A quick smile after matt says please please be careful. This is coming from the guy who did cut his leg with a chain saw about 8 years ago... still has the scar to prove it.
And of course he is giving me a tutorial as I am trying to saw. I successfully cut this piece of wood and another! Woohoo for me!!
We finally decided to use our fireplace. Matt has been itching to make a fire since the first hint of winter. It's got the 'worn in' look now. Awesome fire Matt!!
We were blessed to have the opportunity to visit Matt's family in Oxford on Christmas Eve. When I say family I mean family!! For being an only child this kiddo has a ton of family. Lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and babies!! It was great to visit with all of them.
A few gift opening pictures. Sister gave mom and I cute houndstooth bags. And then mom gave sister and I fun market totes. I have been wanting one of these!! Bottom right was Matt's gift from me. He has been dying to start collecting AL prints to put in our "Alabama Room" as he calls it. We were actually at this game.. so that makes it fun!!
And then it was off to Grandma's house for a visit with her. She really enjoyed us coming over and we were so thankful to be able to see her. It was a great Christmas spent with family!!
Mom and Dad posing for a quick picture before the gift opening. 
And sister and Steven for another photo op.
Sister got dad this sweet headstone for Domino's grave.... he loved it!
And we hooked him up with some AL gear since these 2 boogers just informed the rest of the fam they are definitely heading to Pasadena in a few short weeks... I am so jealous!!
And one last picture before a rousing game of Family Feud on the Wii!! Hope you had a great birthday pops!!
Now on to more happy visitors. Our dear precious friends, Matt and Celeste, have moved to St. Louis (formerly living in New Orleans) and were passing through town on their way back home. We were so excited to get to see them for a brief, but fun visit!! This precious couple is dear to us and will be having a baby boy in the Spring. Aunt Kristen and Uncle Matt are so excited for them!!!
We had a delicious meal Saturday night (that I appreciate so much more now that I have done this by myself) complete with crackers. This is a bit of a tradition for our family to pop these "English Crackers" before eating and you wear your paper crown as you eat. Well, somehow the crackers were forgotten this year... but no fear mom can improvise for anything. Mom and dad made their own version of these!! I was impressed.
And the ladies had our annual ornament swap and a little gift opening later... the men all had their new ties from mema. It was a great weekend getting to fellowship with family and we enjoyed spending time with everyone. Fun times with the fam!!
A few shots from the party. Most everyone participated and even a few got crafty and made their own outfits. We had a secret ballot for best dressed and in the end matt won with the most votes! Makes me proud!!
Sunday night the whole family prepared and served dinner at The Foundry. The Foundry is a Christ-centered rescue and recovery center for men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol. At Christmas you can sponsor a table to provide a Christmas dinner to 10 residents. The fam all joined in and we cooked a delicious dinner and mom did a great job decorating their table. It was an honor to serve these men and be a blessing to others!!
They did the "Walk of Champions" like AL does each week. Look at that stud in his suit!!
And the fam made it for the festivities. It was absolutely freezing!! And it didn't help that after halftime it started raining. This is Matt's first championship of any kind and he was on top of the world last night. I am so proud of him!! He has worked so hard this season and we give God the glory for all of this!! Go Bucs!!
My turkey and my ham (we'll call them fatty and fatter). Now Fatter and I became very good friends at 4:30 am yesterday morning when I had to get up to put this precious thing in the crockpot.
I will let you guess whose plate this is.... oh matt!!! He piled it on!!
And the hubby is up for the Heisman this year... who would have thought?! Matt and his buddy Todd snuck off to take their picture with the trophy while they were supposed to be getting "mentally pumped up" for the game. I didn't see this photo op or I would have got a picture myself. I guess I will have to wait until Matt brings the real thing home.
Hope you are having a good week... can you believe Thanksgiving is just right around the corner? We put our xmas decorations up this weekend.. matt will not let me put anything outside yet.. he doesn't want the neighbors to know we have our stuff up already.
The family doing a little tailgating...
Matt and I made our rounds around campus to see good friends. Top left is Matt with his buddy Eric and Eric's friend Michael. We have converted these 2 guys into Bama fans (notice Eric's Purdue shirt...well, he came out of the game wearing an AL hat... Matt says...baby steps). Then we saw our sweet friends Jonathan and Rachel. Last in the bottom left corner is my dear dear friend Martha from Oxford. We worked together at the middle school for several years and she was another one of my moms away from my mom when we lived there. I miss her dearly!!
And a few pictures from the game. On the way out we saw sweet Kristin and Jason. The crowd was moving so slow getting out that we had time for a photo opp as we walked.
Now I will leave you with this pretty sight... and you might not be hungry for lunch later. We stopped by one of Matt's coaching buddies tailgate... and he tailgates beside Bob Baumhower.. you know the Wings guy. Anyways, there Bob is ... The Bob... cooking up a whole pig.. I took a picture when he turned his back. Sure put our chicken nuggets to shame back at our tailgate.
Here is Harley posing with his costume on
And seconds later trying to get it off.. I am guessing the little guy doesn't like it.
This has nothing to do with Harley's costume or Halloween, but is kind of funny and random. My parents were leaving the game the other night and they looked back to get out of the row and this man was asleep. Sound asleep at a football game. I took his picture and I guess the flash woke him up because he starting moving around after that. Must not have been that exciting for him. Hope you have a great Halloween!!
PS don't worry I haven't violated any privacy things with his picture--you can't see his face. He is practically suffocating himself to fit into the box.
We had to twist the guys arms to get to carving because they were way more into watching football. Matt and David disappeared for a bit.. claiming they were "cleaning the kitchen"--whatever!!
Matt worked so hard on our pumpkin. The only thing he let me do was clean the guts out.. that is my favorite part though. Our design was of course a pirate for the Bucs!!
Now on to the big project for the weekend. We left our firepit in Oxford when we sold our house so we were eager to get a new one. We finally found one and have started a patio area for it in the backyard. Matt was so into this project and I said what can I do? (Never should have asked that.. I was enjoying laying in the hammock more than what he gave me to do). We had the slat that the stone came on and Matt handed me the axe and told me to start chopping it up. Sounds a lot easier than it really was. Safety first--must put the goggles on because wood was flying everywhere. So here's a little before picture and hopefully soon....very soon.. we will have some after pictures.
Because of all this crazy rain lately, the game was moved to Hoover's field...not a big crowd, but a win.
And Saturday we headed to Tuscaloosa for the game. It was a rainy, yucky mess again. We are blessed to have our seats under this overhang, so once we got into the stadium we were fine.. it was just the trek there that wasn't so great. See the bottom right picture... we have this feature on our camera where you can swap colors... so I decided to spice it up and change mom and dad's clothes to green. Who doesn't love to come to the game wearing red and leave wearing green?!
Last Friday night (9/11) we celebrated Grandma's birthday at the Cracker Barrel. Matt missed out on the fun because they had a game in Georgia. I didn't make the 9 hr trek there and opted to watch it on TV at sister's house. Good thing she pays for the expensive cable and she had the channel. We had a good time celebrating with Grandma and our great aunt, Gin. I think they had to kill the chicken in the kitchen, because our food was taking forever so mom and I decided to play with the lemons.
Then on Saturday as soon as Matt pulled back into town and literally he didn't even get to come home... we headed to the Jeremy Camp concert (along with Natalie Grant and Bebo Norman). This was a great concert!! It was such a blessing to have three hours of praise and worship and just give God the glory for everything! Matt was such a trooper... he knew how much I wanted to go to this and he had been riding on a bus for 9 hours, but just put on smile, changed in the car and was ready to go. He's a keeper!!
In between last weekend and this weekend it was filled with literally something every night.. and not a lot of fun somethings.. like class and meetings and yuck stuff! But anyways, Friday was the Hoover/Thompson game. The whole fam made it for the game and let me tell you... my parents sat down and literally 2 minutes later the rain came and it didn't stop the entire game. Luckily I know one of the coaches.. wink wink.. and we were able to sit in the box and stay dry. Don't you love that picture of Matt and I? Well, the field was so wet and was getting torn up so they wouldn't let anyone on the field after the game... So this is how I got to congratulate my hubby on a win and say hey--through the net.
And then Saturday --bright and early--it was off to the AL game. And another rainy day it was. There wasn't much picture taking going on because we were just trying to stay dry. Thanks to my great husband I got to wear my hounds tooth rain boots and they came in handy when I was scaling down a hill of mud and then into a large puddle below. Keri and Steven sat in the 2 seats 2 rows below so I didn't get any pics with them.