Long time, no blog!

Pardon my absence during the Holiday season.  I had the pleasure of venturing home to Arizona for just shy of two weeks to spend time with my gigantic, amazing, hilarious family.  It has only been in recent years that I’ve realized how amazingly unique my family is.  It is huge…. Like HUGE, HUGE!  Growing up, we had 20+ people at every Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Birthday, Superbowl party, Fourth of July, Flag day, etc., etc.  Basically my family rocks.  It is big and inclusive and has lots of honorary members.  My “Aunt” Cindy's favorite thing to do is explain how everyone is related.  It usually sounds something like, “Bill is my husband’s brother’s wife’s brother’s wife’s brother.”

(Note: That is a true description of how they are related.  I think it could be less complicated my saying Bill is her sister-in-law’s, brother’s brother-in-law, but I’m not sure that is any easier to understand).

The awesome thing is Cindy isn’t “technically” even my Aunt.  She’s my dad’s sister’s husband’s brother’s wife… so we are related through marriage.  Maybe she’s my Aunt once removed or something… whatever.  She’s still my Aunt.  In my family, when explaining how we are all related gets too complicated, we just say we are all “cousins”.  In conclusion, having a HUGE family makes things amazing, and exciting, and always interesting.

To most people spending almost two weeks with one's family would be super overwhelming and more than enough "family time.  I honestly couldn't get enough and it truly didn’t feel like a long enough trip.  I think that is a testament to how much I love my family.  I don’t want to bore you all (since everyone seems to think their family is the most awesome family under the sun) with all of the details and festivities during my trip but I did want to share a few pictures of the only thing I had time to bake.

I didn’t have a whole lot of extra time to bake (hence all of the quality family time) so when I finally got around to it, my mom requested I make cake pops because who doesn’t love eating delicious cake with the convenience of it being on a stick!?  Deliciousness with no plates or fork required, count us in!

Channeling my inner Vanna White with the cake pops.

Unfortunately, the kids found the cake pops first.

Sharing is caring… right?!

…that is until the momma found out that baby Trevin had already had two sugar-filled cake pops and took it away.  

Screaming ensued.

Don't you just love the chocolate all over his face!?

I’m taking his reaction as a compliment to the deliciousness of my cake pops.

(Note: The adults enjoyed my cake pops as well.  The difference was no one asked the adults how many they ate :P  ) 

I hope you all had a very happy holiday season with the ones you hold near and dear to your hearts.