2015 in Review

As 2015 comes to a close, it's time once again to look back at the year that just blew by! So without further ado, here is our 2015 in review.

January started off our year with some seriously cold weather (nothing like we're finishing 2015 with). We had a pretty quiet January, spending a lot of time at home. Eric's Dad improved enough to be discharged from the hospital about mid January so we spent a lot of time getting him settled. We capped off the month with Eric's 31st birthday.

I think we must have gone into hibernation until the end of February when things heated up with my 30th birthday and our ski trip to Gatlinburg where we got stuck in an ice storm on the way up and had to spend my birthday night in a hotel in Fort Payne, AL playing cards and other games with our group of friends we were with. February also started my journey obsession with a little thing called FitBit.

At the foot of Ober Mountain in Gatlinburg

We stayed busy nearly every weekend in March.  It was the height of Eric's crappie fishing season and I spent almost every weekend cheering on my dancers at competitions around the area.

The weather finally got pretty again in April and we took full advantage of it heading down to the beach to spend "Spring Break" with my aunt and uncle and cousins as well as his brother and family on the Gulf Coast (Part 1, Part 2). The water may have been a bit chilly while were there, but the sunshine made everything alright. We also made the decision to plant a backyard garden, which Eric dug in less than 5 mins.

He had plenty of supervision =)

We finally got the pool opened the first of May and started enjoying a little hint of summer. I had my dance recital the second weekend and then things heated up with softball. We finished up the month with Memorial Day in Panama City Beach with Mom and Dad and a few days in Orange Beach to see Eric's brother and his family.

June came and went quickly, starting with a work trip for me to Dallas, Texas. Our little garden that we planted was starting to take off this month, so I was able to share a few recipes we made with fresh produce that we grew (1, 2). The month ended with an addition (temporarily) to our house and a permanent addition to my parents' house as we picked up sweet little Maggie Sue.

In July, we said see you soon to Maggie Sue and sent her to her new home with my parents. We spent a very soggy 4th of July at the lake, but I finally got to paddleboard so I was excited! A couple of weeks later my Mom's entire family descended on my grandparents' house in Indiana for a fantastic weekend together and one of my most favorite places in the entire world. We capped off our July with our 5th Wedding Anniversary and an absolutely delicious dinner at Acre.

In August we (literally) kicked off another football season with our football family with our third annual cookout at our house before the season started. Eric trekked to Colorado with his brother for his first antelope hunt and brought home a trophy, while I stayed inside most of the month, trying to stay cool.

September was a tough month for us, and one in which I did very little posting on this blog. I had a lot to say but a lot going on and just couldn't find the time or words to say what I wanted to say. We lost my sweet Grandma Kathryn in mid-September, so I made the trip to Arkansas to be with my family for a few days and say good-bye.  It was a tough trip, but really wonderful at the same time. It had been years since my Dad's family had all been together, and it was so great to see them all again. We spent an entire night sitting in the family room we'd spent so much time in as kids, telling stories and favorite memories about my grandparents.
The day of my grandma's funeral I got a call from Eric saying he was going to the doctor because he thought he had appendicitis. Eric never goes to the doctor so I knew it was pretty serious, I ended up coming home a day early to be with him. The doctor sent him home with antibiotics, but a week later he was back at the hospital having it removed. Lucky for us, it had not ruptured and he was back on his feet after a couple of weeks.

Our October brought more busy-ness which is just what the doctor ordered. We started off the month with Homecoming at Huntingdon. After everything we'd been through the last few weeks of September, a weekend with all of our friends from college was perfect. We laughed and carried on until the wee hours of the morning reminiscing about our college days. I got busy with a new year of dance classes and a gaggle of little tappers keeping me on my toes! And the fun just kept coming with our nephew's first birthday, Eric heading back to Colorado for another hunting trip, and me heading to Memphis with the puppies to visit Mom and Dad for a weekend.

Enjoying the game at our old stomping grounds. 

We finished up football season the first weekend of November, but wanted more action so we spent the next day in Tuscaloosa watching Alabama take on LSU from a suite.  Definitely my kind of football watching! November ended with us hosting Thanksgiving with Eric's family and everyone eating way too much food!

December was spent prepping for the holidays. Eric duck hunted the first couple of weekends in December, giving me plenty of time to get the house decorated. I got tacky at my work Christmas Party, and we ended the year with 3 different Christmas celebrations (Round 1, Round 2, Round 3), having a blast spending lots of time with both of our families.

Who doesn't love a family clad in plaid?

I don't want to say that 2015 was a rocky year for us because there were so many wonderful things that we go to see and do this year, but this year certainly had its fair share of trials and tribulations. I am excited to see what 2016 holds for us! Looking ahead I feel like it has a lot of potential to be absolutely wonderful and I hope that holds true!

Happy New Year and here's to 2016!

Christmas 2015: Round 2

Christmas 2015 is now officially in the books! It will most likely go on record as the one of the warmest and soggiest Christmases I have ever experienced, but the weather didn't keep us from enjoying the holiday. I recapped Round 1 of our Christmas holiday last week, so I guess I will pick up where I left off. We managed to throw together an unofficial Christmas fish fry with a bunch of our friends Tuesday night because we had some friends in town who we don't see too often, so needless to say I was exhausted by Wednesday evening and so thankful for my upcoming 5 day weekend.

I even got a family photo in front of the tree with my boys!

We spent Christmas Eve afternoon with Eric's brother and his family at our house before we all headed over to Eric's grandma's house for Christmas Eve Dinner and boy did she have a classic southern spread: ham and cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, greens and cornbread, and a dessert for each person!  We ate until we were about to bust, and sat around enjoying the company watching our nephew walk all over the place! He has preferred to walk on his knees for the past month or so but decided to walk on his feet that night and spent the evening walking from his parents, to myself, to Eric, back to his parents again.  Of course he clapped for himself every time he made the circle, and naturally the entire room full of adults clapped because when a 14 month old claps, everyone claps back!  It was hilarious!

I'm glad my SIL always has her camera ready because I completely forgot mine! And I clearly make crazy faces when babies walk toward me.

After dinner we went over to Eric's Dad's house to have Christmas with him. He is doing so much better than this time last year, it's really hard to believe he's come so far! We are all so thankful that he is so much better. We finished up there and all went our separate ways, we headed back home and Eric's brother and his family headed up to my SIL's parents' house. Eric and I got home in time to catch the first showing of A Christmas Story (Eric's favorite). He was really excited about it, but like all excited little children on Christmas Eve, he was exhausted and fell asleep halfway through. LOL. I finished up some last minute things before heading to bed myself.

I woke up early Christmas morning (I've never been a good Christmas Eve sleeper...let's just say it was a restless night for me). Since Eric was still snoozing I got up and made a delicious (mini) Sausage Crescent Bake for Christmas breakfast. I guess the smell of breakfast woke Eric up because he started stirring as I was pulling it out of the oven. We exchanged gifts with each other and enjoyed our little Christmas morning together. However, the quiet was brief because we had another round of Christmas to get to! That Christmas is going to have to be a post in itself, but I will tell you that the evening ended with family photos with matching pajamas and dog scarfs. =)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Cagles!

Christmas 2015: Round 1

Looks like I will only be dreaming of a White Christmas this year. I realize that my chances of one are slim to none since we live in Alabama, but a girl can dream! No this year we won't even have a chilly Christmas...we get a warm, soggy, stormy Christmas. Nothing like a high of 82 to get to completely OUT of the Christmas mood. I guess the silver lining would be that the kiddies can ride all of their new bikes/power wheels/other outside only vehicles in between showers on Christmas Day.

We kicked off Christmas 2015 this past weekend in Florida with Eric's Mom, her hubby, and his brother's family. It was a blast!  Lots of good family together time. His brother and his wife had a Christmas party to attend before they got to the boys' Mom's house so we had some nephew time, too. Naturally Uncle E decided we needed to take him fishing. I think he enjoyed playing in the dirt around the pond more than fishing but we all had fun in none the less.

I have a feeling this is just the beginning. Between his Daddy and Uncle E, he has no choice but to love fishing!

Before we headed down to FLA we did a little more Christmasing ourselves. I had a work Christmas luncheon Friday afternoon at Olive Garden.  One of my friends brought her 2 month old, but forgot to bring something to warm his bottle up, so we improvised. It worked like a charm! That afternoon Eric had to finish up start his Christmas shopping so we ventured out Friday night and ended our night at, yup, Olive Garden. He didn't think I'd want to go, but I can eat their pasta and breadsticks all day every day! Needless to say we need to get out more because we were both fascinated by the electronic paying device they had on the table. Don't mind us, we're just that crazy old couple babbling on about technology in the corner. 

While we failed to get a whole family shot down at his mom's house, I took a bunch of pics of the dogs and our drinks because #importantthings, right? 

1) Peanut found the stash of doggie presents and proceeded to guard them for an hour before we realized he was not in the living room with the rest of us. 

2) I'm not going to say that Hawk knows how to make himself at home, but he was quite pleased with this pallet my MIL made up for my nephew as a bed for himself. #spoiledrottendog

3) Peanut finally did get his bone (that's as long as he is) and cuddled with it or guarded it, however you want to look at it, for the rest of the day. He doesn't actually chew on it, just guards it so no one else can get it.

4) We were introduced to a new drink this weekend by my MIL, Nectar of the gods, I mean Moscow Mules. These puppies are amazing.  I had heard of them before but never had one myself because I don't drink a lot of liquor drinks. #wino4life  If you've never had one, it tastes like a hard ginger ale and served in super cute copper mugs. Eric loved them too, which is a shocker because we has completely opposite tastes when it comes to drinks. 

And now we're 3 days away from Christmas and I'm getting excited! We're jamming to Christmas tunes non-stop and making our way through our DVRed Christmas movie list! Heck, we even went light lookin' on Friday night when we got back into town! It's almost like we're at the North Pole, except for the lack of snow and cold weather. But you can't have it all, right?

If you're looking for me this week after work, you can find me here. 

Yes, we now have our own set of Moscow Mule cups to sip on mules to the glow of our Christmas tree. =)  I love the holidays!

One Week Closer!

In case you aren't counting there are only 10 days left until Christmas and only one weekend left before the holiday! I'm almost ready with just a few loose ends to tie up before the holidays. I need one more afternoon of getting things done and I will be ready I think. This past weekend was another productive one for me.  Eric was off on another duck hunting excursion and he had a blast! He said it was probably the best hunt he'd ever been on.

If that's not the face of a hunter in his element, I don't know what is.  

As for me, I had another extremely productive weekend of getting stuff done. Hence the reason I feel pretty confident in my "level of ready" for Christmas. I was out and about all day Saturday for my P.E.O. Chapter's Christmas Bazaar, doing some Christmas shopping, and catching a basketball at my Alma mater. Sunday was my Christmas "baking" day. I don't actually do any baking for the holidays but I do make treats, and I made a TON on Sunday. 4 batches of Christmas Crunch, 1 batch of Pistachio Bark, and 1 batch of Fire Crackers (which I may have eaten half of on Sunday).

1. One of my P.E.O. Christmas Bazaar purchases. I have some super talented sisters!
2. I had some time to kill and needed lunch in between the bazaar and the game on Saturday so I tried out a new pizza place we have in town, Pizza 120. It's like a Subway, but with pizza. And it's delicious! I'm trying to convince Eric we need to go one night this week. He's still bitter because he says he thought of the restaurant concept a long time ago.  I told him he should have acted quicker on it!
3. My old stomping grounds at HC. I like to make it to at least one game a year to watch the girls play. So many wonderful old memories!
4. I checked off another Christmas movie that I have to watch every year this weekend. It was as wonderful as I remembered it, too! And yes I still wish I was Vera-Ellen, she is amazing!
5. You never know who you'll run into at and HC Lady Hawks game! I knew I'd see one of my old teammates because she coaches, but the other one was a total bonus!
6. Not one of my Christmas classics but Mary Poppins was on this weekend!!!  I absolutely adored the movie as a kid and apparently watched it a lot, because I found myself nearly reciting the entire movie.
7. & 8. The pups were glad to have me home on Sunday since I'd been going all week and Saturday and Eric was gone. They made sure I walked them more than once, played ball with them outside, and was available for snuggles.
9. The fruits of my labor on Sunday (part of them at least). This was 3 batches of Christmas Crunch. I had to bag some up to make room for batch #4!
10. My sweet hubby knows the way to my heart is through my stomach.  We are both obsessed with a particular potato soup from none other than a truck stop. Yes truck stop soup. You can get it at any Flying J Truck Stop (we've found it at a couple of them).  There is one of these truck stops halfway between our house and my parents' house and since it's such a convenient place to stop we always go in, and we always get soup (and pizza because it's 2/$5 and the crust is amazing!). On his way back from duck hunting this weekend that sweet man made sure to pick me up a cup of soup! It was lots of fun explaining to coworkers where my soup came from and that I promise it's absolutely delicious and not weird that I was so excited about soup from a truck stop.

Happy Tuesday!

My Must-Watch Christmas Movie List

Christmas movies are definitely one of the things I absolutely love about Christmastime. I am a sucker for a good Christmas movie. A few years ago I started DVRing all of our favorite Christmas movies as they came on throughout the Christmas season so now I have them all at my fingertips when ever I want to watch them (or when ABC Family is playing their weirdo non-original clay-mation Christmas movies that creep me out). I am glad I recorded them, too because there are several movies that don't get nearly the airtime I think they deserve.  So here's a list of my favorite must-watch during the month of December Christmas movies.

1. Home Alone and Home Alone 2
These two movies are probably the most loved Christmas movies for anyone born in the mid to late 80s, but for some reason NO ONE plays Home Alone and Home Alone 2 around the holidays any more and it drives me insane! How could these classics NOT make the ABC Family 25 Days of Christmas Line Up?! And don't get me started on the "new"  Home Alone knockoffs!  I've seen the 2 originals at least 100 times and still laugh every time Harry and Marv get whacked in the face with a paint can.

via

2. White Christmas
This one is a sentimental favorite of mine. It's got the dancing, singing, gorgeous costumes, and Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera Ellen! What more do you need? I've watched it every year since I was a little kid (and finally bought it on DVD as an adult so I can always watch it.  It's another one that doesn't get a lot of airtime on tv, but it's so so so good. Mom and I used to sing the "Sisters" number all the time when I was a kid (and as adults, too, who am I kidding). I still get teary-eyed when the General comes down to the banquet hall at the end.

via

3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (the original 1966 version)
It's not that I don't like the newer version, it's that I like the older version a lot more. Plus the newer one gets played like every other day on ABC Family and I can only listen Jim Carrey scream like a lunatic in that strange accent so many times before I'm done with it. The old version is a classic and one of the movies I can't do without.

via

4. A Christmas Story
Who doesn't love A Christmas Story?! BUT. I don't watch it until Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. Why? Because there are now 2 channels that play it for 24 hours straight and if I watch it before then, I won't be ok with watching it at least 3 times in that 24 hour period. I have to pace myself!

via

5. Christmas Vacation
This is a relatively new addition to my list of must-watch movies. I'll admit that I had never watched the movie all the way through until after Eric and I got married, but now we watch it at least once a year. This is one we ALWAYS watch together.  I mean, how can you NOT love the Griswalds?! My favorite part is when they're sitting at the table and Clark tells the kids that Santa had been spotted by a pilot flying in from New York and Uncle Eddie deadpans, "You serious Clark?" because it cracks Eric up every.single.time.

via

6. Christmas with the Kranks
This movie is absolutely fantastic. I feel like Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Allen are everyone's parents in this movie. It has just the right amount of Christmas ridiculousness combined with all of the aggravations we all have around the holidays, but like all good movies, everything ends the way it should.

via

7. My own personal Christmas movie compilation recorded from the late 80s and early 90s.
Ah lucky #7. This one actually includes 6 different movies on one VHS. Yes VHS. Clearly the apple doesn't fall far from the tree with the movie recording because one of my absolute favorite Christmas movies is one I have on VHS that my parents recorded off the tv when I was a kid. The compilation of movies includes:
Frosty the Snowman (1969) - Happy Birthday!
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (1964) - NOT the Shiny New Year weirdo version they play now on tv
The Nutcracker - The American Ballet Theater's 1977 production starring Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov (way before he was romancing Carrie on Sex and the City)
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) - The Muppets spend Christmas on Fozzie's Mom's farm where they're joined by the characters from Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock
Tis the Season to be Smurfy, a Smurf's Christmas special: Papa Smurf teaches Sassette about the special spirit of giving that comes around the time of Christmas.
A Chipmunk Christmas (1981) - Will Tommy get better? Will Alvin find a way to get a new golden echo harmonica before the show at Carnegie Hall? Will Simon and Theodore ever get the credit they deserve?!

However, my most favorite part of the entire video are the commercials. All of the late 80s/early 90's fast food and toy commercials I grew up watching are on the video and I absolutely love it! I keep a VHS player just so I can watch it the video every year.

If you need me this weekend I'll be munching on popcorn by the glow of the Christmas tree, watching a few of these!

Oh We Par-tayed!

Because I work for a large state agency that takes up lots of floors in a large building, and there are so many people on so many floors, finding a room for a Christmas celebration is impossible.  Our solution? A Christmas Open House where each bureau decorates their "lobby" and provides refreshments during a specified time frame on a specific day. It seems to workout pretty nicely. You don't get a ton of face time with a lot of folks, but you get to see new faces and some you didn't know moved to that floor and whatnot. This year's celebration was moved from the usual afternoon time slot to 9AM on a Monday morning. I am still NOT a supporter of Monday celebrations, but no one asked for my opinion on the matter....Thursday and Friday parties for the win!

Our bureau picked a Tacky Christmas theme this year and I don't think I have ever had so much fun decorating! It turned out so cute and for our efforts, we won best decorations!

I have no idea how much wrapping paper we ended up using but between all of the presents and covering the walls, it was a lot!

 Our "Major Award" (the ribbon, not the snowman)

 Our Cat Paper Wall. The paper is covered in cats wearing Santa hats....lots and lots of cats. 

 We even had a photo booth wall with lots of fun signs.  We left a space for our friend who is out on maternity leave. =)

The lights hung from the ceiling might have been my favorite part of all of the decorations.  They're made from green solo cups and balloons.  We didn't even have to attach the balloons, the're suctioned into the cups! We taped the backs of the cups to some ribbon and hung them from the ceiling.  I can't tell you how many people asked where we got the giant lights from because they looked so real!  I kinda want to throw a Christmas party just to make some "lights!"

The decor pics were taken before we put the food out but we treated our guests to Panera bagels, cheese, and fruit. I lost count of how many bagels I ate during the course of the day, but it's safe to say that it was an obscene number. But they were sooooo good! By the time we finished I was in a post-party carbohydrate coma for a couple of hours.

And the best part of the day?? Getting to wear my super cute Tacky Christmas Attire all day! Light up ears and all!

#ineedtoworkonmyselfieskills

Christmas Season is Here!

...and just like that Christmas has come to town...in our house anyway. Eric was away on a hunting trip all weekend and I told him to have fun but that I better have a Christmas tree to decorate while he was away. He obliged and I'm ashamed to say it took me nearly all weekend to get it decorated. I started stringing lights Friday night only to realize I was two strands short so I did what any normal person would do, threw on some shoes and went to Walmart at 9pm. Unfortunately for me, the Walmart close to where we live was out of clear lights. The manager said they might get some by the end of the weekend so I figured I'd check back.  I ended up getting busy with other things and didn't make it back to Walmart until Sunday afternoon and they STILL didn't have lights. Grrr... However, thanks to divine intervention I happened to wander over to customer service to return some stuff I'd been meaning to return for several weeks, and wouldn't you know it the woman in front of me was returning 3 boxes of CLEAR lights! It took every ounce of adultness in me not to jump up and down and interrupt the clerk as she was helping the woman. As soon as I got up to the register I asked if I could buy the lights that had just been returned and did a little happy dance (inside of course) when she said I could.  It saved me at least and hour of driving round trip to the next nearest Walmart and back, a trip I had been dreading but had accepted that if I was going to get the house decorated this weekend I would have to take.

The holy grail lights I was able to snag! Could someone please explain to me how Walmart can run out of clear lights on December 4? It seems a little early to be running out of lights to me!

Once I had the lights in hand, decorating was a breeze and ended up with the most gorgeous Christmas tree! If I do say so myself.  

Of course I also made the pups put on their Christmas attire for their annual photo. They were thrilled....as usual. 

Aside from decorating, I had a fairly productive weekend that included finishing some crafts for a craft bazaar my P.E.O. group is putting on this weekend and our town's annual Christmas parade!  Our dance studio marches in every year, and this year was no different.  I know I'm a bit biased, but I think we were the cutest little dancing snowmen in the entire parade! It was a blast and I was beat when we finished. Let's just say I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon on the couch vegging while going through the Christmas movies I have saved on the DVR.

The Christmasing didn't stop there because Monday was my office's Tacky Christmas Open House.  Our 1st place winning decorations deserve a post of their own, but let's just say that it involved lots and lots of wrapped "presents," Christmas Cat "wallpaper," and giant Christmas "lights," and it was fantastic!

You Know You're Busy People When....

....you meet your husband at Costco on your way home to pick up a Christmas Tree. Mind you that Costco is just over the halfway point on the interstate between our house and my job, so we left about the same time and he barely beat me there.  I wish we could have made an evening out of it, but I had to be at the dance studio at 5 so I ran in paid for the tree, and he met me outside the truck with the trees. He held a couple of them up for me to pick from, we made our selection, threw it in the back of his truck, I gave him a kiss-making sure to remind him cut the bottom of the tree off before he put it in the tree stand, and we both went on our way...him to run another errand and me to the house to get ready for dance.

Eric wasn't going to just take one that was laid out...he had to go all the way in the truck to find the perfect tree.  I would have gone, too, but I had on heels and I probably would have fallen through the pallets on the way up.

Do I wish we could have made an evening out of it with dinner and maybe some Christmas shopping? Yes, well the diner part for sure, but we don't shop well together so maybe it's a good thing we didn't. =) That's just how the cookie crumbles for us these days. I thought that once I stopped coaching basketball, I would find myself with ridiculous amounts of spare time. Clearly that is not the case.  At least not during the week because apparently we are unable to do that thing some people call "down time."  Weekends though? Those are another story, at least for me.  Eric has been filling his up with hunting and fishing, while I have made sure to spend some time unwinding. But I know what I'll be doing all this weekend!

Did you know that the pine needles on the floor are Eric's FAVORITE part of Christmas?

Isn't she a beauty!?! I cannot wait to pull down all of our decorations from the attic and start decorating! Our Christmas season is really starting to ramp up.  We have the Christmas Parade in our town Saturday, the first of 2 work Christmas parties on Monday (yes Monday - clearly not my idea), a Christmas Craft/Bake sale for P.E.O. next Saturday, and my second work Christmas part the following week. I am really loving how all of the events are spread out this year because I get to do a little more Christmas every few days.

Speaking of doing Christmas...I am planning on trying this out this weekend because the only thing better than your house smelling like a Christmas tree is to have it smell like Christmas tree AND cranberries!

Cranberries are one of my favorite holiday scents (I can't do the super sugary scents - they make my teeth hurt) because they're so fresh smelling. I'll let you know how it goes!