Chocolate Cherry Mice- Recipe

At the request of JG, I am going to post the recipe for the Chocolate Cherry Mice (it is really simple)

Ingredients:

1 bag hershey kisses

marachino cherries (with stems)

1 bag milk chocolate chips

1 bag sliced almonds

red hot candies

Directions:

1. Create a double-boiler on the stove, pour the bag of milk chocolate chips and slowly melt them. (it is easier to do this with 2 people so one can constantly stir the chocolate, but I usually do it by myself)

2. Drain the cherries and one by one pick them up by the stem and dip them in the melted chocolate, covering the whole cherry. Lay them flat on a cookie sheet with parchment paper (makes it easier later to take them off)

3. Once the cherry is on the parchment paper take a hershey kiss and attach it to the front of the cherry.

4. Then take 2 sliced almonds and gently slide them behind the hershey kiss to create ears (be careful not to break the almonds it does happen)

5. Last but not least take a toothpick or a small knife and place 2 dots of chocolate onto the hershey kiss, then place 2 red hots to create the eyes. (I usually wait until I have all the mice made and then I go back and add the eyes)

6. After you have completed them place them in the fridge to harden and then enjoy!!

If everything goes just right they will look like this:

Big thanks to my Mom for giving me the recipe and teaching me how to make them!

Fall!

For the last few days here in NC we have been getting nothing but constant rain. At first I loved it but now not so much lol. Much of the state was put on a flood watch until 6pm tonight so we will see how that goes. One thing the rain has done is cool it down tremendously, it was getting a little ridiculous being mid-September and still having 90 degree weather. With the temp change it makes it finally feel like fall! This is by far my favorite time of year, from yummy candles to decorating for holidays, it all makes me happy. Kyle and I are huge fans of Halloween, we have slowly been buying more decorations and we plan on getting everything up this weekend. This time of year also means that I will be spending a lot of time in the kitchen baking (90% of what I make goes to work with Kyle for all the guys)!! This makes me so happy, this year I will be making a lot of these:

Chocolate Cherry Mice

and a lot of these:

Yummy Cupcakes!

Last night confirmed that I will making a lot of mice for Halloween because everyone at the Hail and Farewell was asking me when I would be sending more into work haha (even the Batallion Commander asked me).

Once we get all of our decorations up I will post pictures, I am really excited!

Happy Thursday!!!

Third time wasn't a charm

We all know the saying "third time is a charm" well I was really hoping that that would be the case for me and Kyle. It's not. I woke up yesterday, the day I was expecting "my friend" and got nothing. A little part of me got really excited and was hoping that maybe this was it. I was going to give it a week before testing but this morning "my friend" made an appearance. As hard as I tried not to I broke down, this was our 3rd try with clomid and no success. I called Kyle on my lunch break and cried, it is so hard wanting something so much and then having it be so hard to get it. He reassured me that we will just keep trying and that it will happen when it's our time. I got through the rest of the day and headed home. I knew Kyle was on his way home so I was excited to start our weekend. He walked in and surprised me with roses, he said he got them just because he wanted me to know how much he loves me. He is definitely the best and I am so blessed.

My sister and I were talking about our (mine and Kyles) struggle. She told me that if for some reason I couldn't carry my own child that she would do it for us. Now, my sister was not the biggest fan of being pregnant, but she told me that she would do it again just so Kyle and I can have a baby. I love my sister so much for being so willling to help. She is amazing!!

I am going to call my doctors office on Monday and see where we go from here. I am sure they will recommend trying IUI which we are ok with. I'm thinking I may hold off on that until after the holidays so we can have a few months to just try on our own. I really never thought I would be 25 and struggling like this, but I have to just relax and let things happen the way they are supposed to.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Weekend at the Races!

This past weekend was probably one of the best times Kyle and I have had in a while! Friday evening we headed off to Charlotte to see my sister, brother-in-law and watch some good racing.

We got to our hotel room at the Hilton (thanks to Chris and Kalitta Motorsports for getting us the room.), and we lounged around for a few hours before we headed off to the airport to pick up my sister:

Hahaha, Kyle relaxing

We picked up my sister at about 11:15pm and it was sooo great to see her! Back to the hotel we went so we could meet up with Chris. It has been quite a while since we have seen him, so it was really nice. We decided it was time to get some rest so we went back to our room and went to bed.

We woke up bright and early Saturday morning, we stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Yum!!! I could eat there all the time. We got to the track and immediately headed for Kalitta's pit area. We felt so special because we got to hang out in the hospitality area, free food, drinks and best of all people watch! My brother-in-law came and hung out as much as he could on his down time:

Lisa and Chris

Me and Kyle

The team working like crazy

Qualifying finished up around 7pm, so we all headed back to the hotel to get some good. We ended up going to Smokey Bones and boy did we have fun. Between the beer and shots we were all feeling pretty good, lol. We laughed and jokes for about 2 1/2 hours until we decided to head back to the hotel. We ended up going to the bar and hanging out with the rest of the team and some of the ESPN announcers. It was awesome!!!! We finally hit our limit, so we headed back to our room at about 1am. Man was it a long night haha.

Good times!!

Oh yea we got some sun!

Lisa, Kyle and I were definitely dragging on Sunday morning, but we headed off to the track at about 9. All I can say is that Chris and the team had a great day!! They ended up going to the final but coming up a little short, they did such an amazing job!!!

Heading off for the final

Doug Kalitta and Kent backing him up

Overall it was a fantastic weekend spending time with my sister, Chris and the team was awesome!! Thank you to everyone!!

Me and Lisa after the race was over

The 4 of us!



I hope everyone had an awesome weekend!!!!

Awesome Weekend!!! (Quick Post)

All I can say is that this weekend was awesome!!!!! Kyle and I had the best time at the races with my sister Lisa and her husband Chris!!!!! When I am more coherant and fully functional I will post a full run down along with pictures!!

Happy Monday!!!

Quick Update

I figured I would take a second and update everyone on my mom. We got amazing news yet again on Monday when she was in Phoenix. They tested her glucose as well as her tumor markers, here are the results:

Glucose:

1 month ago: 158

Now: 117

Tumor Markers:

1 month ago: 99.5

Now: 79.5

Holy Cow!!!! Another 20pt drop in her tumor markers. Her doctor is beyond thrilled!! (I don't want to say this too loud, but she is halfway to remission!!!!!!!!!)

The love and support from everyone is amazing!

Kyle is in the field for the next few days so I have been keeping myself busy with lots of re-organizing around the house. There are still so many boxes that we never unpacked and stuff that still needs to find a home. Hopefully, I can conquer this all tonight.

I just wish I could skip straight to Friday evening because we will be headed to Charlotte for a race, but we have to make a pit-stop at the airport to pick up MY SISTER!!!! I am soooo excited that she decided to fly in. She was originally going to surprise her husband Chris (who works on a race team) but decided that she wanted him to know so that he had something to look forward to.

Well I hope everyone is having a Wonderful Wednesday!!!

Help Find a Cure!!

Kyle and I have a month and a half before we participate in the Purple Stride 5k for Pancreatic Cancer. We are so amazed at the love and support we have been given for doing this. So many people have generously donated to help us reach our goal. As it stands right now we are $200 away from meeting our goal of $1,000. I am going to post the link again and if you are able to help it would be so appreciated, even something as small as a $1 helps. Thank you!!

Purple Stride 5k

You can either click this link or the link on the right side of my page (all donations are tax deductible)

As we all know yesterday marked 9 years since the horrific attacks on America. My thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families who lost loved ones on that terrible day. Also, my thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones due to the war. They will never be forgotten. I am so proud to be an Army Wife and I am proud to be an American! God Bless America!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend!

my favorite!

I posted a few weeks ago about how my Dad had won at the races. I finally was able to get a hold of the picture that was taken in the winner circle:

Kylie, Lisa, Mom, Dad, Greg, Mike and Lisa

I absolutely LOVE this picture!

Fantastic Weekend!!

I can honestly say that Kyle and I have had one of the best weekends! Here is a run down of what we did:

Friday:

Unfortunately I had to work (which really wasn't a big deal since I got off at 3:00). Kyle was finally able to use the gift certificare I got him for a full round of golf. He had a great time he ended up golfing with some General who helped him with his game. After I got home we relaxed for a bit and then we watched "Public Enemies". LOVE LOVE this movie!

Saturday:

We got up at about 6:30am to get ready for the Asheboro Zoo, it took us about an hour and a half to get there. It was so much fun. We were honestly surprised at how big it was (It was about 1.2 miles long). We spent about 4 1/2 hours walking, taking pictures, and enjoying the beautiful weather. They had such a fun selection of animals and they were all so entertaining, here are a few pictures we took:

Right after I took this picture, the Lion opened his mouth and let out the biggest roar, it was awesome!!!

Us <3

This little monkey kept getting picked on.

"I like to move it, move it"

Sunday:

We slept in a little bit and then got ready for our day in Wilmington. We started out day by taking a tour of the USS North Carolina. All I can say is WOW! This battleship is absolutely amazing! It tooks us about 2 1/2 hours to go through the entire thing and we still felt like we didn't see everything. Now we have heard people say that the ship is haunted. We definitely believe it now. We were exploring the engine room and there was a radio and megaphone attached to a control panel (THEY DON'T WORK). Kyle and I were both standing next to it and all of the sudden it sounded like it turned on, we heard static and what sounded like someone trying to talk. We looked at each other because we knew what we heard. It was a truly unreal experience.

This is the radio!

Hanging out on the USS North Carolina

After we left the ship we headed to Downtown Wilmington, we stopped at one of our favorite places "The Scoop" for lunch and some ice cream:

This was our Ice Cream Nachos- Awesome!!

After lunch, we walked around down by the river and did some site-seeing. We had some time to kills before dinner and our ghost walk so we decided to head up to Wrightsville Beach. It was such a beautiful day and being near the water was amazing. After an hour we headed back to Wilmington and decided to have dinner at the Riverboat Landing, great food and a perfect view:

At 8:30 we headed our on our Ghost Walk, our guide Denise was fantastic. I was hoping this one would take us to a cemetary (weird I know) and it did! They stories she told were chilling and interesting. Kyle and I got some pretty interesting pictures of orbs and what we think it a face in a window. Here is a shot from the cemetary:

This was the best Ghost Walk we have been on, definitely will be doing it again!

Monday:

Today has been a very relaxing day, we have gotten laundry done and now are watching racing. Kyle has a soccer game at 6:30, it should be a lot of fun!!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful and safe Labor Day weekend!!!

Yay for long weekends!

I woke up this morning praying that it was Friday because I know this weekend is a 3 day for me. Needless to say I can't wait! This week has been horrendous as far as work is concerned, too much to do not enough time. I can say though that I have been sticking with going to the gym everyday after work and yesterday as I stepped on the scale I saw that my work is starting to pay off. I have lost 3 1/2 lbs so far! I know its not much but I am beyond excited!

Kyle and I have a busy weekend planned and we are pretty excited. He is going to be golfing on Friday while I am at work (thanks to a gift certificate I got him a while back), he has been so busy lately and deserves it. Saturday, we are planning to go up to the Asheboro Zoo, we have heard so many great things about it, so I bought our tickets online the other day, woo hoo, I love zoo's! Sunday (if the weather cooperates) we are going to go to Wilmington, we absolutely love it there. We plan on touring the USS North Carolina, eating at our favorite place, Elijahs, and going on a Ghost Walk. Monday, we plan on relaxing, but we found out last night that he has a Soccer game on Monday (really?! On a holiday). The team is doing pretty well so far they are 2-1! Lets hope they can keep it going.

All I have to do is get through these last 2 days, hopefully they fly by!

Have a great day!!