The First Post

Mike & I decided to create our own blog after having seen what Annie & Travis and Krissy & Gary have been doing! If you haven't seen their blogs yet, you'll have to click on the links. Krissy & Gary just returned from a great vacation to several of the western states, and they have some beautiful pics! And Annie & Travis have lots of pictures of their precious little dolly, Mollie. We'll probably be putting several pictures of her on our site too, so be prepared!I (Terri) am leaving tomorrow (Tues. Aug. 21 - Mike's 55th birthday!) to stay with my Mom in Tucson for a few days. She had knee surgery on Aug. 14, and I'll be with her helping her with housekeeping, cooking, and maybe a little chauffering. We celebrated Mike's 55th yesterday with Annie, Travis, and Mollie. When I asked Mike what he wanted for his birthday, he was silent for a long time. I told him I'd gone to Office Depot and looked at those GPS thingies for the car. But I told the sales guy that my husband would probably take one look at it and sigh in frustration - Mike thinks it's more work to figure out how to use those "techno toys" than it's worth. He'd rather just pull out his Ferguson's Map Book and look it up!So what did he want? A Black Forest Cherry Cake! I asked if I could just get one at the store, but NO - he wanted it from scratch. Now, mind you, I've made him two Black Forest Cherry cakes in our 31 years - the first one was for his birthday when we'd been married only 7 weeks. It came out pretty good. The next one was about 12 years later when we were living in San Angelo (I have photos, so I can pretty easily date the times I put forth the effort on those cakes). Needless to say, I hadn't baked a cake in a LOOOONG time. In fact, I didn't even have cake pans. I had to call Annie and go over and get her cake pans (and play with the baby for an hour or so). But I DID have a brand-new stand-alone mixer. Mike had gotten it for me last Christmas (thinking, of course, that I would one day make him a Black Forest Cherry Cake).Anyway, I'm going to post this now and pick up on my tale of the BFCC later. Stay tuned - it gets better!