 4 hour scenic car ride. This is what he and his sister were doing just before the cow sighting.

Luckily, they were not asleep when we drove to Blue Ridge, Georgia in search of this cupcake shop.

Minutes before they closed, we snagged some of their very last cupcakes to bring back to the cabin. Four chocolate lava fudge (one might be missing), one apple caramel and one pecan pie cupcake. The Sweet Shoppe lived up to its name.

Of course we played euchre every single day. PhilBillPaul gets a little obsessed with it.

Sabu was there to help him. Not that he needs it because he is the Euchre King.

Dudley was not left out.

Side note: Notice Wizzy’s cell phone. It was almost a technology-free holiday. NO internet but if they stood in certain places they could still text and sometimes make calls.

Rachel bought a puzzle and introduced Scary Baby to her new obsession which is gluing the puzzle together after they complete it.

All in all, it was a good week away and in spite of some very loud bickering and competitive game playing, I do love when we are all together and I see the college kids becoming semi-adults.

When we are not fighting and talking ugly to one another, we laugh a lot.

I choose to remember the laughing.

Black Friday at Walmart which was really at 10:00 pm on Thursday was another adventure for the memory book. Sorry, no photos and my bruise is almost gone from some really aggressive pillow grabbing for Elizabeth while she scored a king-sized memory foam mattress top for us.

My favorite photo from the week…

Look, she took the sock monkey hat off in this one unstaged photo that PhilBillPaul captured.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving together. Thanks Granny, for enduring the Georgia Humpfreeze clan and spending time with us!

How did you spend your Thanksgiving? I hope you all spent time with the ones you love…

P.S. Should you ever want to explore Murphy, North Carolina, we’ve got the beat on a very affordable cabin and Granny gets a referral so just ask me for the info!

I know, I know. Some of you love Typo Tuesday and others do not understand my sick fascination with typos that I find. I really can’t help it ~ it’s a gift.

Or a curse.

Whatever.

I really love my friend Google and consult with him daily. (I think Google is male?) I consider Google to be one of my smartest friends.

This screenshot came from Google Docs which is just one of the many services Google offers. If you haven’t used it yet, try it! Super easy and free. What’s not to love?

I was a little surprised that my friend Google doesn’t have a personal proofreader to catch things like this.

The screenshot was from last week so maybe they’ve fixed it by now. I hope so.

If not, they could hire me to proofread everything they do. They could send it all to me via Google Docs and I can proofread from home. That would be my dream job!

I’ll let you know if they call me…