Gobble Gobble! Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for my family today and that everyone I love is happy & healthy!!! I am SO thankful for my beautiful, sweet, baby and AWESOME husband. I hope everyone has a wonderful Turkey Day!!!

Pumpkin Ice Cream Torte! Happy Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Ice Cream Torte

Thaw 10 Minutes before serving to slice

12 Servings

Ingredients

3/4 Cup Graham Cracker Crumbs

2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar

2 Tablespoons finely chopped Pecans

2 Tablespoons Butter, melted

Cooking Spray

1 Cup canned unsweetened pumpkin

1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

1/2 Teaspoon Ground Allspice

1/8 Teaspoon Ground Ginger

1/8 Teaspoon Ground Cloves

9 cups Vanilla low-fat Ice Cream

(about 1 1/2 cartons)

1/4 cup finely chopped Pecans, toasted and divided

1/4 cup jarred Carmel topping

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Combine first 4 ingredients (mixture will be crumbly).

Firmly press crumb mixture into bottom of a 9 inch springform pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

3. Combine pumpkin and the next 4 ingredients (through cloves) in a bowl. Soften 6 cups ice cream. Add to pumpkin mixture, stirring to blend. Spoon half of mixture into prepared pan. Cover with plastic wrap. Freeze 1 hour or until firm. Cover and freeze remaining pumpkin ice cream.

4. Soften remaining 3 cups vanilla ice cream. Stir in 3 tablespoons pecans. Spread over pumpkin ice cream layer. Freeze 1 hour or until firm. Soften remaining 3 cups pumpkin ice cream mixture. Spread over vanilla ice cream layer. Cover, freeze 8 hours or until firm. Cut torte into 12 wedges. Place 1 wedge on each plate. Place topping in microwave safe bowl and microwave 45 seconds. Top each serving with Tablespoon Carmel topping, sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon pecans.

This is one of the dishes I am bringing to Thanksgiving at Mario's moms. Thought I'd share. Yummmm!!!

1st Birthday Take 3

I LOVE sweet potato!

Last weekend Mario's dad and step mom came over to celebrate for Stella's birthday. We didn't get a chance to reschedule so we have been celebrating over the last few weeks! I'm so glad we got to do an actual "party" when we were in Seattle.

Twirling! :)

Yeeee Haw Cowgirl!

Nana went to visit her family in Texas last weekend and brought Stella a cowgirl outfit and boots!

Mashed Potatoes

Stella loves mashed potatoes...can you tell?

Beautiful day in the neighborhood!

It was a absolutely beautiful day yesterday. The bluest sky and around 80 degrees. Since we both were finally feeling better and Mario was fishing Stella and I went to the beach and hung out. It was the first time we've gone since she's been walking so it was fun to see. She caught on pretty quick. When I first put her down in the sand she just stood there for a few minutes not sure what to do. She liked picking up shells. Although we had to work on not putting them in our mouth. ;) It was a great afternoon!

Pink Bathrobe

Stella and her baby!

Nana's wagon!

Nana brought Stella's birthday presents over yesterday since we are still trying to reschedule her party. One of her presents was a red little people lego wagon. FUN!!!

Playtime

Poor sick little birthday girl.

Our poor little baby was sick on her 1st birthday. I mean sick. This is her first cold, flu, anything. First fever other then teething. So she's been pretty lucky making it a year BUT boy did she get it when she did. I'm sure everyone has already heard enough about it from me worrying so I won't get in to it too much. I just hope she isn't a baby that has a high fever every time she gets sick. When I would ask for advice and someone would say well my baby never had a fever that high (which quite a few people did) it just ran a million scenarios over in my head. None of which I would like to visit on a regular basis. So we now have experience with fever rash, which is actually good so I know what it looks like. She's gotten sick to her stomach for the first time and now she has her first cough. It's now been 2 weeks this darn thing has been running it's course. Her sleep of course has been suffering. I think she has woken at least once a night. Hopefully we are in the last phase which is the rattly coughing part.

Ok, moving on. So I haven't been updating much since with the sicky we haven't really been doing a whole lot. Her birthday weekend we had to postpone her party. Still working on a reschedule date and we are going in to the holidays now so it may be a first birthday/Thanksgiving. Just Kidding...well kinda. I could not hold out on our presents for her any longer so we gave them to her slowly over that weekend. Here are a few.

I may revisit the whole "I can't believe my baby is 1" post in the near future. All I am going to say now is it's all true. It goes so fast, your children change your life in ways you couldn't see possible, they make you better people, etc. Pretty much everything I have ever read that people express about their children is true, well only the good stuff of course. I think to just sum it up I recently read a quote by Brad Paisley. Yes, I know lame. BUT it is still ringing in my head and will remember it probably forever.

"Having children is like having your heart running around outside your body".

I know, I know. Not the most eloquent but so true.