the dinner party

For the next day or so- or until I have caught up with this blogging- just keep scrolling down to make sure you get all of the news that is fit to print.

On Thursday night, my cousin Shane and his sweet wife Maggie invited Mr. D. and I over for dinner. We were so excited to go eat with them. They have a new house and we got to see it. It is SO cute!! I just loved everything my eyes fell on. One things Mr. D. loved was their under cabinet lighting and now he has the bug for wanting that in our house. One thing I loved was that their bathroom counter has a built in vanity with a little stool to just sit on and get ready. They are expecting a sweet little (I am thinking boy, but we will see) in December. Here is a picture of the awesome kabobs that we had. MMMM!!! We also had salad, and hash brown casserole. For dessert we had a really good dish that looked like banana pudding but had blueberries and strawberries in it instead of bananas. It was so yummy!!


Another cool thing about Shane and Maggie is the fact they have not 1 but 4 dogs. Amos, Clarence, Mabel and Clyde. This was the part that amazed me the most- when it was time to eat, they all ran in to their respective food bowls. It was so orderly. I loved it.

We had fun with Shane and Maggie and hope to get together with them again soon. Brady was especially appreciative of his "treat bag" of Front Line and Heart Guard from Dr. Shane. It is awesome having a vet in the family!!!

so delighted

I was SO DELIGHTED to get to see Meredith's sweet baby bump on the web cam tonight! Can't wait until the day she is putting Henry in his bouncy seat and letting me entertain him via web cam while she cooks.. or cleans.... or folds clothes... or does all of the other Mommy stuff!!

to Grandmother's house we go.... part 1

As you know readers, I have been to Granny's house. The mass clean up continues on. Granny would not want us throwing anything away, so many things are going in a "special file". These files, (similar to lawn and leaf bags) get to travel to a new place on a special truck-- if you know want I mean. We worked Thursday and created 12 special files just from the "Junk Room". On Friday, we got 8 more from the canning house. Here are some things I knew you would want to see.

The two candles shown here were in a Christmas box.No one had ever seen them before but we all agreed- it would be more of a scary Christmas if you were to use them in your decorating. Kim even commented that they kind of look like aliens- and I agree.


Do know you what you could do with the metal box that chocolates come in???
Why, just turn them into a picture frame of course! (Do you guys love the pink shag carpet I am using for my background??)
This is the pile of empty boxes we have collected. NO, we didn't bring boxes in- all of these boxes had other stuff in them and we have emptied them out.
This was something pretty random- a cucklebur collection.

For anyone unfamiliar with what a cucklebur is, here is a better picture.
We also had a 2 jar collection of peach pits.
This was pretty random- it was an award for 1974 for someone we do not know. I googled the person's name and the company. I am sure it is not the famous person from Nigeria that comes up on google- and the company is selling books door to door. It said on back that it was presented at the Holiday Inn. Odd.
This hangs by the back door and made me laugh.
Here is a picture of a little girl that we do not know who is. At first we thought it was Patsy, and it definitely looks like my niece Kaleigh does today, so we know it is a relative. Patsy took it home and check with her pics and it isn't her. Also, Granny never would have let any of us show that much skin. Why, this kid has a mid drift shirt on. Who knows who it is! Patsy is going to ask my great aunt Beatrice, maybe she can tell us.
Below are blocks of wood covered in contact paper. We aren't sure why. We could have opened up a small contact paper shop with all of the contact paper that we found.
OK- I am not condoning this look- because it isn't a fashion trend that I understand, but here I am in the canning house. I found this long piece of a started, but unfinished quilt and made a scarf out of it.

Empty butter bowls..
This is the inside of the canning house, and that is the outside of the canning house.
The canning house was built by my Pa. He built it so they could do their canning there and not make the house so hot with their work. Momma and Patsy confirmed that nothing had ever been canned in there, but that one time, they cooked corn there and then took it to the house to can.

We got a lot done in the 2 days I was there... but there is still lots to do in the house... and here is a sneak peak at the barn......
Before I go I wanted to show you this pic I found at Patsy's. It is my Uncle Doug, My Daddy (center) and Aunt Patsy. It reminded me of old school rock band.

Don't worry readers.... there will be a part 2 and maybe part 3 to this adventure. I haven't even shown you pics from the junk room yet!!

Rylee Grace

While I was in Cullman, I got to see the prettiest little face and of course, as it always happens- fell head over hills for Rylee Grace. Rylee looks just like her Momma did when she was a baby, except (hopefully this will remain) she doesn't have as fair of skin as we all did and still do. I just love her. Her Mommy was very sweet to let me hold her and love on her as much as I wanted to. I even got to give her a little bath. She is only a week old in these pictures and even though to us she was tiny, Kim and I were both much smaller as babies. We know because our Moms kept telling us that. They said watching us with Rylee reminded them of themselves with all of us. This is us after we had given sweet Rylee a bath and we were getting her dressed. Even though she is small, Kim said she had already outgrown a few newborn outfits that she only wore one time. But don't worry!!!I promise, this little princess is not going to be needing clothes any time soon!! Here is a pic of her sweet nursery. This is a pic of her and Gran (AKA- my Aunt Patsy). Welcome to the family Rylee Grace.

the ultimate July 1st surprise

Thanks to a little creativity in the photo editing department I am able to show you a few pictures of the ultimate July 1st surprise- Camp-A-Palooza! But first, a little background info.


At my school, the 5/6 year old children do not take a nap mid day. These children from every classroom meet together for the nap period and have a class of their own that we call Extended Day. During the summer, the usual Extended Day teachers are off. I have been working with the extended day children all summer, but not in a classroom type setting, but more like a fun day camp type setting. The thought process was to kind of give them a "summer break" and so that everyone starts fresh on the same page in August. So far- it has been great. I have 14 kids, a fairly even group of girls and boys. On Monday's we have "Movie Monday". On Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend the whole time on team building. On Wednesdays and Fridays we do more arts and crafts or cooking type things- big projects. At the beginning of the summer, the kids each made me a wish list of things they thought would be fun to do. Almost every kids had camping on their list. I am not much of an outdoorsy type girl, but I knew I could pull this off on a much smaller scale- and thus, Camp-A-Palooza was born. My boss brought in a sub for my class that day and I was able to spend a whole day with the Extended Day.


I sent a letter to the parents, explaining what I needed for them to do, and that this had to remain TOP SECRET. I was waiting to see which kid would know first- and only 1 kids knew before hand, and she kept is a secret- which impressed me. (Her parents told her because she had the stomach bug and missed her class water day- and I guess by telling her about this- it made things better). The parent's mission was to pack the kids a bag and leave it in the front of the building AFTER they had dropped their kids off for the day. I gathered the bags and hid them in different areas of the school and wrote a scavenger list type note that led us to each one. I also made a scavenger hunt type list leading us to each child which we checked out of their rooms one at a time. The kids were funny trying to figure our which kid we needed to get based on the clue. After we got the kids, we started our mission to the bags. They were so funny saying things like "how did this get here" and "I have this bag at my house". Here is a pic of the kids getting the last bag- with the clue sending them to the surprise. If you heard a rumble where you were around 10:30 AM (CST) on July 1st- it was probably these kids freaking out when they saw a full sized tent in the library. Their screams were ear piercing. They were all thrilled.
We cooked our own lunch. I brought in the electric grill part of Mr. D.'s smoker.
We ate lunch, and they thought they were so cool because I got them orange soda from a can.
After lunch, we had water day. This consists of a few baby pools and a sprinkler. I spiced is up a bit with the POOL-O-RAMEN.
It is amazing what you can do with about $5 worth of Ramen noodles. They had a relay where they had to find things in the pool under the noodles. (On a side note, I was telling my cousin Kim about the pool-o-ramen and she asked what I did with the flavor packets. I said I saved them and when I made homemade soups in the fall, I planned to add them in as flavoring. She commented that saving the packets sounded just like something Granny would do....)

Let's see, where was I... Oh yes, we built a camp fire.
and made smores. If you like roasting marshmallows, or making smores, Target has these telescoping marshmallow roasting sticks in their dollar bin. I love them!! Thanks Tiffani for the tip!!
As you can see from this picture, things were a little messy and a whole lot of fun!!
After the smores were over and we changed from our bathing suits, we all got in the big indoor tent and told ghost stories. It was very funny hearing their versions of what is a scary story. Then we had popsicles and our day was over. It was a great day in the world of teaching!!

Special thanks to all that helped to make this day awesome!!

oh readers...

GUESS WHERE I AM GOING TODAY??

GRANNY'S!!

More crazy and funny post to follow. Wonder what we will find in the "estate" today!!

I owe you all a recap on the AWESOME July 1st surprise I pulled off.

Hope you enjoyed yesterday's post- it will probably be Friday before I post again.

No Thursday 13?? How about you guys do it for me!! Here is your challenge. Comment below and describe me in 13 Words!!

Off to the land of dial up!!

It's Wednesday already?

What a busy little week I have had. Monday, We had a super yummy breakfast for dinner. I took the Potatoes O'Brien, mixed with crumbled sausage, sausage gravy and sharp cheddar cheese. This concoction was delicious and I may formulate it into some sort of breakfast casserole thing with biscuits involved. Also, Meghan has moved in this week since her car is in the shop. We are having fun carpooling to work together and hanging out at home.

Tuesday, Kate's class, Meghan's class and my class (red, white and blue) had water day together. It was so much fun! The weather was the coolest day we have had in weeks with low humidity as a bonus!! It was great. The kids has mini pools, sprinklers, squirt bottles, and sidewalk paints. It was great. After we had a pizza party. Meghan and I went to Target on the way home to pick up some supplies for that ultimate surprise I was working on. Brady is still holding his all access pass to the house and doing a great job. I decided to get him a new toy at the store. I was so excited when I found one on sale that said Lab Tested on it. Great!! I thought. Finally something he can't destroy in a few seconds. Wow- was I disillusioned! I wish I had taken a picture of the toy before I gave it to him!! Here is a picture where you can kind of see it.

Look how happy he is with his new toy!! And then, in the blink of an eye- we went from Happy to CRAZY!!

And I was like HEY!!! Stop that!! As I saw it's head fly across the room. This was quickly followed by all of the stuffing, and the squeakers. Then I saw the balls come off the ropes and a ball come off of the toy!
I was like "But wait- It said LAB TESTED!"
I was horrified by the whole situation!! And, when the dust settled this is what we were left with.

I calculated that is cost me about a dollar a minute for the toy. Brady is dragging the corpse with him everywhere he goes and he is 100% in love his accomplishments.