Fall Mantel Party

Today I found a neat Autumn link party over at The Lettered Cottage. Today Layla is having a fall mantel party where you show yours all decked out for the season. Thursday they are having a fall door decor link up so I know I will be back to check those out. Here is my mantel all dressed for fall. Everything is the same as last year's except for the cute metallic pumpkins I added this year. I found these at Wal-Mart last week for $1 each. I bought a few more crows this year and I love how they look with the pumpkins and fall garland.

I plan on catching up on my new fall magazines and getting some new ideas for our home. I love this time of year!!!

New Restaurant!

We're always excited to try a new restaurant and we have three new ones opening in town right now.  We visited one tonight called Eat At Joe's.  It's in a new building that houses McKenzie's new dance studio which is behind No Way Jose and O'Reilly Auto Parts.  Here's the menu.  The pics aren't that great so I hope you can read it.

 Betty got the grilled chicken with baked beans and potato salad.  Her favorite was the homemade potato salad.

 McKenzie got the BBQ Nachos.  She wasn't a big fan of their BBQ sauce but she said it was good.  She still likes Tacky Shack's BBQ Nachos better.

 Matt went with his old stand-by - chicken strips and fries.  I got a bite of his strips and they were pretty good.  I may get that next time.

My choice was the "Big Joe Burger" and seasoned fries.  It was a little greasy but it all tasted good.  I got a little taste of everybody's and I think I'd have to grade them:  Grilled Chicken- A, Chicken Strips- B, Burger- B, BBQ Nachos- C. 

The food was good and the service was good for an opening night.  Everyone there was very nice.  Even the owner's son, who looked to be about 10, greeted us and asked us if we were doing alright and then wished us a good evening when we left.  I think he was a little sweet on McKenzie, too. 

Pizzazz!

Saturday at the Downtown Jubilee was McKenzie's first public performance with her school's show choir, Pizzazz.  They did a great job!  McKenzie loves doing stuff like this and you could tell she was having a great time!  Here are a few pictures of the performance.

Decorating with Fall Family Photos/Mums

I am linking up with The Inspired Room's Fall Nesting Party 2011. She is encouraging us to put out a few things that remind us of fall. Since it is not actually fall yet, I think this is good to do in that gets us excited about what the season holds. I usually don't decorate for fall until end of September but I did put out a few things that I really love. I love family photos especially holiday ones. Since its time to say goodbye to summer, I took a few of the frames in my kitchen and replaced the current pictures with ones from our trip to the pumpkin patch in Hernando last October. This is my cute find from Big Lots a few weekends ago. It is a chalkboard frame and I got it for $6! Love it! I plan on changing out the pictures often and even letting the kids write the caption they want on it.

One of my favorite pumpkins on the entry hall chest...

Mums are my favorite this time of year and I always can't wait to get those summer flowers out and replace with the mums. It already makes the porch look better and ready for the new season. I kept the accent plants like the ivy and potato vine because they look great for fall. On into October the mums will quit blooming and I will replace with pansies and kale for the winter. This is the view from my front door. The mums look nice with my sunflower door decoration. I also spruced up the deck a little because this is the first thing you see as you come up to our back door.

Can't wait till October to decorate for halloween. Check out these cute things I found at Michaels. I plan on making something for the mailbox with these so I will show pictures soon of how it turns out.

So hope all of this gets you in the mood for fall. Be sure and check out all the other links to the party...really cute ideas.

Birthday Wishes From Minnesota!

Wednesday is Betty's birthday!  Unfortunately, I am spending her birthday in Bloomington, Minnesota.  What kind of present is that - leaving your wife at home during her birthday week to take care of the house, the kids, and the cat by herself?  I know I will have a lot of make-up work to do when I get home!  I flew out Sunday to go to Bloomington for a training class for work.  Betty's first full day on solo duty included dealing with a sick cat, discovering Matt cut a gap out of the front of his hair (two days before school pictures!), and helping McKenzie through the heaviest homework night of the school year so far.  We've been using video chat to keep in touch, but you just can't use video chat to tag team stuff like that!  Betty, I hope you have a great birthday anyway!  You deserve it!

Before I left on my trip, we went to Batesville looking for stuff the kids needed.  One thing they didn't need but I couldn't resist since it was on sale for $5, was a Spiderman costume for Matt.

He loves Spiderman right now and I knew he'd love this.  He had to put it on immediately and slept in it that night, too!

This has nothing to do with anything, but I had to share......

This is Andy in a Beatles wig Sunday morning!  He sang with some other Beatles impersonators Saturday night at a thing at our church and was showing off his wig before church Sunday.

Now for a few pics from my trip so far.  This first picture is of my rental car.  A young lady from National Car Rental led me and another man to the midsize row for us to pick out a car.  The other man was ahead of me and when we got to our row, he practically sprinted to a nice, generic red car.  I looked around and realized why he was in such a hurry.  All of the rest of the vehicles were different color variations of this.....

That's right......I'm driving a Cube.  I've gotten the strangest looks this week in parking lots and riding down the road.  I think I saw a man laugh at me tonight as I left the hotel to go eat.  Let's move on.....

Monday night I went to the Mall of America, which is the largest mall in the country.  It's amazing and I only got through about half of it.  I plan on going back a time or two before I leave.  Here are a few pics.

 This is an autographed picture of the Boston Red Sox after their 2007 World Series Championship.  Only $3,000!!!

 This is the three story American Doll store.  McKenzie would love this store.

 This is a Dora the Explorer Ferris Wheel in the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park which is in the middle of the mall.  They have this, a roller coaster, a log ride, and several other games and stuff in there.

This is a Super Target.  Not only am I missing Betty's birthday this week, but I'm spending the week in the birthplace of Betty's favorite store - Target.  The first Target store opened in this area in 1962.  I did make a trip to this Super Target for Betty.  I called her while I was in there so she could tell me what to get.  I was amazed how she could tell me where to go and where stuff would be.  It was like she could see inside the store and she'd never been to that one!  I guess if I couldn't spend Betty's birthday with her, spending it with Target is the next best thing.

Happy Birthday Betty!!!!!!!!

Kindergarten Open House

Tonight was open house for the lower elementary.  Matt was very excited about showing us his class and his school.  As soon as we got there Matt took out leading the way.  He was ten feet ahead of us walking down the hall like he owned the place!  We enjoyed seeing Matt's class and hearing him tell us about what he does every day. 

Here Matt was showing us the behavior chart.

This is Chip Charger, the class mascot.  He does a little dance and makes horse sounds!

Here's Matt with his teacher, Mrs. Granholm.  We thought Chip Charger was turned off, but right before I snapped this picture he moved his head toward Matt.  Freaky........

 Matt doing what he'd love to be able to do during class!

This is outside the "Li-berry".  He was quite disappointed that it was locked and he couldn't show it to us.

Matt is loving Kindergarten and we had a blast getting the grand tour from him!

My First Pizzazz Performance!!!

Today was the best day ever!!! My Pizzazz group performed all day out in the community. It was so much fun! It was also fun to miss my classes all day, too! We left on the bus at 8:30 and got back to the school around 2:00. We started out at the Courthouse and  City Hall and that is where my mom and my Mimi came to see me and took these pictures. We also went to several nursing homes, All Saints House, hospital, the cancer clinic, Dr. Braswell's office and Central Office. We took our lunch break at Subway, then it was off to sing and dance again. Can't wait to do it again next month!!!!!

Labor Day Weekend

Well, Nana said she was tired of reading about the wedding, so I thought I would update about our fun weekend! We decided a few weeks ago that we would take the kids on a fun Labor Day weekend to Memphis. We thought that after a very long month of starting school and getting used to new routine that a little fun was in order. We have been counting the days to our long weekend. It's always nice to have something to look forward to. On a sad note though, I was in one of my favorite stores and just happened to look down at my rings and my diamond in my engagement ring was gone! Ugh! We are hoping our insurance will help out with this one. I really believe it is in the hotel pool. We were swimming and a string off of Matt's shirt got hung on it because I remember pulling the string off the ring. I am thinking it loosened a couple of the brackets causing it to fall out. Oh well, that is my luck!
We left Saturday morning and arrived just in time to go downtown to The Arcade to eat lunch.

After lunch I went to TJMaxx and David took the kids to Toys-R-Us or as Matt called it Toys-and-Us. So cute! We just kept letting him say it. David was Mr. Softy in there and bought them each a toy. But after the past few weeks they deserve it! After checking in, we went straight to the pool and it was nice to be the only people in it!  Next it was time for an early supper. We were starving so we headed to Side Porch. After we stuffed ourselves, I enjoyed a little time in Hobby Lobby by myself! I am really thankful for David when we go shopping because he always takes the kids so I can have fun!  He  is computer shopping so we went to Best Buy to check out the laptops. I had to take this one of McKenzie and Matt. They are so serious. They probably know more about it than me! Ha!

Barnes and Noble was our next stop. We all love this place! Matt got to play trains, McKenzie read books, and I got to check out some new fall magazines and I think David almost fell asleep over by the trains.
The next morning we decided to go to IHOP for breakfast.

The boys went back to hang out at the hotel while McKenzie and I went to Home Depot to check out the mums. I ended up buying two, so can't wait to get those planted this week. Lastly, we decided to go to the mall before heading home.

The weather started getting bad because of the tropical storm moving in so we were glad to get home especially after seeing an 18 wheeler overturned on the side of the road. It really was a great, relaxing weekend and this note that McKenzie wrote summed it up best. I had to get a picture of it. Sweet!

On a different note its time to get our house ready for fall. Sunflowers are perfect for this time of year. I bought one big sunflower and picked out three different ribbons and had the Flower Co. here in town put it together for me. Dollar Tree got in another shipment of black birds, so I thought one would be cute hot glued on a branch. This will be great for September, then I will put all of my Halloween stuff out in October. Can't wait to show you the cute jack-o-lantern and black cat that I found at Michael's. I plan on putting it on our mailbox.

I hate our Labor Day is over and the kids go back to school and David back to work. It's back to normal tomorrow. It is homecoming week, so we look forward to going to the game Friday night. McKenzie also starts dance at her new school, Charisma Dance Co this week and she is looking forward to singing with Pizzazz! all day Wednesday out in the community. Hope to have some pictures up soon from the week.