Potluck

Remember that One of us got glasses post from December 2007? Well Jacob is no longer the only Dixon kid lucky enough to have four eyes.


Yep, Anna Grace joined Brian and Jacob as a glasses-wearing Dixon.


So now we have the smart kids...


and the fun kids. (My forehead looks freakishly huge...actually my whole face looks to be moon-sized! Wow!) (And I guess I should admit that I am a former glasses-wearing Dixon. I had lasik surgery in 2001 and have loved the results. Of course that makes me a smart AND a fun Dixon. Of course...)(And really if you look at the picture of the smart kids you can tell that they are quite fun as well. I mean look at Brian...really. So in reality I guess my smart vs. fun, glasses vs. nonglasses wearing people doesn't hold water...oh well.)


While perusing the Valentine aisle at the grocery store (I can't even believe they have Valentine stuff out already!) I came across this little wonder. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy it near as much as the Santas. The marshmallow to chocolate ratio is just all wrong here!

And finally...

Because The Over-Thinker requested a full length picture of my outfit from the first picture in this post I had to oblige her. What you can't see here...my turquoise Keds. Yep...I was looking good! (My mom made my outfit. And it is an outfit if there ever was one. The word outfit never looked so good!)

Edit...
That Over-Thinker...she wasn't satisfied with the full length shot. No...she wanted a shot with the shoes too! Ok...after much digging (not really...I knew pretty much right where to look to see if there were more pictures.) I have come up with another version of the full length outfit. Enjoy!

The olden days

While going through all the boxes with the stuff we left in the states I came across this.


My 45 collection. It wasn't huge or extensive, but it was all mine. Rick Springfield, Van Halen, Tiffany, Elvis, Elton John, Twisted Sister, Journey, The Police, Donna Summer, The Chords, Chicago...and so much more. My kids looked at these records and then at me like I was the most ancient person on earth. Too bad I don't own a record player to show them how music was meant to be heard. None of this ipod headphones in your ear kind of stuff for me when I was a kid. We heard static and skipping and the sound of the needle as it played the song for us. And we liked it! I'm sure my kids are grateful that I didn't have a way to subject them to it all! One of these days...one of these days!

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday

Me


Brian

Notice that we had the same haircut.

Memories

Tonight for dinner I made biscuits and gravy. Not the most healthy thing we could have had, but it was the requested meal. When we lived in the states I never made biscuits from scratch. Oh there was a time I used Bisquick and called them homemade, but now I know that they really weren't. There is no such thing as a can of biscuits here. You can't find them frozen or premade in any shape or fashion. In fact biscuits aren't something Turks even eat. I mean they would if they had them, but it isn't a normal bread form here.

So the biscuit recipe I usually use is this...2 cups of self-rising flour and 1 cup of heavy cream. That is it. Mix it together roll or press them to about 1/2 inch thickness and cut out with a glass. Now they don't have self-rising flour here so I add 2 1/2 tsp baking powder and 3/4 tsp salt to the flour and mix before I add the cream. The biscuits are to die for in my opinion. So easy and so yummy. If you want you can add some sugar...maybe 1/4 cup to the dry ingredients if you like your biscuits sweeter.

But tonight I had to use a different recipe. I was out of cream, and I had already started mixing up the other ingredients. I quickly found a recipe for buttermilk biscuits and since I had ayran which is a yogurt drink similiar to buttermilk I decided to go that route. After mixing the dry ingredients I started to cut in the butter. Wow...memories flooded over me. Then I added the buttermilk and almost started to cry. My grandmother made buttermilk biscuits every time I went to visit her. She mixed them with her hands...exactly like I was doing. The smell of the buttermilk as I mixed it in was like stepping back in time. The movement of my hands as I slowly formed a ball of dough in the middle of the bowl...picking up more and more flour from the sides as I moved my hand around transported me back to her kitchen in the tiny town of Emerson, Arkansas.

I'll never forget that place. That house. That kitchen. Where so many memories were cooked up. Memories of homemade sweet pickles...juicy and sticky. Memories of fried fish. Memories of chicken and dumplings, turnip greens, purple hull peas, cornbread, and chocolate pie. There were lots of other memories made there, but tonight it was the thought of the food that overwhelmed me. And even though I have learned to make many of those things they still don't taste quite like hers did.

The 80's - For Crystal

I don't know...I think your hair looked way cuter in your 80's redo picture than mine did in the above picture which was taken in 1987.


But look how cute I am in that red dress! 1986...it was a good year. Good hair, a red dress, and look how good my legs look! If only they still looked that good...big long, wishful sigh. Maybe that's why I don't like to wear dresses anymore...

Old stuff

I discovered an old memory stick in my camera bag so I thought I would share a few pictures from it.


Christmas 2002. And before anyone says anything about how short my hair is let me just say this...it had been growing out for almost 3 months by the time this picture was taken. Seriously...since Sept. 30...a day I will never forget. During one of my language lessons I learned how to say "I would like you to cut off three centimeters of my hair please." What I said to the hairdresser must have been, "I would like you to cut off all of my hair but three centimeters please." He used a razor comb and just kept combing until that's all I had left...3 centimeters. Erica was with me and kept saying, "Mom, tell him to stop." I didn't want to tell him to stop, because I didn't know what I would end up with if he did. On my way home from the 'kuafor' I called Brian to warn him that we now sported the same haircut. His reply, "come on home, Larry"...and I was known as Larry for quite awhile after that.


Our kids attended a Turkish school for the first two years we lived in Turkey. The preschool program had an end of year performance where the kids dressed up in costumes and did dances and sang songs. Here is Jacob in his finery. He looks so sweet I can hardly stand it. He was quite concerned about having to wear a pink shirt, but since all the boys were wearing them and not thinking a thing about it he decided he could do it too. He also had a red one with a ruffle down the front to wear for a Spanish dance that the kids did. This didn't seem to be so bad in his eyes. Red is his favorite color.


Anna Grace. Look at how cute she is!



Will...again too cute for words.


And finally...the cake I made for Will's 8th birthday. Not very symetrical, but it tasted good!

I had one picture of Erica, but it was too dark. She was cute, too. Trust me.

1998

Look closely at this picture from 1998. My dad is the second man from the left. Do you recognize the man standing next to my dad on the end? It was almost 10 years ago. This man is Dick Cheney.

While in America I saw this picture on my dad's bookshelf in his office. I had seen it before, but I never really thought that much about it. He asked me if I knew who it was. I didn't. When he told me I had a brief recollection of hearing that he had been hunting with Dick Cheney and others, but I didn't realize it was documented with picture evidence.

Side note...Dad also beat him in a game of pool, went hunting with him afterwards and lived to tell about it. Of course I don't really think Dick Cheney shot the guy he was hunting with several years ago on purpose. Just thought it was funny that Dad had been hunting with him before he became our VP.

The occassion

Mentanna's comment to my Roomies - 2 post reminded me of the occassion for the picture in that post. I happened to have a picture of those gangsters. But, why did they dress up as gangsters...really...that is the question. But why did they do any of the things they did? Really.

Roomies - Part 2

Another picture of Kristen and yep, you guessed it, Mentanna. I really don't remember what the occassion was, but it was picture worthy then and today...well, it is blog worthy today. I laugh every time I see it.

Roomies

While in America 3 of my college roommates and I got to have a roommate reunion. It was so fun seeing everyone again. It had been 6 years since we had been together. Of course Mentanna was in France so she couldn't be there to complete the reunion, but we found a way around that. I brought my new computer which has a built in video camera, and Mentanna's husband, Scott, set up his computer which also has a camera so we got to see each other and chat for a few minutes. It was so fun seeing her on camera and getting to be "together". Here are some pictures of all of us from then and now.

The four of us in college. We look so young!


The four of us at Mentanna's wedding in Oct. 1997.


Lauren, Kristen, and I in 1990

And again on Dec. 30, 2007...16 years later!