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Chili - The Official Food of Snow Days.

A word of warning to all Yankees reading this post: I live in the South; things are different here.

The boys were sent home from school at noon yesterday even though the snow didn't begin to form in the clouds until 1:38. And by 6:45 p.m. most of the counties in the Atlanta area had called off school for today as well. Now keep in mind that we don't have enough equipment here to clean up the roads like they do in, say, Minnesota. Our average yearly snowfall in this area is 1 inch. Having a bunch of snow plows would be a waste of the taxpayer's money.

I like living here. Snow is exciting. It's not a nuisance.

Here, snow (even just the dusting that we received) gives us all a chance to unwind. Not that we really needed it since we've only been back to school for 2 days. But hey! I'm all for a snow day.

Brian called the patients he had scheduled for the day and told them all to stay home. This wasn't entirely necessary except that I REALLY needed him to go to the store to get a few missing ingredients for the chili I was planning to make for dinner. So much more important! I've been wanting to have our neighbors over for dinner since we moved in here.

Three and a half years ago!

Their boys were over here at our house playing in the snow and so I called Melissa and invited them over for dinner. We had a great time! With Melissa's help I was able to make these cute snowman cupcakes.

Anna woke up this morning so excited to see "SO MUCH SNOW" on the ground! "There's enough to make a snowman!!" Well, not exactly. And it is BITTER, bitterly cold I tell you! I think the temperature was around 15 degrees with a wind chill of one - yes! 1 degree! I don't care who you are: that's cold, folks. Cameron, Landon, Anna and I went out for a little while but there would definitely be no snowman making. Perhaps later we'll try to find something to use to slide down the hill.

I sent everyone in because it was just too cold to play but I stayed outside to take a few more pictures and this flock of geese flew overhead. They are high-tailin' outta here, man!

For now, we're staying inside next to the fire, playing games and drinking coffee.

I'm linking this post from last week up to You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry where the prompt was Winter.

Ketchup

It seems that over the last few weeks I've just been playin' "catch-up" on this here blog. A couple of days ago I was kind of lecturing myself about it too. But today I'm in a better place about the whole thing.

Part of the issue has been that I simply must have absolute quiet in order to think about which words I should use in order to form complete and coherent sentences. And I have had very little uninterrupted quiet lately. Not to mention that the last few weeks have been pretty busy around here and I feel like because I've spent a little less time on the computer or thinking about this here blog that I have not had to play "catch-up" on my everyday kind of things. Is this making a bit of sense? What I mean is: I would rather be behind schedule on the blog than to be behind schedule in life. There. I think that says what I mean.

So, in light of the whole being busy thing, here is a post to get all of you caught up about what's been going on here. If you're interested. Because, believe you me, it isn't terribly interesting. Again, this is another part of the problem because I have this "thing" about the blog being "interesting" and I just need to suck it up and get over it. When I took this job (stay-at-home mommy), I was informed from the get go that it wasn't going to be a glamorous position. You know,... the whole wiping up poo and vomit and laundry and such kind of takes out all the pizzazz. (insert jazz hands!)

Enough rambling...on to the cake!

Brian has demanded requested repeatedly that I make a new dessert for him every Friday. So I finally got around to doing that last week. He was thrilled!

Playdate at Play an Activity Center with one of Anna's little preschool friends. If you haven't been to this place, I highly recommend it. They treat you goooOOOd here!

Look! Their mama was actually there, too! ...
Or is that just their personal photographer?

Before we left that morning I got my shipment from Blue Ribbon Foods.
Wait! I think I hear angels singing... Look at all that glorious food!

And this was our view as we rounded the corner toward home.
I love this view! I think it took me at least 6 months before I started actually watching the road in front of me instead of turning to gaze at the gorgeousness every time we came home. It's a miracle I didn't run over any pets or children at play.

Friday Cuddle Bug's class went on a field trip to Zoo Atlanta. Lots o' fun! Especially since Kristi Walker and I had to keep running off to find one of several of the little monkeys in our group. There was always someone running off ahead or straggling behind.

And I had this little cutie patootie with me!

And, speaking of cutie patooties...

...Cuddle Bug's seventh birthday was today!

These were the cupcakes he requested.

And, by-the-way, Wednesday was my birthday.
So,... Happy Birthday to Me!

And if it hadn't started raining at 6:00 tonight I would have had to herd a bunch of elementary rugrats through an inflatable thing at the kids' school Fall Festival tonight.
Thank you, Lord, for the rain! "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights." - James 1:16

And so ends my post.

The Best Summer Ever

How do you wrap up summer in one post? It seems a little strange to me to be bringing it all to an end when it's only August 4th but school started today for June Bug and Cuddle Bug and Lady Bug will start preschool in 2 weeks so summer break is officially over. It was hard for me to find pictures to add in this post that I haven't already posted in June and July and I realized I missed one or two things that I still want to post about. I have had a lot to write about in the last 2 months because we've been having so much fun around here. So this post is a little bittersweet for me and I'll be referencing and linking up to some of my favorite posts of the summer if you choose to spend the afternoon here on my little blog. Of course, you could always come back later if you are just browsing through the pictures because you've come here from I heart faces blog(I wish I knew how to get the little heart icon in there).

Here we go,....

June Bug turned 8 and Lady Bug turned 4 in June. Here is the pile of wrapping paper from their birthday party.
We introduced a pet into our family as Lady Bug's present.

We celebrated Independence Day with family and friends.

These are Stephanie's tomatoes on July 4th. I'm including these in this post because they look so summery and where else could I include it since they're not even my tomatoes?

We played in a summer storm.

The 3 bigger bugs took swim lessons. Only Lady Bug really got the hang of it. She's quite fearless sometimes. Here is Cuddle Bug with his instructor Francisco.

We took a day trip to Chattanooga on Brian's birthday.

We went to our annual family reunion in Alabama.

We went to a couple concerts and we made and/or ate a lot of ice cream, cupcakes, cookies and barbecue. I'll miss these things the most. I have 13 pounds to lose before my birthday in October. T minus 10 weeks and counting...

Who let the dogs out! Sorry, I couldn't resist.

They're done! My first order of cupcakes. I didn't go looking for a second job but it found me anyhow. Like that guy on Sixes Road that has a sign outside his house,"Will do any kind of work. Call ______ at 123-456-7890." Not looking for a job, just wants someone to come looking for him. Anyhoo...

Here they are. Eleven different breeds. Six different icing colors that all had to be dyed separately (sheesh!), mini-jelly-beans all over the table to search for all the black ones and sticky bits of cut-up marshmallows and Starburst candies all over the kitchen table. These were tough! But most of them turned out very well. My favorite is the pug! He's so cute!

I'll clean up tomorrow. Right now, ... I'm going to bed.

And, no, I didn't come up with these on my own. I'm only good at copying someone else's brilliant ideas. And here's my favorite source: