On top of Stone Mountain

It was totally snowing that day
Our family adventure begins

A few weeks ago Jess and I decided it would be nice to take Chase to Stone Mountain to see all the Christmas decorations, the laser show, the Atlanta skyline at sunset, and the building of the Snow Mountain area. Despite living in Georgia my entire life, I have never been on top of Stone Mountain. I know…it is a shock to me too! We packed up the camera, got bundled up, made a quick stop to get a snack, and we were on our way.
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And so it begins…

What a day! It started off earlier than I’ve been up since Christmas break started. Tea, coffee, oatmeal with fruit..we were off! I am too tired to go through the details, but we got SO much done. We packed up my living room, sold my living furniture, and got Chase his own room up here in Dwood. It’s temporary until the middle of Jan., (hiring a Home removal company and moving to a bigger apartment here at 2Blocks with more room…phew!) but it gives him his own space and a place to keep his things and I love that. He really seems happy up here and I am so so thankful for that. Oh…did I mention we de-Christmas’d TWO apartments today? Yeah..trees, outdoor lights, decor…all of it. Packed up and ready for storage. I have so much to blog about…our Stone Mtn. trip, our official move to Dunwoody, and Christmas of course! We all got so many awesome things from Santa and each other that I can’t wait to brag about. I’m hoping for a calm, relaxing few days. I have some things on my to do list in anticipation of the move, but other than that I want to play games with Chase, watch movies with Ben, and enjoy the rest of my break before heading back to work. A great way to start that is to plan a nice, calm week eating in. Here’s what on the menu. 🙂

Sunday
Spaghetti and Meatballs with Bacon Marinara (yes…bacon. everything’s better with it!)

Monday
Broiled chicken with green beans and rice

Tuesday
Fish Tacos. Muy delicioso.

Wednesday
Brunswick Stew

Thursday
New Year’s Eve dinner in the city. 🙂

Friday
Our first attempt! Roasted chicken, collards, black eyed peas, cornbread. stfu!

Now…off to enjoy a hot bath with my new products from Lush!

Jazz up yer ballz!!

Tis’ the season for ballz!! Sausage balls that is. 🙂 They are a must have and a staple of almost every holiday ‘get together’. Someone says ‘finger food’ and sausage balls’ll be there! Now don’t misunderstand me, sausage balls are the bomb! SniperBen and I started a conversation about a month ago playing around with different versions of the balls. “Bacon balls…Oh..I know! Jalapeno balls! …wait…what about..” and it basically went on from there. The amazing ideas never really came to fruition, however, we talked about it again while walking down stone mountain yesterday with chase (blog on that to come btw!). I needed a good ‘finger food’ dish to bring to Girls’ Night gift exchange and we remembered the balls!! Here’s what we came up with.

Bacon/Ranch Balls
Regular sausage ball mix (the bisquick kind)
add chopped up bacon (pretty small)
ranch dressing mix (powder kind)
*these may need to be cooked a few extra minutes

BBQ Balls
Regular sausage ball mix
add your fav. bbq sauce
we added extra chopped up white cheddar cheese and spices

MexiBalls
Regular sausage ball mix
extra texmex cheeses
LOTS of chopped japs. yummmm….

Maple Balls
Regular sausage ball mix
maple syrup (go on and get the good kind, it’s worth it)
brown sugar

They were great!! I don’t really have exact measurements or cooking times, but you can free ‘ball’ it! (tehehee) The idea is, think of some awesome things that YOU would like and go great with sausage. Cook them until they look “done”. I promise you’ve never ‘sausage’ a great finger food for the holiday! {disclaimer: that corny but funny joke was brought to you by SniperBen}.
*editor’s note: somehow i don’t have a pic of the epic balls! doh…

I mean… for sersiiusnly?

Yeah. for. seriously! That’s how serious it is. So what is on my mind? Well for starters a lot of things. But I’ll get started with this. I noticed the other day that I was on the elevatore and there was a gaggle of ladies all bundles up. They were all in there dark grey or black over coats shivering or what ever t is that people do and I was mearly standing there in my short sleve or long sleve t-shirt. what caught my eye was the fact that here were several people acting as if it were the plague of God and some sort of absence of heat encroaching upon their existence…and here I was just chillin’ in my skivies. Well that was just funny and/or odd to me. It’s happened a few times, but there was that one time that really stood out to me.

You know what sucks? When you ar about to write something down and you kinda fall asleep. Not the kind of sleep you get if you’ve had mor ethan enough to drink, but the kind of sleep you get if you had just run a amarathon or faught Kimbo Slice in the octagon for 3 rounds. That’s what I’m talking wabout. Wait…what am I talking about”? All I knos is that I just said something about Kimbo Slice.

Oh yeah… Wait. I lost it again. What ever. So I’ll start on something new. For starters, I’m in love with Jessica Canning. This woman has encapusulated my life. I love her more than there are words and I will continue to do so until the dawn of time. I just want to go ahead and put that out there. In case any of you didn’t know, she is moving into my aartment complext on the 15th of january. that’s like les than a month away. Now, I don’t live in Milner so if you ar wanting to hang out with her you might want to go ahead and book reservaitions.

I kinda lost my train of thought again. At this pint, I’m pretty passed out, but he, that’s what people….

Totally lost my train of thought. I should sleep nopw.

Thanksgiving break-2009: Sniper Style Part 3 (The next day…)

DSCN0148
Not just 1 or 2, but 3 dancing machines!

Our week of thanksgiving bliss was trucking right along. I had good food and traditions with the Turner’s and lots of rest and cooking in Dwood with the boys, so the only thing left was turkey time with the Birney’s (Sniperjess’ family). For those of you that know us…the Birney house is always an interesting experience. It’s untraditional, and slightly unorthodox…but it’s always a good time with genuine intentions from all. My growing time in Dwood lately lead to what I would call a “catch up” session when we got there. The adult beverages were poured and we chatted about the previous week and just life in general. SniperBen had leftovers, but I was somewhat tired of turkey so I passed (which I would later regret…aLOT). SniperBen got yet another look into the life I grew up in. Our holidays are about celebration and believe me…we celebrate. There was laughing and jump roping and Madonna tunes blaring and dancing. I won’t sugar coat it…things get a lil crazy. It’s a lot for a person to take in if they are not accustomed to the Birney house, but SniperBen held his own. (and later held my own….blegghh). I will admit I may have over done the turkey day festivities, but I was still very thankful to have my guy there to load us up and take us home at the end of the night. (Sorry you had to tomtom your way back to my apartment babe…I owe you one! ..or two.)
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Thanksgiving break – 2009: Sniper Style pt. 2 (Thanksgiving Day)

Rosevelt the turkey
Roosevelt, meet Turner

In true Turner style the morning got started with a big plate of food and a lot of scrambling around. After breakfast Jess and I started in on the turkey, gravy base, and more chopping of vegetables. You’d think that after like three days of preparing food, we’d have all this mess done. That wasn’t really the case. There always seemed to be more carrots, onions, celery, taters… oh wait. No potatoes to cut up those had already been taken care of and were in the fridge setting up. Oh, the taters! Let me describe the ways I love thee. Ok, I’m done.
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Thanksgiving break – 2009: Sniper Style pt. 1

New Moon Queen
Maybe YOU should relax

It all started with a trip to Burger King for some New Moon paraphernalia. I got Jess’ place and we got ready and headed off for some sushi, time with friends, and a gaggle of tweens and/or begrudgingly happy boyfriends and husbands. The movie was ish at best. It was better than Twilight, but then again, Twilight was a pretty terrible movie. There were some decent fight scenes, a fast car or two, some sparkly “vampires”, enough emo looks to make a rainbow cry, and and then some credits. That pretty much sums up the movie, or at least what I recall of it. The night wasn’t a total wash however. On the way to Milner, Jess got word that one of her friends was looking to unload some UGA tix. We jumped at the chance, I stopped by the ATM, got some cash and in exchange, we got tickets to what would be our very first GA game!
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