My 2013 Recap

Oh 2013 where did you go?  Another year flown by with me trying to figure out how we got from January to December so quickly. In true blogger fashion I wanted to recap our year...for funsies. So here goes...

In January lost our sweet Cricket girl, and so we brought our Hollow man inside and he became one of the boys. We also celebrated Eric's last birthday in his 20s!

In February, I finished off another basketball season, celebrated my 28th birthday, and we spent a few days in Sugar Mountain, NC snowboarding with friends.

You sure you wanna mess with this crew?

March brought the (much-needed) face-lift for our laundry room and one of my most favorite (but so so cold) Spring Breaks ever with my BIL and SIL, family from Chicago, and friends in Orange Beach.

In April we got to spend a couple of weekends with football friends for a wedding and for the first Annual HC Football Reunion Weekend.

In May I jetted to the frozen tundra (seriously it snowed...in May) to watch that brother of mine graduate from college and see the place that he called home for 4.5 years and spend an amazing weekend with family. We kicked off the summer with a Memorial Day Fish Fry with Eric's Aunt and Uncle.

I love my family!

We headed back down to Orange Beach in June to help my BIL and SIL with some home renovations, spent as much time as we could in our pool, and spent a weekend in Georgia to watch Eric's "little brother" get married.  We also celebrated the 6th birthday of our little Peanut Dog.

Since we hadn't had enough beach time yet (haha) we went back to Orange Beach for the 4th of July and helped my BIL and SIL break in their newly renovated house and celebrated 3 years of being married on the 31st.

We kicked off August with a trip to Memphis to visit my finally completely moved parents. We celebrated Hollow's one year Gotcha Day, as well as Hawk's 6th Birthday.  We headed up to Memphis again at the end of the month for my 10 Year High School Reunion and I got to see one of my oldest BFFs, but we didn't get to stay long because I had to hurry home so I could catch a plane to Los Angeles for a work conference.  And just because we wanted to make August the busiest month ever we screened in our carport...in one weekend.

Love this kid!

In September we kicked off football (game) season and continued to put our back porch oasis together.  Mom and Dad came for a visit to check out our new digs, and we spent another weekend with all of our HC friends for Homecoming.

October was a month of new beginnings.  I started a new position at work, started teaching 2 tap classes, and kicked off my 3rd season as a basketball coach at THS.   We did carve out a little time to take in an Auburn Game....the last time we went was the year they won the National Championship....could it happen again?!

In November my life was consumed with basketball as my game season began just as Eric's football season ended.  I got to play in my college alumni basketball game again, and at the end of the month hosted Thanksgiving at our home for both of our families.

So glad they got to come!

December has been a blur for me filled with basketball and Christmas preparation.  We were fortunate to have two Christmases this year, one in Memphis with my family and one in Alabama with Eric's family. I even got to see several old teammates over the holidays!

Until I sat down to write this I didn't think we had done a whole lot in 2013, but I am clearly mistaken! This was a crazy busy year!  It was a truly wonderful year and putting it all together makes me realize how truly blessed we are.  It also makes me glad that I keep this little blog going so I can look back on all of the wonderful things we've done.  I cannot wait to see what 2014 holds for us, but after glancing at my calendar it looks like it's going to be amazing!]

Happy New Year!

via

Last Weekend of 2013

After 9 days of getting to sleep in, 5:30am did NOT come easily to me this morning.  I can't lie, I thought hard about hitting snooze and rolling back over this morning, but I decided I would rather save my time off for something fun later on, and get my lazy butt out of bed. We had another jam packed weekend around these parts, but what's new, right?

1. Homemade pizza?  Yes please!
2. My Run of 10 (the 12 is behind the 11) in Phase 10...please notice NO WILDS were used.
3. Dinner with friends!
4. Pretty Alabama Sunset

I ended up going into the office on Friday for a few hours.  Eric was working and it was either take down Christmas decorations or go to work...I chose the latter. We decided to give Eric's Big Green Egg Baking Stone another try for dinner, so I headed to the store to get pizza fixins.  We made a pizza on Christmas night that was delicious but we decided we wanted a different crust, so I searched for and found a copycat recipe for Mellow Mushroom's pizza crust.  It has a hint of sweetness that doesn't exist in normal crusts, and come to find out the secret ingredient is molasses. I whipped up a batch which was super easy with the help of my new bread hook for my KitchenAid Mixer! And the verdict on the dough?  Let's just say we've found our new favorite pizza crust recipe.  We made 3 pizzas on Friday: 2 with that crust and 1 with canned rollout crust, and we only had rollout crust pizza left.  I was sad because I really wanted leftovers, but don't worry there is dough crust in the fridge just waiting to be made into a pizza this week!

Saturday it poured rain all.day.long. So much so that Eric actually lounged around the house all morning.  I was shocked.  I figured a rainy day was perfect for basketball watching, so I met up with one of my college teammates and we drove up to see another one of our teammates coach her to team to a Christmas Tournament win.  It was so good to see both of them and get to catch up!  I made it home to find my house full of people who had come to watch the prelims for the UFC fight that happened on Saturday because we are apparently the ones of our friends who get the channel that the prelim fight was on.  We moved the shindig to another friend's house for the main event because he'd purchased the fight on Pay-Per-View.  I have never been much of a fight fan and to be honest most of the fights weren't extremely exciting, until the girls started fighting.  Yep 2 female UFC fighters and they got after it.  Much more so than the guys.  I am not sure I would be ok with going into a situation knowing there was a good chance I would get punched in the nose/eye/cheek/head, but to each his own I guess.  The big fight of the night started out exciting and then one of the guys kicked the other one in the knee and broke his leg.  Like he kicked and his entire foot wrapped around the other guy's leg.  It was disgusting and a very anti-climactic end to all of the hype.

Sunday we slept in (8:30...what what?!) so I went to late church, and then we went to have lunch with Eric's parents.  He went hunting so I decided to go see my former roomie/teammate before she headed back to Illinois today. We had a blast and stayed out waaaaaay too late on a school night. This girl didn't get home until 10:30 which is part of the reason 5:30am was so awful this morning, but it was so worth it!

I plan on taking the rest of 2013 easy, possibly taking down Christmas stuff tonight and tomorrow....we'll see how that goes.

Christmas 2013 Recap: Part 1

We say it every year, but I truly believe that this year was the Best Christmas Ever! This was the first year since Eric and I have been together (this is our 8th) that we've been able to celebrate Christmas with both of our families.  We are so blessed to be able to do so! Since we had two Christmases, I am going to split this Christmas recap into two posts to keep this from being 3 miles long!

Our Christmas started the weekend before Christmas. Eric headed up to West Memphis for a weekend of duck hunting, so after I finished coaching my basketball game on Friday night I headed up to Memphis to my parents' house. My brother got into town the next night and Eric came over after they finished hunting on Sunday morning.  The rest of the weekend was full of family time, fun and food....oh the food.

1. The whole Jones-Cagle Famjamily!
2. My parents' beautiful Christmas tree!
3. Our stockings on "Christmas" Morning....we did Christmas with my family on the 23rd while we were in Memphis.
3.  Merry Christmas from the Cagles! This might be the only picture I have of all of us together looking at the camera.

1. My Ugly Sweater Run hat! We didn't get to do the run because of the crazy rain storms that came through, but I still got my hat!...and free registration for another race.  We're seriously considering the Foam Fest 5K!
2. Hawkey Dog on the drive home.
3. We decided to go see Starry Nights (for the first time in 10 years) and it was definitely NOT like we remembered.  The line to get in was ridiculous (which is normal), but what we didn't expect was for it to take 45 minutes to get through it!  Matt made a sign with my iPad and held it up to the window as we were waiting.....
4. After and hour and 15 minutes we made it to the gate!
5.  As we were leaving we were trying to figure out what road we were on, so I asked Siri "Are we on Mullins Road?"  This was her response.  Mom and I lost it at this point.  I still don't know why it was so funny, but it was.  We were laughing so hard we were crying for about 5 minutes.
6. I'm not saying we've been really busy lately, but we all crashed Sunday afternoon while we watched some football.
7. Our beautiful Christmas dinner table setting!
8.  Christmas Dinner...Steak au Poivre c/o Matt-Matt, asparagus casserole, mashed potatoes, corn and rolls.  It was delish!
9. Mom helping Hawk and Peanut with their Christmas bones....they LOVED them!

1. We finished off our Christmas night with a bonfire in the backyard.  Dad and Eric had it under control.
2. Starry Nights Nativity
3. My new favorite drink.  We found some Peppermint Mocha Kahlua so we added some milk and a splash of coke and had some Peppermint White Russians.
4, Eric opening his Big Green Egg Pizza Plate.  He was beyond excited about it and yes we've already broken it in.
5. Matt-Matt making the sauce for the Steak au Poivre (it's supposed to be on fire)
6. Mom with her classroom decorations that I made her for Christmas.

Like I said it was an amazing start to what ended up being the best Christmas ever!  I was sad to leave my parents and Memphis (as always), but it was nice to get home so we could wake up at our house on Christmas morning.  Plus we had a whole bunch of Christmas fun to have with Eric's family on Christmas day!  I will have that recap tomorrow!

I am off for the rest of the week and I can hear the after Christmas sales calling my name!  I KNOW there are a bunch of deals just waiting for me to come check them out!

I also want to wish my grandpa a happy happy birthday!  I hope you have a great day, Charlie!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Merry Christmas from us to you!

A Busy Christmas Weekend

T-Minus 8 days until C-Day...that would be Christmas Day.  I have survived 2 work Christmas parties and will be heading to the post office today to send everything I need to send before next week (and hope everything arrives before Christmas). I think after that happens I will be able to breathe a little easier. This past weekend was my last chance to do any major Christmas prep, and I was all over the place.  Work Christmas party on Friday at lunch, game Friday afternoon, date night with Eric on Friday, Christmas fundraiser/auction on Saturday morning, gift wrapping/making Saturday afternoon, dinner with friends on Saturday evening, church Sunday morning, more gift wrapping/making Sunday afternoon, and of course my annual afternoon of making ridiculous amounts of Christmas Crunch.  I am tired just thinking about it.

1.  This is what it takes to make 5 batches of Christmas Crunch.....
2. ...and this is what 5 batches of Christmas Crunch looks like drying on the counter-top.
3. What I would look like as Santa Claus....frightening.
4. Delicious dinner at Carrabba's
5. Sparkling Champagne...delish!
6.  My WINNING Phase 10 score card.  You better believe this baby is on the fridge!
7. Making Christmas goodies is so much more fun with Christmas spatulas!
8. Chilly evenings call for warm dinners....crock pot potato soup was my weapon of choice on Sunday.

If you need me I will be jamming out to my Christmas Station Shuffle on Pandora. =)

Birthdays and Parties

Crack open the champagne it's Friday!!!  Ok maybe it's a little early for that considering it's not even 8AM yet as I am writing.  I am so so so glad to see the end of this week because to be honest I was not quite sure we'd make it to today.  It's been quite a week.  On a normal week it would have been crazy but throw in the impending Christmas Holiday and it was crazy x 10.

First of all I would like to wish a certain "little" brother of my the happiest of 24th birthdays today.  I hope you have the best birthday ever and I can't wait to see you soon!  And by the way if you're 24 that means I will soon be turning 29, ugh.  When did that happen?!  I am pretty sure I was beating up on you and you were scheming how to get me in trouble just a few days ago and now we're both grown-up adults, with real jobs and bills and responsibilities.  Who would have thought we'd make it this far right? (but I sure am glad we did). Happy Birthday Bud!

I have been Christmas Party prepping all week for work which has only added to the craziness.  Our party is today and I can't wait!  Food, Minute to Win It games, a photo booth = good times!  I had a bit of fun putting together pros for the photobooth yesterday.  I was literally cracking myself up at my desk.  I am sure my co-workers thought I was a lunatic.

You never know what will come up in a Google search.  I was trying to find the lyrics for "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" and check out what my 3rd option was....yikes!

Finally, please say a prayers for both of my in-laws, they are both going through some rough times (both for different reasons), and I hate for them to have to deal with things that would be tough to deal with anyway this close to the holidays.

Happy Friday!

P.S. There are only 10 more days til Christmas!

To Do Lists and Christmas Wishes

As of today Christmas is officially 2 weeks away!  Surprisingly the shortened Christmas season has not gone as fast as I thought it would (so far).  I have been trying to stay on top of things, but I feel like for every item I have scratched off my To-Do list, I add another two. Luckily the majority of the items pertain to my two work Christmas parties and our basketball party all which will be over by this time next week.  The good news is that 90% of my shopping is done, and I have about 75% of the gifts in my stash at the house waiting to be wrapped.

I would feel better if more of these items had check marks beside them.

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and I want to do EVERYTHING.  I just can't say no because I love this time of the year and I love seeing people enjoying themselves at functions, but for this is the first year I really feel a bit overwhelmed. Throw in a tough game last night that we should have won and it was icing on the cake last night.  All I wanted to do was go home, curl up, and go to sleep for a couple of days.  I even suggested to Eric that we both take the day off today and sit around in our pjs watching tv.  He didn't bite on my offer, and reminded me that I can't just disappear for a day.

I have always believed that if God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.  And I am holding to that.  I have decided that I am going to make it through the next week and a half and that it's going to be a great next week and a half.  I mean it's Christmas time!  There are so many things around that have the potential to make people happy and restore your faith in humanity it's nearly impossible to not see something that will make your day.  As if she knew I needed a pick me up this morning I had an email from my mom with the following video.  You may have seen it floating around on facebook, and it's totally worth 5 minutes.


And that's what this time of year is all about for me.  I have decided that I am going to take it one day at a time and work my way through my list.  I am not going to stress.  I am going to ask for help when I need it (something I have a hard time with sometimes).  Most importantly I am going to enjoy the little things that make me happy and let everything else just roll off my back.

I have a quote by Herm Albright by my computer that says "As positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."  So look out world, Polly Positive is here to stay and make this the Best Christmas Season Ever!

What Christmas Looks Like at the Cagle's

Like I said yesterday, our home FINALLY looks like Christmas!  Growing up we never put up decorations until mid-December because my brother's birthday is on December 13 and Mom always made a point to separate the two.  I was not a huge fan of it when I was a kid, but I understand her reasoning now.  However, as an adult I have put up decorations shortly after Thanksgiving every year.  Sorry bud.  Part of the reason I do it early is with my basketball schedule I never know when I will get a free weekend.  This past weekend with Eric hunting turned out to be the perfect opportunity! I will sit back and let the pictures do the talking.....

This is my new centerpiece.  I got the idea from this pinterest pin I saw a few weeks ago.  Giant jingle bells, weird giant crystals (not sure where I got them), wine glasses, mirror plate (leftover from our wedding), and silver bead garland....BOOM.  I am in love with it!

You got a sneak peek of the tree yesterday.  As pretty as themed trees are, they are just not my style.  I am a one tree decorated with ornaments that mean something to me kinda girl.  I can pretty much tell you where all of the ornaments came from, including the red and silver balls I use as "filler" ornaments.  They were the first ornaments I purchased when I was in college when my roommates and I had a Lady Hawk tree in our apartment. =)  In 2009 we started a dated ornament collection since that was the first Christmas we were engaged.  Every year we've purchased and ornament on whatever vacation we go on.  2009: That was the year he was in Kuwait so we didn't exactly have a trip, but how cute are those reindeer?!  2010: Starfish sunbather from Jamaica that we got on our Honeymoon. 2011: Lobster from our trip to Maine. 2012: Ceramic bear from our trip to New Mexico.  2013: ???  I have not purchased one yet for this year.  I am planning on picking one up in Memphis when were there over the holidays since we've gone several times this year.   Some of my other favorites are the wedding cake bell ornament my parents gave us and the invitation ball I made a couple of years ago our of one of our extra invitations and leftover ribbons from our wedding (tutorial here).

The mantle is one of my favorites. Stockings have always been one of my most favorite parts of Christmas. They were the first thing we saw on Christmas morning and always the first thing we went through since the contents was not wrapped and were usually overflowing!  Over the years I've lost mantle space to the tv being hung, and then more space this year from putting up a larger tv, but I made it work.  So far Eric hasn't complained about the 2 snowman nutcracker heads covering part of the bottom of the tv.  There's plenty of screen to look at so I don't think he'll miss that little bit covered up. =)

 If you haven't noticed by now, I have a slightly large collection of nutcrackers.  As a little girl I was OBSESSED with the Nutcracker Ballet.  I had and still have a VHS video of the Bolshoi Ballet performing The Nutcracker and watched it at least once a year (probably more).  My grandparents had a nutcracker (the 4th one from the left on the step of the mantle above-he's dressed in a blue coat) at their house and I would dance around with him and pretend I was Clara and that he was my prince.  One year I got to take him home with me and he, along with the music box nutcracker standing on the green cart on the top shelf of the bookcase above, started my collection.  I've received one for Christmas every year.  I haven't counted them in a while but I probably have close to 50.  There are 28 in the pictures above, but I also have several nutcracker ornaments as well as nutcracker place card holders, so yeah I might be considered a nutcracker hoarder.

So that's what Christmas looks like at our house.  I have a few wreaths up and I hope that once Eric gets the outdoor decorations up I will be able to show them to you.  Our outdoor decor is a work in progress that we add to every year. Hopefully one of these years we'll have it down.

So bring it on Christmas, the Cagles are ready for you!

Tis the Season for Christmas Decorations

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these parts!  That's what's keeping me going on this rainy Monday morning.  I have been pretending that it's super cold because it looks really wintry outside, and if the temperature would drop a degree or 30, it would be snowing.  A girl can dream, right?

My weekend looked a lot like this:

1. Puppy naps are my favorite!  I am gone so much during the week right now that I don't mind laying around for an hour or 2 with sleeping puppies on me.
2. The Christmas boxes came down this weekend and now our house looks like a Christmas wonderland!
3.  The fruits of my labor....our beautiful tree!  (more pics of the rest of the house coming tomorrow!)
4. Hollow wondering what the H3!! I put on his head. (it was a doggie Santa hat for the record)
5. Our new memory foam mattress pad came in this weekend, and it was packed neatly in this box that was half the size of Hawk!  BTW it worked wonders and our bed is super fluffy again!
6. Ice Cream Sundae's in front of the tree.  This happened several times this weekend, and will probably happen several more times this week.
7. Fishies at Bass Pro.
8. Attempt number 2 at dressing the boys up.  They look thrilled, don't they?!

As you can see Christmas was officially kicked off at our house this weekend.  Eric was out of town on a duck hunting trip so I pulled everything out of the attic and got to decorating.  I would like to document that I cleaned the house on Friday night at 10pm, AFTER my basketball game.  I am pretty sure that will never happen again, so I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that. =)  My reason?  I didn't want to have to get up Saturday morning and clean the house before I decorated.  I wanted to get up and go right into decorating, which is exactly what I did.  The boxes came down Saturday morning, Christmas movies started on tv, and I didn't finish until halftime of the SEC Championship game, only stopping to walk the puppies and run to the grocery store.

Side note:  Who else is blown away by the fact that a football team from the state of Alabama could bring home a 5th consecutive National Championship?! I don't care who you root for, that is amazing!  And people not from Alabama wonder why we make such a big deal about college football teams in this state...because we can!

Sunday Eric got home right after I came home from church, and we decided to venture out in the rain to Bass Pro. We did a little Christmas shopping and had a date night dinner at Islamorada in the store. We got home at a decent hour and I attempted to work on a few small Christmas projects while we watched Hangover 3. Those movies are definitely full of guy humor.  I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but he was laughing out loud the entire movie like a little kid.  My evening ended with a spider attack....yes you read that right.  I was in the kitchen wrapping a gift on the counter when a HUGE black spider caught my eye crawling across the floor.  I hate to admit it but I screamed. Usually things like that will scare me, but I freak out silently, compose myself, and take care of it myself.  For whatever reason, I screamed this time and Eric came running out of the bedroom with a knife.  Needless to say he was not too happy when he discovered my scream was for a spider. At least I know that he will come to my rescue if I do scream!  And for the record he did kill the spider for me.

I will leave you pictures of the boys because I can, and becuse they crack me up.

Left: I felt bad because I was gone all day on Friday so I let the boys each have a tennis ball in the house Friday night.  They loved it!
Right:  Our first attempt to dress the boys up this year.  They were a little less than thrilled.  I was going to try to get a picture of all three of them together, but that was not happening.

  Have a great week!

Dear December, Where the Heck did you Go?

While most of the country is covered in snow and dealing with frigid temperatures, we (Lower Alabama) are trying to figure out where winter went.  This is what my dashboard looked like yesterday....

After you get over the ridiculous amount of dust on my dashboard -yikes!-you will notice that the outside temperature is 77.  77 degrees in December! I know we live down South but this is ridiculous!  Especially considering that Mom and Dad are only 5 hours NW of here and are having an ice storm today.  I told the boys last night and they looked at me like this:

Ok not really, but don't they look adorable?  My name is Betsy and I like to make weird noises so my dogs will look at me like this.  I can't help it.  It's just so stinking cute!

We are officially under 3 weeks until Christmas and I am wondering how the heck I am going to accomplish everything I need to between now and then.  The good news is that I have 85% of my Christmas shopping done, and I have ideas for everything I have left to purchase.  I have done good bit of shopping online this year, which is new for me, but given my lack of free time it's been so convenient.

Speaking of Christmas, I am Christmas-a-fying our house this weekend!  Thankfully our tree is not longer in this state:

It is currently upright, untied, and in it's stand...but that's it.  All of my Thanksgiving decorations are still out, and if it weren't for a few Christmas M and M's in my candy dish on the table, there'd be nothing else up.

Tonight is game night for me, so it's gonna be a long one.  We're 1-2 right now, which is not too bad.  We beat the team we should have beat, and I believe that if we'd been fresh against the team we had out second loss of the season against, the game would have been closer than 15 points.  We're playing our closest rival tonight at home (the schools are 10 mins apart) so wish us luck!  

Apple Sausage Pita Pizzas

Every year around this time Costco puts out a cookbook.  I usually end up with one because I am at Costco, A LOT.  This year I almost missed mine.  As Mom and I were having out receipt checked the other day on our way out the lady awkwardly handed me my receipt on a book.  Since my hands were completely full (because we refused to get a cart so we wouldn't buy as much) I barely grasped the paper with my fingers.  After we walked out Mom said, "um did you not want the cookbook?"  Oops.  Although I am not sure how on earth the lady thought I could grab a book given my inability to grab just the receipt.  Luckily we were right outside the door and Mom ran back inside to grab one for each of us.  I am sooooo glad she did.  She flipped through it on the way home and we found at least 10 recipes that we wanted to try immediately.  We found one in particular that we had nearly everything for already and decided that we'd make for breakfast before they headed out of town on Sunday.  Those plans fell through unfortunately, but I still had the stuff, so you better believe I made it for dinner!  I don't remember the actual name of the recipe so for all practical purposes we're going to call them Apple Sausage Pita Pizzas.

adapted from the 2013 Enjoy Cooking the Costco Way Cookbook

What You Need:  

3 Tbsp butter

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 medium apple thinly sliced (I used a HoneyCrisp Apple because they're the best)

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp brown sugar

6 pre-cooked sausage links, cut into 1/4 inch pieces (Eric and I decided you could use ground sausage as well)

1 bunch of green onions, chopped 

4 pita pockets

1 cup shredded Gouda cheese

How to Make It:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Saute onion in butter on medium heat until soft (8-10 minutes). Add apple slices, brown sugar, and cinnamon and saute until a glaze forms and apples are soft (4-6 mins). Add sausage pieces and cook until heated through.

3. Place pitas on a baking stone/baking sheet.  Sprinkle green onions on pitas.  Spoon 1/4 of the onion/apple/sausage mixture on each pita and spread it evenly across the pita.  Sprinkle 1/4 cup of shredded Gouda on each pita.

4. Bake for 8-10 minutes and serve immediately.

I can even begin to tell you how delicious these were.  They were really light, but FULL of flavor.  And to be honest you really can beat caramelized onions and Gouda cheese.  They're like a party in your mouth.

Notes:
The original recipe called for spinach leaves instead of the green onions as the first layer on the pitas.  I didn't have spinach leaves, so I went with green onions, but I am sure the spinach leave would have been great, too!

You can add/subtract anything to the sausage mixture.  Eric is not a huge cooked apple fan so I mixed everything together except for the apple slices and spooned what I needed for his pitas. Then I added the apples, cooked them until they were soft and made my pitas.

Our Extended Weekend of Thanks

5:30 came waaaaay to early this morning.  The only time I got up that early the past 5 days was on Friday and it was so Mom and I could go shopping, so of course I popped right out of bed.

I took Wednesday off to get things ready for the weekend.  Eric was up early frying turkeys to deliver to the guys at the stores.  He fried 6 before 10AM.  Shortly after he left, Mom and Dad rolled into town and we started on some of the sides we could pre-make for Thursday. It was then I realized I had not thought about making dinner, so we opted for dinner and a movie.....Catching Fire to be exact!  It was soooooooo good!  Seriously the shortest 2.5 hour movie I have ever seen!

1.  Catching Fire!
2. Love my SIL!
3. Eric and I on Iron Bowl Day.
4.  Mom and I with her new BFF (Hollow).
5. Some of my favorites!
6. Hawk got to go on his first ducking hunting trip of the year on Thanksgiving and it wore him out!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my parents and Eric's family that included an obscene amount of food.  Never underestimate Southern women when it comes to food.  We hosted Thanksgiving at our house so I had the necessities covered (hash brown casserole, stuffing-regular and oyster, green bean casserole, rolls, sweet potatoes, broccoli salad, etc) and asked his Mom and Grandma to bring a couple of dishes.  They did that x5.  In addition to the 2 turkeys I had Eric fry, they brought a turkey AND and ham, plus casserole, plus dressing (that we requested), plus gravy, plus Mac and Cheese, plus collard greens, plus desserts. I am pretty sure you could have filled up 2 plates with a small scoop of nothing but sides if you wanted to try them all.  Let's just say we've been eating leftovers for 4 days and my fridge is still completely full.

1. Our beautiful centerpiece from my grandparents! with the cutest little photo-bomber ever in the background!
2. Our turkeys in their whirlpool bath.  Eric forgot to defrost the turkeys, so we attempted a quick thaw-out method on Thursday morning.  Luckily Eric's grandma came to the rescue with 2 non-frozen turkeys.
3.  Porch fnuction #492,340: Thanksgiving dinner table!
4. The fry-master at work.
5. This was leftover plate #1. All of my subsequent leftover plates have looked almost identical.
6. Beautiful fried birds!
7 and 8. Our Thanksgiving spread!  The cold dishes and desserts were outside because we ran out of counter space. 

Mom and I made the decision a few weeks ago that we would NOT participate in Thanksgiving Day shopping.  I think it's ridiculous to take people away from their families on Thanksgiving, I don't care how much you plan on paying them as compensation.  However, Friday morning was a different story.  Our original plan was to head out at 5AM, but my alarm decided to go off silently and I didn't wake up til 5:45AM, but we were on our way around 6:30 and had a VERY successful day of shopping! After we powered through for nearly 8 hours of shopping (never stepping foot in a Walmart...booyah!) which included our traditional Chik-fil-a and Sonic stops we headed home and crashed.

Saturday was the Iron Bowl, which turned out to be one of the most exciting football games ever.  Seriously.  And I am not just saying that because I live in the state of Alabama.  The game literally came down to the last second, and what happened at the end was insane.  We had Alabama and Auburn fans at our house which meant there was a ton of whooping and hollering and lots of disbelief on both sides.  In case you missed it, here's the last play of the game with the Auburn radio call.

It was just a tad bit exciting.  If you want some entertainment, Google "iron bowl 2013 reactions" and watch videos of Auburn fans losing their minds. This was the reaction at our house.

They say pictures are worth 1,000 words.  I think my favorite is the bottom right where our two AU friends are hugging it out while AJ McCarron and his GF and hugging on tv...LOL.

Mom and Dad headed back early Sunday morning and we took the day off.  I sent Eric to get a Christmas tree since he was heading that direction to go hunting, and this is it's current state:

My goal is to have it up by the end of the week, and decorated by the end of the weekend.  Wish me luck!

The Weekend I Became a Ninja Turtle

Oh Monday, you came waaaay to fast for me this time around, especially since I could not bring myself to turn off the Broncos/Patriots game last night and FINALLY went to bed when it ended around 11:30pm.  I just keep reminding myself that this is only a 2 day week and then it will be nothing but family, fun, football, food, and Black Friday shopping for 5 days!  I cannot wait!

This was one of those weeks that just seemed to keep going.  After not being home before 8pm a single night this week, it finally wound down Saturday evening.  Friday we had a basketball game and picked up our first WIN of the season 41-26!  It was awesome. I was so proud of the girls!  They played so hard, and I am completely convinced that if we'd made 1/2 of the shots that we missed, we could have won the game by 40.  There was no rest for the weary because we had to turn around and play again Saturday afternoon.  The team we played Saturday is really quick and physical, but we hung with them in the first half.  We we down 19-13 going in to halftime, but we ran out of steam in the second half and ended up losing by 15. Once again I was so excited about how we played and I know we can build off that loss.  We have so much potential this year it's crazy.  This freshman class we have came to play and they are so exciting to watch.  I am convinced that with a little refining this group is going to do great things.

Saturday night we went to the neighbors for a few hours.  We ate grilled things and I played ninja turtles with my favorite 4 year old.  Sometimes you just need to act like a kid, and that's exactly what I did. =)  We called it a night early and went home to crash.

Just hanging out Ninja Turtle style. 

 I decided I didn't' want to be stuck cooking in the kitchen all day Wednesday and Thursday, so I got a jump on my desserts Sunday afternoon and I have White Chocolate Snickerdoodles, English Toffee Cookies, a Buttermilk Pie, and a Pecan Pie done.  However a big little mouse decided he couldn't just let a pecan pie sit on the counter staring at him so it's now 1/4 gone.  Luckily Mom is bringing one, too. I was on a cooking roll last night and even made some HOMEMADE Chicken and Dumplings for the first time in my life.  They were delicious!  Wham Bam Thank you, Ma'am. It was a chilly night and Eric was hunting, so it was the perfect comfort food to warm us up.

1. It doesn't look like much but those homemade chicken and dumplings were delicious!
2. You can't beat fresh homemade pecan pie!

To say I am excited for Thanksgiving is an understatements.  It's probably my favorite holiday because of all of the wonderful food, fun times with family, not to mention it's when we got engaged in 2009 (so that helps it's case)!  I am so ready for it to get here!!!

1 is Done

Game days are always great and fun and exciting, but I forgot how awful getting up the next morning and having to go into work at my normal time is.  I got home around 9:45, but my brain was wired and going in 1,000 different directions.  Between recapping the game and thinking about all of the things we haev to improve on for Friday and trying to get myself together for work in the AM, plus wanting to spend some time with Eric and the puppies who were so hyper because they didn't get a walk yesterday, it took me a while to setting down.

Game #1 is in the books and it was a doozy.  Long store short we got beat, pretty bad according to the score.  The team we played was twice our size and the coach did some things I really don't agree with.  Last time I checked it's pretty crappy to press with your starters in the second half when your team is up by 50. Oh well.  It will make us better in the long run.  Our young girls got some really good experience, and *hopefully* we won't play any more teams that are that huge until we play them again.  please please please  To be honest I was really pleased with the way we played.  We are SO MUCH BETTER than we've been in the past.  I think we really have a chance to be good this year.  Luckily the girls weren't too discouraged and are really looking forward to our next game that should be a really good one. Now if I can just put a game plan together and figure out exactly what we're going to do before practice at 6pm tonight I will feel a little better about things.  =)

Weekend Recap: Basketball, Gelato, and Snoozing Pups

Don't worry you're in the right place!  I've been thinking about re-doing this little site-o-mine for a little while now, but I was not sure what I wanted to do with it. I finally made up my mind this week and viola!  I love it!  I've been wanting to add the phrase "A Little Bit Yankee. A Little Bit Y'all." for a while now, ever since spring break when I found my koozie that says that. I feel like it totally explains me, and it explains us and which is what this little blog is all about.

So it's Monday, again.  But it's game week!  Whoop Whoop!  We have 3 this week and I am so excited about them!

1. Went back for more Chicken Salad Chick on Friday for lunch....Nutty Nana on a Croissant.....delicious!
2. What time is it?  Game time!
3. This is what life with burrowing puppies...my clean laundry pile turns into a burrow tower.
4. The entire contents of those 2 empty cabinets.  I am wondering how the cabinets didn't fall off the wall with all that stuff in there!
5. Chicago-Style Pizza....it's what's for dinner (and lunch and dinner again) when your husband is out of town for the weekend.
6. It's baaaaaack!  My grocery store put their Talenti Gelato on sale again this week and they have a new flavor....Peppermint Bark!  

I got myself in the mood for basketball on Friday.  Two of my old college teammates were coaching in a tip-off tournament, and since Eric was on a fishing get-a-way this weekend I decided to go watch their team play and do a little scouting because a team that played the game before them is a team we play in a few weeks.  Watching games really got me excited about games!

Saturday I spent the morning on the couch watching tv and performing a bloggy facelift. I finally decided to get out of my pajamas around 12ish. I took the puppies on a walk, watched a little football [can you believe the end of the Auburn game?!], and went to Saturday night church. I finished off my night with a deep dish pizza, a glass of wine, and some Peppermint Bark Gelato.

Since I was on the ball and went to church on Saturday, I got to sleep in on Sunday-that is until the pups decided it was time for me to get up, which was approximately 7am.  Since I didn't clean on Saturday I had that to take care of, I even got a little wild and cleaned out our spice cabinets.  I'm not saying we have a lot of spices and seasonings, but I threw away an entire garbage bag full of out dated stuff and still have a ton left over.  At least I don't have to set things on the edge of the cabinet and hope it doesn't pop open anymore. =)  Eric got home and we vegged all afternoon and evening.  It was the first lazy Sunday we've had in forever and I loved every minute of it.

And now it's Monday and I really really wish I were at home snoozing with these knuckleheads instead!