Feet In The Sand

And that's just what we did this week. Matt and I took a little mini vacation and on a whim (this isn't normal for me) decided to head to Gulf Shores for a few days. The weather was fabulous. It was so hot when we got there that Matt said "We must go buy some shorts." I replied with, "Let me just cut your jeans off and make you some shorts." But he said those were his favorite jeans and he forgot his tank top, so it wouldn't look right without it. Anyways, we did some relaxing on the beach, ate some seafood, went to the movies, and did a little shopping. We went out to the Wharf one night and see the boat below--well, we are thinking of purchasing this little gem, what do you think? Some of these pictures are not that exciting, I mean how many pictures can you take of each other, or with your arm stretched out pressing the button yourself. Happy New Year!!

I've Been Tagged

Keri tagged me in the picture game.

The object of the picture tag is to:
1. Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer.
2. Select the 4th picture in the folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same.
No cheating (cropping, editing, etc.) Have fun!!!

This is an oldie, but a goodie. This was a folder of old random pictures from our other camera. This was at my undergraduate graduation from JSU in April 2004.

Matt and I were engaged and were getting married in July. Oh those sweet college days, mooching off the parentals and no responsiblity.. ahhh!

So, I don't tag anyone, because all 3 readers of this exciting

blog have already done it.. so if you want to do it.. then have fun!!

Happy Birthday To Our Savior!!

What a day to be thankful for--the birth of Jesus!! This first few pictures are a few when we were waiting for Keri to wake up. Sister likes to sleep in for real. So Matt, Mom, Dad, and I decided to watch a movie while we were waiting on her. She finally woke up when mom was laughing so loud at the movie. I said Sister, you are missing Christmas. We had a fabulous breakfast that sister made us and Harley even got his Christmas day treat. A few pictures of opening presents. Keri and I both got rain boots. There will probably be a drought now that I have these, but I still love them. You know our family loves some Christmas Vacation movie--so my mom thought it was only appropriate to get dad the famous moose mug from the movie. One of my favorite gifts was something Matt gave me. He made a donation in my name to Samaritan's Purse to feed hot meals to a family for one month. That truly is better than anything tangible you could ever receive. God is so gracious to us that we want to give back whatever we can, because it isn't ours to begin with. Happy Birthday Jesus!!

Matt's friend, Eric, came over for lunch because his wife was with her family and he couldn't go because he is a basketball coach and they have game this week. Matt loves to have friends over to play. Dad always gets everyone a toy. It's just a thing he likes to do. Matt got this nerf gun set and Steven got this nerf disk gun. So we decided to make it a family event and take this puppy outside. Matt felt it was necessary to put the whole attire on, vest, glasses, bullet bag and all. Matt shot me in the face a couple of times--he gets a little serious when it comes to games--Howard, you're going down next time!! At least we worked off a little of that lunch.

Grandma came over for lunch and opened her presents. Grandma watched from the window during the nerf war outside. She had already played a round of painball earlier in the day and was pooped. What a Merry Christmas it was!!

Christmas With Matt's Family

On Christmas Eve we went to Oxford to do Christmas with Matt's family. His whole family comes to his Nanny and Papa's house for Christmas Eve. Matt took a browse through his old closet (he lived with his grandparents when his mom moved to Huntsville) and got a little teary eyed when he saw his old Letterman jacket (sorry didn't get this on camera). Such a sweet moment! We had a great time seeing Matt's family.

Happy Birthday Pops!

Today was my dad's birthday. He is my most favorite dad ever!! And my only dad--but he's a good one!! Happy Birthday Pops!!
We celebrated by going to dinner at Wings. Our food was a little slow... so we did some entertaining. Or I guess I just entertained everyone. You can do a lot with straws.

We went back to Keri's crib for dessert and presents. Keri made a fabulous dirt cake-- too bad we didn't have any shovels to eat it with. Dad got some cool stuff. I started getting sleepy so Keri started telling me about EVERY ornament on her tree and where it came from--and she really thought THAT would wake me up. Hope you had a Happy Birthday Dad!! We love you!!!

Dinner With Friends

Sunday night we went to dinner with our good friends, the Kervins. We went to Suki, a Japanese restaurant. Kristin and Jason are big sushi eaters so they begged us to try a few things they ordered. There was this strange orange stuff on the plate and Kristin asked the guy what it was and he said fish eggs. I then began to get a stomach ache. Fun dinner with friends!!

Christmas With The Bouchillons

This weekend we had Christmas with the Bouchillons. This is my aunt, uncle, and cousins that live in South Carolina (my mom's sister) and my cousin and his wife that live in Kentucky. We all met at my Mema and Papa's house and had Christmas on the farm this weekend. We took our annual visit to one of my Papa's grocery stores and even took our picture out front.. ain't that somethin! We have a tradition in our family that every year at our Christmas meal we do crackers. You pop your cracker and you get a prize toy, a joke, and a crown. Everyone has to wear their crown while they eat. We opened presents and Papa gave all the guys a matching Gateway Foodland shirt-this is his grocery store. Matt, Dad, and Mark were so kind, they wore them to church this morning.

More random pictures from the weekend. Dad got to "carve the ham" and ate a few bites while he worked. The ladies did an ornament swap and who would guess I would pick #1 and get the gag ornament- a beautiful red cardinal. Keri, aka "the favorite daughter" even got mom and my aunt Susan, "mom's favorite" ornaments and wrote her name and Mark's name on them. Since they are the first born from each family they think they are the favorites and well, Keri doesn't know about that extra 100 dollar bill mom and dad slipped me this weekend :)!! Who's the favorite now?? What a great weekend spent with family!!

The Rockettes

Matt surprised me with tickets to see the Radio City Rockettes today. I have been talking for months about wanting to see them, so I guess he got sick of me talking about and got us tickets. It was our first time to see them and we really enjoyed it. They are so ridiculously in shape and it motivated me for a slight second that I thought we might should stop and get a membership to Gold's Gym on the way home, instead we stopped and got a hamburger. Loved the show!

Payback

There's a teacher at my school who is a ridiculously huge Auburn fan. He has been really pushing it lately with the comments leading up to the game. So, after the slaughter on Saturday I felt it only necessary yesterday to decorate his door. He took it very well. He didn't know I was the culprit until he talked our principal into showing him the surveillance cameras in the hall so he could see who did it. Today he sent all the Auburn fans in his class to my room with the signs and they shredded them all over the floor and left. I told him don't worry I can make him more!!

Alabama/Auburn Game

Saturday we went to the Alabama/Auburn game, and well you know that AL whooped up on some Auburn tigers. What a game!! There is a random picture of the ZTA sign--Matt says "Go up to the house and give them the secret knock and let's go in." I said let's just take a picture instead. We had a lot of time before the game since we had to get there at the crack of dawn, so we made our rounds and got to see lots of friends. We met up with the Kervin's and another coach that Matt works with and also saw our good friend Daniel from Oxford. We missed his better half, Tatum, as she was very pregnant. And I say "was" because they had their baby, Mason, today!! Congrats to them!!!

Thanksgiving Festivities

For Thanksgiving Day we went to the lake and had dinner with Mema and Papa. These pictures are very random. It was a beautiful warm day, so we went for a boat ride as well. If you looks closely, you can see the colorful glasses that Matt and my dad are wearing. If you are wanting a pair of these for yourself, I am sure any great Dollar Tree would have some. We also celebrated Mema's 75th birthday. The 2 puppies in the picture are what my Mema picked up on the side of the road last week. She should just open an animal shelter. She is always picking up homeless animals. She is so good to them. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!! I think this holiday often gets overlooked because people are so ready for Christmas. So just a few things I am thankful for:

1. My salvation-my God who loves me when I am so unlovable
2.My husband-he is amazing!! Constantly serving me and looking to meet my needs before his
3.My family-They are so fun! We have such a blast together-I am so blessed
4.My friends--old ones and new ones. I miss my old friends but I am so thankful for new ones
5.Home-we are so blessed to have a place to live while our house is on the market-God is so good

That list could go on and on--Matt and I have really been talking a lot lately about the blessings God has given us that we often overlook. I love this verse: "Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." -Ephesians 5:20 And Harley is thankful for a nice comfy bed to lay in. He is so lazy!! Happy Thanksgiving!!

New Floors

I never mentioned this when it happened about a month ago...but we had a huge leak in our kitchen. It was the ice maker on our fridge. Well, to make a long story short, an agent was showing our house and they called our agent to tell us that the kitchen was filled with water. That's always a great thing to hear when you are an hour and half away and can't do anything. We don't know how long the water had been sitting there, but it ruined our hardwood floors in the kitchen, ruined the floors in the laundry room, and went under the wall to the half bath. So... we had to file an insurance claim and all that good stuff and they finally finished the project yesterday. We went to Oxford to see it and we were really pleased. It really was a blessing because we had old yucky vinyl in the laundry and both bathrooms and now we have nice ceramic tile. Now, we just need to sell the ole booger! This was what our floors looked like before. This was taken a while back before we moved.

And now, our floors with tile that goes into the laundry room. It's the same tile in the bathrooms, so I will spare you those pictures. I know this isn't an exciting post (not that the others are), but we are so pumped to finally have this finished and our house can be shown again. We learned a lot of patience through the whole thing.

The Big Give

Saturday we participated with our church on a thing called "The Big Give." Each small group was given an amount of money to go out into the community and bless people with it. Our class split into 2 groups and the group Matt and I were with went to an assisted living home. We took a part of the money and bought gift certificates for the staff to get manicures. We took the rest and bought cake and party stuff and had a party after we played bingo with the residents. Some couples from our class doing a little shopping before heading to the assisted living home.

This was the group playing Bingo. One of the girls in our class called Bingo numbers for an hour straight. It was great. Those folks are serious about some bingo.

Matt was a real hit with the ladies. Notice how the rest of the place had cleared out behind them ( I think it was nap time) well, I thought I was going to have to come back and get Matt later on. We just love old people--they are awesome!

Round 2

Friday night was round 2 of the high school football playoffs. The whole fam came to the game-what a treat!! It started raining right at half time so we were able to go to an inside box that they let coaches families go to. I think it's where the press people sit during the Barons season. I personally thought it was exciting... keri did too until I smashed her fingers in the windows that we were opening. Sorry sister!! I kept waving to Matt while he was in the press box but he ignored me. Hoover beat Minor and this week we will play Mountain Brook again...it was a challenge the first time we played them, so hopefully we can come through another week!!

Smelly Thing

I bought this cherry pit pack thing at Christmas Village last week. You put it in the microwave and heat it up for a few minutes and put it on your neck.. it's great!! Well, the first few times you use it you have to get the smell out. The other night I asked Matt to heat it up for me and this is what he was doing when he brought it back. He said it smelled like dirty feet. I have a super sonic smeller but looks like Matt's is pretty good too!

Nice Outfit, Football Playoffs, and a Bridal Tea

Well the weekend started off Friday with another dress up day. Sometimes I think maybe I teach kindergarten but then I remind myself that it's middle school. But anyways, we had Outsiders Day Friday at school. We just finished reading the book and had to dress up like a "Social" or a "Greaser." So you can see below I look like a Catholic school girl--but at least I participated. Matt barely quit laughing enough to take the picture. Then off to the Hoover game Friday night for the first round of playoffs. They beat Hueytown and that means we move to round two against Minor next week. Sunday my mom, sister, and I helped host a bridal tea at my parents house. Katie (holding Harley man), Keri, and I got the best job--opening presents. I wanted to slip a few things in my purse. Then I had to remind myself that these weren't my presents. Didn't my mom do a great job on the table? This week we get a day off school--thanks to the Veterans!!

Alabama Homecoming

Saturday we went to Alabama's homecoming. We had a long fun day of tailgating with Keri and her group. We let the guys (dad, Matt, Steven, and Steven's dad) use the tickets and the girls stayed out at the tailgate and watched it on the tv. We got to see our good friends from Oxford, Joe and Kristy, again --love these guys!! Alabama won, Auburn lost--great day!! Roll Tide!!!

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!! Matt actually had the night off because they played their game on Thursday this week. It was a good Halloween! My friend Kristin came over Thursday night and we carved another pumpkin. Or shall I say, I carved it and she watched! Our husbands were at the game.

We had to dress up for school on Friday. And when I say had to.. I mean our principal strongly encouraged it. Whatever! So I was Mr. Potato Head.. or maybe Mrs. Potato Head. My original costume didn't work out like I planned, so I had to fall back on this costume.. which Matt wore about 5 years ago. Mr. Potato Head is still holding up strong!

Harley dressed as a Wizard/Magician.. or whatever you want to call it. Whatever it was, it didn't last long. He isn't a fan of people putting clothes on him. I kept telling him I would give him a good treat if he would stay still and let me take his picture. He did good.

Pumpkin Carving

This weekend we finally had a chance to carve our pumpkin. Matt and I get into some pumpkin carving. Matt is really good at the carving part and if I don't say so myself, I am a pro at pulling the guts out. This is something we started doing when we started dating and it's always a big deal when we go pickin' out the pumpkin we are going to carve. (Not sure why these crazy pictures posted in backwards order) The finished product. You get to see it first instead of last...now it's only downhill from here in excitement

We made the Harley man pose for a picture with the pumpkin. His eyes are glowing--spooky

The best part--it's kind of therapeutic to me

Matt is concentrating hard on getting this design

Our Weekend

Our first real Fall weekend and it was a chilly one. Hoover played Vestavia Friday night and won 17-2. That makes them the region champs and now that extends our season longer--means I need to get a few more orange shirts. Saturday we decided not to go to the Alabama game and instead went to Party City to play with the Halloween stuff. You can see below we tried on a few masks and people around us were probably wondering why we didn't have better things to do. Matt and I love to play and that is a great store to do that! Saturday night we met our friends from Oxford, Joe and Kristy, at Wings as they were heading back from the AL game. We love these guys and miss them!! It was fun to catch up with them. This afternoon I switched out our summer and fall clothes--can't wait until Matt gets home and he can't find anything-it will be like a scavenger hunt. Fun!!

Sunday Afternoon Painting

I didn't have my sewing class today, so I was still feeling a little crafty and mom and I decided to do a little painting. Mom and I went to Sips n Strokes a few times before and my mom is very good at painting so has now quit going to that and painting on her own.. anyways... at first my canvas looked like someone threw up on it... but it got a little better as it went on. Mom working on the finishing touches of her painting.
My finished product.. I know it's no Van Gogh but it will do to cover a hole in the wall or something.
You can see our finished paintings look very different--but you can get the gist.

Dinner at Cajun Steamer

After a long day of working at the house we don't live in, we went to dinner with the Kervins. I had never been to the Cajun Steamer, and much like it's name it's quite a spicy place. My mouth was on fire for a good while, but it was yummy. On the way back to the car we stopped by the pet store--Kristin and Jason almost had an impulse buy to get a kitten--although I am not a fan of cats--but it was cute... luckily it was already sold. Kristin and Jason--while the guys were actually still paying attention to us.
The guys were so into watching the game on tv and talking football, so Kristin and I entertained ourselves by taking pictures of each other. If only they had a playground.
Kristin will all the napkins she used with the messy food. The guys were still ignoring us...
Look at these puppies.. aren't they so stinkin cute or what?!

Prayer Request

We have a huge prayer request for our friends and neighbors from Oxford, Janna and Richard. They had their baby, Alli, in June and she was 3 months early. Alli has been a fighter since the very beginning and they thought she was improving. She was moved to Children's hospital not too long ago and late last week began to take a turn for the worse. Matt and I, along with another couple from Oxford, had the opportunity to go to the hospital last night to see Alli. The doctors had told them that they didn't think there was anything else they could do. While we were there, the doctors called Janna and Richard in to tell them Alli may not make it through the night. The nurses were great and allowed all of us to go back to see Alli. It was so difficult to see her so sick and we all just began to cry. We prayed over her and knew God was in control of the situation. We got the news today that Alli passed away last night. Janna and Richard are amazing people with such a trust to know God will get the glory from this situation. God has great plans for this precious couple. Please pray for them as they heal from losing their child.

Alabama vs. Kentucky

Saturday we went to the Alabama game. Mom and Dad went to Gatlinburg for the weekend so we got to sit with Keri and Steven. Bama didn't play as well as they should have, so good thing Steven wore his lucky shirt. We got to tailgate with them and meet up with some great friends from Oxford that we haven't seen, so it was a great day! Quick picture before the game. After getting home in the wee hours of the morning Friday night and then leaving early Saturday for the game--Matt was beginning to get a little tired--but he always seems to find a burst of energy when football is involved. I love this guy!!
My good friend, Tatum, from our small group in Oxford. Isn't she beautiful pregnant?! It was great to see her and Daniel and catch up with them. We miss them!!
My dear friend, Pam, from the school I used to work at. I miss this friend so much. She was a blast to work with and always made me laugh. I miss all my middle school buds! She tailgates right beside Keri's spot. Great to catch up with her too.
Me and the sister. We had fun sitting together--haven't done that in a while.

Face Lift For The Blog

I had a little free time today and thought the ole blog deserved a face lift. What do you think? I am not too savvy with all of this so, we'll see! And just to make you smile, a little picture of the Harley man. This was before I sat down to start working on the computer.
And after. He was bored and pooped out. He does this when he wants you to scratch his belly.

Grandma's New Crib

My Grandma closed on her house this week and we did some major move-in, put away, and sprucing up today. Of course everything she has is new so we had lots to take out of boxes and wash and put away. It's starting to look like a home now that things are in their places. We worked in the yard a good bit and if you look closely, yes you will see me cutting the grass. This was my first time and I have a new respect for Matt and all the other men that cut their grass. (p.s. I didn't enjoy it and will not be participating in this activity again). My dad is so excited for Grandma to have her a nice house and he's calling it the "party pad." Matt said to Grandma--I like your new crib--she said what?! baby crib?! I love her!

Homecoming

Friday night was Homecoming at Hoover. There was a lot of good "people watching" action with all the interesting dresses that the girls had on. They don't make them with much fabric these days. It was a good game and Hoover came out with a win over Oak Mountain. These banners are outrageous that the cheerleaders make. I personally couldn't stand to work on something that huge and then have someone rip through it, but whatever...
Keri graced us with her presence. Thanks for coming sister!!
Me and Kristin. We had great seats to comment on all the dresses.
I tried out some new functions on our camera.. you can capture a certain color and then everything else is black and white.. too cool! I should have read the book earlier.
And the "after-game" shot. The bus was about to leave so Matt was like uh who cares about the picture, I am about to get left.