Thursday, December 31, 2009

My Word for 2010: Fitness

My favorite scrapbooking guru, Ali Edwards, does this thing where every year she focuses on a word for that year. The word should be something that you really want emphasize, achieve, etc. You get the point. Anyway, I've never done that before, but heck...why not give it a try?

My word for 2010 (that would be twenty-ten, for you, Jen C.) is fitness.

Obviously, that means physical fitness. Every year I profess that this is going to be the year for getting in shape. Losing weight. Exercising more. I think, though, that sometimes I set standards that I can never live up to. So here it is: I want my pants to be less tight. I want to make healthier food choices, and I want to get some honest-to-goodness exercise in there somewhere because I want to feel better.

But I want to be more emotionally fit as well. I tend to be a perfectionist in some areas of my life. I need to let that go. I feel like I need to "do it all," and I need to let that go as well. And I need to do things that recharge my batteries--spending time being quiet, reading a good book for fun, spending quality time with Darryl and Amelia, baking, scrapbooking, and so forth.

I want to be more intellectually fit--reading more for pleasure, being more in touch with world events, putting a bit more research and time into my lesson plans, communicating more with other teachers for new and fresh ideas.

I want and need to be more spiritually fit. I need to read my Bible more, pray more, be more invested in church, do more for others.

Oddly enough, as I'm listing all these things, I don't feel overwhelmed. I almost feel as though one thing is going to lead to another; in a sense, it all seems to be about balance.

So hello, 2010! I'm looking forward to a fresh start!

I'm Leaving You Behind, 2009!

I'm not too sad to leave 2009 behind. It wasn't my favorite year. The year got off to a rocky start for my friends and me (Kim, if you're reading this, here's hoping that you don't spend New Year's Day with ServPro!), and I never really felt like 2009 was "my" year.

That being said, it wasn't all terrible. I finally got to realize my dream of going to London; I had two fun scrapbooking excursions; I enjoyed getting to see Amelia's personality develop, and she usually makes me belly-laugh at least once a day; we've enjoyed times with family and friends; and I've gotten to teach a mostly great group of students for two years in a row.

This New Year's Eve, we're away from home. I can't remember being away from home on NYE, well, ever. I'm usually taking down the Christmas tree while watching Dick Clark/Ryan Seacrest on New Year's Rockin' Eve. This year, though, I'm in a hotel with Darryl and Amelia, and I just finished eating some Starbucks Mocha Frappaccino ice cream straight from the pint. Not a bad way to spend an evening. (I would tell you where we are--and if you are my Facebook bud, you know where I am--but I'll save my mother's sanity by not disclosing our location. I'll tell you later, though.)

Anyway, the year 2010 seems like a good year for new beginnings, so on that note, I'll create my next post...the good ol' New Year's Resolutions (not to be confused with my Christmas Resolutions, which I detailed in my previous post).

Farewell, 2009!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Christmas Festivities--Part 4 (Coming Soon)...But I have Christmas Resolutions!

For some reason, I'm having some issues with uploading photos, and my Christmas Eve/Christmas Day post would not be complete without photos, so I'm going to hold off on posting about it until the problem is fixed.

Anyway, we had a wonderful Christmas. I don't know that Amelia is quite old enough to "get it," but we definitely had fun watching her open gifts and play with her toys.

Well, more about that later. After this week, I've decided to make some "Christmas Resolutions" for next year. Here they are:

1. I will not wait until the week of Christmas to take my child to see Santa Claus. (I'm going to do my best to find a non-mall Santa where the wait isn't an hour and a half.)

2. I am going to have a photo Christmas card next year. For two years in a row, we have not gotten our act together in time to do a Christmas card. Next year, my friends, is going to be different.

3. I am going to arrange my classes so that I do not have a bazillion essays coming in to me the last few weeks before break so that I can experience the full joy of the season well before school gets out for the break.

That's the thing about teaching--yes, it is great to have two weeks off, but I feel like I have to fit in all the fun in those two weeks. Last week alone, we visited Santa, went to Alabama, baked sugar cookies, rode the Pink Pig...it's too much at once. I also watched about five holiday movies in there. Next year I'm going to try to do some of that stuff earlier (because I love it all!!) instead of trying to cram it all in over just a few days.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Christmas Festivities--Part 3 (Santa and the Pink Pig)

One vow that I've made after this week is that I'm not going to wait until the week of Christmas to see Santa Claus. On Monday, we finally made the trek to the mall (yikes) and waited in line an hour and a half with an uncooperative 2-year-old so we could get a picture. Here's one pic of Amelia and me, and it pretty accurately captures the mood of the moment:

I don't have a scanner, so I can't show you the official pic, but here's one that Darryl took with his camera.

On Wednesday, Amelia and I set out with our friends Michelle and Sophia to ride the Pink Pig at Macy's. We had to wait about an hour total, but it was a much less harrowing experience than the wait to see Santa.

Amelia and Sophia in line:

Amelia and I on the ride with the "old" Pink Pig in the background:

And here's a pic of the four of us with Priscilla the Pig:

Afterward, we went to Chick-fil-a. It was definitely a fun outing. The jury is still out on whether or not I want The Pink Pig to be a yearly tradition, but now we can at least say that we've done it!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas Festivities--Part 2 (Christmas in Opp)

Last Saturday, we made the long journey to Opp, Alabama, to see some of my dad's family. It was a little over four hours each way, but we just decided to buckle down and do the trip there and back in one day. Amazingly, Amelia was great for the whole trip--what a trooper. Anyway, we had a great time with family, and it was totally worth the drive.

Here's Amelia on the way there. She pretty much amused herself by looking at books, talking, and singing.


Once we got there, we all visited and caught up with one another until lunch was ready. Check out this table o' cakes and pies!

Amelia particularly enjoyed playing with John, who is four years old. Amelia and John are about the same age difference as John's dad, Jody, and I are. We had a lot of fun playing together when we were younger, so it was kind of cool seeing our kids play together so well.

Here's Aunt Winifred, playing Santa for our Dirty Santa exchange.


What a fun time!!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Christmas Festivities--Part 1 (Parties!!)

Friday the 18th--The 2-Year-Olds' Christmas Party
Friday afternoon, Amelia's daycare class had their Christmas party. It was very cute...most of them were dressed in their PJs, and they had a book exchange and ate snacks. I don't even know how many sugar cookies Amelia ate. The girl loves cookies. (So do I. Who doesn't?)

Waiting for her book (note how Amelia doesn't like to sit):



Looking at her new book:

Mmmm, cookies!!!
It was a fun time. After Amelia had finished her plate of goodies (of course she left the fruit and carrot sticks behind; she's not interested in those food groups), she grabbed her book and headed for the door. I guess she figured she had a book, she got to eat cookies, and that was pretty much a party for her. No point in wasting time socializing. :)

Friday Evening--High School Party
That evening, Darryl and I went to my school's party held at the home of one of our math teachers. Let's just say that apparently the husband of this math teachers has a lucrative business because that house was INSANE. At one point, I lost track of Tim (friends have to stick together in awkward party situations), and I actually had to text him to try to find him again...so that should give you and idea of the size of the house. Anyway, it was actually fun, not painful at all, and I won a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card. Not too shabby.


Okay...so in an attempt to be better at blogging, I'm trying to break down this week into smaller chunks. I was going to catch you up "thus far," but that was so overwhelming that I couldn't handle it. Stay tuned, for next I will be covering Christmas in Opp. You won't want to miss it.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Essay, essays, essays

Good grief. I have been grading essays for what feels like forever, which is primarily why I haven't blogged much. Here's the lowdown:

--I had 30 Honors essays on Sc@rlet Letter to grade. They took a sweet forever because they were TERRIBLE. (As a side note, let me add that much of my precious time was spent answering parent emails about the low grades. Sigh.)

--I had 26 AP essays on Sc@rlet Letter to grade. They were much less disappointing than the honors essays, but I was so sick of reading about SL that I wanted to pull an Oedipus and gouge my eyeballs.

--I've had to grade 30 essays so far on SL from my regular students. I should have about 20 more to grade, but that's how many kids decided not to turn one in this close to the end of the semester. Apathy, anyone?

--I now have about 100 Performance Exam essays from all these classes combined for me to grade this weekend. These are going to be quick, though; I'm reading them and slapping on a grade. End of story.

I've been switching up the colors of my grading pens just to keep things interesting. Green, purple, turquoise...it's the small things that keep me going.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Not the best week

This past week was not my favorite. Here is the bullet-point edition:

  • Over the break, an alumnus of our school AND a current student at our school were killed in two separate accidents, so the mood (understandably) was very low all week. I didn't know either student, but one class of mine was particularly close to the boy who was the current student, and on Monday, I pretty much let them sit and grieve. (The accident had taken place the night before, so the shock was still new.) I'm not sure if that was the appropriate course of action, but they were in no shape to do anything productive.
  • My students wrote essays on The Sc@rlet Letter this week. It never ceases to amaze me how much my students don't know about writing when they are in the 11th grade. The process was exhausting.
  • Amelia has had two BAD tantrums this week that had us both in tears. Nothing like feeling powerless against a two-year-old.
  • I had a parent send me an email with "attitude" when I gave her kid a zero for plagiarism. It really didn't bother me that much because the case is pretty much cut-and-dried, but still...it really gripes me when parents get 'tude with teachers.

Now we did have some excitement this week. Tuesday evening, in a series of events that will completely lose their humor when I try to relate them here (totally one of those "you had to be there moments," we gave my parents quite the show via Skype/webcam when a bird flew in the house. Amelia immediately scrambled in my lap and kept pointing at the ceiling shouting, "Bird! Bird!" Darryl chased it with first an umbrella and then a fishnet (he succeeded with the net), and afterward, she continued to talk about the bird. Every day she has mentioned it: "Bird? Outside?"

And today, we tackled a big feat: two birthday parties in one day. This morning we to a party for Anslee, one of Amelia's daycare friends, at an indoor play place that was very cool. It didn't have the bouncy jumpy inflatables, but instead had things like dress-up clothes, musical instruments, a splash area with bubbles, and the like. Very cool. Two hours after that one ended, we went to one at Chuck E. Cheese. I won't tell you what Darryl said about that place when we got back in the car, but I'll just say that both of us thought that place was INSANE. There were about ten parties going on, and there were kids everywhere. And then a big rat (Chuck himself) was thrown into the mix. But as I pointed out to Darryl, the birthday boy seemed to have a blast, and I guess that is the point, right?

We were exhausted after all the birthday fun, and I've tried to will myself to grade essays. I've gotten a few done, but I'm going to really have to get in the grading zone tomorrow. (Once I get in the zone, I'm pretty productive...it's the getting in the zone that's the hard part.)

To conclude this post, I'm going to show you two photos from today that are important to me because they prove that Amelia does have a little bit of me in her.

Here's Exhibit A: Amelia playing the piano and singing her ABCs.

Here's Exhibit B: Amelia does NOT like to get stuff on her hands, especially dirt or food particles. Neither do I. :) Notice how she is picking up the toy with the very tips of her fingers...that's exactly how I would do it.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Darryl's Weekend Project

Since Amy made a promise to post everyday that she was off and failed miserably, I decided to help her out. My project for this weekend was to be able to get my truck back in the garage. That does not sound like a huge project but it took several hours to accomplish. I should have taken a picture before I started but I did not. So you just get to see the finished project. Next weekend's project will be to do a final mowing for the year to pick up the leaves since they are finally gone.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving for Three

So I dropped the ball on posting every day this week. Last night I decided to put up our Christmas tree, and by the time I finished, I was too tired to post...

We decided this year just to stay here for Thanksgiving. Darryl and I were both exhausted and in need of some family time just the three of us. I'm pretty sure I would have hit "burnout mode" pretty soon if we didn't get some R & R.

For the first time EVER, we had Thanksgiving at a restaurant. While it wasn't quite the same as eating some home-prepared goodies, I have to confess that it was nice to nap right after dinner instead of cleaning up the kitchen. :)

We had lunch at Copeland's, mainly because they boasted a buffet complete with "Cajun fried turkey." We love us some fried turkey. Anyway, the food was very, very good. The fried turkey was okay, but definitely not as good as Darryl's. (Or maybe I just missed the luxury of picking off the crispy fried pieces from the carcass, haha.)

Here's a pic of me and my girl:


We finished up with cheesecake for dessert. I know it isn't very Thanksgiving-y, but Amelia didn't seem to mind:

We came home, took a good nap, perused the Black Friday ads, and then went to dinner at Cracker Barrel. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I wanted more Thanksgiving food...I considered it my "leftovers" since we didn't really have any...leftovers.

Cracker Barrel was PACKED. They were out of turkey (!), but I was still able to get all the fixings, which is what I wanted anyway. It took a sweet forever to get our food (but our waitress was so nice and apologetic and hooked us up with free pie), and somehow Amelia stayed in very good spirits through the long wait. Thank goodness for "colors":


We finished up the evening by putting up and decorating the Christmas tree. Out with Thanksgiving, in with Christmas!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Seriously

I just checked my work email (it's a habit), and I have an email from a parent that was sent at 9:40 tonight. Tonight, the night before Thanksgiving. Are you kidding me?

A little about today

I just realized that if my mother checks my blog this evening and all she finds is an embarrassing tribute to Donny Osmond, she's not going to be happy.

Today was busy, busy, busy. We had lunch with Darryl. Then we went to Toys R' Us because I wanted to get a Little People Nativity Set I had seen there the other day (and later wished I had bought), but lo and behold, when I went to get it today, it was gone. Shucks.

Then we went to Chick-fil-a for some ice cream, and Amelia played in the play area with some mean girls while I silently prayed Amelia will never end up acting the way they were acting. (At one point, they actually "mocked" Amelia's baby talk. Seriously??) We left there after about 10 minutes of that nonsense and headed to the inflatable indoor playground and played hard for an hour and a half. We had a blast, though. (And there were no mean girls there!)

And now I'm doing laundry. And I'm about to work on homework for the (ridiculous) online gifted endorsement class I'm taking.

I laugh at the word "vacation."

Anyway, I have enjoyed spending time with Amelia this week. I haven't gotten much grading done yet, but I've had some fun.

And I thought my mom might like this pic of Amelia from a little over a week ago in the outfit my parents gave her for her birthday. Too cute!


I "heart" Donny. Yeah, that's right.

I'm A-OK with Donny Osmond winning Dancing with the Stars. You know why? Because I've always had a little thing for him.

It all started when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, and watched The Donny and Marie Show. I loved that show. I also had a Donnie and Marie 8-track tape, with my favorite songs being "A, My Name is Alice and my Boyfriend's Name is Andy" and "I'm a Little Bit Country, and I'm a Little Bit Rock and Roll." (My friend Heather and I sang that last one in a talent show when I was in first grade.) If I'm not mistaken, I also had a Donny and Marie vanity set.


Let us fast-forward to high school, when I recorded "Soldier of Love" and "Sacred Emotion" from Rick Dees Top 40 and then included both of those on several mix tapes.

And maybe I've watched him as Joseph from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on You Tube once or twice.

I know he can be a bit of a cheeseball. I know he's prolonging his career as long as he can by doing appearances on ET and DWTS. But the dude has undeniable charm and charisma, and he actually danced pretty well.

But here's what I like best about him: I love the fact that he's been married to the same woman since he was in his early 20s. And I love that he has lots of kids who seem crazy about him. I love the fact that when he was hot stuff in his teens and women were throwing themselves at him, he turned them down because he wasn't raised to "be that way." (I'm loosely paraphrasing from an interview he did with Oprah about a year ago.) And I love the fact that after he won last night, he immediately grabbed his wife from the audience and pulled her on stage with him.

The truth is...I like good guys. My favorite "rocker" is Bon Jovi, who, like Donny (have these two ever in life been mentioned in the same sentence before?), has been married to the same woman and admits to driving carpool. I married a good guy.

So...even though this season of DWTS was kind of bleh (aside from Kelly Osborne--how awesome was she?), I'm glad to see that sometimes the good guy finishes first.


(Edited to add...I started out writing this post kind of jokingly, and now that I read it over, I think I sound kind of swoony about Donny Osmond. I'm not. I just think he's a decent guy. But all the stuff about the 8-track and mix tape...yeah, that's all true.)



Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Amelia's Birthday Party

Yes, this is over two weeks late, but I thought I'd FINALLY post about Amelia's birthday party.

Last year, we had a very simple party with only a few family members, but I decided to be brave (or insane?) and do a full-fledged party this year, complete with about 14 kids aged 5 and under. However, I did make the very, very wise decision (if I do say so myself) to have the party at the indoor playground place that Amelia loves so much, so I didn't have to worry about cleaning up before or after and coming up with activities for the kids to do. That was great!

Here are a few pics:

Amelia loved this slide and pretty much stayed on this during most of the play time.

Okay, I'm including both of these (bad) pics so you can get an idea of how difficult it is to get a group shot of young children. This just makes me laugh...



One of my co-workers made the awesome Elmo cake!
One of my co-workers made the awesome Elmo cake!

The only downside to this party is that it was really hard to get the kids fed in the 40 minutes that we were allotted in the party room, so we ended up taking all the gifts home to open. I felt kind of bad about that, but I let it go. It was one of those "beyond my control" things. Amelia did have a big time opening her gifts, though.
It was definitely a fun time, and most importantly, Amelia enjoyed it. That's kind of the point, right?

Monday, November 23, 2009

One Little Indian

I'm going to make a real effort to post every day this week. I have all kinds of things to cover...Amelia's birthday, school stuff, my birthday, and more. My blog is definitely in need of my attention. My mother also wants more Amelia photos, so you might get one or two gratuitous Amelia photos each day. :)

Today I'm just going to post about, well, today. I'm so happy to be off from school this week. I have all kinds of things I want to get accomplished, but I'm mainly looking forward to spending time with this girl:


She insisted on wearing her little Indian headdress (does this qualify as a headdress?) most of the time we were at the house today. Funny girl!

Today I attempted to do a little Christmas shopping today with Amelia in tow. She wasn't bad, but my goodness, I had to chase her everywhere. When we got home this afternoon, we both just zonked out.

It was a good first day of vacation!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

2 Years Old!!

It's hard to believe Amelia is two years old today. In some ways, it is hard to believe she has been with us only two years because she has filled our lives that much, but at the same time, she is growing so fast.

We took on a "real" birthday party this weekend, and I will definitely post some pics from that in the next few days.

Tonight, though, we went to eat at a local Italian restaurant, primarily so Amelia could have some cheesecake, her favorite dessert!



Happy Birthday, Amelia!! We love you very much!!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Sick Ladybug

Amelia is still under the weather, so she missed her daycare party yesterday, and we didn't take her trick-or-treating tonight. I couldn't resist dressing her up in her ladybug costume, though.

How pitiful is this ladybug?

On top of having a cold, she still has a black eye from falling into a bookcase at daycare.

Anyway, she started smiling a little bit, so we took a rare picture of the three of us.

And check out my first ever jack-o-lantern!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Making lemonade

I'm home this morning with Amelia, who is sick with a sore throat and fever (but her test for strep came back negative, thank goodness). I was planning to be off today anyway, but not for this reason...

Darryl and I have had our house up for sale for almost a year now. This past Sunday, a couple looked at the house, seemed to fall in love with it, and made an offer. They arranged to come by Wednesday to sign a contract on it. I took off today so that Darryl and I could look at houses with a realtor while Amelia was at daycare.

Yesterday, around noon, the daycare called to tell me that Amelia had a fever. I called Darryl to see if he could pick her up, and we agreed that we'd just have to take Amelia with us to look at houses. Then about 30 minutes later, Darryl emailed to say the couple backed out of buying the house. Huge bummer.

We had already told ourselves a million times that the couple could back out, but we were still excited about the possibility of moving to a new house. It was impossible not to be.

Even though we are really bummed out about it, though, I realize this is all for the best. I remember that when we first moved to Atlanta, before I had found a job, we would ride around different neighborhoods, scoping out places we'd want to live once we were a two-income family again. We fell absolutely in love with a particular subdivision, and the lots were selling like hotcakes. I prayed earnestly that I would get a job in time to for us to buy our own lot there, but it didn't happen. After I got a job several months later and we found our current house, we went back to look at that subdivision. More and more houses were popping up there as people were building, and we realized just how crowded that neighborhood was. The houses were practically on top of one another. Some of the houses built first were already showing some signs of wear. We were really grateful that we ended up not buying a house there.

So we're keeping that experience in mind. As we looked at houses in the MLS listings, we didn't find anything that we were absolutely in love with, nothing that we feel like we're really missing out on.

In the meantime, I think I'll just make some lemonade out of my lemons and enjoy my day at home with Amelia. It beats teaching The Sc@rlet Letter any day. :)

(And cross your fingers Amelia is well enough to go to her Halloween party tomorrow at daycare. Because what is cuter than little kids in their Halloween costumes? Um, nothing.)

Happy Birthday, Darryl!!


I just want to wish a happy birthday to Darryl! We love you oodles and oodles!!

(And birthday wishes go out to Tim, too! Have a good one!)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Pumpkin Patch Fun

Yesterday we finally made our trek to the pumpkin patch. Burt's Pumpkin Patch, to be exact. I thought we would go the more low-key route by trying another, lesser-known pumpkin patch that a couple of people had recommended, but when we got to the "low-key" pumpkin patch, we realized it didn't really look like a pumpkin patch at all but rather a produce stand that had some pumpkins. (Seriously, we could have gotten just as good of pictures in front of the pumpkins at Publix.) We decided that we might as well join the masses at Burt's so we could get the must-take pumpkin patch photos.

We arrived at Amelia's naptime, and while she was a little ornery, she was a pretty good sport most of the time, especially when she was in a wheelbarrow. Anyway, here are a few of my faves:

On a mission...

I love this picture of Amelia and Darryl.

I love this pumpkin!

Fun times!!

Too cute! This is her mischievous expression.

I love this pic, too!
(I'm not sure why, but the colors in the photos are not as vibrant once I upload them to the blog.)

Anyway, we had a good time. I love fall!!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Gout and The Sc@rlet Letter--Both cause pain and suffering

I think I'm in a bit of a blogging funk. Is anyone even really reading this anymore? I think that most people have gone the way of Facebook, a fact that makes me a little sad because I miss reading new info on other people's blogs and don't feel very inspired to write much on my own. Instead, I know what people are doing through status updates like, "Just ate a pumpkin muffin. Now going to bed." It just ain't the same as reading a blog.

Anyway, as far as school goes, after the two-week craziness known as Midterm Week (with a wacky schedule) and Homecoming Week (another wacky schedule that also included two half-days), we're finally back to normal at school. All my juniors are reading The Sc@rlet Letter, and Lord, help me...we're only in Day 2 and I want to leave so I can work at McDonald's. I really do see a personal leave day in my near future.

On the home front...Darryl has gout. It's been fun for us both. He's in terrible pain (although yesterday he was feeling better and then even better today), and I've pretty much been his maidservant since Friday. I hate gout.

I'm leaving you with a pic of Amelia that I just downloaded from the camera. (It's from last Monday, my fall holiday that I spent cleaning our house for someone to look at. Of course the person isn't interested, so it was pretty much a wasted effort. I hate selling a house.) Anyway, Amelia enjoyed rummaging in my closet and wearing my shoes. Enjoy!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Weekend with Family

So I mentioned that I was going to be a weekend blogger, and then I skipped last weekend. Oops. But hey, I wrote three separate blog posts tonight!

Life always seems busy, but this time of year seems even busier. School plays, homecoming floats that need teacher supervision, midterms, PSATs. Graduation Writing Tests add to the usual busy-ness of work, and then on the home front, we are entering the time of year filled with birthdays for all three of us, Halloween, pumpkin patch and apple orchard visits, and so forth. I love it, though. :)

Anyway, this weekend was a holiday weekend for me, so the three of us went to Florida to see our family. We just hung out, ate good food, watched football (it was not a good football weekend for Darryl and me), and so forth. Late Saturday afternoon, my dad and I took Amelia to a local park to meet up with Darryl's sister, Ashley, and my two nieces, Madison and Avery. Here are a few cute pics:


The pic below of Amelia and Avery makes me laugh. Love the facial expressions!

Madison gets ready to slide...

Amelia also loved the little merry-go-round. (I thought about cropping this pic, but I like it the way it is.)

We even fed some little goats.


We had lots of fun!!

A Fall Afternoon

These were taken a couple of weeks ago on a crisp fall afternoon. Darryl was grilling steaks, and Amelia and I kept him company on the back patio. I snapped a few pics of Amelia because...well, just because.





A little Fall, y'all

I love fall. It is my favorite time of year by far. Here are a few things I love...


My little snack mix of candy corn and dry roasted peanuts--an awesome combination of salty and sweet.


My fall wreath on the door. (I'm not a big wreath person, but I do put one out for fall and Christmas.)


My little yellow mum hanging by the entry way.


My Pumpkin Pie Yankee Candle.

All I need is a Starbuck Caramel Apple Spice and a Paula Deen pumkin gooey cake...