It's Christmas, it's painting the town

So, here we are...ten days before Christmas, and three weeks from deployment. Corey will leave January 8 to Camp Shelby, and sometime in early March for Iraq. This is going to be a very hard time for our family. But technology often makes things easier. We will be able to use this blog to keep each other near as we live our daily lives, uncountable miles apart. And for our family and friends who want to walk this journey with us, it is here for you as well. Corey will also be able to video-chat with the boys, and if there's a way to share that with our family and friends, we will.

As we spend these last weeks together, we hope to give everyone the chance to tell Corey "Merry Christmas" and "Be safe," but we also send warm holiday wishes to our family and friends.

Father's Day Food

In retrospect, these are not dishes one may want to cook for hours in the oven when it's 147 degrees outside, but you can always do the brisket for 6-8 hours in the crockpot.

EM'S STOLEN FROM THE JUNIOR LEAGUE BRISKET

One 5lb brisket
celery salt
garlic salt
black pepper
onion powder
Liquid Smoke
2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup Worchestershire

Paula Deen says the secret to incredible meat it to rub the spices in it real good, so that's what I do with the peppers, powders and salts on my brisket. Marinate in the refrigerator overnight in all but 4 tbsp of the bottle of Liquid Smoke. When you're ready to cook, remove brisket from excess liquid. Bring the rest of the Liquid Smoke, ketchup, sugar, vinegar and Worchestershire sauce to a boil in a saucepan, until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over brisket in a dutch oven and bake at 275 for 5-6 hours. Or put in the crockpot for 6-8 hours. The meat should fall apart on you when you try to move it from the pot to the cutting board or serving dish.


POTATOES SAVOYARDE (Williams Sonoma Cookbook)

I admit, I have a little work to do on this recipe. I think it needs to be cooked longer than this recipe says. Use chicken stock when serving with chicken and beef stock when serving with beef.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in small pieces
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 1/2 cups Gruyere cheese
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
2 1/2 pounds baking potatoes, unpeeled, scrubbed 1/4" slices
1 1/2 cups beef stock, or chicken stock

Preheat oven to 375°. Brush a souffle dish with the melted butter. In a small bowl stir together the garlic, parsley, cheese and pepper. Layer 1/3 of the potatoes and sprinkle one third of the cheese mixture over the top. repeat the layers once and top with last potatoes. Pour the stock evenly over the layers. sprinkle the remaining mixture over the top and dot with butter. Butter a piece of aluminum foil and place over dish. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake 30 to 40 minutes more until the potatoes are render and the top is brown and crusty.


MS. JAN'S CHOCOLATE ICING

She puts it on brownies, but I think you could put it on a boot and eat it delightfully.

1 stick butter
3 tbsp cocoa powder
6 tbsp evaporated milk
1 BOX powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon, or more to taste

Melt the butter. DO NOT BOIL. Stir in the cocoa powder until dissolved and evaporated milk until creamy. Add the sugar, vanilla and cinnamon and simmer until evenly blended. Pour HOT on HOT cake or brownies and let cool.

And a partridge in a pear tree

This week is our week with the boys. Our summer is, like most things in our household, scattered to the wind, since Corey have 20 days of advanced training in July, I'm taking a trip to Arkansas to spend a little QT with Em and the Handsomes, and we're moving to a bigger apartment in August. So for the first part of the summer, we put the boys in summer camp at the Y. It works perfectly because it's near Corey's work and he drops them off and collects them. Today, they were going to the zoo. At the end of the day, when you ask them what they did at camp, they can only remember one thing, so it sounds like they spent the entire day swimming or playing kickball.

When I say that as fun and fulfilling and heartwarming (I just spelled that heartworming, think I have d-o-g on the brain?) the weeks with the boys are, and how we spend the entire week without them talking about the funny shit they do, I truly mean that. I also truly mean that my house is apeshit crazy every other week, and it's unfortunately Murphy's fault.

Murphy must be good practice for how discombobulating having a baby is going to be, and here's hoping he's going to be peeing and pooing in the designated places long before 2011. He goes berserk when the boys are in the room with him--he loves his brothers and wants to bite their toes, pull down their shorts and lick their faces. This sends them into squealing fits, which excites him even more, to the point beyond which we could hope for him to communicate the need to piddle, so he goes on the floor. Not only that, he won't even eat if they are in earshot.

It's absolutely precious, and it makes me want to run fah, fah away. Corey and I are getting up there in years (him first) and it's completely overstimulating and results in everybody going to bed early because the Parents need to sit quietly on the couch and have adult beverages as early as possible after getting up early to get everybody out of the house on time, working 9-10 hours, cooking supper, feeding the brood, stepping on the dog, stopping the squealing, bathing, packing up for the next day and getting up in the middle of the night to take Murphy to potty.

You should see my laundry hampers.

The only one who delights in every second of this is Lily. She feels that this havoc is my atonement for throwing a husband, two kids and a dog at her, when she was perfectly happy being the only companion.

Family Day Photos

Rolling down Black River Lake on a party barge, drinking beer/Gatorade, singing "Redneck Yacht Club" and turning red

The protection guaranteed by SPF 85 is total crapola. Remember that for later.

Corey had drill this weekend, and we had the boys, but it was also Family Day for Dad's bass club. Cydney and I have tried to attend every Family Day since she was around 5, but this year she was the Golden Daughter who got up at the ass crack to go fishing with Dad on Saturday. Jake had a baseball tournament, so Landen and I picked up Dixie and headed to Black River Lake after donuts on Sunday morning. Murphy stayed home and his Uncle Burrell went to feed and play with him at lunchtime.

Coming out the gate, I got a speeding ticket in St. Francisville, and Dixie tried to eat the trooper when I had to roll down the window to give him my license. I wish nothing but respect and safety to all (most) law enforcement officers. Dixie is a sizeable five months, and her big ole noggin barking at the trooper before the window came all the way down had him inquiring whether she was a biting dog or not. (When Cydney moves all by her lonesome for the first time ever into her new apartment in July, we'll be glad Dixie's first instinct is to scream at you.)

Landen is very uneasy about the water. He'll put his head under in the bathtub and he did well in the hot tub at the Embassy Suites for Jake's birthday, but I'm concerned that the time I nearly let him drown at the Marriott has him freaked out about the water when he can't see the bottom. You can't see shit in Black River Lake--as the name implies, I'm sure--so he did not want to get in the water, nor was he particularly excited about riding in a vessel on top of the water. When offered the choice between Great Don's fast boat and Mr. Charlie's big boat (party barge), he opted for the party barge. So up and down the lake we go the majority of the afternoon--Cydney, Dad, Landen, Mr. Charlie and me, joined later by the Ryders and two tweenagers whose names I never caught.

Now, I don't care what level of success one reaches in life, I'd bet that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't consider riding up and down a lake on a big ass party barge drinking beverages out of coolers on a breezy, sunny Saturday afternoon to be a fine way to waste some hours. The only complaint one might file would be if the SPF 85 Sport sunblock one sprays on every hour to keep the melanoma at bay turns out to be total bullshit and sends one home looking like a big tomato.

That would be me. I felt so bad on the 2.5 hour drive home in the evening that I was forced to stop in an empty parking lot on HWY 61 in Woodville, MS, lock the doors and join Landen in napping some of the sun-tired away. I slept for 30 minutes before driving us the rest of the way home. Landen woke up to walk in the house.

P.S. Dixie loves swimming. Her mama got her a fancy dog life vest, but she doesn't need it. Who knew Cydney the Water Baby would find herself a dog who loves to swim as much as she does?

April 16?! Holy shit.

We have been remiss in posting NOTHING the past six weeks. I finished all the work I needed to complete to graduate on May 15th, so that shit is behind me and I have a Masters! Landen graduated from kindergarten and Jake won awards for being an exemplary student. On Monday, they start camp at the YMCA, and I gotta say, I think Corey and I are more excited than they are.

The big news is that we got a puppy. He is a parti-colored American cocker spaniel, born on April 7. His name is Audie Murphy Allbritton, but he’s really just Murphy. Why in the hell did we get a dog? Because I’m nesting and I can’t have a baby right now, and Corey is a dog person. Well, an animal person in general.

I admit that I am going to make all of us neurotic as shit over housetraining, but I am nothing if not routine. We’re crate training, so at night he’s in his crate and we’re taking him out every three hours. He has a habitat he’s baby-gated into during the day and someone comes at lunch to feed him and take him out—and clean up the pee and poop he’s laid on the kitchen floor, sometimes on the pee pad, sometimes not.

When we’re home, we take him out and let him play on the blanket-protected couch, or on the floor, which he “marks” I guess, and we continue taking him out. I’m a little frustrated because he shows no signs of understanding what we’re trying to accomplish here.

See, so obsessed with elimination by this dog am I that I have devoted an entire blog post to it. So blah, blah, if you read this and have suggestions, which I readily solicit, I’m taking all of them. Here are some pics of our little dude.

And how is Lily handling this mess? She just watches him, I"m sure wondering what the fuck he's doing. She will tell him to shut the hell up when we put him in the kitchen and he cries about it. Last night while we were at dinner, he got out of the kitchen gate that I apparently failed to secure, and he was hanging out in the living room, not bleeding, and she was in her chair when we got home.

Things I Learned at the Beach 2009

Fifty-year old women are having LOTS of boob jobs and putting on the bikinis to show them off, certainly not for the hairy, beer-bellied, bald 60-year old men who presumably are buying them.

The hotel-imposed rules of the beach do not matter at all. All hotels guests will swim despite the red flag, bring bottles on the beach, play their music too loud, wear thongs and leave their trash by their beach chairs.

If they are still making overweight teenage girls, they aren’t at the beach. The only teenage girls at the beach are tall, tan and lithe in string bikinis.

Snaps to all the beached whales who get out there in their swimsuits, sans cover-ups, despite the Tiny Teenagers parading in front of them.

Tim Gunn needs to do a swimsuit book, and he needs to advise the planet that those bathing suits with the tropical flowers on the black backgrounds are not okay at any age or any size.

Watch the weather very closely. If, for instance, the prediction is rain on the day you are supposed to pack up and leave the beach, and your mama tells you that one hellacious rainstorm came through last night moving your way, pack your shit up in your car the night before so that you and your family aren’t complete soaking messes for the ride home.

Sunblock, no matter the spf, should be applied every hour. Otherwise your children will burn on their backs right above the waistband of their swim trunks and they will tell you about it all the time.

Know the location of every Wal-Mart between the beach and home. This will come in handy if you decide, on a whim, that you must stop and purchase a portable DVD player on the way out so your children do not ask you if you’re in Louisiana yet every ten minutes. If, in the execution of the backseat theatre, you execute your just-out-of-the-box DVD player when you plug it into the car and it makes a shocking POP sound and begins to smoke, you will need to know the location of the next Wal-Mart so that portable device can be returned as inoperable and another one can be acquired.

Though they sound yuppie and frou-frou, white wine spritzers are delightful balcony beverages.

However much money you spend, however annoyed you get with your family during extended times in close proximity, however much sand you bring home in your bag, however many seashells you are forced to buy....every single pain in the ass is totally and completely worth it to give the beach to a child.