Gill More: Gill Girls

Nothing makes me happier than when (almost) all the kids are handing out together cooking, laughing, and watching movies. My family is such a source of joy to me as I am sure yours is to you. I love the sounds of a happy house, kids singing, laughter, stupid jokes -you all know what I mean.

Today (July 2nd) is Shelly's birthday, she is 14. I am not sure where the time has gone. I am so proud of her faith, drive, and kindness. She is so much like her sisters, it is uncanny. She has Christina's quick whit and sense of humor and Karie's musical taste and zest for life.

So of course if we are having a birthday this means cooking! Two months ago we had a pretty big party for Michelle's confirmation which was three days of cooking. Thankfully Michelle decided she wanted a scaled down version for her family birthday dinner. Another first was instead of buying a cake she wanted to make red velvet cup cakes at home. Of course this means we needed everyone over to help cook.

Now I thought this was going to be harder than it actually was, so I enlisted Karie to come help. She of course brought Gavin and Eleanor so everyone helped. I think help was the plan, what ended up happening was the three of us drank beers while Michelle cooked. It was fun though.

I asked Jim to pick up some red food coloring for me. He got some food color, it might have been magenta and pink, but he gets credit for the effort.

We decided to make my friend Ree's Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork sandwich we again. This is so easy to make, and it's Jennie proof. Dump a few things in my Dutch Oven, and bake at 175 degrees overnight. It doesn't look like much now, but wait until tomorrow.

Michelle's birthday rolled around and we started off by making the cream cheese frosting to finish off the cup cakes. I didn't really know how easy frosting is to make, and it was so much better than the stuff in the can from the store.

Thankfully Karie showed up to help with the prep work and things started happening. The cupcakes got finished, and then it was on to Chrissy's Cheesy Bacon Jalapeño Corn Bread. It is easy to put together, and I think this is now my version of corn bread.

We got that into the oven and I needed to make the whiskey BBQ sauce glaze. This is another Pioneer Woman recipe, and it is amazing. The only thing I add is about a tablespoon of brown sugar to off set the spicy of the jalapeño's that go in.
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