Lean on..

As much as my baby girl likes to walk, she likes to lean on things as well! If there is something that she can lean against she will, like a dog, a chair, a warm rock, ANYTHING. You know I tell her "if you have time to lean you have time to clean". She generally just looks at me and rolls her eyes and says "mmooooomm" in that snooty teenage way, oh wait that is not happening yet, but I just keep replaying that over and over in my head when she does in fact become a teenager. Oh help us all! But right now she is just all cuteness and love and TALKING! We went to the river several days ago with Ben and Noah and she talked the whole way home. Have no idea what she said, but it sure seemed important to her.
We are heading to the big ATL this weekend for Grandma's 94th birthday, WAHOO! Pictures and goodtimes to come.

Don't forget to check out our produce over there on the left. Worth sure is proud of his carrots.

BellaRosey getting her "lean on" with Rainy.

I have been burning up the new Avett Brothers cd The Second Gleam on my ipod. You should check them out. They have great harmonies and their songwriting is just amazing. These guys are quickly becoming one of my favorite bands. It took me awhile but I just keep coming back to them.

All about baby

Allow me to brag on my baby for just a moment.... My little Bean Burrito turned 14 months old, one year and 2 months old, on Tuesday and with that birthday she decided that walking would be her main mode of transportation. We made that big declaration last week that she was walking and then we did not see her do it again for awhile, but not this week. With this walking as come a lot of independence on her part, and she is now forming her own opinions. She is still the sweetest thing ever, but she is knowing now more what she likes and does not like. One day she will be eating tomatoes off the vine and the next day she has no interest in them. This is all fine with me. She is exploring and learning. Which brings me to my main point of this blog, I am in awe of watching a human being from the beginning, birth, to now learn how to naturally figure out eating, and crawling, and walking and all the other things that come along with growing up. Babies all do it all in their own time. It is just amazing. I did nothing to teach her how to crawl or walk, she just naturally does it on her own. Isn't that just amazing! BellaRose is just the neatest little person ever, she is so sweet and she loves things in their specific place. She always has to put her sippy on a coaster on the coffee table, this particular action just makes my heart swell with joy, I am sure we all know why! Right now she very into waving to people and telling them "hi". She does this to anyone and everyone that passes her by. She makes tough men with lots of tattoos and earrings (totally stereotyping) who never even looked twice at a baby break out in a smile and wave back to her. She brings such joy to so many. This baby of ours is pretty awesome. The list goes on an on, but I will not bore you with it all right now, but instead drag it out over a period of time! Thank you for letting me brag, I needed to get that out, phew!

So...

... I could not find my phone the other day while BellaRose was taking her nap. I looked for it, looked for it, could not find it, BellaRose woke up from her nap, so I looked for it, looked for it, could not find it. I finally found it in her clothes, THAT SHE HAD ON! Awesome, right?!
....Worth, BellaRose, Rainy, Atticus, and I decided to have a picnic in Montreat. It was lovely, got the dogs out, ate wonderful food, BellaRose played in the creek. We had to take Worth's straight drive truck b/c we had the dogs. As we were leaving I thought the truck was in 1st, it was not! It was in neutral. I rolled right into the minivan that was behind me. Of course it is a rental van, again, awesome right?!
....I decided to pick up "The Secret Live of Bees" again. Katie is reading it again, for like the 3rd or 4th time. I thought, that sure was a good book, so I am reading it for the 2nd time. I just love summer reading. It reminds me of when I was in school and we had required summer reading. I always read way more then I had too and won things when I got back to school, like school supplies!

Here are pictures from our picnic, pre accident, and pre-feeling stupid! These might be some of my favorite pictures yet!

More river adventures!

Well we did it again, we went back to Wilson Creek to play in some water. We met up with Steve Hogan, and some other EOW friends down by the river. The boys paddled the bare bones river (as in having to push themselves over rocks b/c there was no water) and us ladies played in the water with our babies. Yet another perfect day in the sun enjoying the mountains that we live in. BellaRose of course had a blast playing in the water. I am thinking I am going to have to get her swim lessons.

And since you were wondering or not about what I did while Worth was away, I will tell you! One of my dearest friends from Appalachian came into town and spent the night with me with her husband and 8 month pregnant belly. Byerly, Corbin, and baby Chesson were so much fun to hang out with and it has been years since we have, so this was such a special treat for BellaRose and me! We certainly hope that it will not be several years again! It is funny how life gets going and people slip out of it without you even knowing until it has been way too long. I just got in touch this week with one of my best friends from Elementary school, Abra Lee! She was my first "real" friend. We did everything together. By the time middle school came though, we went to different schools and the time just slipped away. The Internet is an amazing tool for finding old buddies. I just "googled" Abra Lee right up, and there she was, The Landscape Manager for the Atlanta Airport, now how cool is that! Good to be back in touch with you old friend!

I would also be remiss if I also did not mention RIBFEST. That's right, ribfest, the wonderful event that BellaRose and I attended on Saturday evening. I am pretty sure Worth was slightly jealous that I was there while he was surfing. I am constantly amazed at lines people are willing to stand in when they want something real bad. I guess you don't go to ribfest and not want the best ribs at the fairground. You would not believe the lines these people were in, and it was HOT outside. Needless to say I did not stand in that line. We had a great time, and it was perfect for some people watching.

The sunflower house is getting there, sort of. It is more a house for "small" people, and it is perfect because BellaRose certainly qualifies for small. My Mammoth sunflowers have not turned out to be so Mammoth. They are standing at about hip height. They may still grow, but I am not seeing them be 10 feet tall. I will of course show you more pictures as we get more sunflowers! I am also going to try to update you on pickings from our garden on the left, and it may from time to time show pictures of the sunflower house. You just never know with me what I am going to do.

One final note, Worth and I believe BellaRose to be walking. We have been tough on ole' girl, not giving her credit for "walking" when she takes a couple of steps, but today we will give her credit. She walked several places all on her own will. I will also tell you that it is a very slow deliberate walk, she is certainly not go to win any races. Well know that I have "talked" your ear off I am going to sign off. Hope you have a wonderful day.

PS~ I am entering a contest to win a gorgeous quilt, but I have to tell all you about it as well in order to enter my name more times. I hate to do this b/c I really love this quilt and I NEVER win anything, but you have to go to this blog and listen to her cool music and enter to win, and if you do you HAVE to give me the quilt, it is part of the rules! So go to Old Red Barn Co.. Good luck, I am counting on you!

Big Bertha!

Worth left our house at 1:27 am on Friday morning to head to Wilmington to surf the waves from Bertha. He had stalked the weather.com and the surf websites all week to make this choice. He finally decided to go on Thursday evening. He met up with some of our old buddies from Edge of the World, Nigel, and Landon and hit the water. Worth had a wonderful time. He says he is beat down today, but so thrilled he went. The waves were about 4-6 feet. Nigel took most of the pictures and we so appreciate you for that and for taking Worth in for the weekend! Thanks man.
Per worth~ The top picture is a nice wave on Masonboro Island, the bottom pictures are all Carolina Beach from left to right~ Worth, Worth, and Landon. The last row is Worth, Worth, and a guy named Joe.

The fruits of our labor

We are finally getting some produce from the garden. We pick cherry tomatoes off the vine almost daily. We only pick one though, we just can't seem to wait to eat them. They are so very good. We will soon have a ton of them, but right now they are only turning red one at a time. Worth has gotten to eat his beloved tomato sandwich on VERY cheap white bread (those are his demands, it has to be cheap). Let me see if I can get this right, he said "the sandwich tasted like summer in juice form", or something like that. Basically it was good! Well I wanted to give back to my blog community this morning with some recipes that we have been loving on. I get so many wonderful recipes from you, so here are some from my kitchen.

If you are like us then you have so much basil in your garden that you don't know what to do with it all. Well here is a recipe for Chicken Holy Basil, although we don't use Holy Basil, just the kind that we have which is Genovese Basil. This recipe calls for 3 cups, so it is perfect. It also calls for Thai Chiles, but we use what we have a lot of in our garden, which right now is Jalapeno and Serreno Chiles. This is a Martha Stewart effort with a Grant household spin. Also you can make this recipe as hot as you like just adjust the peppers.

Chicken Holy Basil

10 garlic cloves, minced (people will love you!)

6 fresh Thai Chilies, thinly sliced crosswise (we mince)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Asian Fish Sauce (don't be afraid of this)

2 teaspoons soy sauce

4 1/2 teaspoons sugar

Freshly Ground Pepper

3 cups loosely packed fresh Holy Basil (or whatever you have) plus more for garnish

Sticky Rice for serving

1. Mash together garlic and chiles using a mortar and pestle or the flat side of a large knife (we don't usually do this step, but just mince them and combine in oil). Heat oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until garlic is just golden, about 20 seconds.

2. Add chicken, cook, stirring often, until chicken is cooked through, about 4 minutes. Stir in fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper. Add basil; cook stirring constantly, 1 minute. Season with more pepper, if desired. Serve over rice, garnish with basil.

Here is another recipe we had last night for Sweet Potato Fries with Basil Salt and Garlic Mayonnaise . It is OUTSTANDING and another good way to use up that basil. We had those fries with Grilled Romesco-Style Pork. Seriously what is the point of eating out when this is all right here in your kitchen. Now on the pork I just got The Earth Bound Baby Greens and placed as much as I wanted on a platter and then drizzled the hot dressing over the greens. I also did not use roasted red peppers. I hope you guys cook this and if you do tell me how you liked it!

I simply cannot do a blog entry without posting pictures of my Sweet Girl. The world must know the beauty that is BellaRose (only being slightly serious here)! Sorry about the feminine products on the first pictures, us moms gotta do what we can sometimes to keep them entertained. These pictures pretty much sum up her favorite things to do, play in my makeup, give high fives (or ten), and play under the table.

Proud to be an American

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. It just feels so.......summer! It is cookouts, and friends, and independence, and being patriotic, and feeling like one community. I love community and togetherness. Maybe this why we like to cook people dinner so often. I feel like on the 4th of July people set aside their differences and their party lines and celebrate the freedom that we do have here. What a great country we live in. I am so thankful. I was telling my friends I feel particularly more patriotic this year. While at the beach we saw a big Army fighter helicopter fly along the coast and a American troop sat there in the open door waving at all us beach goers. It was very moving, here I am enjoying the beaches of the Atlantic coast while people are fighting for us, it is enough to make you cry and sing the national anthem. To commemorate these feelings I made an American Flag cheesecake, come on who does not love that!

We did enjoy a cookout of our own this 4th of July with friends. BellaRose and I had gone to pick blueberries with Heidi and her kids, and they just happened to make the perfect stars to this cheesecake and they just happen to be one of BellaRose's favorite fruits! While picking she would just pull them off the tree and eat them. I am pretty sure BellaRose felt patriotic as well with her red, white, and blue stars dress (sorry about the b/w picture).
Look at her being such a big girl walking with her daddy. She does take a couple of steps on her own, but not very often. She likes the security of knowing there is a hand to hold nearby, but really who doesn't!

On Sunday we headed back up to the High Country (notice a trend here) with Brother Ben in tow and went to one of my favorite spots Gragg Prong. I love this place because the trail goes along the river, and there are so many places to swim. Of course we get to this spot pictured and get BellaRose in her swimsuit and the boys jump in the water once and the rains started falling. It was torrential downpour! BellaRose did amazing and did not even care. I guess it is all water to her. The rain lasted about 20 minutes and then it cleared and the sun came out and we got all excited again, set everything out to dry and then another huge cloud came, so this time we decided to back it up. We still had a blast though. We got to see our good friend Steve in Banner Elk and meet his special lady friend, got BellaRose outside playing in creeks and streams. This is what it is all about!

A little blog housekeeping~ I changed around the links to the left. You can now tell when people update their blogs which may help us all save time, as I tend to go through the list everyday to see who updated. Also just to let you know, as more people are joining in on the blog world, whether they be reader or fellow blogger themselves, you can (most of the time) just click on an image to make it larger. Also I will add links from time to time and I always change the color and make the word bold when that particular word is a link to another web page. I hope this helps all you newbies out there. Thanks for sticking out another epic blog. You must really like us!

Down time

We enjoyed some down time this past weekend. It was actually pretty nice, what with all the river, beach, and lake adventures we have had as of late. Worth went up to Banner Elk on Sunday to play in a gorge and jump off waterfalls with Steve, and BellaRose and I went on a lovely sushi date together and walked around downtown Asheville. It is so nice to be able to take Little Bean to restaurants and have her eat the cuisine there and not have to worry about bottles and baby food. Now she did not eat raw sushi but she did LOVE the spicy crab salad!

Grandmothers are good for A LOT of things, but one of them might just be that they DO bring there camera to the beach. T-Love (Worth's mom) got some pictures of BR on the beach and I was able to scan them into the computer, and now here they are for you eyes to enjoy. Sorry the quality is not so great b/c of being scanned, but you can pretty much see how much fun she had. The bottom right is of the "lazy river" that we spent many hours on. We spent so much time going around in a big crazy circle that I actually was dizzy when I got out!

Well BellaRose and I are off to Greenville for the night to soak up the sun at the pool and hang with the family.

PS~ For you local people around "the hood" don't forget about our garden. We are about to have massive amounts of produce that will need a good home and a good mouth so please do not hesitate to come on over. We actually really mean this and are not just saying it! PLEASE!

So....urine is sterile, right?

Oh My! Have I some things to tell you. So first lets begin with the urine. I am sure you were wondering. You know how I have told you that BellaRose is a water baby? And that anywhere there is water she is playing in it? Do you see where this is going? In our attempt to conserve water we don't always flush when it is yellow, we of course let it mellow. I try to remember to close the toilet lid, and I try to remember to close the door, but some mornings in my haze it does not always happen. Well I hear splashing while I am on the computer (darn internet!) and you guessed Little Bean is playing in the toilet that has not been exactly flushed!! Oh No! Not only is she playing in the toilet bowl but she is also dipping my old toothbrush in the bowl and brushing her teeth!!! Oh don't you just want to die. You gotta give her some credit though, she sure has been paying attention when I brush her teeth. The week only goes down hill from there for her. She got a fat lip which you can almost see in the above picture while she was crawling. She got stung by a bee while out playing in the sandbox. She just snatched a bee out of the air, and apparently bees don't like it when you do that, and stung sweet girl on the thumb, and we all know how much SHE LOVES HER THUMB! But praise the Lord she is not allergic. She has that going for her. And just look at that picture, is she not her mother's daughter! My swiffer and I are tight and I just hope I pass that love on to her. That is one of the things I am just not willing to give up on in my quest to be environmentally conscious. I have tried to give it up, but I just can't! I am addicted to my swiffer. If you had 2 dogs and a baby who is ALWAYS on the floor then you would agree. I do many other things to lesson my carbon footprint, but giving up the swiffer is not one of them. Hey at least I use both sides!

When you see a cornfield do you ever just want to run through it, like in the movies? Do you ever wonder if you would get a paper cut on your eyeball if you did run through a cornfield? I often wonder about that, but boy oh boy what I would do to run through a cornfield. You wouldn't exactly say we have a cornfield, but I do have a couple of rows of silver queen corn and we just may have to have a harvest party when it is time for picking. BellaRose's sunflower house is doing well too and I really can't wait to see this project through to fruition. Worth and I had heaven in our mouth the other day. We shared one red cherry tomato and it was all warm from the sun and just made us so excited for more! I keep begging Worth to let us cut that big green tomato for fried green tomatoes but he is REALLY wanting that for a tomato sandwich when it turns red, so I will grant the boy that one wish! The pumpkins are thriving as well and I am really holding out for a 300 pounder. Keep your fingers crossed!

As I mentioned the other day, it was Margaret's birthday this past week so I made vanilla cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting and chocolate butterflies. I must give credit where credit is due and tell you that I stole the idea from Cortney, as she made these cupcakes the other day. Also Newell was in town and helped me make the chocolate butterflies. So thank you both, ladies! The butterflies are so much fun to make, it is like you are coloring, but with chocolate. Also the cupcakes actually made the trip down to the lake and sat on the dock ALL day. The butterflies did melt a little, but they actually almost tasted better that way. So cute, right?!

Here is a cell phone picture of a shark that Worth caught while were at the beach. He is holding the shark upside down so it would be more docile, but doesn't it look so ominous? And did I tell you I caught a shark too, sort off. Kevin had cast out and asked me to hold the fishing pole while he was getting another one ready. After awhile he told me to real it in and I started to and I thought that I felt a tug, but then thought it was the current pulling the weight, well sure enough it was another shark! Worth's was about 3 1/2 feet and mine was a little smaller. This only made Worth and Kevin more excited, they ended up staying out there until 11 at night. They waded out in the water up to there chest and decided that might not be a good idea since they were catching sharks and all. Good Idea, ya think!

So being one who never backs down from a challenge (could be why I destroyed my precious 4runner in a pond, but that is another story for another time) I am going to make bagels! Niki made bagels the other day, which I am so impressed by, and I have always been a little scared to make bagels, but Niki said it wasn't bad so I am going to try it as well. I guess I am into copying people and the food they make. Let me also mention that I was never actually challenged by Niki, I guess it is just my competitive nature!

See you soon and hopefully I will be serving you some bagels, or something!

Lake Days and Friends!

Here we go again, a big long post. Sorry about that we just can't help it. We like picture, we take so many, so I am doing good just showing you 13 pictures. So all excuses aside, may I present to you Pearson Parker! Look how cute this little boy is. I really could just eat him up! His parents are our good friends Greg and Dru from college. They came up and spent the night with us on Friday and Pearson and BellaRose had a blast playing in the sandbox and the pool. They almost look alike with their blonde hair and brown eyes. Such sweet babies!

Thanks for coming to stay with us Greg, Dru and Pearson! Our door is always open so please come on down (said just like in The Price is Right).

One of my best friends, Margaret, had a birthday last week and to celebrate we went to Lake James over the weekend to camp! This lake is gorgeous. Mountains surrounding the whole thing. I seriously could live here. Worth's sister babysat BellaRose all day Saturday and she spent the night with them too so Worth and I got to camp. I love my baby and I missed her the second I dropped her off, but I gotta tell you, I needed that. We have not camped in so long, and the camping we did this weekend was on a dock, but hey it was in a tent and our backs were sore in the morning. If that is not camping I am not sure what is. We aren't one of those brave parents that are willing to take the baby camping yet. We thought about starting off in the backyard to see if it is even worth the effort. Here are a couple of pictures, lots of jumping off the dock, and only one back (Matt) that smacked the water so loud I think it was heard in Black Mountain!

Worth's sister and her family just happened to be getting a boat Sunday morning at Lake James as well so they brought us BellaRose and we got to go on the boat with them for a little bit. I can tell you with full confidence that BellaRose DID NOT like the life jacket, at least she could still get to that thumb!

The pontoon went all of about 10 mph, but the kids (read-Worth) had fun none the less. Ethan saw Noah out on the tube and wanted to go out there and show his older brother up. He popped up on that tube as soon as he could. We were all amazed and it sort of looks like he was as well.

Just look at that view with Shortoff Mountain in the background.

Next post we will be talking garden, fishing at the beach, and some cupcakes that I made for Margaret. See this post is not as long as it could have been!