PANcakes. Duh.

These deserved their own blog post. I feel guilty depriving the world of the deliciousness I experienced this morning.

I decided to make pancakes, which happens often, but not usually when it's just Ryder and I. I ALWAYS use an electric griddle and swore by it... Until today.

Simply because, I'm lazy and didn't want to get it down, and have to clean it for a few pancakes. So.. I just used the smallest fry pan I have.

I filled the pan to right before the edge starts to round-up, one at a time and cooked them on med. heat.

Here's what I did:
Made the desired amount of bisquick. BUT add the 'melt in your mouth pancake' ingredients. {written in small letters under the 'original recipe'} there's two options: fresh lemon juice, sugar, baking powder. OR sugar, baking powder and vanilla. I did all of the above. Why can't I have vanilla AND lemon?!

While I was making up the cakes, I sliced some strawberries thin, added a handful of raspberries mixed with some sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice, mixed them together and put in the fridge to get happy for a while.

Once they were done, I buttered those bad boys up, and poured over the, now syrupy berries.

For some reason, cooking the pancakes in the pan, made them so tall and fluffy. I don't know if it was because I was only focusing on one pancake at a time; and babying it to adulthood, and not a whole griddle full, or if today was just my lucky day... But it was heaven in my mouth. You HAVE to try them. Ready-Set-GO!

"No obstacle too great"

Lots of changes coming for the Willards in 2012. Most recently: trying to become homeowners. Exciting right? Not entirely.

Before we moved to Texas, we were pre-approved, had an offer in on the best house we found in our price range and were patiently waiting (5 months later) on the Short Sale to go through. Then, Tyler got laid off. We had to pull our offer, and all of the stress, happiness, relief emotions kicked in. We were forced to move to TX where it was hard to go back to renting when we were SO close to owning.

Anyway, we signed a 6 month lease, knowing {if} we still liked Texas, if Tyler still liked his job, and if I wasn't still a complete wreck, we'd try to buy again when our lease was up.

Those 6 months flew by. What an adventure it's been! And now we're here, rushing to buy/get in a house to avoid another lease signing.

Tyler was home last week and we were able to go look at some possibilities on his very last day off. Someone beat us to the punch on what we thought was 'the one'. We looked at one more right before Tyler had to leave and fell in love.

It's beautiful, the model home, brand new, and everything I would ever want in a home, including having the option to buy the lot next door to avoid a cookie cutter sized yard.

It seems like everyday is different, one day things go great, the next EVERYTHING goes wrong. Days that make you wonder if you're doing the right thing for your family, financially,
etc.

Tonight it hit me.
I'm stuck in Texas if we buy a house. Can we do this? Do I want to be stuck here? Is this even the right house? Sometimes I want to go home so bad, is it right to raise my family here, away from all other family? Is that fair?

I found a quote that helped me tremendously. It certainly didn't give me all of my answers, but it's helping me get to that point.

"There is no obstacle too great, no challenge too difficult, if we have faith."
Gordon B. Hinckley

Simply said, have faith. Faith in what we're doing for our marriage, our family and our future. But most importantly, faith in the Lord.