I am a "retired" scuba instructor who has lived and worked in places like Hawaii, Palau (near the Phillippines), and St. Thomas. I am now married with 2 beautiful children, Abby who is 3 and Elijah who is 6 months. Although I love the ocean and used it as an office for awhile, I grew up in the mountains and that is where my heart lies. We are living in Florida now, but I hope to move home to Colorado soon. I love to cook just about anything from comfort food to gourmet meals. My daughter and I make pancakes together at least once a week, and I look forward to each new batch. When I was growing up my mother, brother and I would make and decorate tons of Christmas cookies together. We did this from before I can remember until I got married and started a family of my own. I've already started to continue this tradition with my own kids. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting around the kitchen table frosting sugar cookie cut-outs while listening to Christmas carols. Hopefully my children will say the same thing when they are older. 3 years ago I made my first Thanksgiving dinner for 14 people. We have a small family, so that was a lot! I made everything from scratch, even the pie crusts. I somehow managed to get everything cooked perfectly and on the table on time. Everybody raved about the food and we all had a great holiday. My daughter was 4 months old at the time. 2 days ago! As I look back on it, it is clear to me that both of my kids obviously wanted pizza for dinner rather than the stuffed chicken breasts I had planned. After an hour and a half of trying to pull this fairly simple dish together I had 3 destroyed chicken breasts and still one more to pound out, my apple had been out so long it was brown and mushy, my grated cheese was partly melted and seperating and I still didn't have a side dish. I had cleaned up 2 potty accidents, changed a diaper, and had put my daughter in 2 time-outs (not for the accidents). I finally gave up when my daughter tried to "taste" the raw chicken as I was trying to keep my son from sampling the bottom of my shoe. My husband came home 5 min. later to a very frazzled wife and a very happy daughter chanting "we're having pizza for dinner!"