2nd Annual Low Country Boil

I got up early with Tater Tot today, around 6:15ish or so. We snuggled and watched Pocahontas. She ate some “crunch crunch” and I had a couple of Ego waffles. Around 8am, we got an early start of chores and cooking, and made ourselves a Funfetti cake!

She chose to wear this Minnie Mouse dress with the tutu, however it was way too short and you could see her bloomers through the tulle 😉

I let her do a little bit of the icing, but once she started digging into it and making a mess, I had to nip that in the bud and cut in. She didn’t mind her job being taken away, because that meant she got to lick the icing off her spatula while I finished up with my own.

So yesterday, Jeff’s dad drove over to Jacksonville to see some of the Pullen family, and they sent home not one, but two of these tiny Barbie 4-wheeler’s, from two of Emmie’s second cousins who had outgrown them. Nita will keep one at their house, and they brought one to our house. I was really scared to let her drive it, but it was actually really slow and she did really good on it. She drove it all around the front yard for a while, before the rain started.

And I just LOVE this beautiful tree in our front yard, with it’s yellow leaves, and even the leaves that’s it’s dropped in blanket underneath. So pretty!

Early this morning, before even making the cake, I put a pork loin in the crock pot. Nana picked up the boys to take them shopping and they didn’t make it home for lunch, but I still fixed lunch for the three of us, and we did the traditional southern New Years’ Day meal of pork, black eyed peas, and green beans substituted for greens since we don’t like them 🙂 Plus rice. And it was so good! Emerson ended up eating about double the amount of meat I started her with, plus extra peas, once she finally realized she liked them.

 

Emmie napped for just under two hours, and I did too. Nita brought the boys home right after Emmie went down, and they ended up napping as well. After we all woke up and got moving, we went over to Megan & Bo’s house for our family’s second annual New Years Day low country boil.

This is the second year we’ve done this, and I told them tonight that since we’ve done it two years in a row, it’s officially a tradition now, and they have to host us, and this meal, every year now!

THIS GIRL loved not only the sausage (as always), but she went to town on those shrimp! We lost count of how many she ate, but it was somewhere between 12-15 shrimp! She just popped them in her mouth whole, plain, no ketchup or anything. She also ate her sausage and half the corn, and then washed it all down with two pieces of our Christmas confetti cake (thanks to Uncle Keith 😉 ).

When we were making plans via group text, we were all volunteering to bring different parts of the main meal. Then Megan suggested that someone should also bring dessert. A couple of us replied and said we would, and then today when we showed up, four of us had all made something! Meg’s funfetti cake was gluten free, then Mama made magic cookie bars (my fave; bottom left), and Aunt Suzanne made gooey butter cake (bottom right).

Oh, and Emmie and I were wearing our matching leopard dresses again today, and I wanted to make sure we didn’t let the night pass without a photo, so we grabbed a quick selfie right before putting her jammies on.

For some reason, all three baby girls were being super silly and pulling their shirts up over their pudgy bellies. They were just walking around playing like this, and we were all dying laughing at them. But then they would try to go down their slide on their bellies, and they would just get stuck, because all that skin wouldn’t quite slide down!

Bo put on some quiet videos to get the girls to settle down, and while Emmie was singing along to Jesus Loves Me, Ellie just sat there staring and smiling at her, so transfixed. It was precious.

The baby girls were all put to bed before the rest of us left. Emmie had been jealous of Ellie when she was tucked up next to Papa, so she immediately crawled up in there after Ellie was asleep. Then Bo asked us to do a “family activity.” So we went around the room sharing our best and worst parts of 2020, and that was a really nice time sharing together.

After a round of hugs from everyone, and gathering up about a million things (leftovers, cake, backpack, sodas, tupperwares, etc…), we finally loaded up and headed home. Bedtime wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t terrible either, and she’s sound asleep now, even if it was much later than usual. Jeff got the boys to wash up some of the dishes (those things just pile up like crazy with extra folks in the house), so now it’s time to just settle down a little before bedtime.