Weekend Randon Happenings

Sorry y'all it's been a while since I blogged last, but you all know how it gets sometimes....to busy!

It has been absolute beautiful weather this weekend in Tennessee, YAY, and I do not want it to end, but I am sure it will!

Yesterday morning we hung out at home and talked about a three year plan and what that entails for our family and where we wanted to be in three years. I think we have a good handle on what we want, so this week we are getting an estimate on expanding our house, just a little. Of course after we add on a room, we will have to install new flooring to match, so that is extra, and of course there is always new furniture involved in any new room addition and not just for the room in question, but for the adjoining rooms too!

After we dreamed for a little bit and made a phone call to get the ball rolling for the carpenter to come and look, hubby was off to work, and me and the boys headed out for a cookout! Yummy burgers and all the fixin's at our family's house, and of course a few games of YaYa and also we played around with trying to put a puzzle together! Did not get to far with the puzzle, but had fun messing with it anyways!

So today, enjoying our last day of beautiful weather, I am inside, of course blogging, washing clothes, cleaning the kitchen and getting ready to gear up for another busy week. At least it's pretty outside (while I am stuck inside) and the windows are opened, even thought the wind is a bit chilly, it's still beautiful!!

Well as I was typing my boring weekend review, Higgin's just pranced in, covered in horse poo AGAIN, so there is another chore added to my list...UGGHH!! That spoiled dog better be glad I Luvie Duvie him so much or he would be pound bound!! Nah, I am too big of a softie for that!

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Fall Retreat, Crab Legs & Oysters, Pre-Med Big $$

Weekend Review!!

Our weekend has been a very busy, full weekend! First I will start with the 5th & 6th Grade Fall retreat. Joey & Victoria went on their first retreat together! They are best cousins, so naturally they would embark on their first overnight big adventure with each other! Joey was ready for the adventure, but Victoria was a little more hesitant. If you can enlarge the picture it will show a few tears in her eyes.

There was a glitch so instead of them leaving the church at 6:30 pm Friday night, they ended up leaving an hour late which gave Victoria some serious thinking time, and if she got her way she would of backed out!

Time came, she went and a fantastic time was had by all!! I did not get a picture of them returning, but there were no tears this time, only smiles and non-stop talking all the way home!!

As soon as we dropped them off, we headed to Chef Wangs, a local Chinese place that serves crab legs and raw oyster on Friday & Saturday nights. Here are a few pictures of Annette & DJ getting ready to chow down and also my plate of wonderful, yummy crab legs & oysters!!

So what could ruin such a yummy meal, you ask?? The fortune cookie!! Everyone got the usual wonderfully witty fortune but me. I was absolutely devastated by mine. In my whole life of eating Chinese food I have never had a fortune cookie like this!! It said:

Keep Mouth Shut

It just made me mad!! The nerve!! What happened to the up beat, "you'll have a great life and prosper" stuff?? Give me a break! Of course Annette & DJ thought it was fitting and the funnest thing! Again, the NERVE!!

Next on the weekend adventure, was the tour of the Belmont University in Nashville. DJ our oldest has it narrowed down to three colleges and Belmont is in the middle, price wise and his pick, so Belmont was first on our tour of colleges.

It was an ever chilly day, and guess who forgot their jacket at home?? Of course it was me, so Hubby, being so mantasiclly wonderful, let me wear his for the day!! I love him!!

The college was beautiful and our tour started with check in and of course the morning Welcome & Information session. Belmont does not fool around, as we sat in the Curb Event Center Arena, we were welcomed by the president and then they got busy with the Admissions & Financial Process! Whoa mama! They do not waste any time and right up front you know that Belmont University comes with a nice little price tag!

Of course DJ is going into the Pre-Med program so his first four years at Belmont will be at a hefty price tag of $29,310 per academic year! Yep that's a whopping....

$29,310

Let me remind you that is $117,240 for four years. He will still have to transfer to medical school for an additional 4 to 8 years depending on which field he is going into!!

DJ's school of choice is Vanderbilt, but if Belmont is this pricey I can only imagine the wonderful price tag of Vandy!!

I really like Belmont even with the hefty price tag. The class size is small with usually 15-20 students per class with the biggest class being no more than 35 students. The campus is beautiful and I love the fact that he is not to far from home. It only took a little over a hour to get their, so weekend commutes will be a must! The acceptance rate to med school from Belmont is 100%, so that is an added plus! Goodness after spending close to $120,000 for college he better get accepted into med school!

We will visit his #3 on list in December, and we will save the big one for last. He has not set up the date for the tour of Vanderbilt, but I am sure that one is soon to follow. Now we need to get busy finding some wonderful financial aid and scholarships.....fun, fun!

That pretty much winds down our fun and exciting weekend, hope you had a good one as well!

Weekend Review

I have had a busy weekend of doing nothing and thought I would wind down a bit before the big day on the job tomorrow!!

First off, this is going to be a little rough for the ones that have a weak stomach! So if you are one of those and need to skip down a bit I totally understand!

Friday night, was Higgin's bath, and boy did he need it! Friday afternoon I went to the pet store and purchased this wonderful smell good shampoo and finishing spray for Higgies. It was baby powder fresh, so I though hey, my baby will smell as fresh as a baby's butt!!

Anyhow, my sweet hubby gave Higgies his bath, and afterwards he was running through the house like a mad dog (Higgin's not Hubby) and I could not get him to go outside for his nightly constitution, because it was a tad chilly, so I figured that he would be OK until the morning. WRONG! While I was getting ready for bed, he did his constitution on my bedroom floor! UGGHHHHH! Really that was not the bad part! His "constitution" had squiggly worms in it! I thought I would die!! Lots of worms!! OMGoooooodness! I was completely beside myself, I had no clue what to do! So Saturday morning it was off to the vet! Poor Higgies, he got violated for a poop sample and yep, he needed medication to rid himself of his little friends! Then the vet had to pull one of his baby teeth, poor baby! So I went ahead and purchased some heart worm preventive and some Front Line, because tape worms come from fleas! Are you ready for the bill?? A whopping $123, again, OMGoodness! After I picked myself off the floor and paid for everything, we headed home.

The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful as well as of today! Not much going on here, except for hubby shampooing the floors and we are cleaning the kitchen floors really good too, because I am afraid that Higgin's might share his friends with others!

Well I guess that about covers the weekend. You can wake up now! Yea, I had to wake myself up several times this weekend also, so much fun, I do not know how we survived!!

I will update again tomorrow on my first day of work, until then, I hope y'all have had a great weekend!!

Busy, Busy Weekend

So I have been busy, who has not been busy lately? Today April (my cuz) and me did this little cook off adventure for Habitat for Humanity. We are a hoot, let me tell you how much we are alike. Never mind, I guess I will save you from that and just tell you about our day!

First off last night we got together to cook our wonderful white chicken chili....well, really it is not our recipe, but a Pampered Chef recipe. (I will post it on another day), I will have to say it was the bomb! I only wish I would of took a picture of her kitchen......it was the bomb too, the after math of a bomb I should say. We had to make between 3 and 5 gallons, so in true fashion, panic kicked in, and we started going crazy, and there is where the mess came in.

We got the chili done last night, in crock pots and in the refrigerator, ready for today. April had lots to do to get ready for tomorrow (Saturday), I will elaborate a little on that in a bit, so she was going to finish the poster display after she got home and we were to meet this morning at 8:30 am and according to the plans we had in our heads, all would be well! Ah ha ha ha! Actually not that bad really!

So when I got home instead of doing the recipe cards like I should of, I procrastinated, in my true procrastination form, and did other things instead. So at 12:30 last night I started to get a little yancy and decided that I would start the little project while I watched CSI. So at 2am I finally get done with the little project and off to bed I go.....did I mention that I had to get up at 6 am this morning?? Ughh!

6 am came and it was rough, but I managed, and off to Aprils I went without coffee. That was not good...thank goodness she made a lovely pot of that wonderful, addicting, yummy, get me going treat I love so much!

Instead of getting there early to set up this morning, we were the last to arrive, beside the dessert lady, but she did not have a tent to set up! Yep, we had a tent to set up, a big green tent...did I mention that April and I are a lot alike, and we do not do tents? Thanks to these three wonderful men plus me and April....yes, 5 of us, we finally managed to get the tent up! Not sure how, but it did get up and actually, miracles upon miracles today, it actually stayed up!

We had a great time and of course it was for a great cause, even though our chili did not win, tons of people kept showing up because they heard that we had great chili. The winner...some guy that made taco soup, yummy, but I am biased, I not sure if it was as yummy as ours!!

It was a fun day, we are going to do it all over again tomorrow, but a longer day it will be. We are heading to a craft Fair (no chili involved), and we will have two tents to put up! That should be interesting....I wonder if those wonderful men will be there to help??

Hopefully I will have some pictures to post of our weekend adventure soon.

Weekend Happenings & Monday Memories

First I want to thank you for praying. This week is going to be difficult to say the least, we are praying for God's guidance and for the right words to be spoken. Sometime this week we will be talking to my family and I covet your prayers.

Second, just a little funny. I have got tons of laughs, comments and e-mails about our crazy animals. For some unknown reason our back porch has turned into the hot spot of the entire farm. The back porch has always been the cats domain, which causes Jeremy much distress. Anyhoo, take a look at this.......

Looks like a chicken got caught red handed!! Yep, that's a chicken that got stuck in between the banister. I think someone needs a diet around here (besides me)! Is anyone thinking chicken and dumplins??

Third...boy this is turning out to be a long post!! Our church ladies have started a blog, if you would like check it out, do so here. Each day of the week we will be posting different subject and on Mondays we have stated something called Memory Monday. I am honored to be the first, so I thought I would post here what I posted on the Calvary Ladies blog. I hope you enjoy. By the way we were really young and wow I was so skinny. I think I am going to post that picture on the refrigerator and hopefully that will deter me from eating!!

Here is my post for the ladies bog.

I am very excited to be the first to share my precious memories with you.

I thought about this for a few days and really wanted to share something besides us getting married and having children, but just could not get past us getting married and having children! When I think of all the special memories that I have, the majority of them are about our life together and our children.

Just the other night while I was praying, thanking God for my family, in the middle of my prayers I just laughed with God. I remember my prayers right after we were just married. We were so young and just like it was yesterday I remember vividly what I prayed for in our marriage. I prayed for strength and for the new love that we shared as a married couple. I prayed for our future children and the life that we would share with a child or children one day.

After we had DJ, my prayers changed again and I prayed so hard for this little life that God blessed us with. How could we ever raise such a perfect baby and I prayed for guidance. I thanked God everyday for the wonderful opportunity that he gave us to be parents.

Then came Bradley a short 18 months later. Goodness, how were were blessed again with another healthy little one. Our family grew and was bursting at the seams with love and laughter. There were hard times to, because after Bradley we decided that I would be a full time mommy. There again, memories were made each and everyday while I stayed at home and spent time with the boys.

Then did God ever have a sense of humor, because He felt, and I say He, because Joey was God's plan for us. Never the less again we were blessed with another little one. Wow, what wonderful, precious memories we have made, the five of us.

I wanted to share something that is on my wall, because it really sums up our lives in a short sentence.

The Perfect Love in Our Lives, Happened in a Sequence of Time. With each kids name I have a clock with the time stopped at the time they were born. I think about of all the memories that we have shared, and having our children was the most special times in our lives. Our perfect love made our children and how honored we are that God blessed us as parents to them!

Standing there with my hubby to be, on May 4th 1991, I would of never thought that I would be were I am today, a mother of three boys. Wow, how we have grown, not only as a family but how we have grown in the Lord. I could not planned my life any better than it turned out!

Which brings this verse to mind:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

So I close my Monday Memory with:

Our wedding day on May 4, 1991.
DJ's arrival, July 30, 1992
Bradley's arrival, January 31, 1994
Joey's arrival, February 23, 1998

Just four of my special memories!!

Weekend Happenings!

Our weekend has been pretty laid back due to Bradley's recovery, so we have just hung out around the house lounging, and it has been nice!

The joke around our house is "this is going on the blog"....what that means is when ever I get the camera out, it is usually something that I am going to take a picture of to exploit on my blog, and usually that is something funny or embarrassing the kids have done. Well let me set up this little scene for you....

Last Sunday we drove by this place in town, called the Wax Shop, and I thought it was a new candle shop so we pulled in to take a look around....NOT, it is a WAX SHOP!! You know, the one that is for hair removal. So that got us into this family conversation about waxing unwanted hair, and it ended up with a home wax kit purchased from Wal-mart, for the sole benefit of putting me in unwanted pain....I mean waxing my legs. Actually it is for the sole benefit of the kids having a great time watching me put myself in total pain for their amusement!

Anyways the point of this story is, yesterday I finally got brave enough and put a little tiny bit of wax on my legs and I yanked it off in pure "what was I thinking pain mode"!!! They loved the piercing screech of pain in my scream and it turn into a whole family affair with me on the couch and Jeremy with this evil grin with the wax container.

The next thing I remember, through the sheer pain and agony of my screams, is a flash going off and the kids saying....."This is going to be great on the blog!!" Unknowing to them.....I CONTROL my blog and the picture will not show up....EVER!! But I did mention it for their pure amusement! So there....I hope they're happy!

Moving on to more pleasant things....here are a few pictures of my nephews walking in a parade that benefits the Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville Florida, it's called the Red Wagon Parade and you can read more about it here. This year they fixed their wagon up as a Star Wars theme. The first picture is of our nephew Joseph, he is dressed up as a Storm Trooper.

Here is our youngest nephew, Ryan and he is actually riding in the...uhm...space ship thing...called the uhm....I am not sure, but I am sure the Star War fans will let me know.

Here is Caleb and Ryan dressed and ready to go. Caleb is Darth Vader and Ryan of course, Luke Skywalker (not a very happy Luke, by the looks of it!!).

Here is a picture of the actual parade, and one of those big Storm Troopers is my brother-in-law Arty, but I am not sure which one!! :)

And one last one of Ryan in the wagon, being pulled around! That's my idea of participating in a parade!!

Last, but not least, Higgins!! You know that I would have to fit him in here somewhere!! As I was sitting here blogging about our exciting weekend, Higgins was messing around with the book case and kept pushing something with his nose. At first I thought, I was going to have to kill him for pulling a book out of the case to chew on it, but upon closer inspection, he was hiding his toy froggy in the books. after a few seconds of intently pushing froggy into the book case he was happy and strolled along in pursuit of terrorizing other things in the house! Of course another picture opportunity for the blog.

When I got down on the floor to take a picture of froggy in all his cuteness hanging out in the book case, Higgins was disturbed by my intrusive behavior and took action!


Higgins, rescued froggy and took off to hide him again in a location that I guess I will never know! The last thing I heard was the squeak, squeak of froggy rounding the corner into the living room!! Again, even the dog is affected by my blog picture taking!

I guess that sums up our weekend hanging out at home, I hope you had a great weekend too!

Ramblings....

It's been a long weekend of mostly nothing happening. I say that like we have totally exciting weekends after the other, but in reality, not much goes on. most weekends. Jeremy did have the weekend off, so that was nice.

Saturday started off with hauling goats to Opossum Holler, the local sales barn. Since gas went sky high our feed bill has went through the roof. Our solution was to take off some goats, to reduce the feed bill and hopefully make some cash to boot. WRONG!! Prices were way down, but we sold eight of the goats anyways. Ughh, I hate getting rid of them, but it is a sacrifice for the farm, at least that is what I told the load that went away on Saturday morning. I was giving them the martyr speech trying to make them feel better....I am not sure it worked, but I felt better, especially after I left and went off, leaving the dirty deed to Jeremy and the boys!

After that we cleaned some rubbish away from the eggs huts to alleviate anymore unwanted serpents! That's an experience I do not want to deal with again. Snakes and rats are the two things I hate to deal with, both in my book are equally scary, but something about a snake makes you really nervous. After the eggs huts were cleaned and the area around them weeded, all felt better, especially the chickens! Actually we got a few more eggs than usual this weekend, so the snake must of really been chowing down! Goodness!

Today, has been the usually Sunday church day. The choir at our church performed the 3:16 musical, which was totally fantastic! After church we have been kicking it around the house, not doing to much of anything. We did watch Nim's Island, which was really cute.

So that is our weekend in a nut shell, not to much going on, but actually that is a good thing, it's good to just unwind sometimes!