Schools Out for the Summer

Landon's first year of school ended last week with a bang. There was spirit day, kindergarten picnic with awards, and a year end party. Since, I have been so uninvolved as a classroom parent this year, I volunteered to help with the year end gifts. This past Christmas, I saw the cutest gift that was made for neighbors, teachers, friends, etc, so I decided to copy for the year end school gift.

First gather the following:

Then, buy gift certificates for ice cream and make up a poem. ( I am embarrassed to say this took me a long time to come up with)

Make balls out of the shredded paper like so...

Then place on top of the ice cream cone like this...

Place in a cellophane bag, tie with a ribbon and attach the gift certificate and poem

Landon thought it was "cool" (no pun intended) and said his friends "liked them a lot. " Thanks to Mountain Brook Creamery for giving me such a great deal on the gift certificates! I believe we will make a stop for ice cream tomorrow. Happy Summer everyone!

These are Days You'll Rememeber

Oh my, last night my "big" little brothers, Bo & Rett, graduated from high school!!!!

And, YES, they are twins!! It's so crazy to think of them done with high school and moving out on their own in a matter of a few weeks!! My poor Landon is not going to know what hit him next fall when "the boys" are no longer a 10 minute drive away...poor bubba! Landon wasn't able to go the ceremony because of baseball, but I kid you not, the first thing he asked me when I got home "so, how was it?" I replied that it was pretty good and he replied "Boy, I sure wish I could have been there!" He meant it with all his heart too. However, Lucy did go and watched from her seat like a good girl!

They were seated alphabetically, so Bo and Rett sat together. As with every graduation program, we were all asked to "please save your applause until the end" however we couldn't resist. My sisters and I yelled "Thats my brother" when Rett's name was called, and after Rett came Bo, so we yelled "That's my brother too!" Unfortunately, their were faced away from us and I could not see their reaction (I am sure they loved it!)

Did I mention they are the youngest of six?! Perhaps my parents have some extra celebrating to do, two high school graduations and an empy nest after 40+ years!!!???

Anyhow, I know they are so excited to be done with that chapter and moving on to the next and I am so excited for them.

Congratulations Bo and Rett! And remember,

"If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold,

you gotta know the password...

ROLL TIDE ROLL!" -Bear Bryant

Shrimp n Grits

My in laws recently asked for a shrimp and grits recipe that I have. I cannot remember where the recipe came from, but it is very easy and oh so good! Since I was typing it up, I thought I would share with all.





1 cup of stone ground grits
chicken broth - optional
salt and pepper to taste
cayenne pepper to taste- optional
1/4 c butter
2 c shredded sharp cheddar cheese (I prefer white vermont cheddar...yum!)
1 lb shrimp, peeled and devined
bacon (as much or as little as you like)
4 tsp lemon juice
1 c scallions or green onion
clove garlic minced



Prepare bacon in oven on 425 for 15-20 min or until brown and crispy...make sure to save the grease!

Prepare grits according to package instructions. I opt to use part water/part chicken broth. Once prepared, add butter, cheese, salt, and pepper and stir until melted, cover until later.

Add bacon grease to pan and heat on medium for 3-5 minutes until HOT. Add shrimp and cook until shrimp turns pink...about 3 minutes. Add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, scallions, and garlic and remove from heat.



Add shrimp mixture to grits, stir, and garnish with crumbled bacon.



Serve this with a salad and it becomes an easy weekday meal or fancy it up to your liking...enjoy!

Mama Mia

I am over a week late blogging, but have so much stored up and finally have a little while to catch up. So, here is a recap of last weekend, Mothers Day. I was given the best gift ever...

No, its not mine, but I was given a day off that I spent at my friends lakehouse doing this...

and reading that, along with Amber, a labradoodle...isn't she the cutest dog?!

My sweet friend, Suzanne, invited me to go along with her to her mom's lake house at Smith Lake. We had the best time doing absolutely nothing and loving every minute of it! (By the way, The Shack was a great read, and although I wouldn't necessarily call it life changing, it will definately get you thinking.) Anyhow, I enjoyed an uniterrupted nights sleep and went home to my sweet kiddos...

(Can you believe I didn't get one picture of me and my kids the entire day...pitiful, I know!)

That afternoon, we headed over to my parents. My mom's 60th birthday happened to fall on Mother's Day this year so we had some extra celebrating to do!

All the mama's (minus one, our oldest sister couldn't make it.)

I hope everyone enjoyed a fabulous Mother's Day and Mimi, I hope you enjoyed a great 60th birthday. I cannot wait to go to the beach and celebrate even more!!

Soul Kitchen

Our home inspection is scheduled for tomorrow. So, as we get closer and closer to owning the home, I get more excited and inspired by the day. The first thing I want to tackle is the kitchen. I went to Lowes yesterday to peak around and became very overwhelmed with all the information given to me. Redoing a kitchen is a HUGE task. I came home afterwards and looked at all my magazine cutouts of kitchens that I love, and I am renewed, inspired and once again excited to get it going. Here are the kitchens that inspire me. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! And, PLEASE, pass on any tips for kitchen makeovers if you have any!

I absolutely LOVE this, especially all the windows...I won't be able to get away with this in my kitchen, but I can dream!

I love these windows too and they are much more realistic for my kitchen. I definately will do the bamboo/sea grass shades as shown.

I really love everything about this, especially the faucet. Is that marble brick on the backsplash???


I really want a basin sink like this one. Two would be awesome but I don't have the room. I would pair it with the faucet from the picture before.

I am on the hunt for barstools that look like this...if you find any, let me know!

That backsplash would work great and would work even better with my budget!

Love this light fixture, but not sure if I will use it...at least in my kitchen...any thoughts??

I want my oven in the corner, like this one, only to the left of the sink. That design is supposed to free up a alot of space, which I always need more of!

Not exactly sure what it is I love about this kitchen...it seems perfectly modern and elegant.

Now that you have seen my inspiration(s), I will give you one guess as to what color will dominate my kitchen!? :)

Beautiful Boy

After a rough week, we enjoyed a wonderful weekend, especially Landon. He was the first to get sick, the first to feel better and then was cooped up in the house while the rest of us recovered. But, by Saturday, we were all well and went to We Love Homewood Day at the park. Landon had a blast!

One Week

What a week it has been!! For those of you wondering what happened to me this week, (OK, mainly my mom and sisters) I don't even know where to begin. Ash and I both left to go out of town last Friday on separate trips, so Landon stayed with my parents and Lucy came with me. Landon became sick Friday evening complaining of a sore throat and being tired. When I called Saturday to check on him, Mom said he was fine and was riding a bike with his cousin. It turns out, he was learning to ride a bike without training wheels (see the post below to see why I even mentioned that) Anyhow, when I returned home, Sunday afternoon, Landon was again complaining of a sore throat.

So, I called first thing Monday to make an appointment for later that afternoon. Sure enough Landon had strep and would have to miss another day of school. In addition to strep, the doctor also thought he had scabies aka mites...gross I know! The next morning (Tuesday) we woke up and I noticed Lucy felt hot, but I just figured she was hot from the heavy blanket she was sleeping with. We spent the day watching morning cartoons and having an indoor picnic and then remembered that we were scheduled to bring snacks to Landon's baseball game that night. At that point, Landon had been on antibiotics for 24 hours and was no longer contagious. So, we raced to the grocery to get enough snacks and drinks for the team, stopped by the house to put the drinks on ice, and I noticed again that Lucy was really hot. So, I took her temperature and she was burning up with a temp of 102.8. I called the doctor on the way to the ballgame with snacks in hand. Our pediatrician told us to come in first thing in the morning and to give Lucy Tylenol in the meantime. We also had the fun task of applying Landon's scabies lotion than night. This was Tuesday.

We woke up the next morning (Wednesday), got Landon off to school and called to make Lucy's appointment. Around noon, Lucy and I head to the pediatricians. They immediately did a strep test and it came back negative. (By the way, it is very uncommon for babies to get strep) They then decided to get a blood and urine sample. So they pricked my babies’ finger to get the blood and then had to use a catheter to collect a urine sample...poor Lucy! The urine sample ruled out a UTI and the blood sample came back with a white blood cell count that was "alarmingly" high. At that point, I was panicked. They then needed another blood sample from the arm. Lucy is a chunk so that proved to be a challenge. In fact, the nurse spent a good minute trying to get the needle in a vein. Lucy was hysterical at that point and threw up everywhere! I was then told that I will need to go to Children's to get the blood drawn for a blood culture. So, off we went to Children's. Lucy got the blood drawn from her little arm (on the first try) and we were told to return to the doctor’s office for a shot of antibiotics. So, back to the doctor’s office we went for a shot in her leg. We were told to make an appointment for the following day and then we were told go home. This was all on Wednesday.

Thursday rolled around and I woke up with a sore throat. Off to the doctor I went to find out I had strep...no joke! I not only woke up to a sore throat but news that the swine flu was in Birmingham! I am completely paranoid at that point that Lucy had swine flu. We went back to the pediatrician’s office that afternoon to check Lucy's blood again and to get another shot of antibiotics. Her white blood count was till very high, however it did drop slightly. I insisted on getting a flu test for her which turned out to be negative (at least I will be able to sleep that night!) However, she still had a fever near 104 and we still didn't know what was wrong with her. We were told to come back the next day to check her blood once again and to get the results from her blood culture.

Friday morning arrived and Lucy's fever had finally broken! That had to be good news. We went to the pediatricians around 3 and got the news that her cultures all came back negative and since she looks better and is no longer running a fever, it was ruled that she had some sort of virus, but NOT swine flu! So, the week ended with good news all around. We woke up this morning (Saturday) and Landon feels great, I am feeling better (and no longer contagious) and Lucy appears back to her sweet baby self! Oh yeah, and in between all of this we bought our first house this week! All's well that ends well! Sorry, for the novel above, but that is the shortest version I could come up with. Here’s to a much healthier and more enjoyable weekend!