Happy Thanksgiving

From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.

Here are the pies I made yesterday, pumpkin, apple, and butterscotch. Quinn helped me cut out leaves to decorate the apple pie with the left over pie dough. The butterscotch pie is my grandmother's recipe that she used to make for the holidays. It has been years since I have had it and thought it was about time I made it! The pumpkin come from my friend Tammy who grew the pumpkins, processed it and gave me enough to make this pie. She also gave me a whole pumpkin that I will process later. We tried growing pumpkins, Seminole pumpkins which are good for this area, that Tammy also gave me the seeds for. But we planted them a little too late in the year, and although they were growing great and producing beautiful pumpkins, our last frost killed the plant and my pumpkins weren't ripe yet. :(

We are spending a quiet thanksgiving at home. It would be nice to spend it with family, but that's not happening this year, maybe next. (Hint, Hint)

So, I hope all of you are enjoying this day of thanks. We have much to be thankful for, health, family, friends, and I am sure there is more if I let my mind ponder longer, but its' time to start rattling some pans. Wishing you all the best.

The Bellavigna Family.

Cute Kittens

This is what greeted me this morning. Three adorable little kittens in my hamper. I had to go grab my camera.


Here is those same three adorable little kittens snoozing on my chair. If you remember another post way back in the beginning of CasaBellaBella when I introduced our critters these kittens look identical to those kittens. They are little "minnie me's".

Here is the mama cat. Notice what she is looking at, the gerbil cage. I have been chasing her away from this every morning lately. Now those adorable little kittens are not always so adorable. Remember my last post where I said I couldn't turn my back for a moment. That's right, there's a story there. I left my post in the kitchen to take a potty break, a girl's gotta go, I returned to a screaming little Anna girl in the kitchen and next to her feet on the floor was a piece of the gerbil cage. Ahh! I frantically started looking for the gerbils who were not in their cage. And we had three adorable little kittens running around. Quinn found the first kitten with a gerbil in it's mouth. I was hoping that we were quick enough to get the gerbil out of it's mouth before any damage was done. Not so lucky. Onto finding the other gerbil. Again, Quinn found that one and again we were not lucky enough. Alex had to bury his gerbils. :(

A few days ago, Dom brought two new replacement gerbils home. One is black and one is gray. I then had to research how to tell the sex of a gerbil, because Dom didn't ask at the pet store. And I was hoping we did not have one male and one female. The kids of course where hoping that we did. I think, after much research and much fondling of the gerbils, that we have two males. Whooo! New names for the new gerbils, Zack & Cody. We had to stay in the same theme as the last two gerbils.

Children Are A Blessing

From the Lord, right? That's what the bible tells me in Ephesians. "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward", Eph 127:3-5. I have to remind myself of that when something like this occurs.

Anna took a dry erase maker and colored all over my kitchen floor, walls, and doors. I can't turn my back for a moment. But do you want to know what I was thanking God for as I was cleaning up this mess? Mr. Clean Magic Erasers!

I Voted

Now all I can do is pray.