Give Thanks

Tuesday I got to attend Scarlett's feast at school. I told her Monday night that I would be going and taking macaroni and cheese. She said, "Uh...do you know anything about Thanksgiving? They have turkey and pumpkin pie?!" I don't think she was too impressed with my offering.

The kids looked so cute in their hand made shirts. They each got to choose a Native American name, so I ate lunch with Princess Butterfly. ha!

This is one of her very best friends from her class. She talks about this sweet girl ALL the time!
At the end of the lunch Scarlett looked at me and asked, "When's the feast?" I had to tell her that the strawberries, two cheese cubes and roll WAS her feast. Oh, and a brownie. Because we all know that Betty Crocker was aboard the Mayflower.
It was fun to see her with her class and I wish I'd taken more pictures of them playing the drums under the tee pee, but I was busy doing "clean up". (otherwise known as eating the leftover brownies)

Family Fun

Saturday night Jaime and Ben went to a wedding, so we got to keep the boys. Everyone had a great time! I played around a little with picnik editing on these pictures showing the fun they had:

Football Frenzy

Scarlett has definitely become Brody's football buddy. Just the other day when the Cowboys had their bye week she mentioned that she was sad that they weren't playing because they're her favorite team. Last Friday night, Brody took her on a date night to watch some high school football in the new Heroes Stadium. Scarlett was thrilled to get some time with her "best friend, Daddy". Brody sent me a text that read:

"she kept saying 'I love being here with you daddy'...brody wept."

That girl has him wrapped right around her finger-ha!

I got in on the action Saturday morning. Let me start by saying we are planners by nature. We just don't do much spur of the moment-probably because that's tough with kids. However, when we got a call Saturday from someone with three tickets to the Longhorns game we HAD to go! My mom and dad had their own plans that day, but graciously offered to take the kids along with them on their errands so off we went. My brother got to come with us and I joked that it was a date for Brody and me but reminded me of high school when Mom would send Jordan up to spy and make sure nothing "inappropriate" was going on. :) The only thing inappropriate this time would be the amount of stadium food I would consume.

Let me say that I made fun of Brody for wearing tennis shoes. I told him three times he should wear his boots. After about the 2nd mile of walking uphill to the stadium in my three inch heels, I was regretting my mockery.
This certainly is NOT the stadium I remember from my days of going to games with my dad. This place was MASSIVE!
Whether you love this team or not, you have to admit how impressive it is to see 100,000+ all wearing burnt orange. It was awesome!
I know my hair looks pitiful here, but I was so happy to be at this game I didn't even care...and that's saying a lot. It was a great day, and a fun football weekend! (even the Cowboys won!!)

Our October

Love Creek Orchard

Before Trunk of Treats

Scarlett's favorite thing!

Clark got in on the action

(we went to a local nursery and our kids were the only ones in the bouncy house-it was a hit!!)

how are they all getting this BIG!?!

Halloween night

a blurry but goody

We're Practically BFF's

In every job, there are a few perks. My job gives me an endless supply of hugs and kisses.

Brody gets free rackets from his sponsor, discounted clothes and shoes, and his favorite perk: free lunches at the Men's Grill (yes-it's segregated-no women allowed). A few years ago we were able to go watch Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick play a tournament in Houston. His boss even got a trip to Wimbledon after all his years at the club. (hopefully we'll be around in 30 years for the same treat!)

Last night the club hosted a fundraiser for the Andy Roddick Youth Tennis Foundation. There was an exhibition but Andy got hurt at his last tournament so he just did the commentating. I missed that part, but Brody said it was hilarious. I DID however, make it just in time for this:

This is Mark Knowles who won the US Open a couple of years ago in doubles. He took Andy's place during the exhibition and did a great job from what I hear.

Both guys were really nice and down to earth. Brody was bummed that Roddick's swimsuit model wife wasn't there (ha!) but I think everyone had a good time anyway.

Here Andy is auctioning off some stuff-I don't know what it was because I tuned it out once I heard the bidding start at $2000.

Just another typical night out for us-schmoozing with tennis royalty. HA!

Today it was back to normal:

and I think that's pretty fabulous too!

The Only Thing Keeping Me Away From the Halloween Candy

In a moment of weakness (or PMS) I told Brody to buy the "good" candy for Halloween. And, because he's a good guy he not only bought the good stuff, he got it at Cost.co...meaning there is a HUGE bag of delicious chocolate right at my fingertips.

I decided I needed a project to keep me busy for at least a couple days until hopefully I would have the strength to resist. Here is our front porch:

I have to say that it looked worse before I bought the mums. It looks like a decent porch, but the bench was bugging me. Actually it was my mom that mentioned it might need to be spruced up a bit. In my typical fashion I was like, "yeah, yeah...blah, blah...I have kids to feed, laundry to do...I hate painting, so no thanks." Then some time passed and I decided, as usual, Mom was right. (aren't they always?! ps-remember this Scarlett and Clark)
So with the chocolate too close for comfort and a UT/OU game that was driving me insane I decided this would be the day to paint. I attempted to round up some helpers:

this guy claimed to have fever

(guys will do anything to get out of painting-ha!)

this guy had worked all morning and as evidenced here had a bag full of jalapeno chips and about three different football games on all at the same time rendering him too busy to be of any help

I asked my girl and she was all about helping me out as long as I called her Sally. (she is back on a Char.lie B.rown kick)

We washed the bench and right then it looked much much better! The next step was a light sanding....and I do mean light-you don't get these jello arms from elbow grease-it takes pure mediocrity to get them looking like they do. (sorry I don't have pictures of these steps...I kind of forgot I had the camera and Sally was busy running around with the hose chasing butterflies.)

Anyway...finally...I did a quick paint job. This will not win any painting awards. I think the right arm only has one coat because I got tired. And I used some spray paint on the tiny places I couldn't get my brush around. Thankfully, I don't think the painting police live in our neighborhood so I should be safe.

I think it looks about 10 times better. Now, I'm off to get a peanut butter cup :)

Easy Peasy Projects

OK, I'm almost embarrassed to show these projects, but sometimes it just takes looking at what other people are doing to come up with something creative yourself. So...here are two easy and CHEAP projects for Scarlett's room.

Last year, we went to Fredericksburg for our church Ladies Retreat. While shopping around we found a cute store with some fabric and other neat treasures. On one wall they had tons of embroidery hoops with fabric inside. Mom said that she had lots of hoops and they weren't being used so I snagged a few. Last week I made a trip to a local fabric shop and chose some for the hoops. I used to think if it didn't match it didn't "go" but now I'm a fan of everything just coordinating...so the more fabrics in a room the better!

Ta-da!

I actually have one more hoop, but only found 3 fabrics this trip so i may add another one later.

I was going to put the hoops along this wall (the one below this very long winded paragraph), but then decided they would look better along the wall with the bed-which left me with this blank space that I had intended to fill with my other project. (does that ever happen to you? you start one thing and then it leads to something else?!) Anyway, I had this leftover canvas. They came two to a pack and I got them at HobLob when they were 50% off. Scarlett loves to create, so I just let her at it. I helped her choose a background color and showed her how to get started painting it. Once that layer was done I gave her three choices of things I think she can draw pretty well that I knew would take up lots of space: a heart, a butterfly, or a flower. Then I showed her how to make dots with the back of the paintbrush. She did this whole thing herself. The heart is a bit off center, I would have spaced the dots differently, and it's certainly not perfect. But I love it!! Best of all...she had a blast painting. I can picture it with baby handprints, or a train for a boy, or an "S" for Superman...the possibilities really are endless!