WOW!!

Ok, so that was such a fun couple of days! I feel so recharged! This is actually the first time that I have been to the Galleria, or the Wynfrey, and they were both so great. Long ago a friend had wanted us to book a room in the hotel, and spend a weekend shopping, but then I got engaged. Needless to say after that the idea died.

We had some great speakers. One, Jenny Nolen, gave a couple of classes; one on dealing with negativity, and one on dealing with stress. I also went to one on different legal issues, which was actually very good. We had a luncheon yesterday and the speaker there was John Croyle. John and his wife started a boys' ranch years ago. They have raised over 1700 children! Can you imagine!! He spoke on raising and loving children.

I was also able to get some Christmas shopping done... yea! We went to the Cheesecake Factory to eat Tuesday night. YUMMY! I love that place.

I came home to find Barry sick and in the bed. Kyle has also been a bit under the weather. Hopefully no one else will get sick, although Kayti was complaining of her throat hurting this morning.

 Well, it's now time to figure out something for dinner... my least favorite time of the day. I've got to get better about doing my menues again.

A professional first

Tomorrow I am going to my very first professional conference. The CLAS Secretaries and Bookkeepers Conference in Birmingham, to be exact. Sharon, the bookkeeper at school, and I are going down together. Oh, and did I mention that the conference is being held at the Winfrey Hotel at the Galleria??!! It's almost like we are getting an all expenses paid shopping trip!! Except, of course, we aren't getting spending money to shop! We will be attending classes tomorrow afternoon and Wed. morning, which I am looking forward to. By the time that we got our registration in, the Winfrey was full, but we did manage to get a reservation at the Courtyard by Marriott just down the road.

I do want to tell Barry how thankful I am to him for rearranging his schedule to be home with the kids on Wednesday morning, and just taking care of them in general while I am gone. Honey, you're the best!!

Now, if I can just talk him into letting me take the laptop with me so I can stay "connected" to everyone!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to take a quick minute to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I am so grateful to have each and every one of you in my life!

A little early Christmas cheer

The kids and I headed up to Fayetteville this past weekend. Every year on the second weekend in November, Fayetteville hosts its annual "Host of Christmas Past". It is just a fun weekend of shopping, music, craft fairs, free movies, snow for the little ones to play in, yummy food, Santa and more. We have been going for several years now, and we always have a really good time. Most of you know that my sister is a professional chocolatier and has her own business in Fayetteville (visit her website: http://www.kristischocolatecafe.com/). She had the shop decorated up for Christmas, and I had to snap a few pictures.


She made these amazing Christmas scenes this year that almost look too good to eat!


(And yes... they are both all made of chocolate!)

I worked at the shop on Saturday. It was fun, but I think that I am getting too old to be on my feet all day! Kayti and Josh had friends come up and they spent most of the day hanging out with them. Megan spent the night on Friday night with her cousin and spend most of Saturday playing with her. Kyle was my hero of the weekend, however, and stayed home with Grandma to help watch Kristi's kids. They came into town in the late afternoon, so when it got a little quiet at the shop I took them walking around the square. By the time we got out it was dark, and all of the food vendors had packed up and left, but it was fun looking at the Christmas lights.


The kids are now getting all excited for Christmas and to decorate. We always put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving, and they are so excited that Thanksgiving comes earlier this year. I have to admit that I am excited, too, until I walk into Wal-Mart and see how many more shopping days are left until Christmas. I guess that I had better get busy!

Fall has fallen, finally!

I guess that it is about time. It has been such a long, hot and dry summer, and it is so nice that the temps have finally fallen a bit. I guess I also needed the time change to really make it feel like it is Fall. One of my favorite things to do in the Fall is to go look at the leaves, and I was really afraid that we would not have many pretty ones this year considering the drought. I was pleasantly surprised, though, and the leaves have been just beautiful. I went out this weekend and took some pictures of them, fearing that if I waited too long they would all be gone. We are supposed to get our first freeze tonight, and that may be the end of a lot of them. I thought that I would go ahead and post some pics and that way we can all enjoy them a lot longer!

The fat lady sang today

Well, it was not a kind day to our beloved Ghosts. They lost both games today, and ended their undefeated season. The long of the short of it is that they just didn't really show up to play, and the other teams did. Truthfully I was very sad for them, but I'm a bit relieved as well. Now the kids don't have to feel so stressed, and neither do I! It was a hard day for Kyle... he was scored on several times, and even though he knows that each goal was not his fault, he still takes it very personally. Megan was really sad as well. She thinks that she wants to try her hand at another sport, possibly softball, next year.

After the last game we headed over to Dublin Park to get medals and pins. The team also got a trophy, which the coach will keep. I was able to snap a quick shot of Megan and Kyle with the trophy. I'm sure proud of both of them. They have had a great season, and have really played their hearts out. I told Kyle that considering that he didn't even want to play this year, ending 4th in the Area out of 150+ teams was not bad!

Today's games, or shoot-out central!

I am probably starting to sound like a broken record here, but soccer right now seems to be taking over our lives! We had another excruciating day on the soccer field, enduring two nail-biters. We played a team from Monrovia this morning, and we ended up tied, 3-3. We should have won that game, but it was not to be. Our second game today was against a Hazel Green team. We had to be there 30 -45 minutes early to get the team signed in and warmed up. As soon as we got there, our coach came over to tell us that in order to advance in the tournament, we had to have a shut-out. And if that happened, we then had to have a shoot-out with the team we tied earlier today. Kyle was not too happy to hear that. In fact, the more everyone talked about it, the more nervous he got. I thought I was going to cry for him. I pulled him aside, and just told him that he needed to say a silent prayer and ask Heavenly Father to help him play his best, and to be calm about it. Thankfully his team stepped up to the plate to help him out, and he didn't even touch the ball the whole game! We won 7-0! I was so relieved for him. I won't bore you with the details of the shoot-out, but we did win it, 2-0. A few of the boys from Hazel Green hung around to watch the shoot-out, and they were standing in awe... I don't think they had ever seen one before. One of the boys called it a shoot-off! This is the 3rd one we have had in the past week. We face another Madison team in the morning... the one we played last Saturday and had our first shoot-out against. We jokingly told the coach that we should just skip the game and go straight to the shoot-out!

So, here is how it stands.... we play at 10:00 tomorrow morning, and win or lose we play again at 2:00. If we win, we play for the Area Championship. If we lose, we play for 3rd/4th. I believe the top 2 teams go to the State Tournament, which will be played in Athens in 2 weeks. I'm not sure if my heart can take much more of this!

As a side note, something cool did happen at the first game today. Kyle was given a "Good Sport" pin by the refs. I have never actually seen one of these given before, and Kyle said that they didn't really explain to him why it was given. They gave it to him after the game when the team went up to shake the refs' hands. I'm proud of him for getting it, but I sure would like to know more about it! Here is a picture of it (he put it on the ribbon of his Regional Champ medal):

Game update

I know that most if not all of you will be helping with the move tomorrow, but I just wanted to let you know that Kyle and Megan have 2 games tomorrow. The first one is at 9:15 and the 2nd one is 2:45. The kids will play both games on Palmer Middle.

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun night last night. The kids all looked so cute... I mean creepy! We are off tonight to a soccer team party, and a football banquet. I just wanted to post a few quick pics of the kiddos.