Happy Halloween!

I know I have shown ya'll my pumpkin topiaries...I think the last time I showed them, I wasn't completely happy with them. I was trying to figure out what to do to them to make me love them more. A few days ago, it hit me...GRAPEVINE! I love the stuff, but I haven't worked with it too much. I got me a big roll of it from Renee @ Joy's Flowers, and Jason helped me wrap the topiaries. I am very pleased with the outcome...now I love them!!
I found use for every last bit of it =)

I will leave my fall decorations out through Thanksgiving...right up until the Christmas tree is put up. I love pumpkins that much...you didn't know that, did you? =)

Here's my adorable little lone trick-or-treating cowgirl. There is another little girl in the house who has a cute cowgirl skirt and pink cowgirl boots, but bless her heart, she didn't get to go trick-or-treating tonight. It was quite pitiful. She cried herself to sleep this afternoon after realizing that she wasn't going to get to go with Macy.

Macy is all about this cowgirl thing. Her dream car is a horse.

She was up at 6:45 this morning asking me how many hours it would be until she could put her cowgirl outfit on. Needless to say, it has been quite a long day =)

We trekked all over town to find some boots yesterday. Mr. Coggins was out of her size, so he told us to go to El Kidd in Hamilton. Sure enough, they had the perfect pair of boots in the perfect size. Macy hasn't taken them off since. She loves them, and I think we will get a lot of use out of them.

I realized at 3:00 this afternoon that I had been wearing the same clothes for 31 hours (sorry, Jason!). That's just the sort of thing that happens when there is a sick baby in the house. Soooo...I hopped in the shower and got ready to take Macy to Trinity to trick-or-treat at my Nana's.

My Nana will be 99 years old her next birthday...can you believe it??!!

Macy and I raced back home, did a switch-a-roo (all while Lucy was still asleep)...Jason and Macy left for the Harvest Festival at church, then they were off to Pepe & JisJis' and the Gran & Nana's. Lucy finally woke up around 6:30 tonight and was feeling MUCH better. She wasn't even sad about not getting to trick-or-treat. She loves her Mommy time THAT much =)

So...what do you do when you are sad because you're not out with your husband and other child having fun on Halloween? Why, hotglue tons of googly eyes to an old pair of sunglasses, of course.

And take pictures =)

Oh yeah, and eat bacon. Bacon has always been Lucy's favorite food...do you think that has anything to do with us contracting the swine flu? Ha!

Happy Halloween!!!

Owl Treats and Entertaining a Sick Little Girl

Last night, Lucy started throwing up =( Then she woke up this morning burning up with fever. So I took her to the doctor. She has the flu. Um, well, the swine flu to be exact. We prefer to call it h1n1 flu around here...but yes...it is the oinking kind. I think the doctor thought that I was going to fall off the table when he told me, so he immediately began assuring me that the media had created so much drama about it (making it seem much more dramatic than it actually is), and it really wasn't so terrible. O.k. So...on with the day...sort of.

I am the room mother in Macy's class for October (I like to call myself the "Octo-mom." Hee hee). I was in charge of the Halloween party today, so as soon as we got home from the doctor with Lucy, I started making the treats. Macy told me she would rather have something besides iced sugar cookies (who can blame her?), so I found this darling owl treat idea in Southern Living (October issue...perfect for Halloween, but also great for the entire Fall!) I'll be darned...I can make and ice thousands of sugar cookies, but I cannot, I repeat, I CANNOT, break apart an oreo withouth tearing up the cream.
So, here they are...some puny-looking owls made out of moonpies, oreoes, and candy corn. But they were fun to make, and the kids loved them, so it was all good.
Today was crazy trying to get treats to school, find some Tamiflu and some boots for Halloween for my one little girl who WILL get to trick-or-treat...all without getting Lucy out. Let me say, I have the most wonderful and most patient husband...bless him.
Well, of all the weekends to get the swine flu, it had to be Halloween weekend...boo. We had all sorts of plans...spending time with family, Harvest Festival, and trick-or-treating. Me and Lucy are having to miss out on all the fun.
Tonight, Jason and Macy went out to eat with Jason's family. Jason's brother and his wife and sweet baby girl Tatum are home for the weekend (and I don't even get to see them!). I was trying to take Lucy's mind off of it all (she is "weally, weally" sad that she can't "twick-or-tweat"), so we made ghost sandwiches for supper. And then we did a first...
Can you believe that Lucy has NEVER dipped oreoes in milk and eaten them? Seriously! So while Jason and Macy were having dinner at Harvey's and dessert and Gran & Nana's, me had Lucy ate bunches of oreoes (leftover from my owls).

Lucy like drinking "cookies and cream" milk the best =)

Being sick isn't SO bad!

Poppyseed Paper Girls

Meet Blake Gray and Robin Shelton...the Poppyseed Paper girls! If it can be done on paper, these girls can do it! I met Blake and Robin several weeks ago at MUW's "Homebased Business Extravaganza." They were the keynote speakers, and I was on the panel and got to talk about cookies =)

Anyway...Marion Wesley and Julie Kennedy hosted a paper party tonight with Poppyseed Paper (they are from Birmingham). Poor Lucy is still sick and in her jammies, so Jason took care of the girls while I went to the party. We exchanged cookies for paper products...such fun!! I cannot wait to get my stuff in the mail...you know how I am about waiting for the mailman or the UPS man...especially when there's something cute coming!!

Blake and Robin are as sweet as they are cute and are so much fun...I enjoyed spending a couple of hours with them!!

Sick Girl

Poor girl...I think she gets sick more than anyone I know! Lucy's got fever and is not feeling good...she told me her tummy hurt and asked for medicine. Bless her.
So, she's staying in her new owl pajamas from Old Navy...with her tennis shoes on, of course =)

I do hope she is well by this weekend...or there's going to be a super cute cowgirl skirt that won't get worn and a little girl who will be very disappointed she can't go trick-or-treating!

Mummy's Coming For Dinner

I like doing themed food during the week of Halloween...I should have saved my biscuit faces for this week, but I couldn't wait to do them!

So tonight, we had mummy dogs =) I took jumbo hotdogs (the kind with cheese in them...yum!) and wrapped them in strips of pizza dough (I used Pillsbury pizza dough in the can...just rolled it out, cut it in thin strips, and rolled it in my hands long ways to make a rope). I baked them in the oven according to the directions on the can of pizza dough, added mustard dots for eyes...and there you go...mummies for dinner! Then I made brownies...I don't have one of those "magic pans" like Melanie has, but they turned out o.k. =) I made a pan of boxed brownies, then iced them with white icing out of a can, and poured about 3 different kinds of Halloween sprinkles on them (can we say cleaning out the pantry?). The girls loved them...they were yummy!!

A Doesn't-Get-Much-Better-Than-This Day

Today was one of those days. One of those it-doesn't-get-much-better-than-this kind of days. Lucy has a little friend, Brody, who was afraid that the sun was going to start growing mold after all the rain we have had. I have thought about this and laughed about this and told so many people this sweet little story. But if there was any chance the sun was growing mold...I can assure little Brody that the mold was gone today =) The weather today was absolutely gorgeous, beautiful, fabulous, perfect, it-doesn't-get-much-better-than-this kind of weather. And for our family personally, it was an absolutely gorgeous, beautiful, fabulous, perfect, it-doesn't-get-much-better-than-this kind of day. I don't think even rain would have affected it. But it didn't rain.
And I am thankful.

And I am at peace.
And I walk a-new.

And that is all I am going to say about that

So after a wonderful morning, we met up with some great friends at the Pumpkin Patch...the Overstreets. We have a funny friendship...Kane, Jason, and I have known each other practically all of our lives (Kane and I since 3rd grade, Kane and Jason since just a few years later). Katey and I have only met once at an engagement party for her and Kane, but we have been bloggy friends for quite some time. We had been e-mailing back and forth saying that we have just GOT to get together...so we put our blonde heads together and made it work =) The great thing about bloggy friends is that you know practically everything about them, so when you do meet in-real-life, there is no catching up to do, you feel like you've known them forever, so you just hug and scream and laugh and say "I know all about you" and then get on with the good stuff.

Like trying to get a perfect picture of 4 kids...because you know...we've GOT to blog about it.

Poor kiddos...the sun is right in their faces, and all their Mommies can do is worry still about getting the perfect picture.

After literally 39 pictures that are all about like this, Katey and I put our blonde heads together once again and realized that if we faced the kids AWAY from the sun, we might get it right.
Great blondes think alike =)
And so, now we have some perfect pictures of 4 cute kids. We can move on to bigger and better things.

Like playing in the corn. Sweet Camp looked at me and gave me this huge I-look-like-my-Daddy-only-with-blonde-hair sort of grin. It was too cute! I have to tell one on Kane (or maybe it's more like on myself), but Kane moved to Columbus in the 3rd grade. Our teacher had told us that a new boy was coming to be in our class, so of course the girls get all excited thinking about what we're going to wear the day the new boy comes and wondering which one of us he'll think is the cutest. All the boys cared about is whether he knew how to throw a football or not. Anyway...I remember the day Kane came to school just like it was yesterday. I wore a blouse with tiny flowers all over it, a short red wool skirt, white tights, and navy mary jane shoes. All dressed up, and would you know I had the audacity to make up a song about Kane...and then I had the nerve to sing it to him! And the song went like this...Kane, Kane, he's a pain, and he's got a funny name. O.k., what is up with that?? I would have gotten expelled for something like that these days. So anyway, I was telling Macy about the little song (making sure she understood that this was NOT acceptable), and she kept singing it over and over and over...so much, that when we got out of the car at the Pumpkin Patch, Lucy starts hollering, "Where's Kane Kane he's a pain?" I was mortified. I had to tell Kane and Katey the story, then Macy graced them with the rendition of the song, and that was that. (And just so you'll know, Kane forgave me for horrifying him on his first day of school and became one of my bestest friends once we got out of the boys-have-cooties and girls-are-stupid stage).
Little Paxton was the sweetest thing. He was perfectly content sitting and playing in the hay.

Katey, I don't know how it was when ya'll got home, but corn was EVERYWHERE at our house! We were dumping it out of shoes and shaking it out of underwear!

Little Miss Priss couldn't get enought of it. She was literally dumping buckets of corn on her head.

After a million pictures of the kids, we finally got a picture of the two blondes who got it all together...

Me and Katey, the two blogging Mommies. And that is little Paxton's hand grabbing onto my necklace. Every time we would go to take a picture of us, that little hand would come out of the sling to grab my neck. It was hysterical and so sweet!

To the Overstreets...we had such a great afternoon with ya'll! We must do it again soon!! And we'll have to get a picture of Kane and Jason next time...we sort of left them out, I guess =)

This child is like the energizer bunny...you would think she would have been dog-tired after the day, but um...no...she just keeps going and going and going and going...you get the picture.

Hope your day was fabulous as well!!

ROLL TIDE!

Whew...today's game was a close one. 12 to 10, holy cow. It was a nail-biter (for Jason, anyway). In the last second of the game, Tennessee attempted to kick a field goal (which would have made them win)...but it was blocked. Unbelievable. I normally don't get all into football games, but today's game made even ME nervous!

While we were walking to the game, Jason realized he had left the tickets in the truck, so the girls and I stopped at a church (which was actually the church where Jason's cousin Lisa got married) to wait on him to go back to get the tickets. I got some great pictures of the girls on the front steps of the church!

I LOVE the next picture...I am thinking about getting it blown up...I think it is a wonderful picture of my precious little girls!

Of course, we had to get Macy and Lucy's picture made with the infamous statue of Bear Bryant.

We listened to the pregame radio broadcast (we got there only 4 hours before game time!). The guy they are interviewing is a former Alabama player who went on to play in the NFL, Barry Crauss (that may not be spelled correctly, but I did not feel like googling it).

Here are the girls sitting on the lawn listening to the radio show...

I really like this picture, too...

I think they got a little bored with the show...Lucy decided to play ring-around-the-rosey with a tree.

And Macy thought she might catch a quick nap.

Oh, and I found the perfect outfit for Jason to wear to the next game =) What do you think??

Then we headed to the field to watch all of the excitement.

Of course, the girls really enjoyed watching the cheerleaders. And am I just getting old, or do college cheerleaders these days look like they are only about 12 years old? Seriously!

All Lucy wanted was popcorn. She wasn't a happy camper until she got it. Then she was good to go!

Macy really enjoyed watching the game and letting her Daddy explain football to me. Maybe she will get it. I mean I enjoy it and all that, but I just really don't get it...like all the technical stuff. Macy was really paying attention though, so she may be Jason's football buddy.

Lucy is easily entertained with food. As soon as the popcorn was gone, she started wanting a big pretzel. So a big pretzel she got. Although she enjoyed eating it, I think she had more fun making "stuff" out of her pretzel...like binoculars =)

Then she figured out how to make it look like a gun, but she wouldn't let me take her picture. I think she was a little tired of pictures...you think?

The game was so much fun...althought it was a gut-wrenching, nail-biter for sure...we had a blast!!

Roll Tide!!