“Mardi Gras is in our soul.”
-Kim Priez
Growing up in Louisiana means that the colors purple, gold, and green decorate the world through February. All of the stores display their plastic beads, doubloons, and masks alongside their hearts, lace, and cupids. All of the bakeries and grocery stores sell king cakes alongside their pink and red cupcakes.
King cake—tastes a bit like bread; a bit like cake. Neither too sweet, nor too bland. It’s also kind of a party game. A plastic baby doll (supposed to be baby Jesus) is hidden inside the cake, and the person who “gets the baby” is supposed to bring the cake the next year. In my senior English class in high school, we had king cake everyday for a whole month—the person who got the baby brought the snack the next day.
In Georgia you can’t just run to the grocery store for a piece of king cake. So I pulled out my handy-dandy Junior League of Shreveport cookbook that we received as a wedding present and attempted my first ever king cake-baking adventure.
The recipe is not really difficult, but it does take a considerable amount of time. Perfect for a novice cook on a lazy Saturday afternoon. After mixing all of the ingredients together, the dough was so sticky that I couldn’t lift my hands off of the baking mat I was working on. Luckily Rob was able to lend a hand, pouring the flour and holding the mat to the counter as I attempted to knead it all together.
I left it to rise for an hour and a half, then shaped it in a ring, and let it rise for another 40 minutes. Then as it baked it continued to grow. After 30 minutes in the oven, I had a gigantic cake on my hands. 
Then the icing and colored sprinkles got a little bit out of hand. But, in my opinion, you can never have enough sugar. 
There’s no place nearby where you can just run out and buy a 1 inch plastic baby, so we had to forego that little detail this time around. Note to self: stock up on plastic babies for king cakes in our future! 
We took the cake and the homemade ice cream (that Rob is making in the photo above) to a Super Bowl Party on Sunday night, where everyone loved it.
“The loneliest woman in the world is the woman without a close woman friend”
-Toni Morrison
It used to be that easy. When I was little, every time I went to the swimming pool, I would come home with a new friend. And the conversation simply began with “Do you want to be my friend?”
Lately I’ve wanted to ask everyone this. The girl behind me in line at the Social Security office, the young mom who is new at church, the bloggers who I read about daily, the girls I overheard in the burrito place.
Through high school I only had one best friend—lots of friends to hang out with at lunch and in class, but really only one that I shared secrets with. And, even by my senior year I had distanced myself from most of them. I still sat with them at lunch, but I had little in common with them. And even though I was the one who left home for school, my best friend was the one who changed and left me behind.
I went off to college 600 miles away, and quickly became friends with three boys from my hometown. I was rooming with two sorority girls who were nice enough (we actually roomed together the next year), but I just simply wasn’t in their crowd—and didn’t really want to be.
I met Rob during the first semester of my freshman year, so my social activities from then on out were wrapped up with him and his friends. His friends became my friends, but still they were boys.
I struggled to find a close girlfriend. Rob encouraged me, my mom encouraged me, but it seemed everybody had already chosen best friends, and I had missed out.
My last year of college brought some relief—I became close to Ashley from my design classes and Hillary, Rob’s roommate’s girlfriend—both were bridesmaids in my wedding, in fact. But, life is having its way with me again. Ashley moved to North Carolina a few months ago, and Hillary is busy finishing school. They are still good friends, but not around quite as much as they used to be.
I need someone to girl talk with, someone to watch chick flicks watch, someone to craft with, someone to go shopping with. So the position is open, wanna be my friend?
“It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”
-A. A. Milne
This past weekend we prepared for the Winter Storm of ’08. Note that I used the word “prepared,” not “experienced.”
I flew in from a work trip to Orlando Friday night—we could already feel the mercury dropping. On Saturday morning, we woke to find snow dusting our parking lot. The second snowfall in a week! We planned our errands and invited friends to come over before things got really nasty outside. Driving on the highway was surprisingly easy—everyone was driving the speed limit and limiting their crazy maneuvers.
Mike was in town from Ohio—thanks a lot for bringing the super cold weather our way!! So he and Hillary came over to cozy up with us through the night. After a quick trip to the grocery store to get supplies for the evening, we closed the door, planning not to emerge until it all cleared late the next morning. News reports showed snow plows gearing up for a busy night, and even churches all over the metro area had cancelled their services for the next morning.
We played games, watched movies, ate yummy chili, drank a lot of beer, and even lit our first fire in the fireplace. A good time was had by all! We snuggled in our beds, and woke up the next morning to find the sun out, snow melting, and no sign of any ice storm at all.
“Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it.”
-Jean Kerr
So Rob and I bought our first pregnancy test this weekend—don’t worry, Mom, I’ll spoil the ending: we didn’t use it before we found out we weren’t pregnant.
Rob woke up Saturday morning at 6:00 to hear me throwing up in the bathroom. I was sick all morning. One month earlier, he had found me in a similar position. The boy’s a worrywart, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was pregnant. That’s always my first thought, too, but I quickly dismiss it, knowing that we are doing everything we can to postpone the expansion of our family. However, he jumped in the car to buy a test. We’re pretty green in this area, and after reading the box, realized that four days before my period, we would only get a 51% accuracy rate. The engineer in Rob didn’t like those odds, so we decided to wait it out.
(I found out later that the Saturday morning grocery trip also resulted in an extra-large chocolate bar, just in case we got back a positive test. That boy, he thinks of everything!)
And wait it out, we did. To our great joy, we will not be sending out birth announcements in late September of this year!
However, children are in our future, just not the immediate future. Rob’s idea is that we have twin boys and then a girl. As twins don’t run in either of our families, I’m not promising him that one. But, two boys and a girl, I could definitely run with that one. Just not now! Let’s wait a few years!
“There was never a good war or a bad peace."
-Benjamin Franklin
Just so you know, the storm has passed in the our household. All is good. We even came up with a solution to the original disagreement. We totally rock!! We're back to our usual happy-go-lucky selves. And just in time for the weekend!
Then the icing and colored sprinkles got a little bit out of hand. But, in my opinion, you can never have enough sugar. 
There’s no place nearby where you can just run out and buy a 1 inch plastic baby, so we had to forego that little detail this time around. Note to self: stock up on plastic babies for king cakes in our future! 
We took the cake and the homemade ice cream (that Rob is making in the photo above) to a Super Bowl Party on Sunday night, where everyone loved it.
