Photo A Day

So, I'm finishing up  April's Photo A Day. Here it goes...

Vegetable - One of the turnips I bought at the farmer's marker.

Something I'm grateful for - Ethan taking the STAAR Test.

Looking Down - Proof I do go to the gym.

Black & White - Flower along our driveway.

Somewhere I went - Dad's birthday party.

1pm - Time to vacuum :(

Circle - Sweet mother of all that is holy, Blue Bell Ice Cream is best ice cream! And it's made here in Texas.

Something that makes me sad - that's my scale there piled underneath our sink. As you can see, I don't use it often.

Hope everyone had a great Monday & I hope you have a fabulous rest of the week!

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Friday was my work friend Arielle's birthday. A bunch of us took her out for lunch. Here she is with a 5 pound gummy bear some girls gave her. She loves gummy bears.

Of course, I made her cookies.

Remember the cookies I made for a girl at work who was resigning? Well, she has decided to stay. She still ate my goodbye cookies. Anyway, I'm thrilled she's staying. Here is the beautiful Lorena. She keeps me laughing all the time.

Friday night we went over to my parent's house for my dad's birthday party.

My handsome Daddy.

Of course, I made him cookies too. Chocolate chunk macadamia nut.

My beautiful mom. She said she's posing the way I always do, hand on hip and head tilted.

My beautiful Aunt Bobbie Jean.

My grandmother Dolly and her husband Ray.

Some of the food.

Ice Cream Cake.

My boys.

Little Miss Sassy Pants drinking her soda.

Ethan signing Happy Birthday to his PawPaw.

My mom totally surprised me. My birthday isn't until next week, but she wanted to give me my present early.  I was so excited I think I squealed.

Cookie cutters, cupcake liners and baking pans.

My mom gets it. She totally gets it. She knows what I love to do was so sweet to plan these gifts. She totally spoke in my love language.

We had church today, lunch, naps, grocery shopping and now, it's time to hit the sack. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Thankful Thursday

Thank you to everyone who said a prayer for Ethan this week. He took the state mandated STAAR test on Tuesday and Wednesday. One of his teachers email us and told us that he was much more focused on Tuesday than Wednesday. She said on Wednesday he couldn't hardly sit still in his seat. I know that's because we took him off of his current ADHD meds because he was developing tics. Once off of that particular med, his tics went away. So, now he needs a non-stimulant that will work on the ADHD but not give him tics. Yeesh!!!

Anyway, this week I'm thankful for several things.

#1. There's this restaurant in the town we live in and we discovered that on Tuesday's kids eat free. On top of that, if you get there for the early bird special, you get buy one entree, get the second half off! Yes!

This is a nice, sit down restaurant, not fast food. All four of us walked out of there for $14 bucks. Sweet!!

Bad phone pic!

Emily loves her some corndogs!

#2. This Wednesday was Administrative Professionals Day. And my boss totally remembered!!! He brought me flowers and gave me a really sweet card. It was so nice to be remembered!

My flowers!

#3.  We will be celebrating my sweet daddy's 59th birthday tomorrow. I'm so blessed to have a wonderful Christian father who has been a significant Christian influence on me and my family. Happy Birthday, Daddy!

My Dad & Max

I say this all the time, but I don't think my words can express it enough! I am so blessed! Thank you sweet Jesus for being with my family and I this week. And thank you that I am able to have my dad with me and that we're able to celebrate another year of his life!

Good Luck, Ethan!!!

Today is a big day for my stinkbug!!

Today he takes the 3rd grade Texas STAAR Test. Actually, he will be taking it for the next two days. This is the mandatory statewide test.

Today math. Tomorrow reading.

 Went to bed at 8pm. Snacks & water bottle packed. Had a good healthy breakfast.

You'll do great Ethan.

I'm not worried. God has given me peace. I pray God will be with Ethan today as he sits down to take this test.

I'm grateful that Ethan is able to take this test. His teachers have been preparing him for this. Also, he will get some good help while taking this test because of his ACC.  He's pretty much awesome!

Good luck, Ethan! We love you!!

Photo A Day

OK. I think I'll jump on the bandwagon.

I've read a couple of  blogs who do the Photo A Day Challenge. Looks like fun. Let's see how far I'll go with it before I get lazy and just stop. I didn't start this until the 16th, so here it goes...

Flower - Emily picks me flowers all the time.

Something you don't like - that would be sweeping and mopping. I loathe this job.

Hair - Emily's crazy up do before jumping in the tub.

Orange - My highlighter.

Something I drew.

Bottle - Our medicine basket sitting in my kitchen with my vitamins, Ethan's meds and our allergy meds.

The last thing I bought - Mark got two new suits yesterday.

We also had a banana bread bake-off at work. I won!!!! Me and two other ladies baked some banana bread and we had 5 judges taste them. 4 out of 5 judges picked mine! I was totally excited. The other ladies were telling what their secret ingredient was. One said buttermilk and the other said whole wheat flower and nutmeg. They looked at me and I was like, I have no secret ingredient. Straight forward banana bread, baby!!

So I'm including my award winning recipe below. So fun to say that! Enjoy!

 Award Winning Banana Bread 


4 Large Ripe Bananas
3/4 c. White Sugar
1 Egg
1/3 c. Melted Butter
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Mash bananas; add sugar and slightly beaten egg, then melted butter. Add baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. Lastly add walnuts.

Pour into well greased large bread pan or two smaller bread pans. Bake 375 for 1 hour or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Thankful Thursday

I'm thankful today for many things.

I'm thankful for these boxes.

Our water heater had a slow leak and for about a week we had to take very quick showers if we didn't want to bathe in ice cold water.

The hub not only replaced the water heater, but he bought a new lawn mower. I'm thankful for the money to replace the two big items and for a hubby who replaced the water heater and then went and mowed the lawn.

I'm thankful for a little boy who is still willing to help his daddy with the yard.

I'm thankful that I was able to give birth to a healthy little girl, who now loves to climb, tumble and flip.

I'm so grateful for my family. I have been very blessed.

Every Thursday I'm going to try and post what I'm thankful for that week. Hope you enjoy.

Garage Sales, Memory Rambling, McDonalds, Cookies and Just Plain Weirded Out!!

On Saturday morning, I decided I was going to get up early and hit some garage sales in town.

First of all, I planned on getting out of the house early, but by the time I got up, showered got dressed, the kids were up and wanting stuff from me (feed me, clothe me, blah, blah, blah)!

So I didn't really get out of the house till almost 10am. You have to get out earlier than that if you want to get the good stuff from yard sales, but it wasn't to be. The only thing I did find, after about the 4th house was one of these.

I got a slap chop for $2. The only prize I found. Oh well.
While on my quest for garage sales, I happen to drive by our old house, where my families land is (where I grew up) and saw my dad out mowing by my grandma's old house. Emily and I stopped by and chatted awhile.

Emily had fun running around, picking flowers and chasing butterflies.

My dad.

Tree with beautiful orange flowers.

Emily picked me one of the orange flowers.

I have such great memories growing up there. We lived on the same land as my grandma. I loved playing at her house and watching her wash clothes on an old fashioned washing machine in which she used a hand cranked  ringer to ring clothes from the wash, only to hang them up on a clothes line. I watched her make pies from scratch and can jars of veggies and make jellies and work, work, work! I loved playing outside and running around in the pasture with my cousins who also lived on the same land as us. Good memories.

After striking out of the garage sale scene, I called home to see what the boys were doing. Mark said that Ethan was invited by one of his friends and their family to a car show. He had lots of fun, by the way.

So, Emily and I went to the local Farmers Market, where the only thing I bought were some turnips for $1.
Then we went to McDonalds for a while.

After McDonalds, we went grocery shopping and then went to Sonic to pick up some lunch for Daddy.

Waiting for by babe's chili cheese dog.

I came home and made some awesome cookies.

Homemade Nutter Butter cookies. These are officially the bomb.com. Seriously. So good. Recipe here.

I also made some more sugar cookies. A girl at work is resigning, so I made her some cookies also.

Lastly, after church today I went back to the grocery store to get Emily some allergy medicine. As I was walking down an aisle, I came across this couple standing at the end of the aisle. She looked like she was in her late 30's and the man looked to be mid 40's-ish. The lady was holding a little girl about 2 or 3. And I got closer, the man goes over to the lady and they start kissing. Not just a peck, but KISSING! And they keep kissing and then it's just plain making out! It was like a car wreck, I wanted to look away but couldn't! Finally, by the time I got up to them they came up for air, thank goodness, but by then I was grossed out.

I love my husband I definitely kiss him on the lips in public, but just a simple kiss. A peck. I'm not 16 anymore and want to show the world what I can do. A simple kiss. That's it! Making out amongst the toilet paper isn't my bag! Is it just me, or is that just plain weird?