The Monday after...

!!!!!!HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY JESUS!!!!!

(just to be clear, I told him Happy Birthday in my heart on Christmas...but for blog purposes, I'm late)



Sev and I spent the entire week of Christmas, in the upstate, with our families. It was AWESOME!! I have not had an entire week off of work since I started the job I have now, over a year ago. We also got to see some snow! We ate LOTS of goodies, shared laughter with loved ones, shopped, wrapped and opened gifts, ate more goodies, and above all else...remembered the REAL reason for CHRISTmas.
I was the receiver of many nice gifts this year.
I am beyond grateful for my new jacket! Which, technically wasn't a Christmas gift...but kind of was, just not a gift for me, but ended up being a gift from me, though now the original gift receiver claims I hoodooed (is that a word? I know it's not voodoo...there was no pin poking in dolls...but I swear hoodoo is a made up word, something my dad is famous for) him into....basically, it goes like this (you can be the judge about my "hoodooing"); My father received two very nice gifts this Christmas (from my mom! who knows he returned them...so if you got dad something, don't be offended, lol) which he decided he did not need. He returned his gifts and searched for another to replace them with. After finding nothing to replace his original gifts, he (very sweetly and kindly) gave his gift cards to me (His very sweet and ohhh so deserving daughter "awwww"!), who really needed a new coat...really! I found a wonderful little jacket and used the cards (on top of the after Christmas sales!)to purchase (at a great price!) my new Mountain Hardware Fleece Jacket (soooooo cozy and warm!). All was fine and dandy until we got home, where MY HUSBAND (out of ALL people) informed my father that I was spoiled! hhhmmph! His actual words were "man, your daughter is what you call milk dayssss after the expiration date!". Oh if looks could kill, he would be squashed! hahaha. Now my father...and even my mother! who decided to jump on the band wagon....have decided I cleverly hoodooed (seriously, someone let me know if this is a word!) my dad!
Whatever. It is 60 degrees in my office today...no lie, I just checked the thermostat!...and I am soooooooooooooo thankful for my new jacket!!!
On top of the new jacket, I was delighted to receive:
A necklace from my (should be squashed) sweet husband.
Shoes
Kitchen appliances...crock pot, coffee maker, steam mop...
Clothes
Jewelry
A Starbucks coffee mug (so I can get some use out of my new coffee maker and take my coffee to go!)
Motorcycle gear (which includes knee pads...but of course! Dad is ON IT when it comes to dirt biker protection, lol)
The sweetest little pottery butter dish (from my mother-in-law who actually had it designed and hand made for me)
A Flip video camera (to take out on the trails with me when we ride)
and a horse...okay not really, but darn it, I got everything else...I can't figure out why I never get the horse on my list! I've had it on my list for yearsssssss.ha.
AND to top it all off, when I got home last night, I had a letter from Iliana!!! My first from her yet! She is precious! It was such a treat to come home and see that I had such a great gift in the mail.
Regardless of what Christmas gifts you got this year...or what Christmas gifts you didn't really get but sort of got because you're "what milk is dayssss after the expiration date"....remember that nothing tops the gift God gave man!!!!


HAPPY DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS AND DAYS BEFORE NEW YEARS!!!!


***edited to say, I JUST spell checked hoodoo and it IS A word!!! Well I'll be....***

Say cheese!

and then forgive a procrastinator!!

I hate that I am just now getting around to posting the pictures of my mothers surprise birthday party, I was trying to go through them and get approval from everyone...but then I realized that was just going to take too long. That, and I had a ton of people asking for the pictures! So here they are!
My mother started her day off thinking that she and my father were going to spend the day together and then enjoy a nice, quiet, relaxing dinner with my aunt and uncle.
She never saw it coming....
Sorry her eyes are closed, but I wanted to post a picture of her with her silly, birthday crown.

I just had to share a picture of Perrin showing off his aunt moo's boots!

Do you know who this is?? Nope, it's not Christopher with a wig on!

Though MAN don't they look alike!!!

Aunt stephy with her sweet nephew Henrybebe!

Mom is a child magnet! She loves kids and kids love her.

Again, sorry her eyes are closed...it's what you get when you try to capture candid pictures.

The cake!! The top layer was chocolate, the middle was carrot and the bottom was white. My mother was born in the fall, likes the fall and looks good in fall colors (haha, I really don't know about that...I just felt I needed three things to make that sentence sound good...). Therefore, she got a fall cake!

My mother and her very dear friend, Mrs. T. Again...eyes closed....geesh.

Two of the sweetest kids I know!

The guys.

Mom! and I bet if you zoom in her eyes are closed! ha...okay I really don't know that for a fact.

Family!!!!

Friends!!!

One lovely lady :-)

!!!!I love you mom!!!!

***PS. If you are in a picture and you would prefer that that particular picture not be posted, please let me know...believe me, I'll understand, I will delete. I've had my fair share of double chins, cross eyed, wide butt pictures that I wished had never seen the outside of a camera! haha***

***PPS. That does NOT go for you mom! The picture of you at 16 is mine for keeps!!***

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Not really at my house, but still.



This past weekend Sev and I drove to his parents house on Saturday, after his final exam (in German, yuck!), and headed for the hills of NC. We were in search of a Christmas tree for my in-laws. We drove around a bazillion twisty, curvy, turns and ended up at the cutest little farm house...in what seemed like the middle of nowhereville. It was the house my dreams are made of. A big, two story, old, white house, with a BIG front porch and I'm sure squeaky floor boards! They had wreaths on every window and smoke flowing from the chimney...very Christmasy (yes, I made that word up). The entire front yard, side yard, and back yard were nothing but rows of Christmas trees. I loved it.
We got out of the car and began our hunt for the perfect tree. We spotted our tree in the front yard of the big ole' farm house.
That is the moment I decided I could never live on a Christmas tree farm. Oh no. Not this girl, not me...the one who can NOT stand change!
As we chopped our tree down, I noticed all of the tree stubs scattered about the front yard. Then I thought about how long it took to grow a Christmas tree (just in case you don't know, a Christmas tree grows one foot or less a year). Our tree was 7ft tall. The guy that owned the farm said he had planted the trees back in the 90's!!
I just can not imagine, having such gorgeous trees, right outside my window, for YEARS and then one Christmas have them all chopped down! Some of those trees were older than his kids!! I can just see the wreck I would be, if those trees were on my farm! I would be the crazy lady that followed all of the happy tree hunters around saying, "oh no, you don't want THAT tree, that one is hideous!...not that one either! just look at it's puny limbs!"...yeah, we wouldn't make a great living at tree farming! I'm such a sap ;-)

After we loaded our tree, we drove to Hendersonville, NC and had dinner at a little tapas grill. It was yummy! After our bellies were full, we made our way to the FlatRock cinemas and watched the Blind Side. It was a GREAT, feel good, movie! Loved it!
We decorated our tree on Sunday afternoon. I spent a little bit of time loving on Sue's horses and then we headed home.

We didn't go to great Christmas decorating lengths this year, we just didn't feel the need to shell out lots of $$ for a tree that we would hardly get to enjoy. We're just on the go so much! I hung a few decorations around the house, but nothing worth posting really. We'll enjoy the Christmas trees, lights and decorations at our families homes this year! However, I don't want to appear to be a scrooge or anything...don't get me wrong!...I do enjoy a festive home! So, I've been scrolling through a few blogs on the Christmas Tour of Homes 2010 blog! Check it out if you're one of those people that likes to see what others do to decorate their homes for Christmas (aka: you're just nosey like me, ha!).

I KNEW it!

It wasn't the feeling of a coughing fit coming on! It was my sixth sense, warning me. This week IS going to be a longggg week.

Remember how I mentioned in my last post that I needed to find the energy to make potato soup sometime this week? Well, I thought I had enough energy last night. I thought I had enough energy to peel the potatoes anyway...I also thought I might have enough energy to get all of the ingredients together and in the crock-pot for tonight's dinner. I DID NOT, however, think that I had enough energy to clean my entire kitchen...but sometimes life has a sense of humor.
Do you know how many potato skins you will have, once you skin 5lbs of potatoes? A Lot! You will have an entire sink full of potato skins, once you skin 5lbs of potatoes!
Sev and I peeled 5lbs of potatoes last night. After the peeling process was complete, I went about pushing the skins down into the disposal...because that's what you do when you barely have enough energy to peel the potatoes in the first place. You don't scoop the skins out of the sink and walk them to the trash can, because that would require WAY TOO much energy! No, you push the potato skins down the drain, all the while hearing your fathers voice in the back of your mind saying "don't put those egg shells down the drain! Don't put those apple cores down the drain! Don't put those potato skins down the drain! You will clog the pipes or tear the disposal up!" No...you don't listen to that annoying voice....you push the potato skins down the drain because that's just what you do when you don't have a lot of energy and when you forget that your dad has lived a tad bit longer than you.
I had just pushed the last of the potato skins down the drain when it happened. The disposal started making a funny noise. Do you know what you DON'T do when the disposal starts to make a funny noise? I'll tell you. You DON'T put your head over the sink, cock it to the side, and stand there trying to peer down into the drain, wondering why the disposal is making a funny noise. You don't do that because it will probably send chopped potato skins, dirty sink water and unidentifiable black goo shooting into the air. A good 2 feet in the air! No lie.
However, THAT is exactly what I did last night! After I found myself covered in all the above mentioned items, I scrambled to flip the disposal switch off. I turned to look at Sev, who was sitting at the kitchen table, a spoon paused half way to his mouth, and his eye wide. He dared to say "uhhh what just happened?" He stood up, walked over to me, looked down into the sink, and FLIPPED the switch back on! I'm not sure what his thought process was. I don't know if he thought I had received all that the sink had to offer, or if he just wanted to make me feel better by dowsing himself with sink crud. Either way, water shot out of our sink even higher than before. It covered my cabinets and slung potato skins as far out as the fridge, on the other side of the kitchen (not that my kitchen is that big, but still a good couple of feet away).
That is when Sev decided that the best plan, to fix the problem, is to go under the sink.
I can't tell you how happy I am that I insisted on taking everything out from under my sink before he began to ...well.... "fix" the problem.
I had just removed all of the items out from under the sink and was standing in the kitchen door way when I thought "you know, I should probably grab some towels..just in case." I turned to go and grab a handful of towels, was a few short steps away when I heard "CRASH...OH CRAP!...SWOOOSHHHHHHH...drip" (or something very similar). I turned around and there was Sev, sitting in the kitchen floor, holding a pipe that was once part of our kitchen sink plumbing.
Dirty sink water, chopped potato skins and goopy black yuck is all over Sev and the kitchen floor. It is pouring out from under the sink and running under the fridge and cabinets.
I tried to soak up as much water from around Sev as I could while Sev peeled down to the only dry clothes left on him...his boxers.
Here we are, in our kitchen full of potato skins and sink water, Sev in his boxers and me with potato skins clinging to my hair. I don't think either of us said a word. Sev crawled back under the sink and started to mess around with the plumbing that was still intact. I got on my hands and knees and started chasing the potato skins that were trying to float under the appliances.
That is also the exact moment that the dish washer decided to go into its rinse cycle. Oh yeah, did I mentioned that before I even started peeling potatoes, I loaded and started the dish washer? Yeah, I did.
Do you know what happens when the dish washer goes into its rinse cycle? I'll tell you.
It sends all of the dirty, soapy, dish water into the same plumbing pipes as the kitchen sink. Do you know what happens when there is a missing pipe from the plumbing system under the kitchen sink? I'll tell you.
Your husband and you will now be standing in even more potato skins, dirty, soapy, smelly, water. Your husband, who ironically had his head under the sink this time, will crawl out from under the sink with unidentifiable goop dripping from his ears. You will then have two options, you can throw up your hands and scream at the top of your lungs or you can look at each other, covered in goop, he in his boxers and you now with wet knees, to go along with the wet shirt and potato skins in your hair, and laugh. We went with option #2. We looked at each other and busted out laughing. What else could we do.
We spent the better part of our evening cleaning our kitchen. Sev ran to Lowe's while I picked up potato skins. He came home and fixed the plumbing and I scrubbed down the cabinets, kitchen counters, sink, floor, walls, and base boards. We fished potato skins out of our hair and said "good night".

I wonder what today will have in store for us.
It's going to be a longgggg week.

This is going to be a long week.

I can just feel it!

Or maybe that feeling is the coughing fit coming on. boo.



I thought I was getting over my cold last week. As a matter of fact, I felt pretty darn good on Thursday and Friday. Saturday wasn't all that bad either. Sev and I spent the entire day at home, putting up Christmas decorations and doing some cleaning and household chores. Saturday night we went to some friends home, in St. Matthews, to watch the Clemson/GT game. We had a great time but by the time we were getting ready to leave, I was starting to feel yucky. My head was hurting and my throat was getting scratchy. On the drive home I started getting stuffy. We got home after midnight and I ended up laying in the bed well past 2am. YUCK! This caused us to sleep past get-up-for-church time. I ended up staying in the bed until 12pm! I started feeling a tiiiiny bit better, or maybe I was just getting hungry, and decided I felt okay enough to drive around and look at Christmas decorations and grab a bite to eat. So that is just what we did. We went for a Sunday drive, ate at UNO's, and made a quick stop at the mall so Sev could spend a gift card he got for his birthday (finally! His b-day was in September!). We had a very nice time, just hanging out together. I may be paying for it today though! I might should have stayed in bed! Today my voice is scratchy, my head feels like it's stuffed with clouds-or cotton-or marshmallows...you pick...and I'm starting to get one annoying cough.

Say it with me **back of hand on head, eyes closed**"wooeeeee is me". haha.

Next weekend Sev and I are heading to the mountains of NC to pick out a Christmas tree with his family. I LOVE going to the Christmas tree farm!! Sev has exams all this week and then one on Saturday morning (seriously, WHO decided exams on a Saturday was a good idea?!). After his exam we'll be headed north to Christmas tree hunt!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! I've got to muster up the energy to pull out winter clothes and pack up summer/fall clothes, find a good night to make potato soup (before my potatoes start sprouting!), bake a cake and get over this cold! ....yep, it's going to be a longgg week.

2009 turkey day has come and gone!

Kind of like I wish this cold would do!!
I'm fighting a cold...I refuse to let it get the best of me!

We had a wonderful holiday break. It was stuffed to the brim with party planning, turkey eating, football watching, shopping and just plain ole' spending time with the family.

My lovely mother turned...ahhhh you thought I had a death wish, didn't you!? I know better ;-)
My mothers birthday was yesterday. We decided to throw her a surprise party on Saturday. It went off with...well, a few hitches...DURN is that woman hard to throw a party for!!...but it was fun and I think she enjoyed it. I have pictures, but I have to get permission to post them.
Sev and I arrived in Spartanburg on Wednesday night.
We went directly to my aunt Jackies and dropped off all of the birthday party items and my cake stuff. We stole an apple pie out of her garage freezer (don't worry, she had a freezer full!) and headed over to our cousins. It is always nice to spend time with them. I adore Pbug and it was a lot of fun playing with him and watching him just be himself. I taught him how to say "GO Cocks!" and he proved to be a good luck charm on Saturday!!!
I spent Thursday afternoon with my mom at my grandmas house. We helped her cook and clean and shared a little laughter. Thursday evening my family all gathered at my grandmas and enjoyed Thanksgiving together. It's always nice to spend the holidays with family, I've learned never to take that for granted. My family may not be all that normal (I can't help it I'm the only one that got the "normal" gene ;-) haha ) but we always have a good time.
Friday was spent....hello...it was black friday, what do you think I did?? Mom and I went shopping!!! We woke up toooo early, battled the crowds, rejoiced over close parking, ate biscuits at chic-fil-a, got excited over good deals on crock pots-coffee pots-steam cleaners and.....Oh my gosh when did I get excited over home appliances??eeeeek **sigh**.....we got to spend time with cousins on both side of my family and just enjoyed the craziness that is black friday.
Saturday Sev and I had to wake up and leave my parents house early. We told my mom we were going to the beach. She fell for it, hook-line-and sinker! We actually went to my cousins and Sev stayed there to watch the GAMEcockswoopsometigertail ;-)
Steph drove me all over the planet picking up balloons, food, flowers and party stuff. We spent the rest of the day decorating my moms cake while my aunt Jackie prepared the food. I WILL post a picture of the cake soon!! I enjoyed having someone actually sit and help with the cake decorating (as opposed to sevy who normally sleeps on the couch while I cover the kitchen in cake pans, icing, flour, sugar and fondant).
Before we knew it the time had come for all of moms friends and family to arrive. I was a WRECK! and I have no clue why!! I don't know who or what I was doubting...mom has THE BEST friends (and family, but they are friends too..right??!) in the WORLD and they all helped to make the party great!! Seriously, my mom (and really our family) are beyond blessed with loving friends and family...if you were at the party...THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!! I love you and so does mom!!!!!!!~~~HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM~~~
Sunday was one lazy day. I didn't get out of my PJ's allllll day. I refuse to let this cold get the best of me, so I'm trying to rest as much as possible. I hated the drive home, knowing that everyone else was already snug in their homes and already putting up Christmas decorations.......Christmas!! man time flys.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and even though its veryyyy tempting to run around, like knuckleheads, looking for that last minute deal...remember the reason for the season and try to just enjoy time well spent with family and friends! Really when it comes right down to it, they are the most important thing in life and they will be the ones that will be there when you turn 50.........ohhhhhhhhhhhh shoot, my bad.