I am a mother of two sons and a daughter. Also a grandmother of 5 and soon to be 6. My oldest grandchild, a girl, is 18 yrs old then comes the 2, 6 year old girls (not twins) a 4 year old grandson, who lives in Japan with his little sister who was born in Oct '08. My oldest son and his wife are expecting in June '09. My kids and grandkids make my world go round! Even tho at times I have a noisy, hectic, home I love having them here. I cook alot to put smiles on their faces! I have made cakes and wedding cakes for over 30 years so baking is my forte but I LOVE cooking anything that is delicious. I work as a fiberoptic technician, after more than 20 years as a dental assistant. Baking bread,cakes and cookies. I have made and decorated cakes and cookies for MANY years and never get tired of that. I just love to cook and really enjoy finding new recipes to try and share. I have shelves and shelves of cook books but still gravitate to the old tried and true ones alot! I love entertaining and I really love to throw elaborate birthday parties for my kids and grandkids and special friends. I follow alot of the same recipe traditions that my mother prepared. We had 7 children in our family so she cooked ALOT! She was always reinventing recipes and making good use of left overs and was really quite good at disguising the fact that they were left overs. I learned alot from being in the kitchen with her. And when holiday times roll around I still pull out her old recipes. I guess we all do that. It makes me feel as if we are still cooking together in the kitchen. Thanks Mom I am still trying to make great homemade bread. It has improved over the years with practice but it still seems a bit of a mystery to me. I know what to do when and for how long but for some reason sometimes it fails. Everything else I cook turns out fine but breads are still a challenge to me that I hope someday to be triumphant over! When I was quite young and just starting out baking I wanted to make Lady Fingers.My mother reluctantly agreed to let me try my hand at making these cookies. I searched in her badly stained from years of use, Joy of Cooking book for the recipe. I thought I followed it correctly but sadly they came out hard as rocks! In fact my 2 younger brothers used them as ammo for their sling shots bursting them against the side of the barn. To this day I still get comments about those dreaded lady fingers!