A Thanks Filled Weekend

I'm just going to lay it out there today and say that I am absolutely 100% exhausted today. However, it's not from the hustle and bustle of a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  It's from trying to escape the earthquakes I kept dreaming about last night....Word to the wise: If you would like to watch the movie San Andreas, watch it because it's a really great movie.  However.  If you are like me and tend to have vivid dreams about after watching movies that tend to be adrenaline-inducing (action-packed, scary, etc.), do NOT watch this movie right before bed.  I woke up in the middle of the night exhausted from running in my sleep and scolded myself for letting that movie get to me, but it didn't help because I went right back to dreaming about earthquakes. =(

We had an absolutely fantastic Thanksgiving weekend that was jam packed with family, delicious food and so much fun! Eric started the long weekend cooking 7 of the 11 turkeys he had to fry this year, needless to say our kitchen sink looked like the frozen meat aisle at the grocery store.  My BIL, SIL and nephew arrived Wednesday and my SIL and I spent most of the day cooking for Thanksgiving. Eric fried fish that night and we had a crew over to eat fish tacos.  Thankfully the night didn't go to late because we were up and ready for Turkey Day the next morning.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Eric's family, that [of course] included entirely too much food.

One of my most favorite smells in the entire world...fried turkey =)

Clockwise from top left: 1) Our Thanksgiving spread. It was enormous as you can see and everything was delicious!  The there were a couple of platters on the stove behind Eric, too. Eric and I were talking that night and we could not think of a single thing that was missing from our spread.  2) Our dessert table included Buttermilk Pie, Pecan Pie, Ooey Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake, Lemon Coconut Cake, and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. And yes they were all amazing.  3) The obligatory Thanksgiving plate photo (this was plate #1). 4) The most delectable Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, complete with turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing....yes stuffing. I've eaten 3 so far and will probably polish off another one tonight. #noshameinmyleftoversgame

We washed our meal down with Apple Cider Mimosas and were really excited about it (as if you couldn't tell).

My SIL and I decided to venture out Black Friday shopping on Friday morning. Neither one of us had anything major on our lists, and as luck would have it we both found what we were looking for as soon as we walked in to the first store. Thank you J.C. Penney's for having a great sale on boots and for having several pairs of larger sizes left!  [I'm looking at you, Belk's.] We figured we found what we were looking for so quickly anything else we bought would be bonus.  We hit up 2 different malls and were back home before noon. To be honest I think we spent the longest amount of time in Penney's trying to find $5 worth of something so we could get a $20 off coupon.

Saturday was the Iron Bowl, so we put together some delicious hors d'oeuvres that morning and  footballed all afternoon. Alabama pulled out a win, and half of the crowd at our house was happy, the other half was sad they lost the game, and one guy was beside himself because we had a $2/square football board and had Derrick Henry not scored Alabama's last touchdown with less than 30 seconds to go in the game he would have won $80.

 Leaf piles are the best when you're 1 year old, in case you didn't know.

I am so glad we got to spend a few days with these guys (plus our husbands who were in the woods when we decided to have this little photoshoot, but I promise they were around all weekend.) =)

See?  Little man was loving sitting on his own little perch with the big boys!

We were up early again on Sunday as my BIL, SIL, and nephew headed back home.  After they left I had every intention of cleaning up the house and getting things back in order, but the night before I was informed about the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movies by my SIL and a couple of friends, so I decided to see what they were talking about.  6 hours later I had watched 3 fantastic movies and had only dusted because the majority of the dusting was in the living room where I could watch movies. I ended up forcing myself out of the chair around 3:30pm and managed to walk the dogs twice, wash my car, and finish cleaning the house before 6pm.  I can only imagine how productive I could have been had I not watched movies all day. This is why I don't watch movies....they suck me in and I get absolutely NOTHING done. The purpose of cleaning was so we could go get a CHristmas tree but that didn't happen Sunday, but hopefully we will have one in our possession before the end of the week (or before Costco runs out). I know what I'll be doing this coming weekend!

A Weekend in T-Town

Finally!  It finally feels like November around these parts! It might be a little rainy but I can deal with that because it's finally not hot anymore. =) =) =) *cue happy dance*  

We had quite the weekend around here. It was absolutely spectacular and so much fun, mainly because we spent a good portion of our weekend in a little town called Tuscaloosa....you may have heard of their football team, the Crimson Tide. If you haven't what rock do you live under?

This stadium is impressive to say the least, especially when it's filled to capacity!

But we'll get to that later....We started our weekend off with Chinese Takeout and movies on Friday.  Because of the impending rain, THS (and most of the state of AL) played their playoff game on Thursday night. I sat this game out, since it was 3 hours away and an unlikely win for our kids. I'm glad I did because Eric didn't get home until 2am...there's no way I could have functioned the next day at work! The boys unfortunately lost, but on the plus side for me I get my husband back and now he only has 3 things to split his free time among: me, hunting, and fishing. Because anyone who knows him knows he had no desire to give any of those things up even with a busy football schedule.

Thankfully we were in bed early because we had quite a Saturday ahead of us. We got up bright and early to head to Tuscaloosa for the Alabama - LSU game. It was a 7pm kickoff, but Eric wanted to get up there early despite the rain. We arrived around noon and went in search of food and a tv to watch some afternoon games. We ended up at a little seafood place called Steamers on the Strip. It took an hour to get a table, but that was fairly quick considering it was pouring rain all afternoon and we had a group of 9 with us. We still had a couple of hours to kill after we ate so we went back to one of Eric's fishing buddy's son's apartments which was literally 2 blocks from the stadium to watch some of the afternoon games. We also got to park under the complex which was great until we were trying to leave after the game.

My SIL and I got to see one of our old teammates, too!

We headed over to the game about an hour before kickoff excited to see Bama dominate LSU! We had really great tickets in the lower level, but then one of the guys Eric coaches with offered us tickets with him and his wife in one of the Skyboxes......uh yes please. We ended up giving our tickets to Eric's buddy and his girlfriend and enjoyed the game from the comfort of the Sky Box where we didn't have to worry about the cold or rain, plus we had an endless supply of food and cokes.  In other words we were spoiled rotten and enjoyed every second of it.

Clockwise from top left: 1) My Crab Cake BLT from Steamers...delicious. 2) Sky Box food is absolutely amazing.  The Golden Fried Risotto Bites were delicious, plus we had Shrimp Creole and Bacon Wrapped Beef Tenderloin....not too shabby. 3) We were greeted by and enormous dessert tabel when we got off the elevator which I had to back track to a little later for some Tiramisu, Red Velvet cupcakes, mini cheese cakes, and friend apple pie bites. 4) During the 3rd Quarter they brought in a bag of steaming hot ball park hot dogs, which were probably the best thing I late the entire time....no lie.  I wanted to eat all of them!

The view was spectacular and the game was fantastic!  Of course it helped that Alabama dominated the game. We headed back to the car after the game and attempted to make a quick exit. The only problem with that was there were 110,000 other people trying to do the same so it ended up taking us nearly an hour to to go .25 miles to get to the road to get out of town. This particular road we were on was directly parallel to the stadium so we had waves of people to watch that entertained us the entire time.

 This was the series where Alabama thought they had a safety but the refs said no....it was right in front of us!

 The post game celebration on the field. 

We eventually made it home around 2:30AM, as it's a 2+ hour drive without game day traffic.  But apparently we were making good time because Eric's brother and his wife who were also there with us, went back to Birmingham which should have been just 45 minutes away, got home less than an hour before we did.

Because of our late night, we slept in Sunday until 11:00AM. I couldn't tell you the last time I slept that late. I did have to get up with the dogs at 7:30AM for them to go out and feed them breakfast, but went right back to sleep. Once we did get up we spent most of the afternoon on the couch watching movies and doing as little as possible.  It was a perfect day for it with the rain and the cooler temps. Eric attempted to hunt Sunday afternoon and came home soaking wet and freezing cold after a few hours. I warmed him up with some potato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and he felt better.

So here I am again, Monday morning.  I am voiceless this morning since this awful cold I've been fighting for a week now has settled in my throat.  I started losing my voice after the game Saturday night and I am still waiting on it to come back.  It's going to be quite a challenge to yell over 8 and 9 year old girls in tap shoes tonight without it so please wish me luck!

Crockpot Potato Soup

As I was getting ready to hit publish on yesterday's post, I realized I have never shared my Crockpot Potato Soup recipe. I started out using a recipe I found on Pinterest 3 years ago, but over time I have tweaked it and made it my own. So naturally I feel the need to share it here. It's no kidding one of the easiest recipes to make....I threw it together in less than 10 minutes on Saturday and that included making more chicken broth because I didn't make enough the first time.

What you Need:

2 (20oz) bags Simply Potatoes Shredded Hash Browns

6 chicken flavored bullion cubes

6 cups water

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/2 onion, chopped

1/2 tsp pepper

1 TBSP taco seasoning

1 block cream cheese - do not use reduced fat or fat free (it won't melt)

How to Make It:

1. Boil 6 cups of water and 6 chicken bullion cubes in a pot. Stir until cubes have dissolved. *You can purchase 6 cups of broth, too, but I always have bullion on hand so I like to use it.

2. In a crockpot, combine hash browns, cream of chicken soup, onion, pepper, taco seasoning, and just-prepared chicken broth. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours.

3. Once hour before serving, chop cream cheese block into small cubes and stir into soup.

4. Serve with sour cream, green onions, bacon, cheddar cheese, and feta cheese (our favorite!).

Happy Halloweenie from the Cagles!

Another Halloween has come and gone at the Cagle residence.  It was extremely uneventful.  Eric and I dressed as ourselves sitting on the couch watching football games. Fun right?! While we didn't dress up, I put the pups in costumes for a photo op of course.

It only took me 8 years to give in to a hot dog costume for Peanut. 

Aren't they precious?!? They loved tolerated it...clearly.

Our weekend got off to a bit of a rough start with THS losing its 3rd straight game. It's been a rough few weeks for the boys to say the least.  We have at least one more game as we made the playoffs again, so we'll see how that goes. We slept in Saturday and attempted to go get breakfast. We tend to be somewhat early risers on Saturdays so breakfast out isn't usually crowded when we hit up our favorite places. We had a rude awakening when our number 1 and number 2 places (the only sit-down places in our little town) were packed to the brim at 9AM, so we opted for Hardee's drive through instead.

The only thing we had on the schedule for Saturday was a Paw Patrol-themed birthday party for our neighbor. After the party Eric headed to the woods for the afternoon and I headed to spend some Kohl's Cash that was going to expire. I made it back in time to catch Saturday night church and headed back to the house to walk the pups. At least I had the presence of mind to throw together a batch of our favorite crock pot potato soup for dinner. It was absolutely delicious and we ate entirely too much of it, as usual.

We kinda slept in again on Sunday but with the time change we technically got up at our normal time.....? Time changes are so confusing. I grew up in Indiana before the state started changing time so by the time we moved to Tennessee when I was 9, the time change completely threw me off. I couldn't understand why on earth any one would feel the need to change their clocks.....and I was only 9 years old at the time. I still think changing the clocks in dumb. This was me when I got off the treadmill at 5pm last night:

I'm tempted to move to Arizona just so I don't have to deal with the nonsense and absurdity that is daylight savings. Who needs extra day light in the AM? I am much more productive when I leave work than I am in the morning! I digress.

No matter how yo slice it, it's Monday, and another week is starting, so I am going to make the most of it and then rush home this afternoon to walk the puppies before the darkness closes in! (and not be melodramatic about it at all)

P.S. I blame daylight savings for me forgetting my lunch on the counter this morning. So there.