Marcy and Scott

Vacation

2011-05-30T16:55:00.016-04:00

I know, it's been a long time. There's been lots of stuff going on, but I have been prioritizing and other stuff has bene taking priority over blogging. But, we just took a long, amazing vacation. I felt that it deserved a blog post. I have already posted pictures on Facebook, so I will share those pictures here so that I don't have to re-upload them. That would take forever! Just a warning, this is a really long post!

We left our house on Thursday, May 12 after work. We drove down to Tifton to eat, stopping at an Olive Garden on the way down. We drove the rest of the way to Tampa on Friday, checked in at our hotel, then headed over to Busch Gardens. School hadn't let out yet, so there were not many people there. We rode every ride we wanted to ride that day, but didn't really spend that much time looking at the animals and all that. Friday night after we got back from the park, we went over to the mall close to the port in Tampa and had dinner at Maggiano's and watched Thor. We really enjoyed both. I thought Thor would be more exciting, but it was still good. I am glad that now I know the story. We went back to Busch Gardens on Saturday and spent more time looking at the animals. The first thing we did was ride the train around the park so that we could see all the animals that are out in the open area. We rode a couple rides, at lunch, then went to the Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, which was kind of like a miniature Cirque de Soliel (we think). We stopped to watch a short Christian concert and then it rained pretty hard. We ducked into one of the shops and tried to wait it out, but it just kept sprinkling. So, we bought a couple of ponchos and headed over to the animal area you can walk through. There we saw giraffes, gorillas, a small aquarium area (small compared to the GA aquarium), meerkats, and lions. I love giraffes! They were a lot of fun to watch. The little meerkats were also so cute! We had seen that they were having a Michael W. Smith concert that evening, so we headed over there. The openers were the the Sidewalk Prophets. We really enjoyed it. We would definitely pay to see Michael W. Smith. We ate dinner on the way to get in one more ride before the park closed. We purchased the all day dining deal that Busch Gardens offers and it was well worth it because we were able to get bottled waters and snacks all day when we wanted it. Here is our album of pictures from Busch Gardens.

On Sunday morning, we got up and took our time packing and eating breakfast, then headed over to he Port in Tampa. We went through the embarkation process to get our Sail and Sign cards (the ship ID) and got on the Carnival Legend. The first thing we did was find the buffet since our room wasn't ready yet. The food was pretty good. We chose the chinese buffet line. It was hard to find a table, so I sat at the first empty table we found while Scott got his food and then got mine while he ate. That was really the only way to do it since we were still lugging around our carry on luggage. By the time we were done with lunch, we were able to go to our room and put down our stuff. We then headed out to the pool to wait for the muster drill and the sail-away. We paid for a room with just a window, but we got upgraded for free to an obstructed balcony, probably because our ship wasn't full and my sister booked our cruise through her company and they book tons of cruises throug Carnival. The only other big things we did that night was go to dinner and the Welcome Aboard show. The show was so late that we checked out the Sing-along in the piano bar with a guy named Mr. H. That was a lot of fun. We met a couple at dinner who would supposedly be sharing our table for the week, Jocilyn and Dustin. The picture is of us sitting at the pool before the muster drill.

Monday was a "Fun Day at Sea" meaning we were cruising all day. We went to a couple of seminars about what do do in the ports when you weren't on an excursion, mainly about shopping. Please remind me to never waste my time at one of those again. They hand you all the information you need on the way off the ship and none of the "great deals" they talk about are really all that great from what I can tell. We also laid out in the sun, ate lunch, and went to our first "formal" night. Our new "friends" Jocilyn and Dustin had been drinking all day and were kind of funny, but Jocilyn said some things that I think embarrassed her. Also, Dustin hadn't realized that they prefer for you not to wear shorts and flip flops to the dining room. So, probably for those reasons, we never saw them again. That night there was a show called "Hot Jazz" that was pretty good.

Tuesday was our first day in a port of call, Cozumel. We had planned a dolphin swim and ride at the Dolphinaris. We really had a lot of fun. We got to pet the dolphins, "dance" with the dolphins, kiss the dolphins, hug the dolphins, and do a belly ride with the dolphin. Our dolpins names were Bina and Marcy (yep, that's right). The lunch was included in our package. It was pretty good, but when we saw how much it was, we decided that if it hadn't been included, we'd have gone somewhere else. After that, we just walked up and down the main shopping area and looked in the shops. We were getting up early the next morning, so we just headed to bed early and watched tv.

Wednesday was our day in Belize and our longest excursion. We went through a private company as opposed to going through Carnival. There were only six of us on our tour, Scott and me and a family of 3 and their son's friend. We did cave tubing and zip lining. The cave tubing was just okay. It was just like tubing in GA down the Chattahoochee, except you are going through a cave in the dark. We did see bat holes in the roof of the cave and some real live bats! Eek! The zip lining was tons of fun! We did 7 zip lines. We got some good videos of each of us zip lining. I really enjoyed being able to look down and see all the trees below us. Scott enjoyed it too and he's afraid of heights. It's a very controlled environment when you're zip lining.

Thursday was our day in Mohagany Bay, Isla Roatan which is in Honduras. We spent the morning on the beach. We purchased a package that included a ride on the "magical flying beach chair" which was a chair lift kind of like at ski resorts, two chairs and a "clam shell" cover, and two floats. The beach was crowded, but it was beautiful and they had an area roped off so that people could swim and not have to worry about floating too far out. Some people were renting snorkeling stuff and jumping off a dock that was a little to the left of where we were. I heard some people saying they saw all kinds of cool stuff. While we were at the beach, our waterproof digital camera stopped working. We had a regular digital camera on the ship, but the next day was our snorkeling trip, so we really wanted to digital camera. So, we decided to be cheap and go back to the ship for lunch, put away our beach things, then go back out to shop for a camera. No luck. We ran into a couple we'd met the next day while we were doing the slide later on and they have a waterproof camera and said they loved their's and had seen the exact same camera but a new model in the photo area on the ship. So, we bought one that night. That was our second "Cruise Elegant" night and there was a New Orleans-type show, so they had beads on everyone's plate when we got to the dining room. That night, it was really windy in the area the ship was sailing through, and we were going really fast. So, the ship was really rocking. There was a big show that night, the best one of the whole cruise, call The Big Easy. We couldn't believe the dancers and singers were still able to go on with the show. The cruise director had told them they shouldn't do it, but they really wanted to. The cruise director, Wee Jimmy, who was Scottish, said that after dinner he saw all the sober people walking around all unstable-looking and people were walking out of the bar in a straight line. It really was hard to walk!

Friday we were in Grand Cayman. It is so nice there! The water is beautiful and clear, the streets are fairly nice and clean. We shopped around, at lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and then went on a snorkeling tour. We visited a coral reef and a ship wreck. It was my first time snorkeling. Scott had been a couple of times before. There weren't tons of fish and there were really only abour 3-4 different kinds of fish down there. The ship wreck was cool. The ship was the Cali and it had a cool history about how it had had several owners, but the last owner had retro-fitted it with 2 big diesel engines. One night he was trying to make it back to the port to beat a storm and he fired up both engines at full throttle. The boat couldn't take the force of the engines, so it started to literally fall apart at the seams. He made it to the pier in Grand Cayman and a welder was trying to fix everything, but finally told him it was a lost job. Since he didn't want to be embarrassed by sinking his ship at the dock, he drove it further into the ocean and left it there. The boat was full of rice, so when the rice got wet, it expanded and literally sank the ship and busted the seams! It's the only time in history our tour guide knew of a boat being sank by rice. The British, who own Grand Cayman, thought the Cali was an eye sore, so they decided to blow it up right where it was. They brought 10 cases of dynamite with them. They really only needed 2.5, but they didn't want to take it all back with them. So, they hooked it all up and let 'er rip! The explosion was so huge, it busted all the windows out of the shops that are close to the dock in that area! This had happened years ago and the ship was all in pieces at the bottom of the ocean and there was lots of algae growing on it. That night, we saw a hilarious juggler, Dana Tison.

Saturday was another "Fun Day at Sea" and we got up bright and early so that we could get a good seat by the pool. We laid out by the pool, reading and napping and talking. There was an ice sculpting demonstration that afternoon. We of course spent a good bit of time on the slide. We played putt-putt on top of the ship in winds so hard, we had to lean into it to keep from being blown over. That was interesting. We worked on packing before dinner and managed to get most of it done before we went to eat. We just finished packing that night and went to bed since we knew we'd have to get up early if we wanted to get breakfast on the ship.

Sunday was "debarkation" and it really went very smoothly. We drove about half way home and stopped in Moultrie, GA where we had dinner with our friends John and Ashleigh, watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and stayed the night. We drove the rest of the way home on Monday and managed to get almost all of our laundry caught up! It was definitely a good idea to take Monday off!

I think we are both in post-vacation let-down. I, surprisingly, didn't feel a real sense of dread about going back to work. So, I thought that was good. I feel revived. I thought our vacation had a good mix of fun and activity and laying around and being lazy.

Movies

2011-01-03T15:20:00.002-05:00

Scott and I love to watch movies. There was a bit of a dry spell where there either weren't any that we wanted to see, or we were too busy while the ones we wanted to see were in the theater. So, until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out in November, I think the last movie we'd been to see was Eclipse. However, we saw HP7 twice (once on the regular screen then once in IMAX with some friends). Then, we've been to see Tangled and the new Narnia movie in the past couple of weeks.

We really like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part1. Obviously, with a book that long, they had to condense a lot of scenes, but I still felt like they stayed pretty true to the book on this one. In previous movies, mainly in the Goblet of Fire, they strayed so far from the book that I felt they actually changed the character of the characters, if you know what I mean. They ended Part 1 in a place that ensures that Part 2 will be nothing but non-stop action and have us on the edge of our seats the whole time! I am really excited to see that one but at the same time I'll be sad for the series to be over.

Tangled was a really cute movie. I really want to get ahold of the Little Golden Book version of Rapunzel because I want to see if the story was anything like the real Rapunzel. I can't remember anything about it, except the hair and the tower. Of course everything ended with a "happy ever after."

The newest Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was very entertaining as well. I have never read any of the books, so I can't compare them. I will probably read them one day, but I might wait until the movies are all out so I won't watch the movies comparing them to the books.

I am an AMC Moviewatcher member, so the last time we went, we got a free ticket that we have to use before the end of January. So, we'll be going to see something else very soon.

We've also been renting movies from Netflix. We watched a movie that Emma Watson, from Harry Potter, did a few years ago on instant watch. It was called Ballet Shoes. Yeah, not that great of a movie. It was kind of pointless, but I didn't think the acting was bad. We borrowed the Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp from my dad and I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it would just be ridiculous, so I wasn't expecting much, so I guess that's why I liked it. I had heard several people say they weren't impressed. Before we watched that version, we watched another real-people version of Alice in Wonderland and the animated Disney version. We watched The Kingdom last night and that was a very action-packed movie. The main character was Jamie Foxx. I don't think I had watched him in anything since the TV show In Living Color so I was surprised that he was so good at playing a serious character! The show was based on terrorism in Saudi Arabia. A military compound is attacked and the FBI comes in to help them figure out what happened and who is to blame. Oh man, this movie was so stressful. Next on our queue is The Life and Faith of C.S. Lewis. We did an instant watch of a documentary called America's Godly Builders: Wallbuilders. It talked about how America's founding fathers intended for Christianity to be a part of the American life. I must admit that I made the mistake of laying down during this one b/c I couldn't get comfortable and fell asleep a couple of times. But, I got the gist. Scott really liked it and we'll probably watch more stuff like that on instant watch. We also watched Sweet Home Alabama because Scott had never seen it and I wanted to see it again. We both agree that that one should go on our wishlist because it's a keeper. Since we really don't want to spend all our time at home watching movies, we have the cheapest version of Netflix - we get two rentals per month, one at a time, and 2 hours of instant watch per month. Sometimes, we end up keeping a movie for over a month because we aren't able to watch it, so we don't need to spend more.

Well, I hope you are tempted to watch some of these movies that we've seen lately if you haven't already. Hopefully I'll download some holiday gathering pictures and do a post on that soon.

Take care!

Caught in the Act

2010-12-24T13:42:00.003-05:00

The other day I got video of some of the cats' funnier quirky habits. So cute.

Mathilda has started dunking her head under the stream of water before drinking it (usually for much longer than I captured here). Sampson always "hints" that he wants to be brushed. They keep us laughing!

Random Thoughts From Marcy

2010-12-22T12:48:00.006-05:00

I know it has been forever since I've posted. So, I really don't know what to say, so I thought I would just do a bulleted list:

-It is cold in GA. It actually wasn't unbearable this morning, but it is supposed to be about 30 degrees F on Christmas day. That's cold.

-I need a new pair of gloves. The ones I have I got at Eddie Bauer either the year Scott and I started dating or the year before that. They have strings hanging off and all the anti-slip stuff is breaking off and getting everywhere. But, there are no holes and they still keep my hands all toasty. I think I'll be going back to Eddie Bauer to replace them. Gloves are not something I can just put on my wishlist. I have to try them on. I have small hands.

-I work in a place where vacation time is use-it-or-lose-it. I haven't used very much because I've been so busy. So, I took last Friday off and I will be taking off every day for the rest of the year beginning tomorrow.

-Tomorrow is cleaning day.

-Our cats are still the best ever. Mathilda has removed a few random ornaments from the tree, but there has been very little damage. Sampson and Maxwell are as sweet as ever. All three compete for our attention.

-We have lots of Christmas and New Years activities coming up in the next week and a half. It's good to be busy and to have lots of friends and family to spend time with.

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This Is What I Am Thankful For

2010-11-25T10:08:00.001-05:00

Chili

2010-11-07T16:16:00.002-05:00

Last night we had our annual bonfire at Charles' and Maggie's house. It was a lot of fun, even though it was really really cold. But, there was a fire, so I huddled close to it. Maggie and Charles were recently part of a different small group, so we had new people at our bonfire and that was a lot of fun too! I made the chili and got lots of compliments on it. This was surprising since I'd never made it this way before, but I made it this way to try to make it so that more people would like it. I have, in the past, always made my chili with only like 1-2 pounds of meat in a huge pot of chili with beans (always pinto) and lots of tomatoes. And it generally isn't very spicy because of my acid reflux and the fact that when I used to put in a can of Rotel, Scott mentioned it was too spicy. But, he seems to have taken on a higher threshold for spiciness in the years since we were first married, so I took a chance and he seemed pleased. I wanted to publish my "recipe" since I still had the cans I used yesterday sitting on the counter since I'd rinsed them and let them dry for recycling.

I made two big crock pots full - the "regular" round size (I think it's 4 quarts) and the big oval one (I think that one is 6 quarts). I tried to put about the same proportion of everything in each pot, so here is two big pots' worth of ingredients:

-3 boxes of the 2 Alarm Chili Kit mixes (do not add the masa flour and the red pepper until later)
-4 lbs ground chuck, browned and drained (we drained it into a collander sitting in a bowl and then pressed it with a paper towel)
-2 lbs reduced fat breakfast sausage, browned and drained
-3 cans tomato sauce
-3 cans plain diced tomatoes
-1 can diced tomatoes w/ green peppers & onions
-2 cans rotel (one was the regular Rotel brand, one was the fire-roasted Kroger version)
-2 small cans tomato paste
-2 cans fire-roasted tomatoes w/ garlic
-1 can fire-roasted tomatoes

Scott browned and drained the meat for me. I split it between the crock pots. I added one mix to each crock pot excluding the masa flour and the red pepper. I then added all the tomato products above. I put the lid on an let it cook on high for 30 minutes, as directed on the box. I went back and tasted and thought it could use some more heat, so I split 1 of the envelopes of red pepper between the 2 pots and to thicken it, I mixed one envelope of the masa flour with 1/4 c warm water in each pot (2 total). I let them cook for maybe 15 more minutes on high then turned them down to low while we went out to lunch, so maybe an hour and a half-ish. When we got home, the house smelled like chili, but when I stirred it up and tasted, it didn't really taste like chili. It tasted like meat and tomatoes. Sad. So, I split my last chili kit between the two pots, excluding the masa flour and the red pepper. I thought they were thick enough and I knew from experience that chili gets hotter with time, so I didn't want to overdo the spice. They probably cooked on low for another hour to an hour and a half before we packed them up to take to Charles' and Maggie's house. Of course, they didn't have to cook for that long and would have cooked faster on the stove. However, if you make chili "quickly" and you intend to have leftovers for the next few days or to freeze, keep in mind that the reheated version will always be spicier.

Sorry that was so long. But, chili is a food of love. It takes a while. I rarely ever make it the same way twice because I can rarely remember. If I was making this for just Scott and me, I would put in beans. I have also made chili with ground turkey breast and it is just as good. I would have used turkey sausage if I could find anything but those breakfast links, which are a pain to break up and they are more expensive. Happy cooking!

A Belated Post About Our Vacation

2010-10-16T21:22:00.003-04:00

Back at the end of July, Scott and I went on vacation in Destin for a long weekend. We really enjoyed it when we went down there for my sister's wedding, so we thought we'd go there again. The water and beach were so beautiful. Well, with all the oil issues and the storms, it wasn't as beautiful as it had been. There was no oil around, but everything just seemed stirred up. I have made a slide show of the few pictures that we took. It was really windy and hot. That's the one thing I don't like about the beach - that you get all hot and sweaty. Ick! But, I read Sense and Sensibility while we were there and we sat on the beach the whole time, with one short trip to the outlet mall. We had one nice meal out at a place called The Back Porch, which was right on the beach. It was an open restaurant and it was really windy that day. We made good use of the salt and pepper shaker and all the condiment bottles to hold down our napkins and such. The other nights we cooked dinner in. We ate lunch in every day too. We spent as much on our one meal out as we did on our food the entire rest of the trip! I think that Carrie, Bethany, and Shana will appreciate this! I took pictures of the place we stayed so we'd remember. It was called Capri by the Gulf by Harmony Beach Vacations. It was pretty nice. It also was the best price around! I didn't bother labeling my pictures because I felt they were pretty self-explanatory. Enjoy!

Maxwell Can Tell Time

2010-10-05T12:25:00.004-04:00

Or may we should call this post "Maxwell Gets Revenge!"

So, last night we had to give all the cats their flea/heart worm medicine. All this requires is squirting a little tube of liquid on the back of their neck. Doesn't sound hard does it? HA! You've never met Maxwell. We always try to start with him. Well, he always seems to know when it's coming. We even tried to mellow them out with catnip. And, we forgot to close the door to the guest bedroom. Under the bed he goes. So, we closed him in and did Sampson and Mathilda. Then, we opened the door and he ran under the bed again when he saw Scott.

You will be shocked at what I did next, it's so mean!

I went into the kitchen and started putting ice in a glass and saying "Maxwell, Ice!" All three cats came running. Maxwell tried to resist and couldn't. I threw them a few pieces of ice, Scott shut the door, and then together we wrestled him to the ground and gave him his medicine. We all managed to escape injury, narrowly.

When we were ready for bed, I did a cat check and couldn't find Maxwell. So, I called and called and he didn't show. I figured he'd hidden under the bed in the guest room again. I closed the door and went to bed.

I thought wrong.

At 4:56 (4 minutes until my alarm goes off), I hear Maxwell in the bathroom in our room doing his loud "I want water; I'm so thirsty I think I might die," meow. It's truly pitiful. I just said "Shhh!" and tried to go back to sleep. (I know you are surprised, but that does shut them up, even through the door, they know the water bottle will follow shortly.) Then the alarm went off and I had to shoo him out of our room.

Oh yes, he holds a grudge!

Cats and Not Much Else

2010-09-08T19:22:00.004-04:00

So, while we have been keeping busy, I really don't feel like I have a lot to say lately. But, I did want to give an update. I can't believe we are already seeing signs of Fall! The Lantana that I talked about in the last post is absolutely out of control. Unfortunately, I haven't downloaded those pictures yet, so they'll have to wait. Just imagine that you cannot see even a peek of the HVAC unit.

We got a photography class for our digital SLR for half off through half-off depot. We went this past Saturday. I learned a few things and I hope to build on them. I took some pictures of the cats when we got home. I am not sure if they are any better than ones I have taken in the past, but I did take them without the flash...so I felt pretty good about that.

Mathilda is now 10 pounds! She doesn't really look much bigger, but she is more round. She's pretty sturdy looking, that's for sure. She guards the food bowls. We went out and purchased a second automatic feeder so that she could eat out of one and the boys could eat out of the other. She sits there and watches them eat or lays down right next to them and nudges them. Sometimes we hear hisses or growls and we figure she got too close and is being put in her place. It's about time is all I can say about that. But, there you go. There's not that much else going on I guess.

I have begun making Christmas cards again. It's going faster this year, I think.

Here are some pictures I took this past Saturday:

How much is that kitty in the window?

Grrr...I am SO fierce!

I don't know if I have said this before, but Maxwell and Sampson are very long, have long tails, and are also tall. They have long legs. It's not as obvious on Sampson because he is so fluffy and fat, but Maxwell is sleek, so when he walks, it makes me think of a Great Dane. Yep, feline version of Scooby Doo. Well, Mathilda is compact. Her legs are super short, even by normal cat standards, I think. So, I say that while Maxwell is the Great Dane of cats, Mathilda is the weiner dog of cats. Heehee. But, she makes up for it with her feather duster of a tail. It's not as long as the boys' but its much furrier and poofy!

Project: Lantana Replacement

2010-06-27T21:25:00.004-04:00

So, I told you in the last post that we did some replacing of some dead stuff. For the last 3-4 years, we have had lantana around our AC unit and around the mailbox. Well, it was so cold last winter that is all died. So, I went by a local nursery on Friday and got some more lantana for around the AC unit and two black-eyed susans and two purple verbena for around the mailbox. We had to pull up the roots from the dead lantana before we could plant the new stuff. It was like fighting a battle. The roots were long and deep in some places and long and far out in others. Here are some pictures to illustrate:

This is one of the ones from around the AC unit.

Two of the ones around the mailbox were like this - they had grown way out into the yard. Scott pulled this one out a little more then it broke off.

Here is the final product around the AC unit.

Here is the final product around the mailbox. I hope they'll really grow this year and also come back next year.

Catch-up Time

2010-06-27T16:39:00.018-04:00

We have been so busy this summer so far! Scott and I have been more focused on spending time together, reading either our Bibles or other books, working in the yard, and exercising in all this beautifully HOT weather we've been having. I find it funny that we have received two comments on how we haven't posted in so long on the very day I was already planning to do a post.

I have listened to or read all the Kathy Reichs books and I am still reading Wuthering Heights and the biography by Julie Andrews called Home. I have been working on that Julie Andrews book for over a year. I have it at work and I read it here and there but it is interesting to read about her. Scott and I did a Sunday morning Bible study (which is something new since we moved into our new building) in the John Piper book Don't Waste Your Life which was really good. I think that we both plan to sit down and re-read the book that goes along with it so that the chapters aren't split up like for the Bible study pretty soon. We are reading and RC Sproul book called Knowing Scripture in our small group that meets every other Wednesday. We are learning a lot of stuff out of that like hermeneutics and the difference between exegesis and eisegesis (which, as many of you will know, is HUGE). It is just a good book that works to try to explain how to read the Bible without missing the important parts but also without misinterpreting the original meaning. Our small group leader Zach says that reading classic literature will make you a better reader overall (which of course will make you a better reader of the Bible), so Scott ordered a bunch of classics and is working through them. He has read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and Treasure Island. If I can ever finish Wuthering Heights, I am going to move on to the collection of Jane Austen books that my sister gave me for my birthday last year after I read a book I borrowed from my friend Lauren called Feminine Appeal. We also worked through a couple's Bible study-type book called After You Say I Do. We weren't really great about doing it so it took us forever and we took a huge break in the middle while we did Don't Waste Your Life. It was a pretty good book and while I thought some of the questions were repetitive, sometimes that's what you need. Someone told me (I won't name the person, but you know who you are) that kissing is repetitive, but no one complains about that (that isn't an exact quote because I have an awful memory, but kissing was the example used). The point is that you can never hear or read some things too many times, the Bible being one of them.

We are currently in a Sunday morning class led by Bob, one of the elders of our church and someone that we consider a good friend as well. (We love his whole family.) We have books of the Bible that we are supposed to read each week then we go over them on Sunday. We are reading a lot of the books that a lot of people have never read like Nahum, Philemon, Haggai, and Habukkuk.

Oh, and I have been listening to all the Twilight books on MP3 in my car lately, preparing for Eclipse to come out in the theaters. Scott and I are going to see it at the midnight showing! I can't wait to see what they did with the movie. I got that novella that Stephenie Meyer wrote called The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and it was really good, of course. Stephenie Meyer is a very good fictional writer. She does a great job of describing things in enough detail to give you a really good mental picture and she incorporates some good humor as well. I haven't read The Host, but maybe I will one day.

We are trying to get out and do exercise 2-3 days a week. On days when Scott cuts the grass, I'll either go to the park by myself to walk or stay in and do Dance Dance Revolution or Wii Boxing (or sometimes both). But, usually, we'll go to the park together and we either walk together or Scott will play disc golf and I'll walk with my MP3 player.

We have been doing a LOT of work in our yard (and the inside of our house is suffering because of it). We had to have a french drain put in because our builder apparently value-engineered proper drainage from our yard when they had everything smoothed out to build the house. Well, they put sand down for the grass to grow back in and we have had tons of weeds coming up with it. We've pulled so many weeds and Scott keeps calling the people who spray our yard to come back out because we're tired of pulling weeds. We have pruned our big oak tree by the street. We ordered a compost bin so that we can save money in the future on buying good dirt. We plan to put in some raised gardens in the backyard this fall and we'll need lots of compost. I moved a bunch of stuff around in our front gardens that weren't looking quite how I had planned. We removed all the pine straw from our front gardens and the little one out back and replaced it with shredded pine mulch. Of course while we had all the pine straw up, I weeded and put out a ton of Preen under and on top of the mulch. I decided to do just a few container gardens this year because last year was a bit out of control. Wow, when I list out all we've done it doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it is a lot. Especially when it's 80 degrees by 9 am!

Here is a picture from May 25. The daffodil greenery was still sticking up in some places and the purple cone flowers were starting to get taller than the daylilies.

I got some geraniums from the Growers' Outlet and planted them in some little mounds I made. But, I was afraid to move those coneflowers. They were not looking great where they were. So, I dug them up...

And I put the two tallest ones between the daylilies and planted three black-eyed susans in the front. I put the two shorter ones on the other side of the front garden where I had dug up a big patch of monkey grass.

This is what it looked like yesterday. The gladiolus are a bit crazy. bit I am happier now that I moved everything around. Can you see the difference after we put out the new mulch?

Yesterday, we actually got up super early to do some yard work to replace some stuff that didn't come back. I'll have to do a separate post with pictures for that one because it's a story in and of itself.

We also had a yard sale! We sat out in our driveway all day and had tons of stuff. Lots of people came by. We made almost $100, which I hear is good for a yard sale. But, it was a lot of work for $100, really. We ended up filling up the entire bed and back seat of my truck with stuff to take to Goodwill. And, I got a really red sunburn for my efforts.

Here's all the stuff we took to Goodwill!

After we left Goodwill, we gathered up our earnings and went over the Petsmart and got the cats a cat condo. It was a long-awaited purchase and I am so glad we got it. I always wanted one for the boys and when Mathilda came along, it kind of became a necessity because she is a climber. Seriously.

Here are all three cats checking out the cat condo on the day we brought it home.

Couldn't resist this adorable picture of Mathilda!

I cut all my hair off and donated it to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program. My hair is now...short. Really short. And apparently the talk of my office. It's been about a month now and there are still people just noticing it (people I rarely see, that happens when there are 400 people in your building). Also, people are still talking about it. Someone will say, oh I like your hair so-and-so told me you got it cut. I was surprised at the strong reaction to my change, but it's flattering, so I won't complain. This is kind of funny - the other day I was walking out with a guy I barely know (I don't even know what he does) and he was asking my why I cut my hair and he said it was a huge change - he informed me that my current style was sassy whereas the old one was kind of girl next door. I think that his observation was spot-on but it was hilarious to me that it came from a guy. Anywho. (That's just for you, Josh - because I think of this post every time I say it).

The picture at the top of the post is of me with my short hair (obvi) taken a couple of weeks ago at our church picnic by my friend Amy (thanks Amy!!). The ones above are from the day I had it done.

Yesterday we went to my dad's house and celebrated my sister, Wendy's, birthday and Father's Day. He has a pool and it has been so hot that the pool felt like lukewarm bath water. Crazy. It was fun to hang out at the pool all day and spend time with my family. There are so many good pictures from yesterday that I think I'll just make a Facebook album and link it here later. So, if you read this post and there's no FB album, check back later.

Mathilda is huge. She is between 7-8 pounds. I weighed her one day a couple of weeks ago and by my calculations she was 8.6 lbs. Then, later that same week I took her to the vet to have her eye looked at and they said she weighed 7.12 lbs. I'd get up and go weigh her now, but I hate getting on the scales these days. I've gained about 4 lbs since I stopped doing weight watchers and I have to go back on the wagon, um, after July 4. She is really a beautiful cat. And mischievous.

I have some pictures loaded on Facebook, I think I'll just put a link to that album here so that you can see all the mischief she gets into and I don't have to upload the pictures twice. There are some other repeats from this post in there, but for the most part, they are of our kitties.

Cat Video

2010-05-12T21:24:00.002-04:00

This video is hilarious. We took several videos of our cats that night. I had taken a previous video where Maxwell was sniffing the camera and I thought that was the cutest. Maxwell is always so serious, so when he does something funny, I love it. Scott was playing with Mathilda and wanted me to see what was going on. I got kind of close with the camera and Mathilda decided it was a toy, too! I thought it was funny and I hope you do too.

Here is the video where Maxwell was sniffing the camera. I love his little expressions (or rather refusal to look interested). He is all cat for sure. Sampson is in here too. We had the windows open that night and he was more interested in looking outside than in playing or talking to us.

Marcy's Birthday

2010-05-12T21:18:00.003-04:00

Since the last time I posted, I have had a birthday. Scott was so sweet to me the whole weekend around my birthday. He gave me a gift each day of the weekend starting on Friday, cooked me breakfast on Saturday morning, and even took me back on Sunday to exchange one of my gifts. What a sweet husband I have. He put so much time and effort to make my Birthday Weekend special, I really appreciated it. I just had to brag on him a little. :)

Grilled Vegetable Salad

2010-03-26T21:32:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago, Scott and I went to Longhorn after church. We do not usually splurge like that, but we wanted steak and left glad that we'd gone. So, it was worth the trip. I got this salad as my side salad (for a little extra); it came off of the "for a limited time only" menu. It was so good that I figured out how to make it at home.

Grilled Vegetable Salad

Salad:

Romaine lettuce-chopped

Feta cheese - crumbled (optional)

Tomato - diced

Red onion - diced very small

Vegetables:

1 squash

1 zucchini

1 bunch asparagus

1/2 bell pepper (red or green)

1 c corn (I used frozen)

1 small white onion (optional)

Olive oil (maybe 1 Tbsp)

Salt

Pepper

Cut all vegetables into 1-inch pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill on grill pan (flat side).

Dressing:

1/2 c olive oil

1/4 c organic canola oil

1/4 c balsamic vinegar

1 clove minced garlic (just use the stuff you buy in the jar)

1 Tbsp lemon juice

Salt

Pepper

Whisk together all ingredients. Salt and pepper to taste. I invested in one of those dressing shakers you buy to go along with the italian dressing packets. Worth it.

Prepare salad. Top with grilled vegetables. Drizzle with dressing.

Make it a meal by adding grilled chicken (pictured).

If you leave off the feta, this is a gluten and dairy free meal.

A Little Mathilda To Brighten Your Day

2010-03-21T15:49:00.008-04:00

This is a picture we took of Mathilda the day we brought her home, January 6, 2010. She weighed 1 lb 3 oz.

This is a picture I just took of her today, March 21, 2010. As of last Saturday, she weighed exactly 4 lbs. She has quadrupled in size!

We are still trying to decide what color her eyes are. Maybe we should call them hazel. Our boys' eyes change between yellow and green. And sometimes hers look more yellow than anything, but usually they are this coppery/yellow/green color. I don't know how to describe it. They were grey when we got her.

She was sleeping all cuddled up with Sampson last Sunday night. Isn't that the cutest thing ever?

Maxwell was chilling out on the back of the couch.

Maxwell apparently got jealous and walked over and literally layed down on top of Sampson! I wasn't fast enough to get a picture before Sampson had had enough and bolted.

Having gotten what he wanted, Maxwell settled in with Mathilda at his side. I think they are getting used to having her around.

Later in the evening, we were sitting around watching a movie and Mathilda snuggled up with me. Look how sweet this kitty is!

She is really learning so fast! She has learned that if she comes running when she hears the icemaker, she will get to play with ice. She understands the word "NO!" She knows that if she scratches her scratching post she will get a treat or two or three depending on how we feel if she finishes her treat and then scratches again! We are still working on teaching her not to scratch and bite when she's not getting her way! She really is an accelerated learner! She has made our lives a little bit more chaotic, but we all love her!

Goings On

2010-03-07T17:03:00.008-05:00

Well, it has been a few weeks since I have posted and a lot has been going on. First of all, our weather has been...bizarre! The last time I posted, we got several inches of snow on a Friday afternoon, which was all melted by the next evening. The very next weekend was our first warm weekend in a long time, where it got up to about 60 degrees. That weekend was the weekend of our nephew, Sam's, 4th birthday. His birthday was on the 19th, but we went to his party on that Saturday, the 20th. We had lunch at Scott's sister's house and didn't go to Sam's actual party at the indoor pool close to their house. The idea of swimming didn't really appeal to me when it was so cold outside, even though it was indoors. Sam was really excited about his birthday party, his birthday cake, and his gifts. He was all about showing us his dragon castle and his Thomas the Train cake. We got him clothes and a card that made a fire engine alarm sound. The card almost made up for the fact that we only got him clothes. ;)

Here's Sam opening his gifts.

Here's the paparazzi.

Here's Sam smiling while we sing to him. It was so sweet!

Here's a picture I took of SaraBeth and I.

Back to the weather. This past Wednesday, it snowed (hard) from about 8 in the morning until about 3 in the afternoon and was pretty much all melted because it never quite got below freezing during the day. Now, this weekend, it's been high's in the 60s. I went outside today and pruned our bushes out front. Like I said, Bizarre!

Scott and I went last weekend to the North Georgia Premium Outlets in Dawsonville, GA and shopped all day. My main goal was to get a couple of pairs of jeans since I only own 3 pair that fit me and I wear jeans almost every day. I could not find one pair of jeans that I loved. Sad times. But, I got a long-sleeve blouse, two half-sleeve cotton tops, two short-sleeve tops, and two dresses. Scott got several shirts too. No jeans. I didn't even find any dressy slacks I liked. But, since I found two dresses at Ann Taylor Loft that would have cost me $69 and $79 at the regular store for about $70 for bother and I didn't own any dresses that fit me before that day, I still consider the trip a success. Yay us!

Snow Day 2010

2010-02-12T22:04:00.007-05:00

This my 250th post! To celebrate, we had snow today! We were expecting it based on the weather man, but I never really put much stock in that. At some point this afternoon, probably between 1 and 1:30, I went to look out the window (again) and my boss laughed and said, "It still isn't snowing, Marcy." I looked anyway, and it WAS snowing, very lightly (HA!). The next time I looked (from a distance) it was snowing much harder. We are still pretty busy, but apparently some other people aren't because tons of people were just standing or sitting with their heads poking out of their cubes watching it snow. I headed home around 3:30 because my boss didn't want us sitting in traffic and risk someone running to us because they were watching the snow. I came home and filled all our bird feeders and took pictures. Then, Scott got home and he and I made a snowman, following the lead of our neighbors, Nan and John. I loaded a bunch of pics to an album on Facebook. Here's the link to my album. I also took some pictures on the way home, when I was stopped at lights and stuff like that. I will load some of those below. The kitties were watching it snow and watching the birds eat in the snow. They were all so cute! But, they always are. Scott stuck a ruler in the snow on top of our grill and it went in about 4 1/2 inches!

Personally, I am ready for spring. I mean, I think that getting one day where we get enough snow to make a small snowman and then a couple of other really cold days is all you need so say we've had winter. We've had years like that before. More often than we've had years like this. It has rained a ton and that's the only time it warms up enough to not have freezing weather. We've had two ice/snow storms now. Hello! This is GEORGIA! I think we're going to move south if the winters keep up like this. Seriously. But, our friends at seminary in Dallas, TX have had a lot more snow than we have this winter, so you can't win no matter where you live I guess! The good thing is that all the little bugs that everyone says don't die in the south because it doesn't get cold enough should be dead by now.

So, I hope that everyone enjoys this snowy weather and stays safe!

Officially Mathilda

2010-02-08T20:22:00.004-05:00

We have officially adopted Mathila! She got a clean bill of health and the boys seem to get along well with her. She is doing much better now that we have let her out of the bathroom. I think she is already bossing poor Sampson around. She is really a sweet kitty. Yay for Mathilda!

Tupperware Party Online! Great Sale!

2010-01-27T08:26:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone,
Tupperware is having a 40% off sale on their modular mates (for pantry organization) and I am planning to buy some. So, I figured I might as well open an online party! You can shop at your convenience and help me get free products!

Be sure to click on this shopping link to ensure that you're participating in my Tupperware Online Party. My Tupperware Online Party will last until Feb. 09, 2010 (EST). If you have any questions, please let me know. Or you may visit my Tupperware Consultant's Web site, Jennifer Lynn Jordan.

Mathilda Live

2010-01-21T20:31:00.003-05:00

The video above is one of Mathilda chasing the feather wand. It's one of the boys' old ones. It seems that all of our cats love anything with feathers. They also love bells. This one has both.

The next video is one I took to show how excited she gets when you are just in there with her. We are still keeping her separated from the boys since she's not old enough to be tested yet, and so she doesn't get to sit in the living room with us when we are home. So, she's just so excited to see us. She sits there and looks at you and starts shaking. It's so cute. I think that you may get a few shots of my crazy after-work get up. Sorry. All my "normal" sweats are currently in the dirty clothes.

Stuffed Green Bell Peppers

2010-01-20T21:26:00.004-05:00

I found this recipe in a book that a friend lent to me. I copied a bunch of the recipes I liked. I don't remember the name of the book. However, I have changed the recipe some because, well, it seems like I always change up the recipes. I just can't help myself. We have made this twice and I really like it. The instructions in the recipe actually call for microwaving everything, but that just seems...gross. So, I have re-written this to be cooked in the oven.

Stuffed Green Bell Peppers

3 large green bell peppers
1 lb ground chuck, browned and drained
2 c. cooked rice (I used white rice)
3/4 t ground thyme
1 clove minced garlic (I used the kind in the jar, it's easier)
1/8 t black pepper
1 t salt
1 egg
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce, divided (I actually used two small cans - one plain, one flavored, like Italian or roasted garlic
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes

Preheat oven to 350 while you brown your meat and cook your rice. Clean the peppers and cut in half lengthwise. Place them open side up in a 9x13 casserole dish and cook the empty peppers for about 12-15 minutes. In a mixing bowl, combine beef, rice, seasonings, egg, diced tomatoes, and the small can of plain tomato sauce (or half of the big can). Mix well and fill pepper halves with the beef mixture. Place in baking dish and spoon the flavored tomato sauce (or second half of big can) over the stuffed peppers. Cook for another 15 minutes or until the peppers are to your preferred doneness. Serves 6.

This has a lot of vegetable already in it, as well as meat and a starch. But, I still think it is better it you have something with it like corn and a salad (yeah, I know that corn is a second starch, but it just GOES with this meal). I hope you enjoy! If you try this and you like it, let me know!

Grandma-isms

2010-01-16T13:39:00.003-05:00

Scott's Grandma is so sweet and Scott is still so thrilled that she has come to live here in GA since while he was growing up, she lived in CA, which is where Scott's mom is from. Grandma sometimes says the funniest things. This morning, she called Scott wanting advice on purchasing a new computer. She opened the conversation by telling Scott that her computer is:

"Slower than molasses in the winter going up-hill backwards!"

Wow. That is pretty slow!

Purr-fection

2010-01-08T22:45:00.003-05:00

I just love it when Maxwell curls up like this. He makes a perfect oval! He really is the ideal cat, all sleek and one solid color with those cat-like green eyes. The color in this picture isn't great because I turned off the flash, but you get the picture! (haha, get it? Sorry for the cheesy pun.)

Thanksgiving

2010-01-08T21:13:00.002-05:00

I know it's been a while, but I never posted about our Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving day, we went to Scott's parents' house. It was fun to see everyone. I have a slide show of pictures. The day after Thanksgiving, we had Daddy, Stephanie, Wendy, and Paul over. It was fun to cook a whole meal and have my family over for something special like that. Wendy took a few pictures, but I was the happiest that she took a picture of the first turkey I ever made!

New Addition Possibly

2010-01-06T21:54:00.004-05:00

Scott brought home this kitten that someone he works with found the other day by their office. He took her by the vet and she seems healthy but they can't test her for Feline Leukemia or Feline AIDS until she is at least 9 weeks old. They estimate she is about 5 weeks old. She is super sweet. She pooped on herself in the box they had her in, so we gave her a bath. She was not sure what to think about that. I am not sure how our cats will like her. They keep sniffing at the door of the bathroom where she is staying. We are going to introduce her slowly. Now we just have to come up with a name for her.

Update: We think we are going to call her Mathilda.

Christmas Cards

2009-12-23T20:16:00.002-05:00

Here are all the Christmas cards I made for us to send out this year. It took forever. But, I did enjoy it.

Funny Commercial

2009-12-17T22:33:00.002-05:00

The other night Scott and I found this show that was the funniest commercials in 2009. They weren't all originally shown in the US. This one was not their #1 pick, but it was definitely my favorite.

We Are Still Here

2009-11-19T20:46:00.004-05:00

Hello everyone! I am sure that you are all wondering what is going on with us. Well, we've just been very busy lately. We've both been working a good bit and we have had lots of fun friend gatherings to go to, etc...

Also, I am hand-making all of our Christmas cards this year, so I have been very busy doing that. I have quite a few already made. I had bought a big pack of paper at Joann last year after Christmas and made a few here and there throughout the year, but now that Christmas is coming soon, I am working hard almost every night on cards. It's fun!

Scott's birthday is next Wednesday. I can't wait to give him his gift. He has probably guessed what it is, but I am still making him wait until his birthday. hehe.

We are planning to go to Scott's parents' house for Thanksgiving next Thursday. We are having my immediate family over for dinner on Friday since I won't get to see them the day of. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for this time of year?

I am thankful for God and the undeserved love and blessings that He showers on me daily. I am also thankful for my husband and the rest of my family, as well as my church family. I am thankful that we both have jobs in this time of uncertainty. I am also thankful that I enjoy my job.

Well, I hope you all are doing great! I am uploading a picture of Scott and I that was taken at a party went to at Dean and Judy's a little over a month ago when Josh, Shana, and Truett were home for fall break. It was a lot of fun and so nice to see so many of our friends that we love so much.

Quick Update

2009-09-30T21:38:00.003-04:00

I just wanted to do a quick update. The dermabond has been off my chin for over a week now. I went the Thursday after I had the place removed to have my stitches removed. Everyone told me it was no big deal...and they lied. Why do people always down play things? I only had two stitches but I found it quite painful to have them removed. And I bled, a lot! I was quite surprised by this and by how my arm looked right after they took them out. Frankly, it looked like she might as well have ripped the stitches out instead of cutting them, with the way the holes were gaping open where the stitches had been removed. The PA got onto me for looking, but I didn't think I'd bleed! The put on steri-strips which finally came off yesterday (with a little help). I am not impressed with how my arm looks. It looks to me as if they had taken out the stitches too soon and they weren't careful enough when they put on the steri-strips and the skin came apart. Now, it has healed too much; there's no way I'm going back, but it doesn't look great. Thankfully it is just a small spot, so I'm not really worked up about it. Just disappointed. Why did I go through the stitches if they weren't even going to help? My chin is still really sore to the touch and hurts if I stretch the area too much. But, it is healing quite nicely. And itching. But, I really can't complain. I am extremely thankful I didn't have stitches now that I see how my arm has turned out.

Anywho, that's it. There's my update.

Alton Brown Live

2009-09-29T20:56:00.005-04:00

On August 29, Scott and I went to see Alton Brown Live, which was done in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of his Food Network show, Good Eats. It was really good! He didn't actually cook anything because he apparently wasn't allowed to at the Cobb Energy Center, but they had a "talk show" like set up for part of it. Then, he finally did something with a fire extinguisher (used the CO2 to freeze fruit and make smoothies) to make it a "multi-tasker." He always says that everything in his kitchen is a multi-tasker except the fire extinguisher. At the end, they made a huge birthday cake out of premade huge pancakes and glow in the dark icing. He had the band that plays the music for his show there, as well as several other people who are usually on the show. Including his "sister" Marsha whose name is not really Marsha and who isn't really his sister. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it. We couldn't take pictures once Alton Brown came out, so we can't really show you any pictures. So, at the top is a picture of us. :)

What happened was...

2009-09-13T20:11:00.003-04:00

This weekend has been quite a weekend...starting Thursday. A couple of months ago, I went to the dermatologist for a body scan to make sure my skin is all normal. I try to go every year but usually only end up there every other year. The PA noticed a small blue spot on my arm. I knew it was there, but I wasn't worried about it because it looked like a vein under my skin or something. There was no bumps, no change in the way my skin felt, etc... The PA, Tracy, said that I could have what she called a blue nevus. A blue nevus is usually benign but it could turn into a melanoma. (Let me just say that my blue spot looked NOTHING like these pictures on the link becuase if it did, I would have been in there much sooner.) She did a biopsy and it came back as just a sun spot according to the lab. I had to go back in on Thursday for a follow up and Tracy still said that she didn't like the look of it and she wanted to remove the whole thing. I told her that was fine as long as she took the whole thing, because I wasn't going to come back, I just can't handle that kind of stress. Now, just so you know, this is not a "no big deal" kind of thing for me. I have serious issues with needles and well, any type of medical thing. When they did the original biopsy, I did okay because they made me lay down, sit up slowly, gave me water, etc...then when I went out to pay, Scott, who had come for an appointment as well, came over to me and asked me what they did to me and I was telling him what they did and that I may have to come back for them to remove it and I almost passed out right there at the check out counter. So, I think it's more the thought of medical stuff and not really pain that I have issues with. I mean, I don't like pain, but I do much better with pain that just happens than with pain that is purposefully inflicted in a doctor's office.

Okay, so all of that was back story to fill you in. Here's the real story. Thursday I went in and she said she wanted to take the whole thing off. I did okay but I did want to run screaming from the room when she started doing the stitches. My arm was numb, but only in the one area so I could feel the pressure and tugging and ew it was just disgusting. I drove myself home and was fine. They had put a "pressure dressing" on my arm which is a fat piece of gauze over the actual stitches and then this disposable ace bandage type thing that sticks to itself wrapped tightly around my arm. They told me to leave the pressure dressing on there until the next morning and to remove it, take a shower and wash it as usual and then just put vaseline and a band aid on it.

Here are the stitches. Ew.

SO, Friday morning, I get up at 5 am like normal. Scott was still asleep in bed, like normal. My arm had been hurting from the tightness of the pressure dressing but I figured that was normal and my fingers weren't blue so it wasn't "too tight". When I unwrapped it, it hurt even worse. I am assuming there was increased blood flow to that area too (which, doesn't that mean decreased blood flow from my head?). Then, there was blood on the gauze and it was more than just if you have had blook drawn or a shot. And, then I saw the stitches. Oh my goodness, they were two nice, neat little stitches with blue plastic-looking thread, but they were IN my skin. Ew. But, I had to look, right? I have to bathe myself and put band aids on it and stuff like that. So, I was like, I am a big girl, can handle this - don't be a baby. I turn on the shower, get in, and start washing my hair as normal. In the process of washing my hair, I start feeling the beginnings of passing out. What was I supposed to do? I mean, I couldn't just sit down, that's not sterile (so maybe that was not the most logical thinking, but I don't think it's normal to be logical when you are about to pass out). I couldn't just turn off the water and get out of the shower because I had shampoo in my hair, right? So, I rinsed my hair (well, mostly rinsed I think) and then turned off the shower planning to dry off and go sit on my towel in the floor. My towel was cleaner than the shower or bathroom floor in my opinion at the moment. This is when my plans went askew. The next thing I recall is waking up from dreaming (I always have very restful dreams in the seconds when I am passed out) to blood spattered all over the floor and I was obviously wet and slipping every time I tried to get up. Scott was over me trying to help me saying we needed to go to the hospital and I looked over and freaked out because I was dirty with some sort of yuckiness that tends to accumulate on the shower door. (We have one of those scrubbing bubbles sprayers to keep our shower cleaner for longer but it doesn't seem to clean the bottom of the shower door. I don't get too worked up over that because it's not like I'm ever going to have bodily contact with the shower door, right? (HA!)) So, I was a little hysterical (maybe that is like saying the Grand Canyon is a little dent in the earth's surface), extremely confused, slipping around in the floor in dirt, shower water, and my own blood. Scott ran for a roll of paper towels when he realized I was going to be okay and handed me a stack of folded up paper towels to hold onto my chin, which was the source of all the blood. He grabbed my towel, threw it on the bed, and made me lay down. He wiped all the shower door dirt off of me, wiped the blood off the floor, then came and looked at my chin. He was like, we need to go to the hospital. I really didn't want to go through the whole stitches experience again, so I needed to tell him I was fine. He helped me get up and look in the mirror. This of course brought on a whole fresh wave of hysterics (I don't know that I had really calmed down that much, even though Scott was trying to get me to calm down). Apparently (and of course there are no witnesses because Scott was asleep and I was unconscious) I passed out while still standing in the shower, fell, hit my chin on the handle of the shower door, which caused the door to open, depositing me on the bathroom floor. I guess the impact of the shower door and then I am sure my chin hit the floor, then the pressure from the paper towels, my skin was all stretched apart, so it looked like this big gaping wound. Poor Scott woke up to the sound of the thud when I hit the floor. Somehow, Scott dressed himself, dried me off, and got me completely dressed before driving me to the hospital. I did calm down enough to stop sobbing out loud, but I still felt very foolish for what happened. When we got to the ER, the waiting room was empty. They saw us very soon. The guy took my blood pressure and heart rate and they were a lot higher than normal. They put us in a room, gave me a tetanus shot, cleaned my wound, and then they glued my chin back together with this stuff called Dermabond. I was so glad they didn't do stitches. Scott had privately asked them if they could do anything besides stitches, since that's what started this whole thing. They checked and I didn't seem to have a concussion. I have no broken bones or broken teeth. I got my tetanus shot, which I was about 2 years overdue for, without having to worry about it before-hand. Did I say I have issues with needles? The tetanus shot makes your arm muscle really sore. I am still kind of sore, but I think that it didn't seem as bad to me because of all my other issues. At some point in time at the hospital, I calmed down enough to realize that my right knee was hurting. I pulled up my jeans leg and had this horrible bruise already forming on my knee. I have since discovered lots of other sore spots and bruises. I am sure I will still find more. I stayed home from work on Friday. Scott did too. He had already planned to take half a day to wait for the AT&T and Direct TV guys, but he decided that I really shouldn't be left alone. I had a headache all day. I still can't chew without it hurting, but I can tell I've healed a lot since Friday. When I brush my teeth my chin will start bleeding. Friday night when I was eating my baked potato, my chin started bleeding. Scott called the ER and talked to a doctor. He said that that was normal with chin injuries and that if I wanted to go back up there they'd look at it but that if it was pulling apart, they probably would want to put in stitches instead of more Dermabond. They also said that if I had to be admitted again we'd have to pay another $100 copay. Um, no thank you. He said that we could put a pressure dressing on it to keep it from bruising. I looked like an idiot. But, at least I wasn't dripping blood everywhere. Well, since my left arm was sore from the tetanus shot and my right arm was sore from stitches, I slept on my back all night. I had put ice on my knee several times on Friday, so it really doesn't look that bad. But, it still hurts. I feel like my knee must have broken my fall and kept me from breaking any teeth.

When we got up Saturday morning, Scott hovered while I got ready to make sure we didn't have a repeat from Friday. He pulled off my band aid and when I got ready he put the vaseline and band aid back on my arm for me. He always makes me sit down to do this. Do you think he thinks I might pass out again? It is possible. It does kind of hurt when we pull off the band aid and I have this horrible fear that the pulling sensation of pulling off the band aid is going to pull my stitches or something. What a sweet husband I have.

So, that's my story. My left arm feels much better already from the tetanus shot soreness. The picture above was taken on Saturday evening. Hopefully it won't leave too big of a scar, but at least I didn't break my jaw bone or any teeth. God was truly protecting me.

Kicked Up Pimiento Cheese

2009-08-28T14:29:00.003-04:00

On the 4th of July, I made this pimiento cheese. I had promised to post it on my blog so that everyone could have the recipe...then I got busy and forgot. Amy reminded me the other day, so here it is.

This recipe is an Emeril recipe that a man I used to work with at Pike made, but with some "tweaks" (which are in italics). He used 6-8 jalapenos with the seeds, but I only use 2 and I take the seeds out. You just buy a baguette from the grocery store and slice it up. Smear some of this on it and it is a yummy appetizer.

I found an old picture of the pimiento cheese spread on baguettes and decided to include it. It's Yum-O!

Kicked Up Pimiento Cheese

8 slices bacon, chopped
1/2 lb extra-sharp white cheddar cheese, grated (if you can't find it, use orange)
1/2 lb extra sharp orange cheedar cheese, grated
8 oz. roasted red bell peppers, chopped
3/4 c mayonnaise
1 c. spicy ham - I used deli pepperoni
1/2 c. chopped green onions
2 tsp. minced garlic
2 tsp Essence of Emeril (recipe follows)
salt & pepper (optional)

added:
2-3 fresh jalapeno peppers, chopped (I take the seeds out, but if you want more heat, leave them in there)
1/2 lb pepper jack cheese

In a large skillet, cook the bacon until brown and crisp. Transfer to paper towels and cool.

In a large bowl (very large), combine all ingredients.

I never feel like it gets mixed up enough when I just use a spoon to mix it up, so I put it in a food processor. Mine is kind of small, so it takes several batches.

Essence of Emeril

2 1/2 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp salt
2 Tbsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tbsp onion powder
1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp dried leaf oregano
1 Tbsp dried thyme

Combine all ingredients thoroughly and store in an airtight jar or container. Yields about 2/3 c.

Still Saving and Losing

2009-08-28T14:16:00.004-04:00

Today I went to Kroger and Publix (in the rain). At Kroger, I got $121.28 worth of stuff for $69.74. That's 43% savings! At Publix, I got $57.32 worth of stuff for $32.39. That's 43% savings as well! Wow, I can't believe it turned out that way.

I have a feeling that when I weight myself this evening, I am going to have gained a pound or two as a result of our crazy eating while on vacation. I am kind of dreading it. But, as of last week's weigh-in, I had lost 19.4% of my starting weight. I still have 3-5 pounds left to lose, depending on what it looks like tonight. I really need to do better about exercising, though.

Trip to Louisville

2009-08-26T20:32:00.010-04:00

Scott and I just got back from a trip to Louisville, KY to visit Josh, Shana, and Truett. We also got to spend time with Judy and Dean. So, it was a fun, Stringer-filled few days. While we were up there, we saw some of the sites of Louisville and the surrounding areas. Scott and I weren't the best eaters while we were gone. So, it's back on the bandwagon now.

It seems like the only picture Scott took of me with Truett I was not wearing make up. Great. But, here we both are holding him.

We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum the first day we were there, Saturday. We visited Josh and Shana's church, Crossings, on Sunday. Afterwards, we all ate at a burger place called Red Robin with Darrell and Jenny Estepp, some friends of ours that we used to go to church with. Monday, we went to the Creation Museum close to Cincinnati (in Petersburg, KY). The Creation Museum was really good. I would definitely recommend it. They have the museum part and then they also have a botanical gardens outside. We drove through Indiana and Ohio just to say we'd been there. We also tried Skyline Chili, since we'd seen it on Food Network. It was an interesting flavor. It is not normal chili. There's cinnamon in it or something like that. We were googling things to do in Louisville, and Scott found that we could take a tour of the Jim Beam distillery. Not that we like bourbon, but processes like that are always interesting. So, we drive the half hour or so out there and it turns out that they are renovating the distillery so that people can tour the distillery, but the current "tour" consists of visiting the Beam house on the property, looking around a gift shop and sampling some Jim Beam chocolates, watching a video about the history of Jim Beam, and a bourbon tasting. Yeah, disappointing. We also went to have lunch at Tony Boombozz, which is the pizza restaurant that Darrell is part owner of. It was really very good pizza. Luckily, Jenny does some marketing for them, so she just happened to swing by to do some marketing so we got to talk to both Darrell and Jenny! It was great. If you ever want good pizza in Louisville, let us know and we'll tell you where Tony Boombozz is. The whole time we were there, we were invited to dinners at Josh and Shana's, cooked by Judy. It was all very good. Last night we visited this place that Josh and Shana love called the Pie Kitchen. Oh, it was good. I almost made myself sick eating half of the piece of pie Scott and I shared because we had had Graeter's Icecream after lunch. Graeters is handmade icecream. There are several locations in Louisville. Man, was that stuff good.

So, that was our trip, lots of good times with the Stringers, lots of good, bad food, and several tourist-y outings.

We drove home today and since we were going to be driving through Nashville around lunchtime, we asked our friends Kari and Eric if they wanted to meet us for lunch. It was so good to get to sit and spend some time with them. We also got to see how big Evan has gotten and meet Grace for the first time. We rarely get to see them now that they are living in TN.

Over all, we had a good trip. It was fun to spend time with old friends and to meet Truett and get to hold him and watch him change every day and see all the cute faces he makes. It is fun to see how Shana has gone from zero to Mom in 60 seconds.

Tomorrow it's back to work for Scott. I took the rest of the week off. I am going to see how much of nothing I can do the next two days. :)

Lauren's Baby Shower

2009-08-17T21:39:00.003-04:00

A couple of Fridays ago, we had a baby shower for one of my closest girlfriends, Lauren. It was fun showering her with attention, gifts, and food. Lauren and Zach haven't found out whether they are having a boy or a girl. They got lots of good baby stuff. I think that the pictures say it all!

Two Delicious Treats

2009-08-14T20:53:00.002-04:00

Lately I have found two treats that aren't really so bad for me that are really delicious.

The first is Laughing Cow Cheese. I get the Light Garlic and Herb flavor. One triangle of the cheese and 5 whole wheat Ritz Crackers is 2 points. Yum.

Next is something I discovered at Lauren's shower which we recently threw (which I still need to blog about). We had a parfait bar, just to have something different. We had all kinds of fruit, vanilla yogurt, and granola. It was delicious. So, I did some researching and I got strawberries, Activia Vanilla yogurt (the regular, not the light, which has artificial sweeteners in it), and Fiber One Honey Oat Clusters. The whole thing is only 2.5 points on WW. I use 1/2 c strawberries, a carton of yogurt, and about 1/4 c of the cereal. I have been having one for breakfast all but one day this week. Yum-O.

Just wanted to share.

New Hair Cut and Laptop

2009-08-03T21:39:00.004-04:00

Here's my new hair cut. (It is a little bouncier earlier in the morning. This is after being up for 12 hours on a hot, muggy day).

Here's a picture of my new laptop.

Why?

2009-07-31T12:25:00.001-04:00

A friend of ours posted this link on his Facebook page the other day. I still can't get over it. I thought I would share this with all of you. Who would want this? I mean, even if I was a huge fan, why would you want a terra cotta bust of the president with tendrils of plants growing out of his head sitting around your house?!

http://chiaobama.com/

This and That

2009-07-29T14:00:00.007-04:00

I always think about things to blog about when I can't sit down and write a post. Then, when I have the chance: nothing.

Let's see, what have we been up to lately?

My Aunt Bobbie passed away on Friday evening. She had had cancer and lost the battle. She was a wonderful Christian woman who was always a joy to be around. I will really miss her. Please pray for her only son, Chris, and his wife, Lori, as they get ready to move on with their life after caring for her for the past few months.

This week is Restaurant Week in Downtown Atlanta. That means that there is a list of restaurants in the area that offer a very small selection of dishes for $25 a person. These are restaurants that usually end up being over $100 for two people. Last night, Scott and I went to Morton's to take advantage of this deal. It was very good. We both had the filet mignon and it was one of the best steaks I'd ever had. I got the Lyonnaise Potatoes and Scott got the grilled asparagus. The asparagus had this balsamic stuff on it and Scott wasn't a huge fan of that. I loved the potatoes and Scott liked them too. We both got caesar salads as well, but they had too much anchovie paste in the dressing, so I only ate about 3 bites of that. Yuck. The dessert was to die for. We both got the double chocolate mousse. It was rich and creamy. I had to hold myself back and only eat half. I had eaten my entire steak and about half of the potatoes. I still felt full when I got up this morning. I know that is not on my Weight Watchers plan, but I didn't want to miss out on the chance to go to such a nice restaurant for so cheap!

I must admit that this has been my worst week yet on WW. I decided last week that I absolutely had to have some hot wings and soon. We had tried to make them in a healthier fashion at home and it just did not quench my need. I like them super crunchy. So, Scott went to Buffalo's and got us some wings on Saturday night and I made fries in the oven. It was really good and hit the spot. I needed that. Of course, I didn't realize then how much I would be eating in the next few days. The church made a meal for us after Bobbie's funeral and I didn't know how many points were in all the food I had. I didn't eat a lot, but I had a little sliver of Chocolate cake (with homemade chocolate icing that my Aunt Noma, cousin Judy, and I were drooling for) and I wasn't sure how any of it had been prepared. However, since it was prepared by a bunch of Southern ladies, I can only guess. Plus, we'd eaten out several time over the weekend driving to and from Austell for the funeral home. At this point in time, I have blown through my extra 35 points for the week plus an additional 13.5. It would be 16.5, but I got some exercise on Saturday.

Since we took our house off the market, we are going to take our stuff out of storage so that we aren't paying for storage any more. Plus, we really do use or need most of that stuff and had only put it in storage so that the house would look more empty for the "staging". I will say this: it is one thing to have your home "staged" for selling for a couple of months; it is quite another to live that way for a year and a half. Needless to say, we were glad to go and get some of our bigger items on Saturday that we had been missing. We still have a bunch of boxes with all our extra linens, books, picture books, picture frames, and other items and a couple of large items to go and get. So, I am thinking 2-3 truck loads in my truck. Our sweet neighbors, Nan and John, came over and helped us rearrange our living room several times until all agreed we had the perfect set up. I should take some pictures and post them.

I went and got my hair cut for the first time in about six months on Saturday morning. I like it. I need to take a picture of that too.

Okay. Dilemma. When we packed up all of our stuff for storage, we threw away a big old bookshelf that was in danger of falling apart. So, now we need another book shelf or two for around the house and one small one for our bedroom. We went looking on Saturday and didn't find anything we liked. We'd like to not get something that looks cheap, but we don't want to spend a lot of money either. I have heard a couple of people suggest Ikea. Does anyone else have any suggestions of where to look?

We went a couple of weekends ago and saw the new Harry Potter movie. I liked it, but was a little disappointed in some parts. They changed some things completely, but not like in previous movies. They had some great opportunities to have some really exciting action scenes, and they passed those by. But, overall I enjoyed it. I purposefully did not read any of the books for a LONG time before the movie came out this time. In the past, I have always re-read the books right before the movies came out and it caused me to spend the entire movie analyzing the differences. So, now that I have seen the movie, I of course wanted to read the book again. Luckily, we have the book on MP3, so I listened to it on MP3. I finished it today.

My current computer at home is about 7 years old. Scott has been talking about getting me a new computer for quite a while and I have been holding him back because we just didn't need to spend the money. Of course, we still just don't need to spend the money, but I just can't stand the slowness of the internet any more. He found a sweet deal on a HP laptop for me and is going to get it tomorrow to take advantage of the tax-free weekend! I can't wait! Now, I will feel like I really need to clean off my desk. Ugh. I hate doing that. I dread it, actually.

Well, I have rambled on for long enough. I am in the calm before the storm right now and don't have much to do at work.

Peanut Butter/Butterfinger Brownies

2009-07-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

I have been thinking that this would be a good combination for quite a while, and had decided that I would make it for 4th of July. Then, our June Betty Crocker calendar had a very similar recipe, but did not have the Butterfinger. These were inspired by my mint brownies that I make.

1 brownie mix, prepared according to package directions for 9x13 size
Most of a container of peanut butter
1 12.5 oz bag of Fun Size Butterfinger Bars
1/2 pkg of chocolate chips
2 Tbsp butter or margarine

Let prepared brownies cool completely. Unwrap all Butterfinger bars and put them in a plastic bag. Using your meat tenderizer, crush all the Butterfingers. Pour Butterfingers into a bowl and then mix in peanut butter until you are happy with the consistency. I used up the remainder of a jar that we had opened and eaten maybe 2 PB&J sandwiches out of. It was a pretty thick consistency. Spread Butterfinger/Peanut butter mixture on top of brownies. Using a double boiler, melt chocolate chips and butter together. Let it cool just a little and then spread over the top of the Butterfinger/Peanut butter layer. Cover and put in the fridge until the top layer is solid. I usually prepare these the day before. I removed them by sliding a butter knife around the edge of my pan, then, I turned them out on top of a sheet of aluminum foil then I covered my cutting board with aluminum foil and flipped them right side up. I cut them into squares by doing 6 x 8 squares.

Options: You can probably use a package or two of full size bars and save yourself some time. I didn't know how many I'd need, so that's why I got the small ones. I usually get a brownie mix that doesn't stay really soft and squishy because they are harder to cut.

These were a hit at our recent family event and have been requested to make an encore at our next event by Daddy. So, that's a definite plus.

Sorry, no pictures. I wasn't thinking, obvi.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

2009-07-09T21:31:00.003-04:00

I have decided that I loved all the things I made for the 4th of July so much that I am going to post all of those recipes over the next couple of days. The first is the easiest, since it came from the Betty Crocker website. I followed the directions exactly with the type of brownie mix and the type of cookie mix. I used the triple fudge chocolate icing with chocolate chips because I already had it. But, I think you could probably use any brownie mix and any cookie dough mix you wanted.

1 box Betty Crocker® Original Supreme brownie mix (with chocolate syrup pouch)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
1 pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker® chocolate chip cookie mix
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
1 container Betty Crocker® Rich & Creamy chocolate frosting

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Spray bottom only of 13x9-inch pan with cooking spray, or grease with shortening. Make brownie mix as directed on box, using oil, water and 2 eggs. Spread in pan.
2. Make cookie mix as directed on pouch, using butter and 1 egg. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls evenly onto brownie batter; press down lightly.
3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted 2 inches from side of pan comes out almost clean. Cool on cooling rack 30 minutes. Frost with frosting. For brownies, cut into 8 rows by 6 rows.

Oh man, these were SO good! Yum. Yum. Yum!

So, I right clicked on the text of this recipe to copy it and this came up: a link to print coupons for the stuff in the recipe!!! So, if you go to the link for this recipe any time soon, print these up!

Print these coupons...

$0.50 off Betty Crocker® Warm Delights® Bowls
$0.75 off Betty Crocker® Box Supreme Brownie Mixes
$0.40 off Betty Crocker® Cookie Mix
Plus 19 more...

July 4th Weekend

2009-07-09T21:24:00.000-04:00

We had quite a busy weekend for the 4th of July. Scott and I both had the day off on Friday. I spent the morning and early afternoon preparing food to take to Daddy and Stephanie's for a party they had on the 4th. Scott went and played disc golf with some friends and then did some work around the house for me. That evening, we went to a birthday party for our good friend Zach at Zach and Lauren's new house. It was a lot of fun and the food was really good.

The party at Daddy and Stephanie's was a lot of fun as well. They have a nice pool in their backyard. We ate and swam and visited. There were people from our family and from Stephanie's family there. I had made a decision to not count points on Saturday, so I made some things I wanted to have for the day. I made 2 different kinds of brownies and a big batch of kicked up pimiento cheese (there was so much of this actually that I took some of it with me to Zach's party). After we swam and ate and visited all day, we had about an hour before dark inside then we went out front and had some fun fireworks. We did fireworks for about an hour before we shot off the grand finale. We drove home tired, but happy. I'll include a slide show of pictures from the weekend.

Grandma's 90th Birthday Party

2009-07-07T21:07:00.003-04:00

On June 20th, we had a 90th birthday party for Scott's Grandma at our church. 90 years is a lot of living! Scott pretty much grew up without his mom's parents as they lived in California until about 2.5 year ago when his Grandpa passed away and Grandma came to GA to live with Scott's parents. She is always smiling and very cheerful. It is these qualities about her that draw people near to her. In the short time that she has been in GA, she has touched enough people that about 100 people came to wish her happy birthday! She volunteers at church in a program for elderly people called Happy Hearts and she helps out with the Youth Group on Wednesday nights, loud music and all. It was really very touching to see all the people that came and the different ways in which she had touched their hearts. Scott's mom set up a slide show of pictures of Grandma throughout the years and it was going through her laptop to a little flat screen tv. At the end of the slide show the words "We hope you like your new TV!" came across the screen! Grandma was watching the slide show on her birthday present and didn't even realize it! The look on her face was really priceless! I am including a slide show of the pictures that Scott took at the party.

Critters and Our Stories About Them

2009-06-25T21:33:00.009-04:00

We have had some new visitors this year. We put out a squirrel feeder in the fall in the back yard on our fence post. There were never any "patrons" and we never actually saw any squirrels back there. Sometimes we would see a chipmunk, but not often. So, after I potted up all my container gardens, I kept noticing dirt on the ground around them. I investigated to find that there were little holes in the dirt! There were apparently squirrels and chipmunks digging in them! This was happening in the front and the back. I wasn't sure how to handle this, so of course I googled. The websites all said that they are either looking to eat your bulbs (there weren't any in these pots) or they are looking for moisture. SO, I figured we were kind of inviting them in with all of our bird feeders. They said that the best way to deter them from digging in the pots and garden beds is to sprinkle red pepper flakes, like you see at the pizza places, on and around the pots. They say that you have to re-do this every few weeks because the smell wears off. So, we bought a huge thing of red pepper flakes and it has been working. But, I can always tell when they have worn off, those little stinkers. The website also suggested that you could provide them with a source of water. We also moved our squirrel feeder from the back to the front and attached it to our tree (see the picture of the feeder). Of course, the first Saturday after we moved the thing, we got up and went into the living room to see 2 squirrels sitting in our bird feeders out back! I wish I had gotten a picture before we scared them off. So, we made a home-made squirrel feeder for out back that consists of a piece of wood with a screw through it and a big hunk of nut suet stuck on there and bought a baffle for that shepherd's hook. It does look like it has been gnawed on, but not much. I even put a big hand ful of out good bird seed on there to attract them. The bird seed was all gone today without much missing from the suet thing. Oh well. The front squirrel feeder gets emptied every other day. I also put bowls of water out for them all, one out back and one under the tree out front. Of course our front porch looks crazy with red pepper flakes everywhere, but oh well. I am sure you have wondered what all the red dots were in all my plants.

One day last week, Scott was in the living room and heard a scratching at the back door. There was a squirrel scratching as if he wanted in. Both cats were sitting there watching him like they weren't sure what to think. Then, he ran over and got in the chair closer to our potted vegetables like he was thinking about climbing in, and decided not to. Finally, he tried to climb the shepherd's hook and ended up inside the baffle and wasn't sure what was going on. He kept climbing down and back up. Very strange. I wished I had seen it first hand, but Scott got pictures of him on the shepherd's hook.

We have a couple of beautiful sunflowers growing in our garden that were lovingly planted by a chipmunk or a squirrel. We always have them growing out from under the bird feeders, but I pull those up. These weren't in a bad place, so I let them grow. Here is a picture of the one that was blooming as of yesterday. You can see that there is a taller one behind it. It was starting to open up today. So pretty.

The other day, a chipmunk kept scary me while I was working in the garden putting out pine straw. Apparently, he travels from one side of the garden to the other in the drainage pipe that runs across the back of the garden. I heard him running through there once then suddenly it was quiet, so I just tried to ignore it. After I had just had enough time to forget about the noise, I hear it again and suddenly a chipmunk comes running out of the end of the pipe closest to me and runs across the walkway into the other side of the garden. I screamed out loud...then felt silly.

Okay, last critter story:

So, when we put the squirrel feeder under the tree, we noticed that the squirrels seem to like sunflower seeds and peanuts much better than the corn, which ended up on the ground under the tree. Scott asked me if the corn would grow, and I was like, nah!

Yesterday, I went out to pull weeds, dead head things, and water the pots. I walked up to the tree to check on the caladiums to realize that there were lots of things growing that weren't supposed to be.

I recognized the sunflowers trying to pop up from the squirrel food, but there was a new weed that was coming up that I didn't recognize.

This is what it looked like.

So, I pulled it up and this is what was attached to the end...a piece of corn! Great! There's corn trying to grow under our tree!

This is the face I made before I got down on my hands and knees and pulled up as many of them as I could find (both the corn and the sunflower seeds).

Needless to say, we are going to buy some in-the-shell peanuts and mix them with sunflower seeds and that is what the squirrels will be getting in the future.

Short Update

2009-06-25T21:09:00.002-04:00

We have decided to take our house off the market. We are tired of always having to keep our house spotless, and honestly we weren't doing that great of a job. Not that we don't intend to keep our house clean, but not so perfect that it doesn't look like anyone lives there. That's too much stress for this long. Plus, I am tired of disappointment. We don't feel like God is ready for us to move after all.

The thing about having really smart friends is that they say things that are so logical sometimes that you wish you'd thought of it. That's what happens when your husband is a Georgia Tech graduate. Our friend Eric had a good point on my last post where I talked about my WW progress. He said that if you are going to compare your weight loss to someone else's, you should base it on the percentage of your original weight instead of how many pounds you have actually lost. If I look at it that way, I have lost 1-2% more than Scott. That makes me feel better.

Please be praying for my Aunt Bobbie. She had cancer many years ago that has been in remission. I month or so ago, they found that the cancer has returned in her spine and her liver. She has been at home after for a few weeks, but she is now back in the hospital. Bobbie is the sibling closest in age to my dad, who is the youngest of 5.

Gardening update

2009-06-25T20:43:00.007-04:00

Tonight, we moved the shepherd's hook that is in our front garden holding the bird feeders and the hanging baskets. You couldn't really see them from the street because of the gladiolus that are growing so tall. I had considered doing away with those at the end of this season because of that, but I have gotten so many compliments on them from my neighbors in the last few days, I don't think I will. We still needed something for the clematis to climb and it didn't seem to like trying to climb the shepherd's hook anyway. So, we got a trellis-type thingy to put there. We moved the hanging baskets over to the side of the garden to add color to that side. It looks good. I'll take pictures soon. It's too dark right now. We are rewarding ourselves with popsicles as I type. It makes it more difficult to type, actually. I have added a picture of the gladiolus as of yesterday. For reference, there is also a picture of me standing behind them. I am 5'1.5" and some of them are taller than me.

We still don't have ripe tomatoes on our tomato plants, but the green tomatoes are pretty big. Does anyone have ripe tomatoes yet? Our green bell peppers are getting pretty big. We already picked 3 jalapenos and have a bunch of blooms on them now. Yay. This is a picture from a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why I haven't taken a more recent picture. All the plants have just about doubled in size. I have been trying to go the "organic route" and I bought this organic fertilizer. I think it is freeze dried poo because p-u! Seriously.

Last Thursday, we took the day off work because we were just exhausted from everything that happened last week with Meme. We slept until we woke up with no alarm. Then, we both went and did things we like to do: Scott went to play disc golf and I went to the Growers Outlet. I couldn't help myself. Last Saturday we went to get a couple of plants to fill in the big pot where a couple of things had died. The lady that runs the place told us that the next Saturday was their last day to be open for two months. I started to feel all nervous like I might be missing out on something that I need. I mean, some of the things I planted weren't doing great, what if I decide to replace them? Plus, I knew things would be super cheap. So, I had to go. I am sure you understand. Anyway, sale is an understatement. I did not pull up anything that was still alive. I am going to let the plants in front of the gladiolus work on growing for the rest of the summer. However, I had planted some calla lilies over on the garden on the other side of the walkway to our front door and they died. I think I should have watered them more. So, I bought 15 new guinea impatiens to put there, then I really wanted something to grow under our tree, but it provides a lot of shade, so I ended up getting 12 caladiums. Plus, I figured I might as well get something to go in front of the canna lilies. I really wanted some daylilies, but they didn't have any. I got 11 dragon wing begonias. I hope that they all do well. So, that is a total of 38 plants. And, these are the "6-packs" you can buy for cheap at the big box stores, these are 2-3 inch pots. My grand total was $15.52! I ended up with too many new guinea impatiens, so I had to create some more container gardens with them. They say that the first step is admitting you have a problems: Hi, my name is Marcy and I am addicted to container gardens! Ha! On the back porch, I now have 10 pots of flowers and 4 potted vegetables. In the front, I have 2 hanging baskets and two potted plants. Um, that's a lot.

Here are the canna lilies and you can see the little dragon wing begonias surrounding them. They are supposed to get pretty big. I really hope they do.

Here's a close up of the begonias.

Here are the caladiums under the tree.

Here are the new guinea impatiens. They are supposed to really fill out too.

The End of a Generation

2009-06-21T18:00:00.005-04:00

My grandmother, Meme (Mary Kate Haney), passed away early Tuesday morning, June 16, 2009. Meme had been sick off and on for several years now and she never really recovered from the pneumonia she had in February. She also had ulcers and was being given medicine to try to control those. Apparently this medicine stripped not only the bad bacteria causing the flare ups of the ulcers, but also the good bacteria in her stomach. This caused a disease called C.diff infection. I had never heard of it, but it is apparently common in hospital patients. My grandmother had been in the nursing home for a little over 3 years. I am sad to lose my grandmother, but in a way, I am not sad. She struggled with why she was still living after watching her parents, her siblings, her husband's siblings, her only child, her husband, and finally her closest aunt who was in the nursing home with her up until a few months ago, pass away. I know that even though she had a steady stream of visitors, she was often sad and lonely. She had arthritis in her hands and the pain was terrible. She was going blind from an eye condition called macular degeneration. She also suffered from dementia, which can be very disorienting. I would always tell her that God knew His plans and she was on this earth for a little longer for a reason that only He knew. While I know she knew that, I am sure it didn't make it any easier.

Many of you have called, sent me emails and messages on facebook, and sent cards. Many of you have prayed for us during this time. Some of you even made the long drive out to Dallas to visit with us at the funeral home. It was all appreciated more than you will ever know.

Lunch Time Ramblings

2009-06-11T12:05:00.003-04:00

I have so many random thoughts all the time, I figure that is something to blog about. So, here goes:

This past Sunday, Scott was playing disc golf and he put a big hole in his shoe. Apparently when he makes is "approach" he scuffs the side of his left foot on the pavement and he wore a hole through his shoe, through his sock, and scuffed up his big toe by the time they were done playing. Needless to say, he threw those shoes away and went to buy some new ones on Monday. Then, he went to play disc golf on Tuesday and figured out how to not scuff his toe. You live and learn I guess. Our friends Mike and Erin from church were with us at the park. Mike played disc golf with Scott and Erin and I walked with the boys (well, two of them rode bikes, two of them were in a stroller and one was in one of those carrier thingies). We had never been to Lenora Park until they told us about it. We love going over there now. It is so close to the house. We are also really glad that we sometimes get to go with Mike and Erin and get to know them better.

We have some jalapenos that look like they might be big enough to pick. I need to google when you are supposed to pick them. I can't wait until we have bell peppers and tomatoes that are ripe. Mmmm...I can just taste a yummy BLT or some pasta salad (yeah, that pasta salad comment was for you, Shana).

Just as an update on my Weight Watchers program, I have lost 18 pounds as of last Friday. I weigh myself every Friday when I get home from work, before I eat dinner, of course. I still want to lose 12 more pounds. I have been doing the program since the beginning of March, so that's three months plus a week. I am basing what I need to weigh based on BMI. It seems like every website I find tells me the same healthy BMI and calculates it the same way. However, when I look up how much someone my height and age should weigh, I get varying answers. Some of them are way too low, in my opinion. Scott is eating the same things I do when we eat together and just basically eating whatever he wants when I am not around, but I think he is trying to be a little better than before. Plus, he plays a lot of disc golf. He has lost 16 pounds. I am really happy for him. But, it is kind of annoying that he has lost so much weight and he still goes to Burger King some times. But, I think that across the board it is easier for most guys to lose weight than it is for women. I wonder if guys agree with that. (I know there are only a handful of guys that read our blog, so let's hear it from you!)

Scott and I are trying to get ourselves on a regular schedule each week that includes exercise, studying for him and various administrative stuff including church finances for me, individual Bible reading/study time, and a family devotional. We have really helped ourselves out by sitting at the table to eat every night instead of sitting in front of the tv. Once the tv comes on, it is hard to turn it off. We have gotten way behind on So You Think You Can Dance and In Plain Sight, but that's okay with us. We really need to get our priorities in order. Thankfully, we have both been working a pretty normal schedule at work. We are blessed to have jobs. I am still enjoying my job for the most part. My boss and coworker (there's only 3 of us in our little group) and I get along really well, so that's great to me.

Alright, lunch is over. Have a good day.

Good Fajita Recipe??

2009-06-07T18:54:00.001-04:00

Scott and I want to make steak fajitas some time this week. I am kind of wanting a new marinade for the meat. Any ideas?

Fun with Flowers

2009-06-07T15:28:00.011-04:00

It feels like I really don't have much to say on here lately. Truly, I don't. I think I am becoming a boring person. I have been enjoying the product of all this rain we have had this summer so far (I think that we skipped Spring, really, and that's okay with me). Last year, I purchased some daylilies at the Growers Outlet and then when I got them home I divided them into 3-4 plants each, so I had six up front and seven out back. They apparently were not impressed with the division, so they never bloomed, so I wasn't 100% sure what they would look like. Well, they have thankfully come back this year and they just started blooming this year! Yay! Here they are:

The ones in the pictures are the ones in my back yard. Those tall things back there are gladiolus and behind that is the crepe myrtle that we planted a few years ago.

Last year, I went a little nuts with geraniums. The Growers Outlet had some beautiful pink ones and I had purchased a couple of reddish/pink ones from Lowes or Home Depot and they were so pretty, I hated the idea of them dying. So, in my Gardening Month-by-Month in Georgia book by Walter Reeves (and some other lady whose name I can never remember), it gave instructions on how to save plants like geraniums that are kind of hardy. So, I pulled them out of their pots and put them in paper bags and went out there once every month or so and sprayed them with some water during the winter. Lo and behold, they started turning a little green and one even put out a bloom before I could even get them back into pots. All but one of them has survived and they are all looking great (well, except the one that has not shown any signs of life that I need to replace). Here is are some pics of them right after I pulled them out and snipped off all the dead "limbs" and some pics I took various days in the last week:

Those are the ones out back. There is a geraniumin the middle of that rectangular pot, but it is really crowded in with the petunia's and daisies. I like to see a full pot of flowers. There's only one geranium out front that is from last year, you can see it in the first picture looking like a dead stick:

It's amazing to me how fast these flowers grow. Most of these pictures were taken last weekend and the flowers are already blooming more and getting bigger!

I was afraid that none of the geraniums would really be what they were last year (shame on me), so I bought two new ones to put in my hanging baskets because I feel like those should be really pretty since they are so visible from the street. They were just babies and they only cost a dollar (or maybe less) at the Growers Outlet. My hanging baskets are doing great! These pictures are from last weekend and they are even fuller (more full?) right now. You can see in the close up that the daisy I planted in one of them is starting to bloom. I planted them both with the exact same flowers, but the daisy in the other one has not started blooming yet.

You can see how tall the gladiolus I have in front of the shepherd's hook have gotten. There is a clematis climbing up the shepherd's hook, but it's really hard to see from the other side because the gladiolus are so tall. I guess I really didn't plan that out that well. Oh well.

I haven't really put anything new out by the mailbox or under the tree. I planted some Lantana by the mailbox last year as well as a clematis. One of the lantana and the clematis are coming back up, so I think I will just be patient and let them do their thing. I have planted some annuals in the front garden but they aren't really exploding like I would have liked. Hopefully they will start really getting huge like all the books say they will, but we shall see. The yellow flowers are called Melampodium and the furry red, orange, and yellow things in the very front are called Celosia. I don't have a picture of the mailbox area as it looks right now, and I am too lazy to run out and take one, so that will have to wait for another post.

That other pot is on our back porch in between the two chairs we have out there. There's another one sitting on the concrete right in front of it, but it's full of all my "leftovers" and a daisy that decided to come back up this year, so it's not as beautiful and carefully planned out. I may combine it into the large green pot that is sitting behing my long planter on the back porch so that they both look more full. It was kind of a last minute thing, too. The clematis and daisy that were in there from last year were started to come up sitting in the garage, so I just added some other stuff in there with it. The geranium I put in there is not doing anything and I had put two Melampodium in there, but they apparently didn't like it in there so they died. Sad times. It looks kind of sad if you look at it closely. I will put a picture so you can see. Please don't laugh.

Our vegetables are getting little babies on them, too, but that will also have to be for another post as this one has gotten kind of long. Sorry about that. I hope it isn't boring for you to read about my flowers. But, I am a big fan.

Have a great week!

Great Deal at Publix

2009-05-29T08:20:00.002-04:00

So, yesterday Scott was running by the store for hamburger buns. So, of course he had to go to the store w/ the lowest price for good buns, which was Publix this week. Well, I noticed that they have their Taco Bell dinner kits B1G1 and there is a coupon on the Smart Source website (if you use zip 32801 and then search by brand for Taco Bell) for $1 off, so I asked him to print out 2 of those coupons and pick a couple up as well. I didn't know exactly how much it would be. He got 2 dinner kits for $.69 with those coupons! You can only print up to 2 from each computer, so we printed 2 from his, 2 from mine, and then 2 from mine here at work and I am going to the Publix over here close to work today and getting 6 dinner kits! I have a hard time passing up anything to do with tacos when they are on sale!

Biltmore House Visit

2009-05-27T19:26:00.004-04:00

When we took our trip to Asheville a couple of weeks ago, we drove down Wednesday morning and had lunch at the Tupelo Honey Cafe once we had checked into our hotel. We then drove to the Biltmore and made sure we didn't go in before 2 pm. We did the outside stuff on that day. We checked out the gardens and the little sitting areas and then headed over to the winery to do a wine tasting (well, Scott did, I forgot my wallet in GA, so no luck for me) and inside the actual winery they had all kinds of samples out! They have all these cheeseball and dip mixes for sale as well as salad dressings and they have various samples of these things sitting out with a big bowl of pretzels next to it. We wandered around tasting for a while. We also sampled their Wassail mix to wash it down.

Thursday, we toured the house in the morning, had lunch at the Stable Cafe, and then checked out the Farm and the petting zoo-type area they have. We then went on a Behind-the-Scenes tour of the winery, which was very interesting. We really don't like wine much at all, but it is still interesting to see how they make it.

Here are pictures we took at the Biltmore House. We have other pictures from our trip, but that is for another slide show and another post.

Savings Galore!

2009-05-26T21:31:00.003-04:00

Sunday evening Scott and I went to Publix armed with our list and a baggie full of coupons. We bought a ton of stuff. Our menu is for two weeks, but with the stuff we already had at home that wasn't included in our menu and the stuff we bought because it was on sale and we know we'll eat it, we probably have enough food in our house to live for at least a month! Scary! I think we need to pause on the shopping for a while. But, we had some good savings. We saved 47% on our trip at Publix! We bought several "big price" items like 3 things of ground turkey breast, 6 things of litter and 4 NY Strip steaks! The cat litter was B1G1 and I had my little $1 off coupon thinking I would buy 1 and get it for $2.50. Well, we start looking at it and there are those little pull off coupons for $2 off on all of them! I was super excited. We got Wheat Thins for $0.63 each, brownie mixes for $0.85 each, bagel-fuls for $1 per box. The cheapest thing we got was our Kraft salad dressing, which was B1G1, which made it $1.50 each and then we had $1.50 coupons (2 of them) so they were free! Between the B1G1 and our coupons (including doubled ones), we saved $97.96.

Scott went to Kroger on Monday to get the things that were on the best sale there (plus their produce always seems to be cheaper) and saved 40% between sales, coupons! We got 6 tubes of Colgate toothpaste for free! It was 10/$10 and we had 2 $1 coupons from previous weeks' papers and were able to print 4 of coupon.com. We also got a thing of Weber Grill Creations seasoning for free. They were 10/$10 and we had a $0.50 coupon, which gets doubled! Yay!

Oh the excitement...

Have I mentioned that I have become a pro at packing food into our fridge and freezer?

Have you found any exceptional deals lately?

Shana's Shower Pictures

2009-05-21T20:31:00.002-04:00

As promised, here are the pictures from Shana's Shower. It was a lot of fun and Shana got lots of good baby stuff!

We're Back!

2009-05-19T12:32:00.003-04:00

We are back from our much-needed get-away. We enjoyed Asheville and the Biltmore House. There really isn't much to do in Asheville, so if you want to take a 5-day trip, I suggest you plan two stops, maybe 2 days in Asheville and then the rest somewhere else close by with not much to do. But, we still made the most of it. We thought we were going to have an indoor pool, but as it turns out, there are 2 Country Inn and Suites in Asheville. We ate at the Tupelo Honey Cafe that Lindsay suggested and it was really good. We at breakfast and dinner at the Moose Cafe next to the Farmers' Market close to our hotel. All the restaurants in Asheville are all about fresh food from the farm and stuff like that. The Biltmore House was fun to go through and they had even recently reopened one of the important rooms in the house. All the flowers were really pretty. We ate at the Stable Cafe on Thursday for lunch and it was really good.

While we were in Asheville, we also played a round out Putt-Putt and saw two movies: Monsters vs Aliens (in 3D) and Star Trek. I had never watched an entire show or movie of Star Trek. I am not sure how I avoided them growing up as they were on a lot since my dad and sister were big fans. I thought that the Star Trek movie was really good. I would definitely like to own that one once it comes out.

We have downloaded our pictures, but I haven't finished editing them and I need to create a slide show to share on here.

Also, we threw a baby shower for Shana on May 3 and I have those pictures downloaded but not posted yet either, so sorry.

While we were away, it rained a good bit, so everything grew a lot! Our neighbor Nan was also sweet enough to check on the boys and water my pots on days that it didn't rain.

I will post a slide show or two later this evening, hopefully.

TTFN (ta-ta for now!)

Flowers and Cats

2009-05-12T19:35:00.003-04:00

While we are away, I want you to have something to look at on our blog. So, I am leaving you with some pictures of our flowers for so far this year. I planted some things in our front bed called celosia. They look pretty cool, but I don't think they like all the wet soil from the rain. I really hope they don't die. I am pretty sure I am done with planting pots and baskets for the summer. I planted just a few...ahem. We have also planted 2 tomato plants, a bell pepper, and a jalapeno plant. So, we'll see how those turn out. I saved all my geraniums from last year and have incorporated them into this year's pots. They are already getting some pretty green leaves. I really hope they bloom as well as they did last year.

I have also adding in some pictures of what the cats do while I am working on the gardening. I usually open the windows to air out the house and the boys sit right in the window and watch me. They like to sniff the air, which is what Sampson is doing in one of the pictures where he is making a funny face. We've been getting a lot of bird activity lately, too. The boys love it. The birds and the cats are eating us out of house and home.

DVD Giveaway @ A Full Heart

2009-05-11T21:39:00.002-04:00

My sweet friend Erin at A Full Heart is giving away some DVDs from the Vision Forum. Check out her post here and enter to win! The deadline is May 14! Erin's blog is always an encouragement to me, so be sure to read some of her posts while you are over there.

Wolverine

2009-05-11T12:17:00.001-04:00

We went to see the movie Wolverine on Saturday. It was really good! I enjoyed the action and it also explains a lot of the mystery surrounding Logan in the X-Men movies. Also, it definitely left room for another movie between when this one ends and the first X-Men movie began.

There are a lot of movies coming out this summer that we want to see. Harry Potter, Transformers, GI Joe, and I am sure there are a few more that Scott mentioned last night. Are there any movies out there this summer that you just have to see?

We leave on Wednesday morning for our trip. I can't wait!

Update

2009-04-25T19:36:00.009-04:00

Wow. It has been a long time since I posted anything. Almost a month. That wasn't really my intention, it just worked out that way. First of all, I was sick twice in three weeks. I am still sort of recovering from my last illness. I am kind of tired of being sick. I usually only get sick about once a year. This makes 4 times in 6 months. Scott was sick too. He got sick with some sort of sinus thing at about the same time as I got some sort of stomach bug. Then, he went to the doctor and started feeling better and once I had recovered from my stomach thing, I started getting sick with whatever sinus thing he had. No fun. I started to feel sick a week before my birthday, on the day of our joint birthday party with my family for Stephanie, Kristyn, and me.

Our birthday party was a lot of fun except that I wasn't feeling great, Stephanie was starting to have some sort of allergy thing, and Kristyn's stomach wasn't feeling too great either. But it was still good to get together. I got so many great gifts for my birthday. Obviously I don't think that my birthday is all about getting gifts, but it did sort of lessen the sting of turning...ahem...30. This is our group picture. Love the bunny ears. haha.

Here is the face I made when I opened my Cuttlebug. I was really surprised that Daddy and Stephanie got it for me. I had always just thought that I would end up saving up and getting it for myself. But, sometimes looking at my expressions is scary, seriously!

I got my first gift wrapped in "Over the Hill" wrapping paper this birthday. Thanks Daddy and Stephanie.

They got a special cake for my birthday...and added their own finishing touch of 30 candles!

Here I am trying to blow out all the candles! I was not successful in blowing them all out in one breath. They were all so spread out! It was a lot of ground to cover.

I won't list all my gifts, but I got a compilation of Jane Austen novels, some CDs that I had really been wanting, a movie, a Cuttlebug die cutting/embossing scrapbooking tool, and a new cookbook I really wanted. On top of the MP3 player that Scott gave me a couple of weeks ago, he surprised me with the perfume I really wanted, Armani Code for Women. I love the way it smells!

On the date of my actual birthday, April 18th, our close friends Andy and Caitlin got married. It was a beautiful ceremony and it was an enjoyable time to get to see a lot of people that we had not seen in a long time.

The weather has been absolutely crazy the last few weeks. Just this week, the lows have been about 35 and today it got up close to 90 degrees!

I have planted some tomato plants in pots with cages this year and a jalapeno plant. Hopefully we will have a good crop with them. We also purchased some dirt to amend the soil in our garden and I have started dumping my pots from the winter out and planting the whole thing out in the garden, kind of around the big area that I usually plant on that is raised. I put a lot of bulbs in them and I am hoping that by planting them in the garden, they'll come back next year and bloom. Scott and I went over to the Growers' Outlet today and I liked some of the stuff they have, but was disappointed that they didn't have more things I like. So, we didn't end up getting anything. I think that we are going to go back next weekend to see what they have and hopefully they'll have more stuff out. I still have plenty of time to plant. I don't have a lot of stuff to do in the yard this year because I have so many perennials, but I do have some things to plant. Mostly though, have my pots to take care of. The other day when I was working in the gardens and Scott was cutting the grass, I walked over to the side of the house to go through the fence and was surprised that all the hostas on that side that I planted 2 years ago have come up and they are monsters! The closer they are to the fence, or the more shade they are getting, the bigger they are! I will have to divide them this fall if we are still living here.

Did I ever say on here that we dropped the price on our house? Since that happened, we have had a pick up in traffic. We are not sure if that is because of the price decrease or because of the fact that it is spring. We would really like to be able to sell our house so that we could take advantage of the low prices on a house closer to our offices and church.

Today was Founders' Day for Scott's fraternity at GA Tech. So, we went downtown and got to spend time with friends. It was really nice.

I am still doing Weight Watchers. I have lost almost 12 pounds. I still have about 18 more that I want to lose.

Scott and I are taking a trip to celebrate my birthday. I decided that I would rather do that than have a big party or something. We are going to the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. Neither of us has ever been. We will be there the last weekend of the Flower Festival. We are going to drive up on Wednesday, May 13 and come home on that Sunday. Obviously we won't be spending all of our time at the Biltmore House. I know that there is a lot to do up there, but I haven't spent a lot of time researching it. Does anyone have any suggestions of things we can do or restaurants we can visit?

Well, if you are still here, I am impressed. I hope you have a blessed week.

Weight Watchers Ice Cream Sandwiches

2009-03-30T21:55:00.003-04:00

This is a recipe I got from my friend Robin from T&U back when she was doing WW while I was studying for the CPA Exam (one of the many times I studied for it haha). I used to make these all the time because they are so stinking good. Why I stopped, I don't know.

1 chocolate graham cracker (use low fat if you can find them)
2 Tbsp fat-free Cool Whip

Make a sandwich by breaking the graham cracker in half and smearing the cool whip in the middle and freeze. They are so good, you won't feel like you are missing out on anything!

I couldn't find low fat chocolate graham crackers, so it is 2 points. I think if you use low fat, it is just 1 point.

How easy is that? You're gonna love it!

(That's not the best picture I have ever taken, but I just ran and pulled out the ones I have already made up and set them on the lid of the container I have them stored in.)

Happy Early Birthday To Me!

2009-03-30T21:41:00.002-04:00

My birthday isn't for a couple of weeks, but Scott couldn't find a good hiding place for my present...so he gave it to me early!!

He gave me a Sansa MP3 player! It is pink and small and he got me an external drive thingy so I have a total of 8GBs of memory! He is ripping a bunch of my CDs to MP3 right now and loading me up! I am really excited! All I need now is that cord thingy that will hook it up to my stereo in my car and I can listen to my CDs much easier than having to worry about flipping through my CD case while driving down the road.

I am really happy about this present. I will enjoy my walking at the park on the days that Scott plays disc golf much more now!

Let's Go Krogering!

2009-03-30T21:16:00.005-04:00

I went to Kroger and they still have their Tyson boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.99/lb, so go get some before they stop doing that. They weren't advertised, I don't think. I spent $41.51 and had no coupons, but my Kroger Plus Card savings were $27.38! I didn't buy anything that wasn't on sale! I got squash, zucchini, and apples for $1/lb, an onion for $0.89/lb, 2 mangos for $1 each (b/c I had never bought a fresh mango, so I wanted to try.) I also got some Del Monte fruit cups for $1 each, the ones with no sugar added! I needed some hotdogs for a the joint birthday party we are having for Kristyn, Stephanie, and me in a couple of weeks with my family so that I can make pigs in a blanket, so I found some Light Hot Dogs (made with Turkey, so we'll see) 2 for $7, but I only got one pack and it was still $3.50. This last thing is very interesting to me...they had potatoes - 5lb bags were $3.69 and the 10lb bag was $3.99! So, I got the 10lb bag! If you refrigerate your potatoes, they will last a long time. We eat a lot of potatoes. I recently read an article on the WW website and it said that the skin of a potato has more potassium than a banana! HA! That makes me feel much better about not liking bananas. There's all kind of other healthy things about potatoes, too. That made me happy because I love potatoes!

I hope we don't need groceries again for a while, because it sure is costing us a lot to save all this money! HA!

Well, I am rambling. The point is I saved money and I am happy. I am full of chicken stir fry that I prepared very similarly to a hibachi-style japanese restaurant (and it probably cost me less than $4 to make the whole meal and Scott gets to take leftovers tomorrow!) meal and so is my husband and he is happy. Mmmmm...

And, I went ahead and bought enough squash to make the squash casserole recipe that Bethany gave me so Scott is excited about that too!

Okay, enough rambling really.

More, Better Savings!

2009-03-30T12:06:00.002-04:00

This weekend, I went online and looked at the Publix circular for sale items of things that we didn't necessarily have to have right now, but that we do use and would have to buy at some point in time. I really like their site because anything you want to buy, you just check it and it adds it to your shopping list and you can just print it out when you are done. Then, I went through all the online coupon sites looking for coupons that would match my items. I even googled coupons for ___ and sometimes I did get something! There were a couple of big priced items that we bought that were not on sale that we discovered that we needed. If you ever see the scrubbing bubbles refills on sale or get a coupon you don't need for them, let me know. We are always needing that stuff.

Anyway, drum roll please:

We bought about $85 worth of stuff for about $49! Plus, between this trip and the one last week, we are really stocked up now on things like granola bars, 2 Liters of Dr. Pepper products (which we take to fellowship meals at church or parties and stuff like that), cans of coke products, cat treats, canned green beans, and Ritz Crackers. I have discovered that it never seems like ground turkey breast is on sale. And, I need to buy more boneless skinless chicken breasts when they are on sale for $1.99/lb because man, we eat a lot of chicken.

Kroger has zucchini, squash, and vidalia onions on sale right now, so tonight I am going to go pick us some up and we are have chicken stir fry - yum-o!

So, have you found any really good deals that are going on right now that everyone else should be taking advantage of?

Savings?

2009-03-25T11:39:00.002-04:00

I have decided that we need to do better with using coupons, etc...

So, I have discussed the best ways to save with Shana and to also keep from going insane from feeling like I have to go 15 places every time I grocery shop. There is this website called couponmom.com and it lets you search for you grocery store and it will list all the best deals from their circular for the week and which coupons are still valid for those deals. It tells you based on which coupon book from which Sunday's paper. So, it's very helpful. Lots of people say that Kroger doubles coupons, but I don't think I got any double coupons last night, so that is a little confusing. Well, we spent an hour and a half at the grocery store. This is why we have never been good with coupons and shopping deals. It takes too long. But, I am told that once you get used to it, you get a method and it is easier. Let's hope so. We spent about $155 but we saved (if you include coupons and the "Kroger plus card savings" which are a scam anyway) about $43. We did buy some things because they were on sale. Like, they have coke products 3 12-packs for $12, which isn't the cheapest you can usually get them, but if you bought 3 12-packs, you get 2 free boxes of Ritz crackers. Both of those are staple items in our house. I got the whole wheat ones, which I didn't know existed until Bethany told me about them, and they are really good and better for you! And, believe it or not, we bought all "zero" products and nothing with sugar. But, of course, we already had plenty of that at home anyway. I also found this website where you can download coupons automatically to your shopper's card. I loaded all of mine to my Kroger Plus Card because that is where I shop the most often. The website is shortcuts.com. I actually used more of those coupons than I did any others.

I just need to learn to work the system by buying things at their lowest cost and combining that sale with the manufacturers coupon and the store coupons to get them almost free. One of these days...

P.S.

2009-03-18T12:34:00.002-04:00

I just had a yummy frozen lunch, which is unusual. It was a Smart Ones chicken quesadilla. You should try it. It really does taste as goos as it smells. Again, unusual. Just thought I would share.

Update

2009-03-18T11:53:00.006-04:00

So, it's been more laid back lately. So far there have been two full work days this week and so far this week I have left at 4:30 both days. I have been toying with the idea of putting this on my blog, but I figure why not? I could use some accountability: I have started Weight Watchers. I am on week 3. I have only lost about 4 lbs so far, but I don't weigh again until Friday. SO...if you have any recipes that you want to share, send me the links or email them or scan them and share! I may start sharing some of my favorite healthy recipes on here. I haven't really done any recipes lately. Sad times.

This past weekend was a whirlwind of showers. I went to a bachelorette party/shower for Caitlin on Friday night, a bridal shower for my friend Kim on Saturday, and a bridal shower for Caitlin at church on Sunday. I was so proud of myself because I went out the week before and bought gifts so I wasn't rushing around on the day of!!! (See any previous post where I talk about how I have turned into a procrastinator!) I didn't take pictures of the cards, but I made them. I used the pre-made blank cards you can get at Joann or Walmart and then cut squares of my wrapping paper and made them super cute. My wrapping paper was like squares with different wedding-type designs. I just wanted to share that because I had never thought about it until I was looking at that paper and I was like, wow this would make a cute card.

Shana did a good job summing up Caitlin's bachelorette party on her blog, but I want to talk about it, too. Lauren, Caitlin's wonderful sister, planned it and did a great job. We all carpooled down to Fuego, this tapas restaurant downtown. It was really good and we had good company too! Then, we came back for the "shower" time and Lauren made this yummy apple crisp (I didn't eat any of it, but I have had it before) and I made Margarita Punch, which is nonalcoholic but does taste like a real margarita. It's super easy, but things are always better when someone else makes it, so I always make it for the girls (I made it up, but I am sure lots of people make it my way, too). How can I say no when they shower me with compliments on my bartending abilities? One of the highlights: Shana was there! Yay! She and Josh came home from Louisville (where Josh is attending seminary) for the "Caitlin and Andy wedding shower circuit!" I can't share all of the pics, which were almost all good (b/c there are just too many for one post), but here are some of my favorites. All the ones Shana posted are super good too, but since she posted them, I won't. So, look at her post too if you want to see more good pics! The one up top is Caitlin surrounded by her gifts drinking margarita punch. Too cute! Then, there are pictures of Lauren (the hostess with the mostess) and me and Maggie and me. The last picture is a belly picture of Shana. She's just the cutest pregnant person ever. I had to share (I hope you don't mind Shana).

Kim's shower was a lot of fun too. It was great to see Kim. I know her because we used to go to church together and I worked with her mom, Teri at T&U. I still stay really close with my T&U friends. The shower was at Cheryl's house, my old boss from T&U who also went to church with us. It was fun because there were lots of people there that I like a lot who I rarely get to see. I ended up making bow-quets from all the bows on Kim's gifts, so that was a fun way to be crafty. Okay, the pictures from this shower are kind of small, probably because I saved them off of Facebook, so they probably are not normal size pics. But, there is one of me making the bow-quets and then one of Kim with her bridesmaid Cristy (Cheryl's daughter) holding their bow-quets. Fun. (Okay, I just tried a different way to save those pics from FB, so maybe they are better.)

Caitlin's church shower on Sunday was fun too and she racked up! I have my pics downloaded, but I haven't emailed them to everyone so I don't have access to them at work right now. That is for a later post.

200th Post & an Update

2009-03-06T18:45:00.011-05:00

Happy 200th Post! Wow. If I had known this was going to be my 200th post, I might have done a contest or something witty. But, I really don't have it in me right now.

We filed our 10-K at work! Yea! Of course, we still have the proxy, and I have month-end stuff still going on and in April we will have quarter-end and the 10-Q, but whatever. We enjoyed the moment today! My boss left at about 3 and my other co-worker in my department, Linda, and I gave him about 15 minutes head start and headed out too! Did we feel bad? Nope! He had said not to stay late...so we didn't! I really do like most of the people I work with, so it's a good place to be. I do feel kind of stupid sometimes because the people in accounting seem to have higher than usual IQs even for accountants.

I made a slide show of the pictures from our snow day the other day. There are two in there that our friend Kelly from church sent us as she had her camera at church and was snapping pictures of everyone outside playing in it. Some of the pictures in the slide show are just because the snow was so pretty. Some are to show off what great pictures our new camera takes. Some are to show how stinkin' sweet our kitties are.

Like this one:
I know it is blurry and it actually turned itself sideways just now. I was actually standing in the chair to take pictures out the window and Maxwell got up into the chair with me and started rubbing against my legs. For some reason, maybe because I was too close, the camera didn't focus on his little face, but isn't this just so sweet how he pushes his head into my hand.

Here is the series of events:

He got up and started rubbing my legs

Then he went to see what Sampson was looking at

Then he came back over to me

He rubbed my legs some more. After this is when I bent over and started rubbing his head. Too cute.

Well, it's supposed to be beautiful this weekend. I am going to try to get out and enjoy it some!

Snow!

2009-03-01T20:16:00.004-05:00

It snowed today. A lot. It started (I think) right around lunch time. We were at church, so I don't know what time it started here, but it snowed (hard) for about 5-6 hours. It is just sitting in the grass, on the sidewalk, and the streets. The streets look kind of slushy. It has stopped now. It is supposed to be freezing temperatures tonight, so hopefully it will dry up fast. It was a lot of fun to be at church while it was snowing. We were all out in it, watching the kids throw snowballs at each other (and sometimes at us). It was really beautiful. When we got home, we had lots of birds all day. It was interesting to watch them. We have a bird that is not in our bird book called Common Birds of Atlanta. It is solid black and has a small red stripe just above a small gold stripe on each wing. I'll get a picture of it next time and upload it to see if anyone knows what it is.

Not this past Thursday, but the Thursday before that, I got a hair cut. I will post a picture so you can see it. I had about 6 inches cut off, layers cut, and some long bangs. I like it.

We took a bunch of pictures today at the house, but we have not downloaded them yet. Such is life lately.

I am still working 10-12 hours a day. We should file our 10-K this Friday, so hopefully it will ease up some. I know I will still have a good bit of overtime, because we still have our proxy to file and then it will be time to do our 10-Q (for quarter end), but I really don't intend to work this much for that much longer. It's kind of crazy. I am glad to have a job and I do like my job. But, enough is enough. My understanding is that it is much better this year for our department than it was for them in previous years. So, for that I am thankful.

Scott is still working away at his same job. They keep having layoffs, so we are trying not to be nervous about that. The good thing is that with the two companies they have, they really do need to keep 2 IT people. So, that is sort of a little bit of piece of mind.

Anyway, that is a brief synopsis of our status. I know I have not been good about writing. Hopefully I'll be better about it soon.

Weird

2009-02-14T12:17:00.002-05:00

Last week, I had a rabbit run out in front of me on two separate days, in almost the exact same spot. The same rabbit! Isn't that strange? The first time was a very close call. I was very close to home. I was just getting up a little speed after stopping at the stop sign and this rabbit dashed out in front of me. I am sure that if someone had taken a picture of my face, it would have been comical. I only had time to take my foot off the gas, and open my mouth hugely as if to scream and suck in breath. I didn't see him go across the street on the other side of my truck, but I didn't feel the inevitable bump I would have felt if I had hit him. I don't know how I missed him. Lucky rabbit. Then, the stupid thing ran (a little farther) out in front of me to cross the road two days later! I mean, it's not like there's a lot of traffic on this road...

Anyway. Weird.

Random

2009-02-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

So, I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to. This is mainly because I have been working a lot. I get to work at about 7 every day and usually don't leave until about 6ish (which means I am gone from my house from about 6:15am to 7:15pm every day), unless I have somewhere to go like Small Group. Obviously I'm not getting home early on those days either. Then, usually when I get home I have been having things I had to get done for various responsibilities I have. Our company is traded publicly and that means we have to file a 10-K each year with the SEC. With a 10-K, there really aren't "extensions". (Well, I think you can file an extension but it's only for a few days, I think so why bother.)

Two Fridays ago, Scott and I went to the Fox to watch the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. I liked it, but there were a few pretty confusing scenes. I had to work late so we missed the sing-along with the Might Mo so I was kind of bummed about that and felt guilty.

Scott's dad's birthday was Jan. 31, so we went to Provino's with his parents and Grandma for his birthday. I love Provino's. And, it's the perfect place to go for your birthday because you get your meal free.

Saturday morning I went with some girlfriends to see the movie Bride Wars. I wanted to see it but I was not 100% sure it would be a great movie. But, it turned out to be really good. I actually cried during this movie.

We went to an awesome Super Bowl party at our friends Rob and Cheryl's house, like we have for many years now. It was a lot of fun. We (the ladies) didn't really pay any attention to the game until about the last 5 minutes, so it was great for me. I do feel the need to go online now and catch up on the commercials that I missed though.

Scott is staying pretty busy as well because he is kind of picking up my slack at home since I am working so late.

Our house is still for sale. We have not had many people come to look at the house lately. We are going to have to go through each room this week and really do some cleaning up because we have kind of let ourselves slide. Scott told me that he heard the housing market might start picking up a very small amount, so we want to be ready in case it does.

We finally got our Christmas present to ourselves: an SLR camera. I absolutely can't figure out how to take a good picture with it. I am going to have to read the manual to be able to take a picture with the flash successfully. Somehow the red eye reducer is always on and it turns into a strobe light and by the time the picture snaps, the cats have already turned away or run off. I can't blame them really. Anyway, wish us luck!

Sorry I don't have any good pictures, but maybe next time. I am at work right now, so there really aren't any available. Plus, we just haven't really taken a lot lately.

Blogging Award

2009-01-17T12:39:00.002-05:00

I have received my first real blogging award from Carrie at Thoughts, Ponderings, and Musings. Thanks so much Carrie! I feel really special! I am going to proudly display my award on my side bar and pass this award on to some of my favorite bloggers:

Jennifer at Jordan Family Happenings

Erin at A Full Heart

Josh and Shana at Stringer Family Happenings

Callie at Coupon Callie

Maggie at Shadburns R Us

Pass it on!

Christmas and New Years Eve

2009-01-17T12:21:00.002-05:00

Hello blog readers! I know I have not been as good about blogging as I used to be, but maybe I will get better in a few months once work slows down. I'll tell you more about work in another post. The purpose of this post is to talk about our Christmas and New Years now that it is January 17!

Well, shortly before Christmas, my friend Kim from work had a gingerbread cookie decorating party and Scott and I went and had a good time. It was a lot of fun decorating cookies and hanging out.

On Christmas day, Scott and I went to his cousins' house (Molly and Glenn) who live in Monroe. This has become a Christmas day tradition in his family. We had the best steaks you can imagine and everyone brought sides and snacks and just hung out for a few hours. It was nice. I didn't take any pictures though. I put Scott in charge of that and well, you see what happened...

The Saturday after Christmas, we went to Scott's parents' house for our Christmas with his family. We exchanged gifts and then had a really good lunch. It's always nice to all get together at the same time. There are pictures in the slide show.

On New Years Eve, Scott and I had tickets to the Chick-fil-A bowl, since Georgia Tech was in it. They played LSU and lost in a really embarrassing way. I was disappointed and it takes a lot to get me disappointed about football or any sport for that matter. Oh well. I took some pictures there and they are in the slide show in this post. Notice that we did not take any pictures after the game had started. By the time half time rolled around, we were so far in the hole points-wise that there was no returning. I figured they would at least score a few more points to make us competitive, but no, sadly not. BB&T had provided everyone with a flyer about the bank. Bad idea. All the people on the Tech side started making paper airplanes with these flyers and seeing how far they can go. Remember, this is an engineering school, so some of them were going pretty far. We were on the far end of the field and there were planes from our section making it out to the 50 yard line. Some time during the 4th quarter they announced they would start arresting people for throwing anything from or in the stands. Most of them stopped. That was kind of the exciting part of the night. People were cheering when a plane would go especially far. Kind of sad. Oh well. We were driving home from the game when the clock hit 12. We did not do anything at all on New Years Day and that was quite nice.

On Jan 3, we had Christmas with my family. We had party-type foods and exchanged gifts. I have pictures in the slide show. We had a lot of fun visiting with each other.

Follow up

2009-01-10T21:39:00.004-05:00

I feel that I should follow up on my last post and some of the comments that were left. I am still listening to country music, but I think that one of the reasons for my current state of flipping is that they haven't had a lot of new stuff come out lately and I am kind of tired of listening to the same songs over and over again.

Now, my sister mentioned that she loves that song Just Dance by Lady Gaga. I know the song she is talking about and it is kind of catchy. However, Lindsey and I saw her perform it in person when she opened for New Kids on the Block back in October and let me tell you, it could have ruined the whole song for me. That was the only song she sang that was really entertaining, honestly, but that is not the reason for our dislike of her. I can't think of any other way to say this but, she is a freak. I know that's not very nice, but let me explain. First of all, Natasha Bedingfield was the first opening act, and we really enjoyed her. I did not realize I knew and liked so many of her songs. When she finished, she informed us the the New Kids would be out in a few minutes. So, that kind of tainted our reaction anyway. When Lady Gaga came out, we were all standing up and screaming thinking it would be the New Kids. So, she comes out in this white shiny outfit that makes me think of a wedding dress right out of the Jetsons. It is a corset-type top and a short shiny tutu-like skirt. She had on extremely tall high-heeled white boots. She was flanked by several male dancers wearing very Jetson-esque outfits. She danced kind of weird during her first song. At one point in time, she began crawling around on the stage and we had a great view of her underwear. Seriously, she was getting weird and half of the crowd had already sat down. I think my mouth was hanging open by this point. The next thing I know, her dancers yanked her skirt off and she was dancing around in that horrible corset and her underwear. It was weird. I mean, who opens for a group who will have a mostly 30-something female audience and dresses like that? Anyway, freaky in every way. By the time she was done, the only people still standing and cheering were obviously drunk. If it hadn't been for them, I am sure if she had stopped singing, you could have heard crickets chirping. So, anyway, that is the explanation about the comments on Lady Gaga. I like that Just Dance song, but it does bring back those memories of her strange performance. Obviously the song and Wendy's comment bring the same type of memories back for Lindsey as well. Our memories will forever be burned with the disgusting images of her prancing around on stage mostly undressed with the weirdly-dressed dancers.

What Rock Have I Been Under

2009-01-08T20:36:00.003-05:00

Does anyone else out there listen to country radio that reads my blog? Did you realize that Cledus T. Judd is no longer working for 94.9 The Bull? I was totally bummed when I realized this on the way to work this morning. I go through phases in my radio-listening patterns. Sometimes, I'll go for weeks listening to my Bible on MP3 on the way to work. Sometimes, I'll put it on 101.5 (Kicks) or 94.9 and listen to whatever comes on, usually only switching if they start talking about something that gets on my nerves or if a commercial comes on that I can't stand to listen to. If I can't find something on either of those stations, I check out the Christian radio stations and the Fish to see if I can get good signal and if they are playing a song I like. Well, then I go through phases where I don't listen to the DJs at all or the commercials, I just flip like crazy until I find a song I like and sometimes even if I find one I like, I will keep flipping to make sure there isn't one on that I like better until I get back around to it. I have 3 FM channels with 6 presets each, so I have a lot to choose from! I was especially into doing this when I had my Grand Am and I had the radio controls on my steering wheel (but I only had a total of 12 presets then). Well, recently I have been flipping. I have been listening to the country radio stations a lot less, and pop and hip hop a lot more. I listen to 94.1, 99.7, 95.5, 98.5, and I always flip by the oldies stations to see if they are playing a song I recognize. All of those DJs get on my nerves except Steve & Vickie and they teeter on it. I try not to listen to anything vulgar, but when I am listening to 95.5 The Beat, it's usually hard to tell what the people are saying, but I like the beat. SO, I have been in a flipping phase - that is my excuse for not realizing that my favorite radio DJ had been fired a week before Thanksgiving. I read an article about it online today when I got to work just to make sure he wasn't out sick and they just failed to mention him. Apparently lots of radio stations aren't even giving their DJs a full year to pull up ratings even though it sometimes takes years to build a following.

Whatever. I was just shocked and wanted to share with you the fact that I now feel like I have climbed out from under my country radio DJ awareness rock.

More blogging to come soon, I hope.

Merry Christmas and God Bless You!

2008-12-25T17:17:00.002-05:00

We hope that you are all having a wonderful Christmas Day! Here are pictures of our Christmas decorations. We have enjoyed spending time with our family today and look forward to our other Christmas family gatherings in the days to come.

What's been going on

2008-12-19T19:37:00.005-05:00

Hello all! I have been on a sort of blog hiatus lately. I have been busy at work and also busy at home. I have also been reading the Twilight series. I know, I know, it is meant for teenagers, but I couldn't resist. Stephenie Meyer has quite an imagination and I think that she is quite a talented writer. I really do enjoy reading science fiction novels and novels about love and romance (but I have never read an actual "romance novel" except for Nicholas Sparks). This series combines both of them.

Have you finished your Christmas shopping? I hope so, with Christmas only 6 days away! Scott and I did a lot of online shopping this year. I think that we really helped ourselves by doing this. Basically, we did two different big orders on amazon and then we made a list of the other items that we thought we wanted to buy with a dollar amount in mind for each person and we went shopping together one Sunday after church and did the rest. I have had to pick up a couple of things here and there, but basically that was it. It kept us from nickel and diming ourselves to death and overspending. Then, I sat down and wrapped every single gift on one Saturday afternoon. I still have a couple of small things that I bought after the fact to wrap and a couple of gifts that I am making that haven't been wrapped. But, I basically consider myself done.

We had our work Christmas party on Dec. 6 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. It was a very nice, formal event. Last year they had it at the Fox but they had waited too long to book it this year. But, my understanding is that we will be back at the Fox next year. So, I am looking forward to that. Here are some pictures we took while at the party.

We have several Christmas parties to attend in the coming weekends. Tomorrow we are going to decorate gingerbread cookies at my friend Kim's house from work. I am super excited about this. Sunday is our small group Christmas party from church. We are having a white elephant type ornament exchange and party-type food, so it should be fun. We are going to Scott's cousins' house on Christmas day, seeing his immediate family on the Saturday after Christmas and seeing my immediate family on the Saturday after New Years. Whew! Everything always seems to get packed into the same space. But, I am looking forward to all of our gatherings.

This weekend I will take some pictures of our tree and the outside of our house and post them. I know it isn't cold outside, but honestly, both of our SD cards are rather full which makes them extremely slow to load and I just don't have the patience for it.

I hope that you are all having a very merry Christmas season. God bless you.

Crazy Weather

2008-12-12T08:45:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note as I am at work and supposed to be working...

Does anyone else think that our weather is kind of strange lately? I mean, we have the coldest November and beginning of December ever and then it shoots up to the 60s so that it can rain and as soon as the rain ends, it drops back down into the 30s-40s! Crazy. Maybe we'll have a white Christmas. Hopefully, if we do, it won't stick to the streets, just the rooftops and yards!

I hate cold weather, BTW!

Where have I been?

2008-12-10T21:41:00.002-05:00

I know it has been a while since I have posted. I have been busy, but I have no excuses, really. I think that Carrie put it best though:

"Are you suffering from post Disney trauma of returning to the real world plus burnout from blogging everything you did on your trip?!"

That's exactly what I think has happened. I will be back soon to finish (briefly) our Disney trip and to catch you all up on what's going on with us.

Nothing very exciting, just normal life. But, I am not complaining!

Happy Birthday Scott!!!

2008-11-25T08:13:00.003-05:00

Today is Scott's birthday! We are celebrating tonight with a steak dinner. He is looking forward to that! Happy birthday Scott! Thanks for being such a wonderful husband!

Thursday-Downtown Disney, Animal Kingdom, and Rainforest Cafe

2008-11-22T21:06:00.006-05:00

Thursday was our "relaxing" day. We had breakfast at the Boatright Restaurant at the Port Orleans resort and then headed over to Downtown Disney to do some shopping. We headed into the World of Disney first and about halfway through the store (which is huge BTW), we ran into Bethany and Carrie! Ha! It was so great to see Bethany and finally meet Carrie in person. We talked for a few minutes, finalized our lunch plans, and then finished up our shopping. There were so many things we wanted, but we held ourselves back! We also visited the toy store. We had lunch at the Earl of Sandwich with Bethany and Carrie and sat for about two hours just talking about all kinds of fun stuff. It was quite enjoyable. I wish they both lived closer because I think it would be so much fun to hang out.

After that, we went back over to Animal Kingdom and rode Everest again, watched Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade, walked a couple more of the nature trails, did the Safari for the third time, and checked out a few more shops. I love the safari, it really was different every time. I had forgotten about the Maharaja Jungle Trek, or I would have wanted to do it again too. Then, it was time for our dinner reservations at the Rainforest Cafe'. As we were heading over to the Rainforest Cafe', the park was closing and they were "trucking" Mickey, Goofy, Donald, and Minnie somewhere, I guess their dressing room, and we got to take pictures of them. That was fun. The Rainforest Cafe' is so cool with such detailed decorations. It is decorated to look like a rainforest with all kind of animals that move. For instance, there was a huge snake slithering around on a tree branch that hung out over the dining room and several families of apes that would start jumping and making ape noises randomly every few minutes. I kept hearing tigers roaring and birds cawing. It was interesting. We had to pay for this meal as it was not on our dining plan, so we just shared an appetizer sampler, but it was really good. I believe those were the best chicken fingers I had ever had! After that, I took some pictures of the huge tree that had been put up in front of the entrance to the park between when we had been there on Monday and Thursday when we got back over there. They really had a lot of detail on that tree. We headed back to our hotel and had a dessert of those chocolate covered icecream bars shaped like Mickey's head. Those things were surprisingly good and much bigger than I expected them to be!

You can see here how big the tree was. The whole tree was decorated with all types of animal ornaments and then under the tree were toys and the Winnie-the-Pooh and Jungle Book characters.

This was at the entrance of the Rainforest Cafe'. I thought it was funny.

Scott and I had some fun with the Rainforest Cafe' sign!

So, that was our day on Thursday. We tried to take it easy.

Tuesday - Epcot

2008-11-21T20:38:00.005-05:00

Our second day at Disney was our day at Epcot. We wanted to do the ride Soarin' first because we thought it would be really fun. I mean, it was okay but I kept expecting something kind of scary to happen and it never did. But, it was a nice ride. We then went over to Test Track and the beginning was kind of interesting but not exciting, but the second half was great! I enjoyed it! Our favorite ride in Epcot is Mission Space. It simulates a take off in a space shuttle and a trip to Mars. It was a lot of fun...but if you have motion sickness, it is not the ride for you! We also rode a ride called Spaceship Earth that is inside the Epcot ball and it basically is a history of communications between people throughout our existence. Besides that, we visited various countries in the World Showcase, had lunch at the Coral Reef Restaurant which has a huge aquarium as one wall, rose the Finding Nemo ride, and had dinner at the quick service Mexican Restaurant. We sat for a while waiting to see the Illuminations laser and fireworks show that night which was awesome! I really enjoyed walking around and seeing all the countries. We didn't make it to all the countries, but we went back another day to finish seeing them.

This picture is of a car right outside of the Test Track ride. I guess it's the car of the future or something.

These pictures are ones we took inside of "Mexico". They had these crazy big sombreros on sale and we had to try them on!

Oops

2008-11-20T21:52:00.001-05:00

Okay...so while I was writing my Wednesday post, I was thinking...oh, I forgot to say this about Epcot and that about our lunch, etc...

I just realized I have not done a post on our day at Epcot on Tuesday. Oops. I'll do that next. heehee.

Wednesday - Magic Kingdom

2008-11-20T21:10:00.009-05:00

Wednesday was the big day for Magic Kingdom - what Disney World is all about!

As we entered the park, we were trying to get to Space Mountain and I just wanted to keep taking pictures. This is my very first sight of Cinderella's Castle, the tallest building in Disney World. It really is beautiful! We never did go inside. I guess that's something we'll have to go back for!

It really is a magical place! We got there before the park opened and they had a group come out and do a song and then the train came and brought the family that got to do the countdown to open the park for the day and MICKEY!! Mickey was there! Yay! It was so great. Also, they had completely decorated for Christmas (I think) in that park because they had the Very Merry Christmas Party the previous night! It was so pretty!

We made a beeline for Space Mountain. The line was short so we didn't have to wait that long and it was still short when we got out so we rode it again!! We also did the Buzz Lightyear ride where you shoot laser guns at targets and it keeps your points (except I didn't realize it was keep points until the ride was almost over, so Scott had about 77K points and I had about 3K). We rode the tea cups, the Winnie the Pooh ride, It's a Small World, the railroad train, Space Mountain (yes, two more times), the haunted house, and we rode the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I really liked the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. We had lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern in Liberty Square (we did not ride all those rides before lunch, that was all day). Liberty Tree Tavern was probably our favorite restaurant the whole trip. Yum-o! It rained a couple of times that day so we don't look so great in our pictures. But, what can you do? We saw Mickey's Philharmonic and the Monster's Inc Comedy Club. Both were awesome! It started raining just before dark and we headed down Mainstreet USA and had hotdogs and fries at Casey's Corner. You know, Might Casey? Well, that was a great hotdog. We had to huddle under one of the umbrella-covered tables and dry off our chairs to eat. There were these ducks from the ponds that were walking around and looking pointedly at people hoping for table scraps. They cracked me up. There was this little boy in a poncho that kept following them around. They didn't seem to mind. I don't think they were shy. What could I do except take pictures of them? After dinner, we walked around through a few of the shops and then found a spot for the SpectroMagic Parade. Then, we realized that Cinderella's Castle was all lit up with LED lights and it was blue, no purple, no pink, no turquoise! It kept changing colors. Once the parade was over I started becoming obsessed with trying to get a picture of it in every color! After the parade there was a really great fireworks show. Tinkerbell was even there!! It was a very magical day!

Here are our...ahem...friends...they are pretty cute, aren't they? (P.S. those are rain drops beaded up on those ducks. They aren't spotted.)

When it rained the first time, during the day, we had just gone into some shops. Somehow we ended up in a jewelry store where a barber shop quartet were singing and they were asking us about our Happy Anniversary buttons. The next thing we know, they are making us dance in the store as they sing some "romantic" song to us. Here's the proof.

I took a picture of everything in the SpectroMagic Parade. So, if you want to see the whole thing and the fireworks and Cinderella's Castle, I will just upload all those pictures to a slide show. Just leave a comment.

7 Random Things About Me

2008-11-20T17:50:00.003-05:00

Ashley tagged me several days ago to do a post with 7 Random Things about me. I have 10 minutes in which to do this because we are planning to go outside and watch for the space station in a minute.

1. One of my pet peeves is when people turn or change lanes without using their turn signals.
2. I am a procrastinator - but this is a recent development. I haven't always been! Strange...
3. I am terrible with directions. I could get lost anywhere.
4. I love to chew gum. I almost always have a pack or Original Flavor Trident and a pack of Bubble Gum Flavor Trident in my purse and one of each in my desk drawer at work.
5. I love the TV show Bones. It's so good!
6. I love scrapbooking. I can't wait to scrapbook my Disney trip. Then, maybe I'll finally scrapbook out cruise from last year (see why I put so much details in my blogs - I don't want to forget this stuff!
7. My current weight loss goal is 25 lbs. I can't believe how much weight I have gained in the past year - 10 lbs! Craziness! I'm not sure what happened...besides changing jobs twice and going through bankruptcy at one company...hmmm...

There you go. This may be the shortest post ever. More on Disney to come. I have to blog all about it so I don't forget!

Speaking of forgetting, I forgot to tag someone else. I think I am supposed to tag 7 people, but I have tagged lots of people before. But, I'll try:

Midlife Mom
Carrie
Sarah
Jennifer
Erin
Callie
Amy

Monday - Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios

2008-11-18T20:40:00.014-05:00

Monday was our first official day at Disney. There was an extra Magic Hour at Animal Kingdom that morning and 3 extra magic hours at Disney Hollywood Studios that night. So, in order to capitalize on those, we planned both things in one day! Whew!

We got to Animal Kingdom when they opened and had to go pick up our tickets, which was a small ordeal because of how things were set up, but we got them. When the park opened, we made a beeline for the Kilimanjaro Safari because we had been told that the animals are the most active in the morning. Well, they weren't kidding. This is a ride in which you get in a smallish bus that's kind of like a Range Rover I guess and you drive through this huge wilderness reserve that has "Asia" and "Africa". It have been very well done and there are all kinds of animals. We saw hippos walking around underwater and white pelicans perching on their rearends which were sticking out. There were ostrich eggs sitting around on the side of the road. We saw lots of giraffes and the next thing we knew, a baby giraffe was passing in front of our truck and he was so cute! I got some great pics of him. We also had a White Rhinoceros cross in front of our truck and then walk away with his tail curled up because apparently we offended him and an ostrich walked by so close to me that I could not get his whole body in the picture. That was kind of freaky. There is some stupid movie that I've seen parts of where these two guys are looking for their car and they find it in the middle of a herd of ostriches and the ostriches hold them captive in their car. I have heard that ostriches can be kind of mean. Anyway, they also have an entire island of pink flamingoes and tons of rare animals. We saw real life wildebeasts and warthogs. It was great. There were also these really cool trees that they said people called an "upside down tree", I think it's real name is the Beobob Tree (sp?). I took several pictures of those! (Um, maybe I should have just done a slide show - but you can click on these pictures and see them better!)

They have lots of places in Animal Kingdom where you can see live animals like Tigers, Lemurs, Otters, and lots more including live bats (ew). I love the Tree of Life, which is a fake tree in the middle of the park and has all kind of detailed animals carved into it. At Animal Kingdom we also loved riding Everest and we rode it a couple of times because the lines were pretty short. We also did the safari again later in the morning. They had a character greeting set up for Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger and we waited in line for that because they're my favorite and I think Scott is a big fan too! That was a lot of fun! The sign at the top of this post is the sign we saw just before we went over to look at the tigers like the one you see sleeping in the picture to the left. I loved it because it looked like Tigger in the original Pooh books by A.A. Milne that I grew up reading!

We had lunch reservations at the Sci-Fi dine-in theater in Disney Hollywood Studios, but we wanted to swing by the Caribbean Beach Resort first and get our room keys and also officially have our meal plan stuff before we went to eat. The Caribbean Beach Resort looked just like your typical, nice beach resort. I actually didn't take a lot of pictures in the resort because there wasn't anything exciting, just palm trees and exotic plants.

Disney Hollywood Studios was so cool. I loved all the buildings and the street names were just like Hollywood. We loved the Tower of Terror and the Rockin' Roller Coaster with Aerosmith. We rode each of those twice. I screamed...the entire time! We looked in some of the gift shops and watched the Beauty and the Beast show as well, which was excellent!

This is the picture that was automatically taken of us on the Rockin' Roller Coaster ride. Scott knew when it would take the picture and liked to pose for those shots, hence his cheesy face. I really was terrified...and screaming. I took a picture of the screen with my camera...heeheehee.

We knew that we wanted to watch Fantasmic, a laser/fireworks/character extravaganza with limited seating. So, we got over to the seating area super early and ended up sitting behind a couple of guys visiting from Atlanta as well. We talked to them and people watched and just had a good time. The show was well worth the wait!

We had dinner at a quick service place called Rosie's All-American Cafe which was gross. Don't eat there if you go!

Altogether, it was a great, memorable day!

To those of you whose blogs I read - I am behind on your blogs and hopefully will get caught up in the next few days. I feel very out of the loop! I hope you are all doing well!

Also, check the previous post because I am about to add a slide show in there from our Sunday pictures!

I wanted to add a couple of notes. First, in talking to Lauren tonight I remembered that we saw the Lemurs, live bats, tigers, and the komodo dragon in the Maharaja Jungle Trek. It was something that I wasn't sure I wanted to take the time to do and it was so worth it. So, do it. You'll be glad you did.

Also, Carrie asked if the price difference was worth it for paying to stay in the Caribbean Beach Resort (moderate) as opposed to staying in the Pop Century (Value) and it was worth the extra money and it was actually only about $250 extra for 5 nights, so that's like $50 a night. So, maybe that's a lot, but the beds were much more comfortable. And you get a free fridge!

Sunday-The Drive and Boardwalk

2008-11-17T19:59:00.004-05:00

The first official day of our vacation was Sunday, Nov. 9. We left Loganville pretty early in the morning because we wanted to optimize on our time in Disney. I took the first driving shift mainly because I didn't want to drive in Orlando. We stopped at an outlet mall about 14 miles from Disney because someone Scott works with had told him they had a good Disney outlet. I was not impressed. I was impressed with the outlet mall and could spend a week in that place alone, but we did not even go to one store because there were no parking spaces. Plus, by that time, I really didn't want to shop. What? Yeah, I know. I was pooped. So, we drove on to Disney and checked into our hotel. The package that we had purchased from the travel agent did not include our first night there so, Scott had gotten us one night at the Pop Century Hotel (one of the "value" hotels on Disney property). This place was seriously cool. It had stuff from the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. When I say "stuff" I mean they had huge words on the sides of the buildings (one building for each decade) that said stuff like "Totally Radical Dude" and "Far Out". The background for the pool area outside the 70's and 80's building (we stayed in the 80's) was a huge laptop (like the size of the side of a building huge). They had one of those softish play mats close to the pool that was a huge qwerty keyboard. And the best is that they had a huge Roger Rabbit standing on a barrel of turpentine that was as tall, if not taller, than our building. Also, almost every stairwell was topped with a rubix cube, which lit up when it got dark. This place was definitely pointed more towards families with kids, but it was fun. They had a huge gift shop. After we checked in (before we saw all that stuff I just listed), we spent about 45 minutes looking at the gift shop.

After we checked out our room, we headed over to the Boardwalk Hotel. Behind the hotel, they have a real Boardwalk that looks out over the little lake area that connects Epcot to several hotels and Disney Hollywood Studios. They had a bakery, several places that sold hotdogs, and the ESPN Club, which is where we ate dinner. There were a surprisingly large number of Steelers fans there. It was kind of shocking. The food was okay. I guess it was typical sports bar food. But, it was fun to be there on a Sunday night with all these die-hard sports fans. A kid next to us had gone to the bathroom and came back exclaiming about it: both bathrooms had a flat screen tv hanging over the stall (one for every two stalls). We both had to personally check it out because he was so excited about it. Crazy.

Well, our camera is kind of slow to download pictures once the SD card gets full and I am trying to download from a full one. So, I have about 10 minutes left on this one. I'll do a slide show and add it to this post from Sunday soon. I probably gave too much detail, but hey, it's my blog, right?

We're Ba-ack!

2008-11-15T21:08:00.002-05:00

Hello all! We are back from Disney! It was a great trip! I am actually glad to be back. While I really loved Disney, I am tired and ready for some good sleep and days where we don't walk around for hours. And, I must say that before we left on our trip, I found out the real reason that Scott tripped up the stairs - he had gotten me a surprise anniversary present and had run upstairs to get wrapping paper to wrap it and then asked our neighbor to put it out so that it would be there when we got home. But, I was in the closet in our office where he had hidden it to get a bag on Saturday night and saw it. He got me a globe, which I have been wanting for a long time. We had agree we would not be buying each other presents though because we are planning on buying a really nice camera soon and we were going on this really nice vacation right around our anniversary (which is today!).

We took a ton of pictures, but there are so many and I haven't really had time to look through them or try to name any of them or anything, so for now, please let this link to the photos that were taken by the PhotoPass people in the park suffice. I have been adding various borders to a lot of the pictures because you can just order the whole CD for one price and I figure the more Disney-ish stuff I add the more bang I get for my buck. So, I have about 25 days to go through and add borders and edit those pictures.

So, keep checking back for a more descriptive story about our trip and tons of pictures!

Disney Surprises Already Starting!

2008-11-08T18:38:00.003-05:00

I had a moment and wanted to blog about the first Disney surprise for us before our trip even started. My "online" friend Carrie, who is "real life" friends with my friend Bethany from college won a trip to Disney to stay in the Swan and Dolphin Hotel for three days next week while we will be there!! I have been really wanting to meet Carrie and how funny that we will finally be meeting in real life in FL of all places! And, I have not seen Bethany since her wedding right after we all graduated which was...ahem...7 1/2 years ago. But, whose counting, right?

I am super excited. Please say a prayer for our safety while traveling and an extra little prayer for poor Scott. While I ran up to Kroger today to pick up a prescription, he went up the stairs to our bonus room to get our small suitcase and tripped up the stairs at the top of the first little section of stairs (there's a short section, then a half turn, then another small section if that makes any sense). Anyway, he believes he hit his head on the hand rail. I came home and thought he had gotten into it with one of the cats, but then he told me the story and when I looked at it in the light, he has quite a little gash in his head over his right eye. Yikes! This really makes me nervous because what if he had poked his eye out?! He tends to do things like this though. Shortly after we were married, he turned around too quickly in our apt. and go disoriented and bashed his head on the corner of the door so hard it was gushing blood. And, that was on a church morning, so we went to church with a huge band-aid on his head between his eyes! He said that since our 5th anniversary is so close, he figured he needed to celebrate with a new scar! (Yes, he still has a scar from that incident with the door.) Anyway, Scott has no swelling on his head, but he says he feels light-headed. I am a teensy bit nervous about that. But, we are about to eat so hopefully he'll feel better after that. So, pray for no more accidents!

Disney or Bust

2008-11-08T17:17:00.002-05:00

Well, we are leaving tomorrow morning for a fun-filled week at Disney. We are both really excited. I will probably set up a slide show at some point in time during our trip and put it on the side bar, so keep checking back. In the meantime, below are the pictures from the Reformation Day Party that we had at church.

Have a great week! We'll see ya real soon! (hahaha)

October 2008 in Review

2008-11-02T18:17:00.012-05:00

Hello all! It has been a crazy month for us and I haven't really blogged much about what we are doing. There have been so many things over the last few months that I have wanted to blog about and haven't because I just didn't have time. But, I don't want that to be the case for October.

First of all, a sweet family at church, the Jordans, had their 7th little blessing, Priscilla. I was able to go visit them at a rare moment when no one was home except Jennifer and Priscilla until just a few moments before I left. It was a nice visit. Here is a sweet picture of Priscilla that I took at church a week or so ago.

Our small group had a bonfire cookout at our friends' Charles and Maggie's house. It was a lot of fun with hotdogs, chili, smores, and fun games like horseshoes and double ladder ball! Here are the pictures in a slide show:

I have done a bunch of planting this month as well. I threw away most of my summer potted plants and did some pots of bulbs (tulips and some daffodils) and pansies, from the Growers' Outlet, of course. I love that place. We got 31 3" pots of pansies and 30 bulbs for less than $30! I had read in my Month-by-Month Gardening in Georgia book by Walter Reeves and some other lady that you can save plants like Geraniums over the winter in your garage in paper bags, so I did that. I really liked the colors of the ones that I had and every bit you can save helps. I don't think I'll do any more planting this year except for the daffodil bulbs I have to plant - and I am going to wait until we get back from vacation for that. I will do a quick slide show of my plants, but here's a picture that I tried to take of myself with my updated hanging baskets - it was already dark, so it's not the best. Hey Daddy - do you recognize that shirt? (I save it from a yard sale several years ago - I think that shirt is as old as I am).

Scott and I (well, mostly Scott) have our Disney vacation almost completely planned out! We are leaving this coming Sunday (YAY!!!). We are staying in the Caribbean Beach Resort and we have 5 days of park-hopper passes. We have made meal reservations (we bought the meal plan thingy) for The Rainforest Cafe, Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater, Coral Reef, Liberty Tree Tavern, and Teppan Edo. We are hoping that we can get a last-minute reservation at Le Cellier because it looks really good. We also plan to go to the ESPN Club and the La Cantina De San Angel at some point in time. We ended up having to make lunch reservations for most days because the dinner slots were all full. So, I guess we will eat our "quick service" meals for dinner. We have been looking at the websites for each park and deciding what things we want to do and saving them on our vacation planner on the Disney website. My friend Carrie told me about a website where we can check out the menus for our restaurants at http://www.allears.net/. I feel like I need to pack my whole wardrobe because I am nervous about what the weather will be like!

Another extremely exciting thing happened this month: our friend Clay came to church. This might seem strange that I am excited about someone coming to church. However, Clay has had Cystic Fibrosis his whole life and received two new lungs through a transplant a couple of months ago. He has been on quite a journey of recovery and infections. I believe that Clay is still recovering, but doing much better. It was such a blessing to see Clay. He is such a witness for everyone.

In less exciting, but still quite humorous, news, I am still #1 in our Pigskin Pickem league that I mentioned in a previous post! Chris, aka Master Jordan, sent out some trash talk this week stating that he thought the girls were going down this week. He also does not believe that I am going into my picks blindly and I have not idea what I am doing (hehehe-yes, he put that in his trash talk email). Well, here is a screen shot of our current standings: I'm #1 (Lady Luck) and Caitlin is #2 (Captain Awesome)! Heeheehee! I am waiting until after the Monday night game to send out any trash talk though! I don't want to jinx myself. I must say that I went into this expecting to be in last place every week and to rarely ever think about it. But, it is fun to be winning. At this point, if I drop in standings, I think I will be disappointed. Whereas at the beginning, I would have been happy to not be last. I doubt I will ever do this good again (if Josh invites me back to the league). So, I am enjoying it while it lasts! P.S. Scott is still in last place, even behind Shana who failed to make picks one week...sad.

Scott and I went to our only Georgia Tech football game this year - homecoming against Virginia. They looked really good for the first 7 minutes or so and it was all downhill from there. I was bummed. I did meet some new people that Scott went to college with and saw some old friends that I have known for almost as long as Scott and I have been together. We had fun even though the team lost. Here are some pics from the day:

Okay, most of you already know this, but I went to the New Kids On The Block concert last week with my friend Lindsey. Our Shorter friends Heather and Allison also went and we had dinner with them before the concert. This concert was awesome! I was totally surprised at what a good show they put on. They had multiple wardrobe changes, ran around, danced. They even sang a couple of songs from a round stage in the middle of the main floor that rotated and had a grand piano in the center of it. The New Kids have aged well is all I am saying. I mean, do you realize that the oldest one is at least 40!?? Crazy. I mean, I really do not think that is old, but it is old for what they are doing. You can tell that they haven't really gotten mixed up in drugs and stuff like that (at least, I don't think they have). I was glad that they sang a lot of their old stuff because their new album really does have some raunchy stuff on it. There are only a handful of songs that I can stand to listen to. Here is a slideshow of pictures Lindsey took at the show.

On Friday night, which was the last day of October, Christ Church celebrated a Reformation Day party. Oct. 31, 1517 is the day that Martin Luther tacked up the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, thus beginning the Protestant Reformation. I have quite a few pictures from this, but I have not looked through them yet to make a slide show. I will do that later and post them. They will also be up on our church website, I am sure.

So, that's it. That's our October in review. I have left out the yucky stuff like me being sick for almost the whole week before homecoming with a fever of over 102 and all the cold weather we have been experiencing in our area, forcing us to wear long sleeve shirts and turn the heat and humidifier on. Also, the fact that for about 2.5 weeks my office was having some upgrades done to our A/C causing parts of our building to be 65-68 degrees, which is what made me get sick, I am fairly certain.

So, happy reading. I hope this wasn't too long. If you have made it to the end, feel free to leave a comment about anything above!

McCain's Insurance Plan

2008-10-15T12:24:00.001-04:00

I have been extremely confused about the talks about the two candidates' proposed health care plans lately. Scott found this article and I think it lays it out pretty well. I hope you will read it. Let me know what you think.

Randomness

2008-10-10T21:33:00.003-04:00

This will be a random, quick post. I am babysitting the printer while our church financials print and poor Scott is in the kitchen doing the dishes. :0( It has been an ordeal to print these things. First, I thought we weren't going to have enough paper and that Scott was going to need to go out tomorrow to get some. Then, I realized I can print them front and back, so I think I'll be okay. (I have not actually counted the sheets). Then, our ink cartridge ran out of ink, so luckily we were stocked up on ink cartridges, but I still had to find them and change it. But, the good thing was that I found one kind of pushed to the back that I don't think we realized we had. So yay!

We had a lot of rain this week. It rained all day on Wed. and a good bit on Thursday. Scott checked our rain gauge last night and said that we had gotten 3.5 inches this week! Wow! I was afraid that the mums in my front garden weren't blooming because I was overwatering or they didn't like getting morning dew on them or something; but apparently they were thirsty because now they have started blooming. Yay!

I have a house plant called a Croton that I bought to sit in our cut-through window between the kitchen and the living room. I am apparently overwatering it or something. Does anyone know anything about these plants? I put rocks in the bottom of the pot, I think, before I put it in there.

We have carved out the second week of Nov. for a vacation. We are pretty sure we are going to go to Disney World. I have never been and Scott has been, but he doesn't really remember it. Scott has been talking to a guy at work that goes every year getting all the good deals and calling his travel agent. She gets really good deals. He also ordered us an informational DVD off of the Disney website and it came today in the mail with our name printed on the little "CD protector" thing it came in. Impressive.

Anywho, I guess that's about all. I just have a few more to print and I'll be done. Woohoo!

One Word Answers

2008-10-05T20:41:00.003-04:00

My friend Erin tagged me in this one-word only meme - I have to answer each question with only one word. Then I pass it along to others to do the same. Here it goes! (Please realize that this is very difficult for me!)

1. Where is your cell phone?
purse

2. Where is your significant other?
chair

3. Your hair color?
brown

4. Your mother?
deceased

5. Your father?
53

6. Your favorite thing?
Church

7. Your dream last night?
strange

8. Your dream/goal?
Mom

9. The room you're in?
office

10. Your hobby?
scrapbooking

11. Your fear?
rejection

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years?
Home

13. Where were you last night?
Shadburns'

14. What you're not?
tall

15. One of your wish-list items?
CDs

16. Where you grew up?
Georgia

17. The last thing you did?
ate

18. What are you wearing?
sweats

19. Your TV?
baseball

20. Your pet?
furry

21. Your computer?
old

22. Your mood?
whatever

23. Missing someone?
Lisa

24. Your car?
Tacoma

25. Something you're not wearing?
hat

26. Favorite store?
Target

27. Your summer?
gardening

28. Love someone?
Much

29. Your favorite color?
red

30. When is the last time you laughed?
earlier

31. Last time you cried?
unsure

I'll tag 5 people to continue the game!

Shana
Maggie
Bethany
Carrie
Allison

Pigskin Pickem

2008-10-03T21:37:00.004-04:00

Speaking of polls...

Our friends Josh and Shana have organized a league of Pigskin Pickem through ESPN for us and a bunch of our friends. It is one of those where you just pick who is going to win each NFL game each week. The first week, Scott went through and called out the games and I just randomly picked the winners...based on if I knew anything about the team, which team colors I liked best, or which mascot I like better, etc...you get the picture. Well, I have been 1st, 2nd, or tied for 1st for all 4 weeks so far! Scott is dead last. Actually, overall, the girls in the league are doing better than the guys. I find it quite funny as none of us really knows or cares that much about football. It is even funnier that I probably spend the least amount of time making my picks. All I can say is that there must have been a lot of upsets because Scott knows a LOT about football. He knows a lot about all sports, but especially football.

Did you know that in college he was an intramural flag football official? And, after college, for about 3 years, he was a high school football official.

What's my team name? It started out being "Marcy's Picks". What is it now? "Lady Luck." That's all there is to it!

I figure I should post this now while I am still ahead. Chris predicts that all the girls' luck will turn. He might be right. Andy said that they roped us in by purposefully doing bad the first few weeks so we get into it, then they're going to pound us. Whatever. :o)

Anyway, I love it irony of the whole thing!

I am sure that many of you are asking yourselves: "I wonder if she is actually watching these games to see who the winner is?"

My answer to you: "No!" I mean, it isn't worth all that! They will win or lose whether I watch it or not! And, Scott will inform me anyway.

Please realize that all of the above are merely statements. I am not "bragging" because I have used no skill in reaching the success I have, so I can't really take credit for it. My boss told me that there's a girl at work that won the basketball bracket thingy at work 2 out of three years and that last year, after she won, she said "We were talking about baseball for that thing, right?" Why do I find this so funny? I don't know! But, it does make me laugh every time I think about it...

Follow Up On Poll

2008-10-03T21:29:00.002-04:00

I thought it was fun to have that poll over to the right. It looks like 23% of people (at least people who read my blog) clean out their fridge when they go to the store or when they need more room (which for some people can be one and the same) and 17% of people clean it out once a week, when something smells, or once a month.

Thanks to everyone who voted!

My answer was...when we need room! We are terrible about doing it. The worst part is that when we do clean it out, sometimes we stop once we have made enough room!

Heehee...

Fireproof

2008-09-28T16:45:00.004-04:00

Scott and I went to see Fireproof the movie yesterday afternoon with several couples from our church. This movie is really awesome. I think that it would even benefit single people. I thought the acting was great. This movie really showed how important it is to keep our covenant with God that we make through marriage. This movie was made by the same people that made Facing the Giants and Flywheel. I have not seen either of them, but now I really want to.

Go see if yourself and let me know what you think.

Fall Planting

2008-09-19T18:30:00.013-04:00

I have been doing some Fall Planting. Some of my spring/summer flowers were just looking so tired, so, a couple of Saturdays ago, Scott and I drove over to the Growers Outlet and picked out a "few" things. Well, maybe more than a few. I didn't know what they would have or really what I needed. I found some really cheap pots of caladiums, so I bought 4 of them (hey, they were $1 each and each of them had about 5 bulbs!). I split up and planted 2 of them and then I am just keeping the other 2 in the pots so that the bulbs can be planted next year in case the ones I planted don't come back. Also, in case (hopefully) we sell our house and have to start all over with our garden! They had Calla Lilies for $1 or $1.50 according to their size, so I got a few of those to fill in the place in my garden where only 2 of the 4 I planted last year came back. I got two different plants that said they could be annuals or houseplants. I can't remember the name of either of them, but I know the red one was nicknamed "chicken gizzard", which is kind of gross, but it was $ .50 and the purple one I got was only $1. Then, we spent most of our money on some mums. They have large ones 3 for $15 and medium sized ones 4 for $10. So, we got three large burgundy colored ones and 4 medium yellow ones. So, we came home with a truck load of plants for $40!

This was kind of a "spur of the moment" trip. I had gone out into the yard to dead head and water the pots to realize that everything looked so tired and I just couldn't stand it. Even my beloved hanging baskets out front kind of made me want to cry (see that picture to the left, isn't that sad?). But, they are better now, thankfully.

By the time we got back from the Growers' Outlet, we needed to eat lunch, so I kind of lost my steam. I went out there and pulled up all the zinnias (I will never get pink zinnias again BTW, I will only get the orange ones again) and chopped off all the gladiolus. I snipped and pinched everything I could that looked brown from my hanging baskets (I also swapped which side each was on and turned them around) and pulled all the weeds out of my garden areas. Then, I was kind of tired of being outside. So, I decided to "plan" my plantings and "sleep on it". Well, that was a good excuse to not have to dig any holes that day. I paid for this the next day, btw. The picture at the top is not the best picture of our house, but I had to use the "backlight" feature on my camera to be able to see the garden b/c the house was shading it. So, that's as good as it gets. To the left is the picture of the "planning" I did on Saturday. As you can see, I switched the location of the mums, but it is still the same idea. I actually ended up sticking with the original idea I had when I was at the Growers' Outlet.

Instead of planting stuff in the yard, I spruced up some of my already existing house plants by adding the purple thing to one (they had it labeled, but I just can't remember its name) and the red one (the chicken gizzard) to another one, which I had recently bought a new pot for and I repotted altogether. I also potted two of my calla lilies to add color to our basically green house plants, but they are by themselves. I love the way we have our garage set up with shelving and a peg board. My wheel barrow has become my "planting table" when I do a pot. I always keep my big bag of dirt, my small garden tools, my gloves, and my little shaker of fertilizer in there so that when I want to plant stuff in the yard, I can just put the plants in there and wheel everything around. Do you see that spot on the left front of the wheel barrow where my knee pads are? I just moved those and sat my pots in that spot to do my potted plants.

We had our fellowship lunch at church the next day, and I was planning to take a nap and then going out there and planting all that stuff once it cooled off. Well, on our way home, someone called wanting to come that evening and look at the house. This threw us into emergency action. Scott went in after we got home and picked up and vacuumed and put away the dishes while I got on my gardening gloves and planted five mums, two calla lilies, and, once I divided them, 10 caladiums! I was still so full and it was so hot. Oh, I felt so gross out there. I thought I might barf, or pass out, or possibly both. Oh, how glorious my shower felt when I was done. The picture is of the caladiums I planted. They were kind of sad and droopy when we got them home, but now they are pretty perky. I guess they needed some TLC.

Since then, all of our potted plants have perked up as well as my hanging baskets. So, we have two mums that we purchased to be potted plants. So we have LOTS of potted plants for all seasons :o).

Does anyone want a calla lily because I have an extra? Ours are doing great indoors. They like sun and for their soil to stay moist. The one directly in our window in the office keeps leaning towards the sun and I keep having to rotate it. Our mums and caladiums came in the fairly nice plastic pots that kind of look like terra cotta pots, so I'll put it in one of those if you want. You can see if in the picture below, but they didn't come with the saucer. I just happened to have that one already in my stash.

Okay, so this was a really long post about gardening. Sorry. But, I am not done.

I have been reading lately about fall gardening. Apparently this is the perfect time to do fall plantings, but things like mums (and I think bulbs) will only last until the first frost. But, for us, that's like January or something, right? Also, you really aren't supposed to plant pansies until after the first frost, but who can wait that long and who is still selling them by then? I figure that when our potted plants all die, I will replace them with bulbs and pansies (which will take care of winter and the first few weeks of spring). I have our bulbs in the refrigerator. Your bulbs are supposed to have several weeks of extreme cold before they can grow in the spring and since our winters are so short in the South, we have to help them out a little (or something like that, you can google it). I just love mums! I am excited that some of mine are already starting to open up! I also put down a fresh layer of pine straw AND put out Preen because apparently now is the time to prevent winter weeds from growing and both of those help. So, if you haven't done that, you should, for your own sanity, if you hate weeds like I do. (I think that was a run-on sentence or a comma splice, or possibly both; so I apologize for all you grammar freaks).