I am a happily married mother with four boys and a puppy (yes, a boy too!). My boys are ages 8, 6, 4 and 2. They keep life very busy, but they also bring much joy to our home. I love to read, scrapbook and stamp home-made cards (when I have a few free minutes...). We love to go camping as a family and we're die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fans! I love to bake and I am trying to develop a love for baking pies, since they're my husbands favorite. I like trying new Mexican dishes and Italian ones too. My step-dad is pure Italian and my mom grew up on a farm with mostly country cooking. When they married she had to learn a whole new style of cooking, which thankfully, seemed to come to her naturally. I love making homemade pasta and sauce (which if you're Italian, you MUST say gravy:0)), but I also like trying to replicate my grandmother's chicken and dumplings-- both worlds apart, but equally delicious! My dad says that I make the best coconut cream pie, which he requests every year for his birthday. After several rounds of trial and error, I finally have the recipe down to a science! My husband and I had only been married a few weeks when I decided to try a new chicken recipe. It contained rice and orange juice along with the chicken, but you could only taste the orange juice... sour and absolutely gross! I'm sure there are plenty of similar recipies out there that taste wonderful, but to this very day, my husband will not allow me to cook with orange juice-- unless it's in a dessert!