Wednesday Hodgepodge-volume 195

I'm linking up with Joyce and the ladies this week for Wednesday Hodgepodge!  

1. Elizabeth Lawrence is quoted as saying, 'Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn." So have you done just that? And what did you leave undone in order to do so?  I can't think of a thing!  I'm a procrastinator so I leave lots of things undone until the last minute! 

2. Since we're talking turning...what's one thing you feel you're doing 'every time you turn around'?  Cleaning the litter box!  With three cats in the house, one of them is always in the bathroom.

3. How hard is it for you to 'turn the other cheek?'  It's not hard at all!  I'm not a confrontational person at all so I tend to just take whatever is dished out.  I may not always 'like' turning the other cheek, but I rarely will confront someone in a negative way.

4. When did you last turn a drawer, your car, a room, or your entire house upside down looking for something? Did you find it? I'm always on the hunt for something it seems!  A few nights ago, I ransacked a drawer where I keep a key to the neighbors house.  Their house alarm had gone off and I wasn't sure if they were home or not, so I was getting the key ready for when the cops/firemen came!  I found the key and luckily everything was fine at their house.

5. 'One good turn deserves another'...were you most recently on the giving or receiving end of that sentiment?   I was on the receiving end!  One of our church friends has been making a lot of wood projects.  Sunday he brought me a coffin!  It's really cute but it did sound kind of funny when I said, "Thank you for my coffin."   And, he filled it with candy!

6. Red, yellow, and orange are the colors of fall. Also the colors of fruit. If you were permitted only one color of fruit in your diet, which would you choose? This question isn't as easy as it sounds, at least not for me.  Out of those three colors, I would choose yellow.  Bananas and pineapples are delish!

7. The Hunt for Red October, October Sky, Halloween...which 'October' film is your favorite?  I LOVED all scary movies back in high school.  Friends and I would go to 'the show' as we called it, in Paris.  We would get so scared and just KNEW something was going to get us as we crossed the river to come back home.  Now,  I can't stand the suspense, but especially the gore, that's in the newer scary movies.  Out of those mentioned, October Sky was great!

8. Insert your own random thought here.  I was SO happy to have my girl home this weekend!  We went to a "Frozen" birthday party for a darling little girl.  Then, she helped me in my Bible Class on Sunday and the kids always like having her there.  She taught them the cutest little song!

Happy Wednesday, y'all!

Movie Night

A few weeks ago, our Bible Class got together to have a movie night.  When the movie "God Is Not Dead" came out, we were going to try to go see it as a group, but it never worked out for us to go.  So, Lee Ann bought the movie and planned a fun night for us at their house.  

We had an assortment of finger foods-ribs, tortilla roll-ups, chips and spinach dip along with fruit and dip and THIS-

As we were sort of planning what we were going to bring, one of the girls, Tonee, said, "You can bring that peanut butter cup cheesecake!"  So, I did.  It was great, and so was everything else we had.

We ate and then got the movie started.  We all liked it even though we didn't agree with a lot of the religious ideas portrayed in it.  What we did take from it, was that we, as Christians, should be bold in our stand on things and be prepared to give an answer about what we believe.  All in all, it was a great night!

These are special friends that I'm so fortunate to have in my life!  And then there are the guys...

Trying to get them to all cooperate at the same time for a picture, is like herding cats!  It's almost impossible!  But, I love them anyway!

Summer Recap 3-August Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to us!  Allan & I have birthdays a day apart and we always celebrate our special days together. 

 Our church has a really good group that go out to a restaurant of the birthday girl/boy's choice.  Allan & I have not ever announced our days and done this but we go to other's parties all the time.  This year, we decided to do it for ourselves.  We had so much fun!

We had 24 friends show up to party with us.  I made my Paula Deen brownies and fancied them up with extra chocolate drizzle and whip cream on top. 

Susie is our preacher's wife and it was her birthday weekend too, so we celebrated with her at the same time.

I just love these girls from our Bible class!  They're very special friends.

I love these folks!

For Allan's birthday, I made this most decadent cheesecake that I've ever made-Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake!  Oh. My. Goodness!  It was not only beautiful but it was delicious.  

There are really no words to describe how good it is.  I was going to take this to the party with the church folks, but I didn't think it was big enough to feed that large of a crowd.  And, anyways...we really didn't want to share it at all!  

Also, on our birthday weekend, we had a surprise visit from Allan's brother, sister-in-law, and one of their kids.  They had been camping in the area and came through here on their way home.  We met them out at the new house and visited there a bit before going out for Mexican food.

Toward the end of the month, we had another church birthday party to go to at the Fish Fry.  Dear, sweet Ellen turned 89!  She is one of the most amazing people I know.  I love her so much! I'm always telling her that I want to be HER when I grow up!   I made cupcakes to take for her party and I have to say they were not only yummy but pretty also! (I would love to have a little cupcake shop some day!)

So, August was a pretty fun month...except for the adding a year to my age part!

Summer Recap 2-July

I'm having trouble remembering things from July since I don't have many pics that document whatever it was that we did!  Anyway, we had a very low-key 4th of July this year.  In fact we missed the big fireworks display that the Choctaws put on every year because they had it A DAY EARLY!  What's up with that??  So, on the 4th we just planned a little cookout with my mom and dad.

Allan has inherited the grilling job it seems and he always does a good job!  If I remember right, he grilled steaks, hamburgers, and smoked sausage.

Me and Mom just had to sample the brownies while Allan was outside cooking.  It was a necessary thing to do...really, it was.

I think this is one of the few 4th's that we haven't had a crowd here to celebrate with us.

It's also one of the very few times that we haven't watched fireworks or shot them off ourselves.  Maybe next year we'll be back to our big celebration.

Allan has continued to work on our house and he's made a lot of progress this summer!  I'm really proud that he is such a hard worker.
We have some beautiful wildflowers on our property.  Nearly every time I go, I walk around taking pics.

Luckily we've had a very mild summer for this part of the country...lots of rain and not too many hot, hot days! 

Summer Recap 1-June

I'm trying to do a bit of bloggy catch up this week.  We've had a pretty busy summer around here.  This is what was going on in June:
Colby's birthday was in early June and we celebrated a week early with him.

We met up with the kids at our usual halfway place after church on Sunday.  I always make the strawberry cake that he's requested for years.  We had a great time even if it was just for a short time.  I'm so proud of the man Colby has grown up to be.  Wow...that's so weird calling him a man! He'll always be my boy!  It was so funny that one of the waitresses here at Chair Crushers...yes, that's the name of this joint...remembered us.  The last time we were there was in February for Ashley's birthday and I had taken her special brownie chocolate chip cheesecake that we shared with the waitress.  She happened to walk by us, stopped and pointed, and said,  "Chocolate cheesecake!"  Cracked us up.  So, of course we sent a few pieces of Colby's cake to the back for them to share.

Next was our annual Homecoming and Rodeo.  I just love a parade so I'm always there on the church steps to watch with other church members.  This time one of my little church friends didn't have a family member to bring her, so she came with me.  She said we were Parade Partners! Too cute!  My favorite little boy was there too.  I so love these kids!

There were lots to see in the parade...Rodeo clowns, old cars, politicians, law enforcement, and of course, Rodeo Royalty and the American flag.

There's always horse drawn buggies, mule drawn wagons and church friends on horses.   There's lots of horses but these just happen to be our church friends!

And...of course what most of the children come to parades for nowadays-CANDY!  It's so funny to see young AND old both coming to parades with Wal-Mart sacks to gather up candy.  Sometimes the kids are dodging floats and horses in order to get a tootsie roll or a dum-dum sucker!

Father's Day was the next event in the month.  We made a cute craft in Bible Class for the kids' daddies so I made one for my Daddy too!  We ate at our usual Sunday restaurant.  Colby was on his way back from a wedding in Florida so he made a quick stop to visit with us and wish Allan a Happy Father's Day.

Vacation Bible School was next.  Our theme this year was "A Blue Ribbon Life" with a county fair type decor.  Our teachers outdid themselves with all of the effort put in the class decorations.  I didn't teach this year since I'm needed in the office, but I did play a part in the puppet skits each day.  That's always so much fun!

Kids love cookies and punch from the snack ladies!  Our church ladies are always so generous with the amount of cookies they make for VBS.  We always have way more than we need which means that some of the extras always end up in my office.  Funny how that always happens!

Toward the end of the month, we went to the community theater play in Paris.  This play was "Little Miss Firecracker".  I have to say that this was our least favorite out of all the ones we've gone to.  It was just the story line wasn't good or else we missed something key to the story at the beginning.  The actors did a great job but the story was just blah.  We do look forward to the next season which begins soon.  

Well, as you can see, June was a pretty busy month.  We're still working on our new house and by we, I mean Allan, as I haven't been too much help in a while.  He's working hard and it's slowly coming along!

Labor Day Weekend 2014

Well, I have kind of neglected this little blog over the summer so I thought I would do a post about our weekend and then try to catch up with what's been going on here over the summer in the next few days.  We shall see.

I was so excited that both of our kids were coming home for the weekend!  They don't come home near often enough for this momma and lots of times they don't get to be here at the same time, so this was really special.  Ashley got here Saturday night and had already asked if we could go to Paris to eat at her favorite place.  She lives in the big city but has not found a Mexican restaurant that even comes close to TaMolly's.  So, off we went!  After eating, we wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower!

I just think this is the neatest thing!  We hung around, took pics and then toured the Red River Valley Veteran's Memorial which is on the same grounds as the Eiffel Tower.  The memorial is very impressive.  Allan and I had been there a year or so ago during the early stage of the building of it, but now, there is so much more to see!  We are very fortunate to have a memorial such as this here in our little part of the world.
It began to get dark and I was so glad we had hung around until then.  I knew that the tower was lit up at night but I'd never seen it.  It was beautiful!

Sunday was church and it was my last Bible class with the group I've had since they were 2 years old.  I'm going to miss them so much.

We went to lunch at Roma's after church and had a good visit with family and friends.  During the afternoon, Ashley and I watched a movie while waiting on Colby to get home.  We all went to church again and then to Braum's with church friends.
Monday we loaded up and headed to Mom & Dad's for a cookout with the family.  Allan fired up the grill and had some help from the kids with the cooking.

We had a ton of food!  Burgers, smoked sausage, and hot dogs with all of the trimmings! And cupcakes!

We sat out on the porch and visited, watched kids play, and drove the mule around.  Everyone had a great time!

I always have to have group pictures before everyone begins to scatter.  A lot of them complain about posing for pics, but oh, well! They'll thank me for having these pictures some day!

We had such a good time!  Then it was time for my kids to head back to the big city, which always makes me sad.  I love them so much!

I hope everyone had as good a weekend as we did!

Memorial Day 2014

I hope everyone has had a great Memorial Day weekend!  I'm so thankful for all of our military men and women that have sacrificed so much for us to have the freedom that we have.  We should never take it for granted!

Allan got up early this and went to work at the new house.  As soon as he left, the animals decided it was time for ME to get up...grrrr.  Mom called to say she was grilling hamburgers and for us to come out for lunch, so we did.  After lunch, Allan went back to work at the house and I ran home to check on the animals.  I went on out after getting animals fed, pottied, and crated since rain/storms were in the forecast for the afternoon.

Allan has been working so hard at the new house.  The yard and meadow had really grown up with all of the rain we've had so he's spent a lot of time mowing and weedeating.

There is still so much damage from the ice storm back in the winter that it will take months and months to clean up and burn.  He burned several brush piles on Saturday and already has another huge pile ready to go again!

While he was doing all of this hard work, I was sitting on the porch taking selfies! 

Well, not the whole time!  I did drag some limbs over to the burn pile and then I walked around checking on the redbud trees Mom planted last year.  Most survived the ice storm and I was so surprised!  Mom will be happy!

Allan took a break and we walked around the property for a while.  When we first bought the property, there were several blackberry patches that were in pretty bad shape and not producing good fruit.  We hadn't really seen any plants at all over the last few seasons and figured they had died out or had been mowed down.  Today we found quite a few!

They're small berries and we probably won't get to harvest them this year.  I figure the birds or some other critters will take care of them.  I need to learn what to do to help them thrive for future seasons.  I love a good blackberry cobbler...especially the ones Mom makes!

I just LOVE wildflowers!  We came upon several patches of a couple of different kinds.  Later on in the summer there will be tons of black-eyed Susans!  

Have a great week!