East Texas: Reunions, Yamboree & Birthdays

This past week we made the LONG drive from the Panhandle to East Texas. We left Wednesday after work and dropped my great aunt off at her daughter's house in Paris. And Clint and Rachel were sweet enough to let us stay the night with them. We got in sometime after 11 p.m. and stayed up visiting until 2 a.m. Baby Nolan wasn't feeling well when we got in, but Thursday before we left he was nice and cuddly.

The only pretty fall colors I saw while we where in East Texas happened to be on one of Clint & Rachel's trees...

Thursday after Dr. Clint had a look at our teeth we headed to Gilmer. We hung around until Jerrye and Kenneth got home from work and then we drove to White Oak to get Marty's deer from the taxidermist and meet Stephen. He'll be really upset I don't have a picture of his deer mount to put on here.

Friday morning I want to take Jerrye to a local winery to celebrate her birthday. It was so neat...tucked down this little oil road lined with trailer houses opens up to this beautiful 40 acre winery.

Here's the view of the deck where we had lunch. They had two bird dogs that just lounged around wherever they felt fit. I wish I had snapped a picture of them. It was SO relaxing!





We tasted their "Sweet Wine" list. The only one I didn't like was the one Jerrye loved.

Friday night was Marty's 10 year class reunion. Although I was apprehensive in the beginning we had a great time!

Here's Marty & Tron. Tron and Marty played football together and were fishing buddies in high school. Latisha was in charge of the reunion and she wanted a picture with M because she said she had a crush on him in "grade school".

I took lots more pictures, but I won't post them all on here.

Saturday morning we headed to the parade and got to see lots of friends. I just hate it that these weekends don't last longer because they go by too fast!

After YUMMY corn dogs, lemonade and sweet potato fries I tried to get a few pictures before we all dispersed and went our separate ways.

Clay, Marty & Clint

Jaymie & Marty

me & my beautiful nieces before the barn dance

I think they found Uncle Marty quite amusing...oh and that's last year's deer in the background. I did have a picture, just not of it by itself.

Justin, Marty, Adam and Wes at the barn dance

Robin & Me...she always looks so stylish...we actually went in this year to hear Johnny Lee (from Urban Cowboy) sing "Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places". He was SO good!

Marty & Kenneth before we left Sunday morning...

My Mom...50 & fabulous!!!

So, for the past six months I've been planning a birthday bash for my mom's 50th birthday. It wasn't a suprise party because she had to help me with the guest list, but she didn't know any of the details so there were still elements of suprise I guess you could say. I decided our theme colors would be all different shades of purple with hints of blue. I ordered invitations and included a note asking for old pictures and for guests to send me back written notes to Mom to include in her scrapbook. I am not a scrapbooker to say the least, but one of the girls I work with sells Creative Memories and another is a scrapbooking guru so I was in good shape. I felt like I was planning a mini-wedding, but it was SO much fun! My mom is the most deserving person I know so I wanted everything to be perfect.

The location of her party was the same place we had my bridal luncheon. It's this great little tea room and the food is A-MAZING!



Here's the view from the front door. I decorated the mantel with old pictures of mom, votives and flowers.

Here's a picture of the table setting. I found these adorable mini tea pot place card holders online. And the wonderful florist did the flowers for my wedding as well.

Here's the first page of Mom's scrapbook.

Here's when Mom and Grandmom arrived and her seeing the scrapbook for the first time.

Everyone else looking at her scrapbook.

The scrapbook/gift table.

Group Shot...

Mom's table: Aunt Mary, Mom, Grandmom, Lana, Shannon and Tresa.

Mom & Me

This was the dessert Mom chose...Snickers Cream Supreme. It was to die for...

This is me reading some of the "roasts". I couldn't hold it together for my little speech and I definately had a difficult time reading all the sweet things people said about Mom.

Christie was sweet enough to come and take pictures for me so that was one less thing I had to worry about. She is a sweetheart and I am so blessed to get to work with her!

It was an absolutely perfect day! I could never begin to repay my mother for a lifetime worth of love and things that she continually does for me, but this was so much fun. We are so very blessed and as we reflected on the day all we could think about was how fortunate we were to have each other in our lives. I love you, Mom!

Jori & the kittens have arrived...

This past weekend, my dear friend, Jori, whom I met at Kadesh at ACU when we were still in high school came to visit. She has been in North Carolina for the last few years and now she's looking at going to work with refugees in China.

She didn't get in until late Friday night so we slept in late Saturday and I fixed breakfast, then we stopped by the barn to see Marty before he took Gus for a little spin.

We headed to the walking bridge and then took Honey to the river. She had a ball.

Before we went to eat...

We had a little suprise Saturday morning. Cowboy woke me up around 4:30 a.m. and I set up the pop-up kennel for her and put her in the laundry room. When Marty got up she had had two kittens and another one would come a bit later. They are SO cute!

Here's Marty holding the tabby one.

Cowboy had three kittens in all. One looks exactly like her, bobbed tail and all. Then there is a solid tabby with a tail and then a second tabby that's got both some yellow and gray markings and it's a bobbed tail as well.

Sunday after church we headed to Mom and Dad's to do a little outdoor "playing".

Here's my two favorite cowboys...

Lily down at Dad's office...

Jori doin' a little four wheelin'

OKC & The Oklahoma State Fair

I went to OKC a few weekends ago to celebrate my friend, Becky's, birthday. We spent Saturday at the Oklahoma State Fair. She has most of the pictures on her camera so I'll have to get those from her later. We ate fair food, shopped a little, rode a few rides and even got henna tattoos.

Here we are watching the lumberjack competition which included saw contests and the log rolling competition.

Becky with her "jug o' rootbeer".

Sunday morning we got up EARLY in order to go to early services at LifeChurch. The lesson was great and we grabbed a little Panera before Becky had to be at work. I headed to Norman to meet up with my cousin, Cade, who plays basketball for OU. I only got a couple of pictures and they were TERRIBLE of me, so I'm not posting them, but he was a sweetheart. We ate at BJ's and then ran to the mall for a bit.

Marty stayed in Canadian and went dove hunting and to a cookout with some guy friends. Of course, he didn't take any pictures.

Have a blessed day!

A Little Bit of Life...

It's been awhile since my last post, but it seems like we've had something going every weekend. Not all of it has been documented, but we've still had a lot of fun.

My parents spent a week in Colorado mid-September. Dad and Bruce were hunting and Mom and Lana relaxed at the cabin. Marty & kept Lily and spent the weekend at the ranch to sort of "keep an eye" on things.

This was Marty's first year to get to go on the wildlife survey of the ranch via helicopter. I think he really enjoyed it, but what he was most excited about was all the elk and deer sheds he saw from the air. So we spent the majority of a Saturday "shed hunting". We were successful, but it was HOT and HUMID.

Here's three of my favorites in one picture. The dogs LOVED getting out and running around.

You can't really see honey, but she's to the left of Marty.

Gotta love the panhandle.

I had my heads in the clouds for a lot of the time...Marty covers a lot of ground and I hung back looking for arrowheads and taking my sweet time.

Marty was trying to get a good picture of Honey & me playing in the creek, but it was super windy if you can't tell by my hair.

Picture perfect Mack.

My mom came and stayed the night with us the night before she and Lana left for Colorado. I couldn't find Lily one afternoon while Mom was gone and this is how I found her in our extra bedroom. She was missing her mama!