Gobble til you Wobble

So this Thanksgiving I made pies from scratch! (for the first time EVER!) As many of you know - my Thanksgivings consisted of FLAN for dessert until I started dating and married Ty. The years we dated though his mom and family made the amazing traditional American meals and when we got married well we lived abroad so we ate pasta in Italy or turkey & mash in London! (Actually thanks to Angela & Selfridges we did manage one traditional Thanksgiving meal one year)

This year our friends Rachel and Don were wonderful and invited us over to share Thanksgiving with them. Ty was up at 5am studying for the CFA exam (which is December 4th- so PLEASE PRAY for him!) and I was up early filling a last-minute cakeball order for that morning. So going over to their house and getting to relax and share an amazing meal was so wonderful! We spent it with them and their new precious son Liam.

We also spent it with our other wonderful friends Stacy, Craig and their beautiful new daughter Evelyn & Stacy's parents (Patty & Scott).  It was such a great day!

Here I am practicing! Liam was trying to hold his bottle with one hand and had his other hand on his belly! A few years later and it'll be tucked into his waist band. What a typical guy! ha!

Evelyn & her current boyfriend Liam (she hasn't met Gabriel or Tabor yet, but there IS competition coming!)

The babes enjoying a sunset Thanksgiving dinner together. ha!

Let's rewind though to the day before when the pie making went down at the Touchstone house. Rachel was very sweet to provide me with the recipes, ingredients, supplies and tips! Even Sarah who wasn't in SoCal for Thanksgiving shared ingredients with me - I have such amazing friends!

 Using Sarah's pastry cutter - Ty walked in while I was doing this part and asked "What is that step called?" I looked at him and with a slight giggle replied "Making the dough" - he's too cute!

After chilling the dough for several hours I moved on to the next step. This one was called "rolling the dough" - with my new rolling pin (thanks to my wonderful hubby!)

3 pie doughs were then rolled.

and layed into the pie pan followed by folding the edges. This was fun! 

I even used pie weights for the first time! I enjoyed this part ! This step finally had a cool name: "Blind baking" - although Ty renamed it to "Empty baking" because the blind part didn't make sense to him.

Ty helped with this part. We cut out leaves out of pie crust and layed them around the edges of each pie. Again thanks Rachel for the tips & tools!

The pumpkin pie in the oven. Want the recipe? Click HERE

 Here are the other final products:

The staple Touchstone Apple Cake. If you want this recipe you'll have to email me!

The Coffee-Toffee Pecan pie. This was sweet but very tasty! Click HERE for the recipe.

Rachel did a great job with the place settings. So pretty! Each leaf had someone's name on it.

No Thanksgiving is complete without stuffing...YUM!

Don carving the Turkey! It turned out delicious!

Only my 2nd time to ever have creamed corn. What a treat!

Had to take a picture of the cranberry sauce because it wasn't in the shape of a can with rings around it. That's the only way I knew how to make it! ;) This one was made from REAL cranberries!

Patty's specialty - Cranberry wild rice. I'd LOVE to have this recipe! (hint hint)

A sad little Ty because his wifey was taking pictures and not filling her plate with food. He was tired of waiting!

The delicious mashed potatoes...ok enough food pics. I think you get the point. The food was delish!

After eating & sharing our favorite Bible verses and being grateful for our friends, family & food we went on a Turkey Trot at the beach. It was a beautiful day and the dolphins came out to entertain us!

Here's almost all of us. Ty's probably off playing with his football, Liam is in the stroller under the camera and Don is behind the lens. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We missed our families, but thanks to our SoCal friends for making this such a special and memorable Thanksgiving! We definitely gobbled til we wobbled (well maybe I was the only one wobbling but that was Tabor's fault!)



OUR Gender Reveal Party

Well Saturday Nov. 6th was probably one of the most exciting days of our lives so far! We found out the gender of our soon to be bundle of joy!

We went to the doctor Friday and had our 3rd Ultra-sound. They asked if we wanted to know what we were having and we said Yes, but... we explained that we were wanting to find out with our family and friends. The doctor was so excited and said she would write it on a piece of paper and seal it for us in an envelope.

We had a blast seeing Baby's pics in 4d - (she wasn't really supposed to be doing it in 4d but she said Baby was in a good position and she felt like doing it for us) so here's a few pics of what we saw:

A shy little baby...

A new member of P90X (as seen by the bulging biceps below:)

The wait was tough, but Saturday finally came.

Ty laughed at my idea of food for the party. It was my top 3 Cravings from the first 3 months of my pregnancy!

The Banner:

Craving #1 - This was the first thing I started craving and it went on until Ty banned me from Taco Bell. Sorry Amber - I promise had I been back home it would have been Taco Villa. This is as close as I could get!

Craving # 2 - This began because my friend Sarah (the other cute baby belly-ed girl in the pics) was sick one day and stayed home from work so I decided to work from her house while watching an old chick flick with her. Her craving that day was for Tomato Basil Soup & a grilled cheese. Well... the grilled cheese (plus avocado) was already a craving in month 2, but the tomato soup was the perfect combo. That day started craving # 2.

Craving # 3 - was Ty's LEAST favorite. He tried so hard to keep me from eating the box of brownies that I dreamed about for a week, but in the end he showed up with 3 boxes of brownie mix and a gallon of milk for me. Turns out it wasn't really the brownies I was after but the milk. I can't drink milk plain, but with a plate of brownies I can drink TONS of milk!

The drinks were done by color:

Blue Gatorade (yes I misspelled it) for Team Boy



Pink lemonade for Team Girl

For your information the food was a huge hit! Everyone seemed to enjoy my funny cravings. Of course all my cute setup couldn't have been possible without Marlene's help! (and everyone that showed up early or on time but early in Danielle-time and helped setup - so basically thanks to everyone for helping!)

A pic of us before we devoured all the food!



Then came the fun part... the big reveal. Now we know this wasn't as big of a deal to everyone as it was for us, but it was really special that this is how we found out. It was so much fun to get to share this moment with everyone near and far! Thanks to everyone who viewed us online during and even after the event!

If you still want to see it click HERE to come to our party. If you want to fast forward to the cupcake revealing part move the cursor to the 1 hour and 2 minute mark.

Before we reveal the color on the blog. Let's meet the teams:

TEAM PINK:

TEAM BLUE:

Now to the good part.

The cupcakes were delivered right before the party began (so I would have NO time to peek) Thanks to Rose for filling and icing these for us! These were the highlight of the party...literally!!

Yes - of course there were cakeballs at the party. Specially made from that amazing new company in LA called Kruffles!

We counted to 3 and took a bite of the special pink or blue filled cupcakes...

...and found out that the cupcakes...

were indeed filled with...BLUE icing!

We are having a Baby Boy!

Tabor Touchstone we can't wait to meet you!

A few other fun pics. Here's Sarah & I comparing Baby Bumps. Gabriel & Tabor usually LOVE when we belly bump and let them play together.

Yes I'm standing on a Baby toilet in order to be as tall as Sarah.

Best dressed award went to Matt! Unfortunately his team did not win this time, but he got the award for most creative costume!



I'll update this blog if I get more pictures. Otherwise, now everyone knows Baby Caby finally has turned into Baby Tabor. (Although I believe Caby may stick with him forever)

Happy Halloween!

Well although we spent the weekend studying & making cakeballs rather than Trick or Treating. Ty still managed to find a way to dress up. He wore our friend Richard's pirate costume to work on Friday.

AND also to the mall after work to get a Blizzard. Yes we walked THROUGH the mall to the Food Court with Ty in full costume. Sword and all.

I forgot how much he loves to dress up! I do too, but this year I was just a Pumpkin without even wearing a Pumpkin costume! :-)

Ty doing the Captain Morgan pose so you could see the entire costume. He did win a giftcard at work for dressing up & submitting a baby picture. (Seriously sounds like they didn't do much working on Friday ha!)

We bought candy just in case we had any Trick or Treaters, but since no one came we ended up eating it ourselves. (oops)

Hope everyone had a very Happy Halloween!