Wrapping up 2009!

We had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas in Knoxville. For Christmas Dinner, we had a delicious seafood pasta and an antipasto salad along with Herman bread rolls, however, I spiced them up a bit!

Here's Herman the dough before rolling him out and baking him.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself. On Christmas Eve, we had my mom's traditional meal of ham and cheese sandwiches, but really good ham and cheese. My mom has always bought onion rolls, but they are nearly impossible to find in Knoxville. We finally found them after visiting three grocery stores. It was a Christmas miracle!

We also made homemade sausage balls, and below is the world's largest sausage ball, before I rolled it up into a many tiny sausage balls.

Here are some of the beginning photos of the yummy seafood sauce David made with mushrooms, fresh crab meat and scallops, shrimp, garlic, basil, more spices, etc. So delicious!

So good! Hope all you had a very Merry Christmas and 2010 will be a wonderful year! Happy New Year!

Snow in the Smokies

My computer was at the Apple Store for the past week since it needed a repair, so it's been more than a week since I could post.

We traveled to Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains last Monday (before Christmas) to see some of the snow that had fallen. The road from Gatlinburg to Cherokee was closed due to snow and ice, but we were able to see quite a bit of snow on other roads from the mountains to Townsend. There were "Watch for Ice" signs along the road.

A lot of the limbs had snow on them, but it was starting melt, so we heard a constant water drip sound. Enjoy these winter scenes!

 

 

 

Before we drove up into the mountains, we ate lunch at the Pancake Pantry in Gatlinburg and looked around.

Look at that green Christmas sweater and matching red skirt! 

 

As we drove home, we stopped and captured a shot of Gatlinburg from high above the city.

We haven't gotten any snow in Knoxville since the first snow of the season in early December, so it was nice to see the snow in the Smokies and really get into the Christmas spirit.

Merry Christmas! (Sammie's holiday letter!)

We hope everyone is having a happy holiday season! Here's our Christmas card to everyone. It's a letter from our cat Sammie. If you still haven't received yours in the mail and want to read the printed version, then stop reading now! However, make sure you visit us again since there are some great photos on here that aren't in the printed version.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2010!

December 2009

Hello, everyone! It’s Sammie Ann Beutke DeVito writing this year.

You might not know me very well since Dolly has always written this letter, but I know she’s mentioned how wonderful I am on multiple occasions (or at least that’s what she told me!). I don’t want to dampen your holiday spirits, but the reason I’m writing this year’s letter is because my very brave, older sister Dolly Bouffard Beutke DeVito is now an angel in heaven.

She left us in May after fighting a courageous battle with kidney disease. We all miss her very much, but it’s nice to know she’s watching down on us. (Although, I don’t think she was watching down on Tim Tebow and the Gators when they played those fat Alabama elephants a few weeks ago!)

In an effort to make sure I didn’t feel too lonely without Dolly, my parents decided to bring another feline into the house after a couple of months. I think they did it more for them than for me. My mom found a black male neutered cat on Craig’s List (craigslist.com) on the Internet in July. I don’t know who the heck this Craig person is, or why he’d have a list of cats available, but thanks to him and his wonderful list, I now have my younger brother, Cash. Can you sense my sarcasm…I mean thankfulness here?

Anyway, Cash’s previous family loved him very much, but they had to move in with other family members who didn’t care for pets (how rude!). He had another name before he joined our family, but my parents realized they had never named their own cats before (except when they were kids and named their dogs, but dogs don’t count!), so they decided to name him Cash after legendary musician and the man in black, Johnny Cash, who is from Tennessee.

Did you know it’s actually a requirement if you live in Tennessee and have at least two children or pets that one of them must be named Peyton after UT football star Peyton Manning? My parents were able to get around this since Cash is an acceptable alternative. Thanks goodness!

Cash is very loving, and even though his previous family said he wasn’t a lap kitty, he now loves to sit on my mom’s lap (while she is grading papers) and brush up against Dad’s legs. He has been very helpful with taking care of his younger brothers…the fish. He loves to watch Dad feed them, and just after Cash arrived in our house, he managed to roll the container of fish food from the living room to underneath the bed in the spare bedroom, open it and eat it. Cash has tried to eat Styrofoam, wood, plants, plastic holly berry decorations and who knows what else.

He also likes to talk to himself, and he has these episodes when he runs around the house and acts crazy followed by periods of sleep. My parents have said this is typical behavior of Ph.D. students, and I guess they should know.

We love being in Knoxville for the holidays. We already experienced our first snow in early December, and we’re expecting more this weekend.

 
I hate being outside in it, but Cash loves it. He tried to eat as much snow as possible on the back porch and got upset once it melted. Crazy Cash!

My mom is in her final year of the Ph.D. program in communication at the University of Tennessee. She is working on this really long paper called a dissertation and will graduate in May. Dad is teaching chemistry at Pellissippi State Community College, and his students love him, although some of the excuses they come up with for not being in class crack him up. How many “family emergencies” can one student have in 15 weeks? You’d be surprised!

My mom had a funny experience earlier this fall on UT’s campus. It was raining one evening as she was leaving, and she happened to see UT football coach Lane Kiffin walking in the rain without an umbrella. She suddenly realized the only umbrella she had in her car was a Gator umbrella! She thought about stopping to lend it to him, especially since it was the week before Tennessee played the Gators in football, but she didn’t. That’s my mom!

My parents made three trips to Florida this year. The first one was for Aunt Allison and Uncle Matt’s beautiful wedding in March. It was great to see everyone in the family!

Then in July, they secretly traveled to Florida for Grandpa Amos’ 70th birthday surprise party that Uncle Jason and Aunt Kristen had planned along with my parents. He thought he was going to someone else’s surprise birthday party, so he had no clue all those folks had gathered for him.

While my parents were there, they met my first cousins, Mattie and Mia (Jason and Kristen’s puppies!)

In September, my parents flew to Orlando for Grandma Bouffard’s 80th surprise birthday party. She thought she was going out to dinner with just a few family members, so imagine her surprise when all of her six children and sixteen grandchildren showed up to help her celebrate! It was actually the first time in a while that EVERYONE was together!

We’ve also had all the grandparents visit us this fall. Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Amos came up in October, and it was really cold for their visit. Cash gets a little nervous around new people, and it takes him a day or so to warm up to new folks, but a few minutes after they arrived, I was already sitting on Grandma’s lap while she worked on her word jumble from the newspaper. That woman can’t get enough of those jumbles.

We had a historical Thanksgiving since it was the first time we hosted someone for any holiday in our home. Grandpa Sam visited us on his vacation. He drove from Florida and stopped in Georgia to visit family before heading our way. It was chilly again, and Grandpa Sam was so cold that he wore his jacket in our house. I sat on his lap to keep him warm.

Just last weekend, Grandma Betty, Grandpa Jean-Paul, Grandma Bouffard and Aunt Allison drove up to visit us. Cash and I loved seeing all of them since they brought us toys, which Cash has managed to eat, hide or destroy by this point.

Grandma Betty and Aunt Allison in my kitchen. Wish they had bothered to feed me! :)

Dad grilling with Grandpa JP. They didn't give us any! :)

Cash and I are on Facebook like our mom. We have Catbook profiles, so please check us out at facebook.com/allydevito. Also, my mom loves to blog about us and everything else happening in our lives, and she is going to post more photos of us along with this letter on her blog at allydevito.blogspot.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/allydevito. Our dad doesn’t believe in socialism…I mean social networking, so you won’t find him on these sites.

During this holiday season, we hope your spirits are high and that you weren’t friends with Bernie Madoff. Remember, if you have pets, have them spayed or neutered. (My parents volunteer at the Young-Williams Animal Center in Knoxville and get to see the over-populated pet problem first hand.) I never watch “The Price is Right” like Dolly did, but Mom and I are still upset that “Guiding Light” went off the air in September. It was the longest running show on television and even older than Grandpa Amos!

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Love,

Sammie, Cash, David, and Allyson DeVito (allydevito@gmail.com or dmdevito@gmail.com)

P.S. I do not share the same love for Florida football quarterback Tim Tebow as Dolly did. I’m a Riley Cooper kitty. I’ve also watched some UT football games this season, and I heard some folks call the coach Lame Kitten instead of Lane Kiffin. That’s an insult to cats everywhere! Go Gators! Go Vols!

Christmas cards are in the mail...

I am the latest I've ever been in mailing out our Christmas cards and holiday letter, but they are on their way! We mailed most of them today, and the rest will go out Monday. I'll post the letter and more photos of Sammie and Cash on my blog in a few days.

Here is proof that I was working on them this week. Notice Cash in the lower right corner. He enjoyed sitting next to me while I addressed all 100 of them! I think we're going to cut down on the number we send since so many people are online now, and we can save paper by sending a web version.

Cash was ready to leave after "helping" me for several hours. He is long enough to reach the door knob, but he hasn't figured out how to open the door...yet.

Cash also likes to sit under our Christmas tree. It reminds me of when Dolly and Sammie sat under our tree a few years ago, Sammie's first Christmas with us. We haven't had a real tree since 2006, and I'm glad we bought one this year.

Part of the delay in sending out the cards has been writing the letter. It was a lot harder this year without Dolly's input. I hope you enjoy what Sammie wrote. Check back in a few days to see her letter and more photos posted. Merry Christmas!

Fun family visit

David's mom, step-dad, grandma and sister made a quick visit last weekend. It was a lot of fun, but we wish they could have stayed longer!

After serving as an usher at UT's Graduate Hooding Ceremony on Friday afternoon, I arrived home to find David had taken his family to Kroger's Marketplace, the only possible grocery store that I can compare to Publix. We cooked dinner at home Friday night, which included cheese and bread, a yummy salad, grilled pork tenderloin and potatoes, and Herman bread. It was cold outside, but David and JP braved the winter weather for the sake of grilled goodness.

I'm good at taking photos of the table before we put the food on it! (Remember my Thanksgiving post!)

Like mother, like daughter! It's a great photo of Mom and Allison. 

After dinner, there was a friendly competition between a brother and sister on the Wii while everyone else watched.

Saturday was full of shopping and more eating of course. We ate lunch at Lakeside Tavern next to Concord Marina.

Thanks for visiting us and for the wonderful birthday and Christmas gifts. They even brought Sammie and Cash some toys. We miss you already! Merry Christmas!

Best addressed Christmas card (Thanks Lourdes!)

We're starting to receive more and more Christmas cards, and I have to share one we received today because of how it's addressed to us.

Our friends in Texas, Lourdes, Jamie and Sienna, sent us a card and jokingly wrote, "Mr. and Mrs. David DeVito" on the front with an arrow to turn it over.

I tore into the envelope (since I knew it contained a photo card of their adorable little girl!), so if you can't read what Lourdes wrote, it says, "Just kidding, just referencing that blog post. :)) Here's the blog post Lourdes is referring to that I posted last year around this time—Mr. and Mrs. David and Allyson DeVito. Thanks for the super cute card!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

We bought our Christmas tree last Friday from Mayo Garden Center in Knoxville. They actually have a tree lot set up in Farragut in front of the Fresh Market shopping center. They told us these trees are from Virginia and cut last Wednesday, so our tree is a really fresh one and still drinking plenty of water.

It looks great in the corner of our living room. David had a great idea of putting the lights on the tree while it was in the garage, so we made less of a mess once it was inside.

I purchased a wreath from the Boys Scouts during Thanksgiving weekend that hangs on our front door.

Hallmark stores are selling Linus from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and I had to get one. It was the last one in the store a few weeks ago! He recites a verse from Luke in the Bible and then says, "That's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown."

There is one decoration that Cash has decided he likes to eat. I bought some plastic holly berries and mixed them in with pine cones in a red bowl. Cash likes to eat the berries, so this decoration goes into the spare bedroom at night and can only be out when we're home.

We also have some lights up outside and more decorations inside that I haven't taken photos of yet, so stay tuned!

Sammie is still working on her holiday letter, and it should be in the mail by next week since I know some of you are anxiously awaiting to receive it. Happy Holidays!