Boys of Fall

Since the 1st of August, football has pretty much consumed our world. We could count on it every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday with a Sunday thrown in every now and then.  Its a good thing that Landon likes loves it, because I'm not sure I could tolerate it otherwise.  Don't get me wrong I am a girl who happens to love football herself, but its been quite a time constraint and overall sacrafice for this family.  But Lan Man does love it so I bite my tongue, put a smile on my face and act the happy soccer football mom part...sort of...kind of... but not really!  ha!  :)  Did you catch all that!?!?And for all of you out there with more than one child playing at a time...how in the world to you do it!?!



Ok, so really this is a post about Lan Man so I'll get back to it.  Football practice started at the beginning of August when it was HOT outside and it was still bright as day when practice ended at 8pm!




Those boys grueled, tackled, grunted, sweated (is that a word??) and practiced day after day and practiced play after play in anticipation of that weeks game.  They worked so hard and were ready to play and win.













The football gods had another plan and that would involve them losing all but one game.  But they sure did work hard and have fun, which is really what its all about at this age.

{I'm going to warn you right hear, I'm about to brag on my boy, so if that gets on your nerves or makes you want to roll your eyes, you may want to stop reading now.  :) }  Landon is quite the stud on the football field.  He played safety, linebacker, and left guard on a regular basis.  But when needed, he stepped in as running back, tight end, center, and a position on the kick off team that I dont know the name of.  He played every game, nearly the whole game, coming out once maybe twice for a quick water break.  That boy gave it his all every single second he was out there and made some awesome plays - tackles, interceptions, fumble recovery etc




And he knows so much about that game  now, that I need him around when I watch games on tv.  I'm now watching and asking him what happened or what a flag was for and he fills me in!  ha  :)  Although, the season ended 1-7, Landon had so much fun playing and is sad that his season is over this year.  I love that sports lovin boy so much and love watching him play, grow and improving year after year.  Go Rebels and go #23!

So now we have a 2 week break until his next sport starts....basketball!!  And in the meantime, I'll keep explaining to him why we can't actually go to the Bama/LSU game...omg those tickets are going for $500+ a ticket...say what!?!?  We will be tailgating on the quad and maybe luck out with a pair of tickets (yeah right)!  Roll Tide!!!

Tuesday Rambings {and a recipe}

Well this blog post is exactly as its titles, just some random ramblings and pictures.  The weather here has been absolutely beautiful and we have tried to enjoy it as much as possible.  Lately, we have really enjoyed going to the parks and Lucy has aptly named each park.  Let's see in out rotation we have the pink park, Mickey Mouse park, green park, Pressy's park, and Railroad Park or as Lucy pronounces it Wailwode Pawk.  Its not one I take the girls by myself too often, but its our favorite park to go to as a family.












There are huge grassy lawns for Lan Man and Ash to throw around a frisbee or football.  There are numerouse tracks to stroll the girls, a playground, a workout gym thingy that the kids just like to crawl on, a playground and a huge covered area for a picnic with a little restaurant.  There are also a bunch of food van vendors (what is the real name for those???) that may or may not be there.  All in all its a great clean and green urban park that we really enjoy.







Again, I tried using my camera on manuel, but I could not get the settings right.  It could be that I was facing the sun in almost every picture and things were just to bright.  So far, taking pictures of rocks is the easiest!  ha!  :)  They didn't turned out to bad but there are a lot of shadows...thank goodness I think my kids are so cute that nothing can make there pictures too bad.

Lil Bit is a mess here lately.  She is into everything and is starting to climb.  Yesterday she had climbed up on the fireplace hearth and was sitting in the fireplace.  I freaked before realizing nothing could have happened, (the gas is turned off from the outside) so I wasn't able to snap a picture.  It was pretty funny to see a baby sitting inside a fireplace.  But I guess I better nip that in the bud quick before we start using the fireplace again.  Speaking off, a cold front is coming through tonight and we wil be getting some real cold fall weather the next few days.  I'm so ready because I just got a new pair of boots that I can't wait to wear.  Okay, I warned you this was a rambling type post...sorry!



With Lil Bit becoming her own little personality, she and Lucy have realized they have best friends in each other.  They are really cute to watch play.  Lucy is quite bossy of course, but Lynlee can quickly have enough and stand up for herself.  Here is another random picture of Lucy helping me fold clothes...notice all her piles.  :)



And finally, I have a recipe to share.  I made it last night and it was oh so good (and a hit with all the kids too!)  Its
Buffalo Chicken Pasta.  First get all your ingredients together...



Plus chicken.  (Depsite my best efforts, I can't make raw meat look good, so I'll just opt not to post pictures of it)

Put your chicken, cream of chicken soup and equal amount of buffalo sauce in your crockpot on low sometime in the morning, then go about your day.

When your ready for dinner, cook your penne according to directions.  Meanwhile, shred chicken in crockpot with a fork, add about 1 cup of sour cream, 1/2 cup of chunky blue cheese dressing, and about 1 cup of mozeralla cheese to your crockpot.  (Honestly, I didn't measure any of the ingredients, so its all approximate, add as much or as little as you want...I really don't think you can mess it up:))  When your noodles are done, drain and add to crockpot and stir all together.  And thats it, your ready to serve. 



Serve with a blue cheese salad kit and a loaf of french bread for a complete meal.   The girls gobbled it up...










Some notes:  Since my kids won't eat anything to spicy, I choose extra mild buffalo sauce and used just enough to get a flavor.  Ash and I later added more to our plates for an extra kick.  And to make it as healthy as possible, use low sodium cream of chicken, low fat sour creme, low fat blue cheese dressing, and whole wheat penne pasta.   And to make things even easier, I have also been using these...



But am wondering how safe or toxic free they are...seems kinda not right for plastic to be touching a hot surface for long periods of time while your food cooks in it...hmmmm.  But it sure made cleaning up easy!  :)  Have a wonderful day!

"Fall"ing in Love

I got a new camera and I am in love!  Actually, I got this camera back in the spring.  And it was still amazing then...


 But recently, I have learned a few tricks of the trade, such as aperature and shutter speed and it has slowly begun to open up my world and make for some amazing pictures.  Believe it or not, I have sat down quite a few times to blog but realized I had no pictures to blog about.  As I am learning what this setting does as opposed to another setting, I take pictures of still life, like a flower or dish.  I would love to have been learning on my children, but we all know they are never still!  Unless their asleep and then its dark and well I can't take pictures in the dark.  ha!  Anyhow, I figured its kinda pointless to be learning and miss funny moments because I'm too busy taking pictures of ummm, rocks.  So, I dialed it back over to automatic and snapped away this weekend.  But I did manage to snap a few on manual and I'll let you guess which ones are which!  :)
So, baby brothers celebrated their 21st birthday this weekend.  There birthday is actually today - HAPPY BIRTHDAY BO & RETT!!  But of course, we kicked it off early and celebrated Friday night with a family dinner at Ruth's Chris.

My family is pretty funny and we always leave from these sorts of get togethers with stomach aches from laughing so hard. (and maybe the delicious food might have something to do with it too :))
The boys are the babies of the family and there are 22 years between them and the oldest sister, so they were quite loved and mothered growing up, which makes them pretty spoiled.  Just kidding... (not really)  :)  After dinner we all I tried to get them to go out on the town but they had no interest and were ready to head back to t-town to party on with their friends.

Saturday, we deemed family day.  The weather was gorgeous!  So while Lynlee (and I) took a morning nap, Ash took the other 2 hiking at Moss Rock.  They came back and picked us up to go to McDonalds.  The most fun McDonald's ever!  The playground was enormous!!

First we ate...


Then we played...

and played...

and played...

Finally, when everyone was worn out (including myself and Ash), we made our way to buy our Halloween pumpkins.  Because everyone was so tired, we really should have waited.  It was chaotic and fussy to say the least, but quite memorable and really kind funny now.

Each child was going to get their own pumpkin with the intentions of carving all of them.  Well, Landon wanted the warty kind of pumpkin.  (Ewww...just looking at those pumpkins makes my head itch!)  As I tried to calmly [insert rolling eyes] explain that type of pumpkin would be very hard to carve and as he very politely [again insert rolling eyes] tried to argue with me, we looked over and saw Lynlee crawling over all the pumpkins as they were rolling off of the pallets.

As I ran to rescue the pumpkins Lynlee, I look over and Lucy is busy organzing all of the teeny tiny miniature pumpkins exclaiming that those were her pumpkins.

Meanwhile, Ash is asking the sweet volunteer how much everything was to make sure we wouldn't go broke buying pumpkins.  Landon is pouting about the warty pumpkin, Lucy keeps telling me the tiny pumpkins were hers and Lynlee is crying because she is ready for a nap.  Ahhhh...fun times!  :)

We left with 9 pumpkins, 3 fussy children, 1 ticked off mommy and 1 husband trying to keep the peace!  Needless to say we all took afternoon naps!  Speaking of, I hear the girls waking up...enjoy whats left of your weekend!