Santa Claus Is Coming To Town!

Who doesn't just love a parade?  Parades are a big deal in our little small town. Practically everyone turns out to watch the home-made floats, watch for friends riding in the parade, and waiting to gather up the candy being thrown from each entry!  Last Saturday, we had our annual Christmas parade!

 

I always watch the parade from our church steps and usually several church families come to watch from there also.  We always have a great time!

The kids are just so excited waiting for the parade to start...listening for that first police siren that means 'THE PARADE IS STARTING"!  The kids announce it to the rest of us as if we MIGHT not have heard that loud ear-piercing siren.  They're so excited and I just might be a bit excited myself!

The Choctaw Nation Color Guard leads the parade.  Then all the floats from the different businesses and organizations in town are next.

Next, are individual entries-cute kids, colorful town characters, and anyone else that just wants to be in a parade!

Of course, there is always the high school band!

Rodeo Royalty!

Lots of horses!

A

AND...the main attraction and my favorite part!  Here he comes!!

Our town is known as "Circus City USA" since 3 circus' have their winter quarters here.  Santa always rides in the parade on an elephant!  I absolutely love it! 

 Where else can you see this each year?? Nowhere!  People come from all over  just to see Santa on the elephant.  What else would you expect from a circus town?

This NEVER gets old for me to see!  Love, Love, Love it!

Thanksgiving 2012

I hope y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week.  It was a beautiful day here in SE Oklahoma!  Our Thanksgiving was quite a bit different this year than it has been in many years.  We usually go to my late grandparents'  old homeplace and celebrate Thanksgiving with aunts, uncles, cousins and whoever else that might show up.  We have such a great time!  This year several family members were having health issues so plans changed for everyone.  We spent the day at my parents' house here in town, along with one of my brother's and his family.  Colby came home Wednesday evening and Ashley didn't get to come this year.  I was kind of a sad momma without having both of my kids here.

Of course, the girls do all the cooking it seems for these family gatherings!  I baked my first ever turkey and didn't even get a picture of it before Allan carved it!  It was such a pretty turkey too!  I  made a chocolate caramel pecan pie from the November Southern Living magazine.  It was scrumptious!!  I also made my Paula Deen brownies which in recent years has become a must-have dessert.  We had lots of other good food too.  I don't know why I mentioned mainly desserts...well, yes, I do know why...because I LOVE THEM!

Mom's neighbor, Patty, Mom, Me, & Stacey

We all ate until we couldn't hardly move but it was well worth it!  Since it was such a pretty day, we ended up outside for most of the rest of the day.

Me & Allan

Allan, Me, & Colby

My brother, Doug, and his family

Mom & Dad

Colby used Mom's new leaf blower to make a big pile of leaves for K to play in.  She had a blast in there!  I believe her dog, Buffy is also somewhere in there.

She even got her Momma to join in her fun! 

Colby & Dad

Mom was needing a new profile pic for her Facebook page, so we went and had a little photo shoot.  I LOVE this picture of her!

One of Mom's cats, Whiskers, wanted in on the picture taking too.  He's really listening to her motherly advice!

We left Mom  & Dad's house to go to our new house for a while so Colby could shoot his new gun.  He's recently taken up duck  hunting, thanks to the Duck Dynasty guys!  He practiced shooting clay pigeons.

We went back to Mom's and snacked on leftovers for supper before going back to our house. 
All in all, it was a wonderful day.  We sure missed the ones that couldn't be with us and hope next year we'll be back to our regularly scheduled family Thanksgiving.

One last thing...as I wrote several weeks ago, I am trying to break my Dr.Pepper addiction because Dr. Oz put a scare in me!  Welllllllll, since it was Thanksgiving, and I had gone 10 days with no Dr. Pepper, I decided to splurge a bit and have one.

I can say, it was the prettiest site I'd seen in 10 days!  I drank it slow and savored every sip...mmmm good!

Dr. Oz and Dr. Pepper

OK, I will readily admit that I'm addicted to Dr. Pepper.  It's in my genes and not my fault!  Really, it is.  One of my grandmothers had this deep love for Dr. Pepper and I'm convinced that she passed this love down to me.

I have gotten into a bad habit of drinking more Dr. Pepper than I should.  Again, this is not my fault. Does this sound like I'm in denial or something?  Due to Sonic having half price drinks during Happy Hour and McDonald's offering $1 drinks of any size ALL  day long, there is really no excuse to not have a drink or more every day.  If these businesses did not offer such great deals on drinks, then I'm sure I wouldn't be going there near as much.  See?  Again...not my fault at all!  This is what I've been convincing myself of for the last few years.

Dr. Pepper is just so good!  After a day of building a house and I just need a cold drink to cool off, what better time than this to have one?

Hard work just seems to warrant a nice, cold one!  Even though I do drink a lot of water each day, nothing quenches my thirst like an ice cold DP.

Dr. Peppers (and Snickers) are what gets me through stressful days at work.  Well, my job is not really stressful, but if I'm going to have excuses reasons to drink, sometimes I have to just make them up.
Anyway, you get the point.  Dr. Pepper is my life!

Well, last week, Dr. Oz purposely tried to ruin my life and I think he just might succeed.

I really do love Dr. Oz, most of the time.  Last week he had a show on different cancers and he began to talk about pancreatic cancer and how much all soda drinking increased a person's risk of developing the disease.  He really scared me with the info!  I mean, REALLY scared me.  You can listen for yourself right here.

So, I decided that I'm going to really, really cut down on my Dr. Pepper intake.  Dr. Oz said to have no more than one soda a week!  That is just horrible news to me!  Sunday, I had Dr. Pepper with my lunch and supper both.
I felt like Dr. Oz was looking at me like this:

 So, I've decided to try and cut it out for the rest of the week.  YIKES!!  Yesterday I made it through the day without having one.  I did get a killer headache by mid-morning but I took meds and got rid of it.  After work, I went to Wal-Mart and bought some caffeinated tea to help with the craving.  I hope I can truly cut down drastically on my Dr. Peppers and stick with it this time!  Scary stuff can happen if I don't!
But, secretly:

Really, I could!  I just know it!

Mom's Birthday!

Happy Monday, people!  Our family got together the weekend before last to celebrate my mom's birthday.  My brothers and their families all came for the afternoon/evening.  My kids were the only ones that didn't get to be there:(
Anyway, my youngest brother, Doug, smoked a brisket and ribs and brought them to the party.  They were delish!!  We had side dishes too and I made a Butterfinger Cake as her birthday cake.  It was wonderful!

 My mom is such a beautiful person, inside and out.  She is so giving and unselfish about things.  I was trying to get her to tell me what kind of cake she would like.  She kept saying to make something that the others will like, make something that the kids will like, etc.  I said, "NOOOOOO!  I don't care if anyone else likes it or not, it's YOUR birthday!" haha  Well, the cake was a hit with everyone so all was well in the pleasing others department.

One of mom's gifts was a new leaf blower.  She LOVES to work outside and would be outdoors all day every day if she could.  She doesn't just stand around out there either...she's working!  She's really enjoying using her new 'toy'.

Mom also got a gift certificate to get a massage, which she's going to need after using that leaf blower on all of those leaves!
I took the niece and nephews out to take pics of them and I was so glad that they all cooperated!  They are such cute kids and so funny, too!

"E" is getting so tall and growing up so fast.  He is a huge rock collector but he took a break in his rock hunting to pose for me!

"C" is the cutest little 5 year old in the world!  He just keeps us all laughing with his stories.

"K" is about the wittiest little girl I've ever been around!  It's hard to get anything over on her AND she's pretty!

Mom and the 3 little grands!  

My brothers and me with mom.  Even though I might be am the oldest, I'm still the youngest looking one!  That's what I tell myself anyway!

Happy Halloween!

I LOVE Halloween!  We went to our church's party a couple of weekends ago and had a great time.  This is the first year that I didn't dress up and I'm not going to let that happen again!  I love costumes!

Our hosts for the night were Clark & Samantha.  They've graciously hosted this party for the last several years and we always have such a great time.  Clark spent the evening keeping us supplied with hot dogs on his homemade grill.

Samantha always does such a good job of planning everything each year.  I appreciate them so much!  She was an adorable Piggy!

 I didn't get great pics of the kids because it was hard to get them to be still long enough, but Spiderman will always stop and give me his sweet smile!

"O" was a butterfly, "H" was a dragon before he shed the top part of his costume, "P" was Spiderman, and "N" was Cleopatra.

Samantha, her sisters and her mom were the 3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf!  I just loved their costume idea. 

Tonee  was a 50's girl and Shirley was a train engineer along with her teddy bear, the conductor. 

Allan & I, in our very creative regular clothes costume.  I felt like such a party-pooper! 

These two were battling it out to see who was the fiercest one of all!  I'm not sure who won.

There was pumpkin carving and everyone's turned out so good!

We had marshmallow roasting with the biggest marshmallows I've ever seen!  I didn't know they made them this big. Shirley was first to test them out.

The night ended with a hayride, which is always so much fun!  There are always some scary happenings along they way so the kids and I are always on edge just waiting...and waiting!  One of the little girls sitting by me on the hayride was  getting a little antsy and nervous, knowing 'something' was bound to jump out and scare us and possibly carry her off in the woods.  She said, "I was hoping to live to 90 and not just 9."  Cracked me up!! 

We had a wonderful time!  Lots of good food, fun and fellowship!  I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween!