Thoughtful Thursday

Would you rather:
1. Drink dirty water from a flower vase?
or
2. Eat a cup of the stuff scraped off the hamburger grill at a fast food restaurant?

So.....

Grey and I almost died today. Really.
I sat in silence for about 5 minutes afterwards thanking the Lord that it wasn't our time yet.

We were driving on a back road where the speed limit was 55. We got to a narrow part with double lines when about 100 yards from us, a white mini van coming towards us decided to try and pass the car in front of them. They came over and proceeded to flash their lights at us as if we were in the wrong. Grey started screaming and had to immediately slam on brakes. The bad part was that we were on a bridged area so we couldn't swerve to the edge of the road. We literally almost had a head on collision. I can't even tell you how close that van came. The van barely got around the other car and we just sat there stunned. It was super scary but thank the Lord we are alright.

Things I didn't know seven days ago

1. This is what happens when a really bad storm goes through Moore, SC.


2. This is what stuffed jalapeno peppers look like. Grey claims that they were really spicy...but what did he expect? :)


3. The kittens know their places - I was making our bed a couple of days ago and I found them like this - Franky Lynn (A girl) on my side of the bed and Oliver (a boy) on Grey's side. :)


4. Scalloping is the coolest thing ever - You go out into 2-3 feet of water and float/swim around looking for scallops. Once you see one in the water, you bend down to pick up the slimy thing amidst star fish, crabs, and weird looking creatures. I caught 5 and of those 5, I only actually picked up 3. Grey and Grace came over to pick up the other ones for me. :) I know I'm a wimp. Grey and Grace probably caught close to 75 others so we had a good dinner that night. At one point, I bent down to pick one up and accidently dropped it. Dropping it in the water caused it to start swimming and when it did, it ran into my leg causing me to scream and frantically get away from that spot. Yes, I'm a wimp.




5. God creates some HUGE grasshoppers. Huge. Huge. Huge.




6. Inspiration for our newest artwork around the house comes from Jessie! I didn't know that it would take me almost 2 weeks to complete this. AH!


7. Birds that nest in the fireplace ARE capable of flying into the house and causing complete chaos.

8. Curly fries can be longer than 3-4 inches.


9. And...God never ceases to amaze me with his beauty!




That was beach trip round 1 - Round 2 and 3 are coming up!

Life Lessons

This is how you're supposed to do it...jump into an inner tube while folding yourself in half and going in through the middle



And....this is the incorrect way to do it. This is Grey attempting to copy the oh so flexible gymnast

Garden Update

This week:
(The white stuff you see is bug repellent)
Wild Blackberries


Strawberries


Squash


Zucchini


WATERMELON!!!!! :)


Picked today (The white things are onions. We only picked two today but we've picked a whole basket prior to this)


Finally...here's a blurry picture of the hail we got from a storm this late afternoon. Click on it to see it better if you need!

Only Dad

Happy Father's Day to the world's best daddy!

*Only MY dad would dance with me to Soulja boy at my wedding (if you don't believe me, go look at the videos on my facebook page...Thanks Sammi for taping it!!!)

*Only MY dad would take me fishing and play catch with me in the yard growing up

*Only MY dad would perfect the fish fry cocktail sauce and refuse to give the recipe out :)

*Only MY dad would tickle you until you peed in your pants unless you yelled out the magic word, SQUIRREL!!!!!

*Only MY dad would spend 3-4 days helping me set up my classroom so I wasn't overwhelmed when school started

*Only MY dad would love me unconditionally regardless of how big a pain in the tush I can be.

Thanks for being my daddy dad! I love you so much! Happy Father's Day!

-B

Things I swear I didn't know seven days ago

Apparently Kristi and I are in a blogging war. It goes like this:
Kristi did a "Things I didn't know 7 days ago" post and I copied her. Now she's done it again as shown in THIS post.

So soul sister...bring it on.

Here we go - Round 2.

1. Grey can spend a full 7 hours in front of the tv playing a dorky video game that I won't release the name of JUST so you won't judge him. Trust me, I have. It's a dirty road to go down and I won't let you do it. :)

2. Homemade chocolate chip pancakes are not enough to keep Jon and Meredyth at our house in the morning. When I say homemade, I mean homemade. Forget the box pancake mix! They boogied out before I could have a chance to even make them.

3. The so be it "squash" plants are now growing zucchini. I guess they tricked us alright!

4. WE HAVE A WATERMELON! It's about the size of a nickel and I'm guarding it with my life.

5. I have an obsession with painting things. That's all I'm saying about that.

6. I now really love the Pioneer Woman. She is one of my heroes. I'm reading one of her books and it's fabulous!

7. Brownie Waffles (the recipe is the hyperlink) are to die for, especially with cookie dough ice cream and homemade whipped cream. Make them - do it or you'll regret it.

8. Trish (my car) has been rattling for some time now. We finally took her to the doctor and they decided that it's something with the power steering. Yay. There goes our savings!

9. I had quite the traumatic experience at the OBGYN this week. That's all I'm saying about that.

10. I gained three pounds in half a day. :)

That's all! Happy weekend!
-B

A normal summer day

I've been working on crafts to decorate the house with and out of the following words (not in any particular order), can you guess which one I spelled wrong?

Marriage
Compromise
Isn't
About

Got it?

Have you thought about it?

Really?

Ready?

Ok- I misspelled ISN'T! Boo me. I spelled it Is'nt and then tried to convince Grey that he was wrong. Not only did I misspell it, but I had painted that word on a canvas board...so...back to the very beginning. I had to paint over it (which I had already done about 3 times) and start over. Grrr me.

Also, I thought you'd like to know that I went grocery shopping with a two year old today. Ole Grey lagged behind during the whole trip in walmart and asked me (more like begged me) if he could have a big bouncy ball and a sandbox in our house.

I tell ya, life is never dull with him around! :)

Things I didn't know seven days ago:

Ok - yeah, ya got me. I was inspired by this lovely post

CLICK HERE!
Except mine isn't going to be nearly as impressive/creative/hilarious as Kristi's. She's just that good. :)

1. One of my good friends Meredith got married this past Saturday and she was one of the most gorgeous brides I've ever seen. That isn't the part that I didn't know...I always knew she was a looker, but the part that stood out to me was this: She and James make me sick. There, I said it and I'm purely saying it with a sense of humor, so don't shoot me. :)
Seriously, to be that in love was amazing. It was so evident that they loved each other that it was absolutely precious. During their ceremony they kept whispering to each other and giggling...I loved it. Love, love, loved it.

2. Grey can clean up REAL good :)


3. Dancing in 3 inch heels does yucky stuff to apparently only one out of your ten toes which leads me to this new discovery: I must really dance awkwardly. If any of you are aware of this, please save me the embarrasement and just keep it to yourselves. Thank you.


4. (Please ignore the wretchedness of this picture). This is what happens during a tickle fight between husbands and wives and by "this," I mean, SOMEONE GETS WHACKED IN THE EYEBALL WITH SOMEONE ELSE'S HEAD.
Please note the blue-ish shiner appearing under my left eye.


That is all, thank you.
Beck-ster

Traumatic Moments :)

Our kitchen became the home of the "Cut Out Cookie Disaster" today.

I tried a new recipe from one of Kristi's good friends called Brownie Roll Out Cookies. They were ABSOLUTELY fabulous! I had a tad bit of trouble with the icing though. I couldn't get the consistency right to where the icing would just sit there when I frosted them. It was way too runny even after adding about 1 1/2 cups more powdered sugar. So I decided to just dump the bag of sugar into the frosting. What came out was frosting that was REALLY thick to the point where I decided just to take a whisk and fling the frosting over the cookies to decorate them. Can you hear my mother gasping yet? :)

So, this is what became of those cookies.




Here's a little intermission between the cookies and the garden. Did you know that our cats have camouflage?


Ok - on to the garden. Our pepper plants are OUT OF CONTROL! (I love it though!)




Our tomatoes are growing! The first plant is a cherry tomato plant that has yet to give us any tomatoes, but it's growing really well. The second is a better boy tomato plant.




Since we're in the middle of summer, I thought you'd like to compare and contrast
My herbs:


Mom's herbs:


Apparently I don't have a green thumb when growing things like basil, thyme, and rosemary. Go MOM! :)

And last but not least, we had a traumatic moment about 2 months ago when Grey ran over my newly purchased daisies. After about 8 weeks of love and devotion, one of them is finally blooming. Hallelujah.


-B

It's a big one!

This week marks the official "First Week of Summer Vacation!"

Yay.

Friday was my last day at school. We ended up staying until about noon (playing card games) until report cards were printed and then we packed up and went home. It was kind of sad knowing that it's going to be two months before I step into that building again. On the other hand, it's sad knowing that I only have TWO MONTHS before I step into that building again. Let's take a vote on how many years I actually end up teaching... :)

Saturday, we threw Susan a couple's shower. It was a little disappointing at first. We invited 10-15 couples other than Susan and Will and it turned out that only one other couple could make it. Mom and I had spent lots of time making food for 30 people so of course, we were kind of bummed. However, it turned out to be completely perfect. It was much more relaxing with the six of us and we were really just able to talk about life, marriage, and expectations. Of course, we are still eating leftovers even after giving Susan and Will, Jessie and Bailey, and mom food to take with them. I'm about sick of cake balls and chicken salad. EK!

Sunday, Grey and I drove down to Charleston for one of my college friend's wedding. It was amazingly beautiful. It was outside at the country club located by a river and of course, Meena looked just stunning! We ended up hanging out at Kiawah Sunday evening into Monday afternoon. It was a wonderful little vacation for us!

Below are random pictures from the weekend...completely out of order. I'm feeling lazy right now. :)

Yesterday, some of us went to a Greenville Drive game

Bird.

Cucumbers!

Us at the beach.

Squash

I figured out what those little egg sacs were...click closer if you're curious!

My reading material for the trip down to Charleston (Thanks MOM!)

Peace.

-B

Oops

I stand corrected. Please look back at the last post where I told you all that we had a zucchini. My momma came over today to help with a shower and announced with all her green thumb glory that the green log was not a zucchini but a......


wait for it.....


cucumber!


SO! It turns out that I will NOT be cooking homemade sauteed squash and zucchini with basil and feta but instead, making a tomato, cucumber, and feta salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing!

My bad.

Be on the lookout - this was a busy weekend! Friday was my last day of school, Saturday I threw my buddy a shower, and tomorrow, we're heading into Charleston for a wedding! :) A "I cook better than I kiss" blog post is coming!

Jalapenos!

I HAVE JALAPENOS!!!!! (You can see two)


AND LIKE 5 BANANA peppers!


And Tomatoes!


AND!!!!! Zucchini!!! :)



I feel like a garden momma! :)

Last week in class, my geometry and precal classes worked on designing their own board games to review the material. I assigned each of them a unit and they had to create their questions based on that unit. On Friday, they got to go around and play each others board games for their last review. When they were done, they all voted on their favorite and the winning group got an extra ten points on the project grade. It turned out to be a WONDERFUL project and the kids absolutely loved playing all the games!
This was the winning game for first block. The kids designed it after Candy Land. Look closer at the game board pieces...do you recognize anyone? (blue shirt and pink skirt....THAT'S ME!)




Some other games:




Today, I made mom's famous chicken pot pie and put little mice (no significance) on top :)


And finally, when I came home yesterday, Grey had spent all day cleaning the house! He put a bunch of stuff away, did a load of laundry, folded it, and put it away, and cleaned the kitchen. When I got home today, he had cleaned both bathrooms AND he bought me these. :)
Aren't I the luckiest gal ever? Love ya buddy :)


Happy Wednesday!
-B