Yummiest recipe EVER

St. Paul's Hot Chicken Salad

2 cups chicken, cooked and cubed (I used a Rotisserie chicken and shredded it)

1 1/2 cups rice, cooked

1 cup celery, chopped

1/2 cup onion, chopped

1 cup grated cheese

1 can water chestnuts

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

dash cayenne pepper

salt and pepper to taste

1 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 cup mayo

1/4 cup water

potato chips, crushed

Mix mayo and water together with whisk. Mix all other ingredients (except chips) together and then add to mayo/water. Put in 9x13 inch baking dish and top with crushed potato chips. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Serve warm. 

This is AMAZING. My mom's good friend, Lil, gave it to me years ago (it's her husband Shay's Aunt Jessie's recipe) and I can't believe it's taken me this long to make it. A new favorite in our house!! 

Happy Fall, y'all!!

I'm LOVING the little taste of Fall we've been having lately! It's been in the 60's every morning this week, and even though it eventually rises to the 80's, it's still been nice to feel to crisp, cool air if only for a few hours. I dressed Emma Claire in her new Fall dress yesterday and couldn't resist taking some pictures of my sweet girl. 

She turned 15 months old on Sunday and gets sassier every day. I had a miscarriage two years ago today and got pregnant with Emma Claire just two weeks later. When I think back on the heartbreak we experienced that day it is bittersweet because if we hadn't lost that baby, we'd never have our precious Emma Claire. God works in mysterious ways, and we thank Him every day for it! :)

More...

Christie hitting Andrew in the nose...

Beautiful sunset

Restaurant on the beach

Hanging out on the beach (that's our house in the background)

Brad, our tree-climber

Brad had a case of the grumpies, so Christie and Lauren had an intervention...

It was so hot, you could fry an egg...until I tried that and it didn't work. I left the egg by our pool until the next day when the boys replaced it with the scrambled eggs pictured earlier. Those eggs later ended up in somebody's lap, somebody's bathing suit, and the pool. :)

Sorry I'm a day later than promised for this post. I'm telling you, I cannot put this book down! I finished Twilight and have now moved on to New Moon...this is the most addictive series I've ever read. We're going to the NC mountains for a church retreat this weekend and I'm looking forward to the 5 hrs in the car each way, plus the down time over the weekend, to read. Is it wrong to read about vampires on a church retreat? :)

Anyway, back to our trip! We left on the 13th with our friends Christie, Brad, Lauren, and Andrew and drove 10 hours to Islamorada, one of the upper Keys in Florida. We stayed in a gorgeous house on the ocean with its own pool and private beach. The boys rented a boat (next time we do this we'll take one---it was pricey and the boat wasn't the greatest, but it was better than no boat at all) for half of the week and spent lots of time fishing or taking us girls for boat rides. We saw all kinds of cool creatures on our boat rides, including at least 50 enormous sea turtles, a handful of sting rays, and a big group of dolphins up close. We went snorkeling one afternoon and got to touch all kinds of cool fish, and spent a day on the boat looking for manatees but never did find one. Christie, Lauren and I spent one day at the spa getting pampered...one of my favorite things we did, for sure. My three goals for the vacation were easily accomplished: eating, drinking, and sleeping. :) 

Here are some pictures...I took over 200, so if you're really interested in seeing all of them just let me know and I'll send you the link for my album at Shutterfly. I highly recommend Islamorada to anybody who is looking to plan a vacation---we'll definitely be going back! 

P.S. Hunter, are you happy that I updated now? :) 

Sneak peek...

...at a few pictures from our fabulous trip to the Florida Keys last week. I'm HOOKED on the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer and cannot put my book down long enough to do a full blog post, and on top of that, premier week is finally here so I hit the couch as soon as the kiddos were down for the night and I've been watching tv all night! Such a tough life, I tell you! :) Anyway, here are a few pics and I'll do a longer post tomorrow with all of the juicy details (if you can call eating, drinking, and relaxing juicy)...

Back to CSI Miami now! 

Love it!

Playing outside

The children were outside playing this afternoon and looked so sweet that I had to grab the camera and capture their cuteness forever...

First day of school!

Emma Claire had her first day of "school" last week! She is going to the Mother's Morning Out program at our church one day a week from 9-12, and she loved it, although you can't tell from the pictures--I couldn't get her to smile because she was so interested in what was going on around her. :) I think it will be great for both her and for me. She is around other children a good bit during playgroups and in the church nursery, but this will be a good way for her to get even more social time while giving me 3 hours a week to get stuff done without a child to tote around. Yay for school! :)

I'm so mean...

This makes me laugh---mean, I know, but it's so funny! This was Grayson's reaction in the car wash not long ago. He hated being in the car wash but he loves watching this video. Go figure. :)

Birthday poster

At Grayson's school, every time a child has a birthday they have a celebration of life ceremony. The parents are invited to watch, and are instructed to bring a poster with pictures of the child's life. Since Ben is an architect, he refuses to make an ordinary birthday collage like all of the other children have---he has to make the mack-daddy of all collages. It was cute last year (and I was SO embarrassed--it was three times the size of the other posters!) and it's even cuter this year (and smaller!). He blurred out Grayson's whole name for this blog post, but besides that it's the same as what we took to school today for Grayson's ceremony. Can you tell who is always behind the camera? There are several pictures of Grayson with his daddy but only one with me in it--I bet we have less than 10 pictures taken over his whole lifetime of the two of us. We need to get better about that--I don't want the kiddos to think their mommy wasn't around when they were younger! 

In other news, Grayson is doing GREAT with potty training! We're in week 3 of potty training boot camp, and he stays dry most of the time and has an occasional poop accident. He's still sleeping in pull-ups or diapers, but he's in "big boy underwear" during the day, both at home and at school. I never knew how exhausting potty training is on the parents---he uses the potty upwards of 25 times most days so we are constantly racing to the potty, cheering, and giving stickers. It will all be worth it when I only have one child to buy diapers for! :)