Christmas Holiday and the past 3 weeks

Since I last posted, quite a few things have happened. J had his 1st basketball game and they beat Berclair Baptist.

J scored 4 points but only 2 were for his team. He scored the other basket for the opposing team after halftime when he forgot to change goals. We had a great laugh about that one!
After his game, he went to his dad's and me, mom, sissy and Marcia had our annual mother/daughter Christmas get together. Instead of doing brunch this time, we went to a movie and dinner. I can't even remember the name of the movie now but it was a real cute romantic comedy and then we grabbed dinner and a few bottles of wine at Bonefish. It was a lot of fun, especially since Marcia kept her fat mouth closed. I don't want to go into it too much but the night before, she has crossed a line w/me that she cannot come back from. Dillon got caught selling weed and she threw my name out to the deputies trying to help him out. Pissed does not even describe how I feel. I'm sick of her being such a selfish bitch and am through with her. Anyways, I let her have it Friday night and Saturday she kept her mouth closed because she doesn't want Mom to find out. Little does she know, she knows but whatever. After dinner, I drove mom home and then went over to Sissy's and had some more wine and talked about everything that had happened.

The next weekend (Dec. 11-12) was our annual Cowboys game trip with the Mays and Feathers. We left Memphis Saturday, the game was Sunday night and headed back to Memphis Monday morning. The weather was great when we got to Dallas but temps started dropping quickly. I had been sick before we left and K got a hit of it while we were in Dallas. It was Mel and Chuck's first visit to the stadium and they were not disappointed. We stayed in Arlington and hung out in Arlington. Saturday night we went to the Fox and Hound and Boomer Jack's. Saturday we went to brunch at Black Finn and did some shopping at the Arlington Highlands. We "tailgated" at the hotel before the game because it was so cold. the Cowboys played the Eagles and lost by 3. First game K and I have been to where they lost. It stunk but we still had a really good time.

The next Friday (December 17) J got out of school at 11:30 for Christmas break and we headed north to visit Dad. We drove to Springfield and stopped for the night. We went to the huge Bass Pro and let J do some shopping. He had saved some money for the trip and I gave him an early Christmas present, a gift certificate for Bass Pro. He had a blast! We wound up staying there about 3 1/2 hours but that included stopping to eat dinner at Hemmingway's too.

We stayed the night and got up Saturday morning to head to Kansas City. We stopped at the Osceola Cheese Factory on our way.

I have always wanted to stop there but when you are driving straight through the KC/Memphis journey, I don't take kindly to pit stops and extending the 8 hour drive but since we were only driving 3, it was the perfect time to stop and I'm glad we did. They have the best cheese in about 100 different flavors. I bought $40 worth of cheese and hot sauces. I will be stopping again for sure even if I am driving straight through. We got to Dad's around lunch and visited for a bit. Later on that afternoon, me, J, dad and Dee met Shelly,Todd, Libby and Will at the bowling alley and bowled a few rounds. It took dad a good game and a half to bowl halfway decent!

When we finished, we were pretty hungry so we headed over to Mensky's Pizza for dinner and a magician show. It started snowing while we were at dinner, which obviously made me very uneasy but it was gone when we woke up Sunday morning! J and I met Shelly, Todd and the kids at their church. After church, we grabbed dad and Dee and went skating. 

J rocked the limbo just like I use to and almost won! 

After skating, we went out to Cabella's to do a little more Christmas shopping and let J see the place.

Later on that evening, everyone came over to Dad and Dee's, including Brian, Mindy and Chris for dinner and to watch football. J and I hit the road Monday morning and came back to Memphis. That Tuesday night was Christmas at mom's with me, J, K, mom, Roy and Aunt Opal and then J, K and I did part of our Christmas when we got home. K got me one of the best presents ever! I am the proud owner of a Kindle now and it is the best :) Wednesday, J went to his dad's and Thursday, K and I left for Louisiana. We hung out at his parents when we got in, Ryan and Mallory came over for dinner with us. Christmas eve was a beautiful day. I got up early and got 4 miles in before the eating frenzy started. K and I did some last minute shopping that afternoon and picked up a bunch of boudin to bring home to the freezer. Christmas eve night was spent at Aunt Jerry and Uncle Sonny's. Christmas morning was cold and rainy and all around pretty yucky. I wanted to get out for another run but the weather wouldn't permit. K and I went over to Ms. Jan and Prescott's for a little bit. I got to meet 2 of her daughters but Christy didn't get to come because Frank was in the hospital with gallbladder problems. That afternoon, we all went over to Aunt Cathy and Uncle Charlie's. We ate and ate and ate and ate and watched football. K and I got up and left Sunday morning to come home. We never got to see Anna Claire or Mary Katherine because MK had the flu. We got back to Memphis and K packed his hunting stuff and headed to the camp to meet Ryan and a friend of his that came up with him to hunt for the week. I picked up J and we hung out while he played with all his presents he got from Louisiana and his new .20 gauge shotgun. Yesterday, I had to work for a couple of hours so J came to work with me. We had lunch at Kooky Canuck's, went to visit the Peabody ducks, went to the movies to see Gulliver's Travels and then had a long bowling competition on the Wii....and I never one any of the games. J went back to his dad's this morning when I went to work.

CTK Christmas Program

Last night, K and I took J to his school Christmas program. He had a speaking part in it and nailed it. The program was pretty short and painless. The star of Bethlehem was the highlight of the show....at least as far as K and I were concerned. She was in a gold star outfit and was suppose to stand with her arms out to her sides the whole program and the poor little thing couldn't do it. We had the best time watching her trying to wiggle and hold up like she was suppose to, she did everything in the world up on that stage except stand like she was suppose to. Jackson, Wyatt and both of their sisters also had speaking parts. After the program, we ran be Pei Wei to pick up dinner and headed home to watch Lebron head back to Cleveland and get booed by his old town. K did laundry and packed for his hunting weekend.

Crack candy, tree decoration, early Christmas gift and a decision on the marathon

Someone got an early Christmas present.

How cute is Taco meat??

Monday was Tom's memorial service. K picked J up from school for me so I could go. We had planned on getting our tree when I was through with the service but it was raining and freezing cold so it was a no go. J was disappointed but I lifted his spirits a little by making deer tacos. Tuesday was suppose to be bowling night for J but Jimmy had a basketball game so he went with me to the Tashie's. Marcy cooked us dinner and she and I had a marathon crack candy making session while the kids played. They hadn't seen each other in forever and had a lot of fun.

Marcy and Sophia breaking up the crack!
I'm not sure what has me in such the Christmas mood but I was really in the mood to have some kind of tree up in the house, so when we got home from the Tashie's, I put up the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I had bought earlier that day.

"I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love."
The rain finally cleared up Wednesday so we were finally able to go get our tree. We went to the Christmas tree lot across from the K Rogers (where we went last year) and one of the teachers/baseball coaches, Coach Vanamon, that was at White Station when I was there was running the lot. We did a lot of catching up, he is still coaching but at Cordova High now. He was very interested in J. Said he could tell he was a ball player and was going to be huge. Called him being a pitcher without us telling him. I originally thought we would just get the tree home and decorate another night because I had planned on cooking a pot of tomato cream sauce and pasta but once we had the tree, I wanted it decorated, so we ordered pizza and got to work.

Amazingly only one ornament was broken this year, but that was probably because I let the guys do more of the decorating than I did. Last year, I easily broke 8 or 9.... oops! We finished up and then enjoyed dinner by tree light.

K and I made a decision on the St. Jude marathon and the decision is to not participate. It is suppose to be a great hunting weekend, the temperatures are going to be subfreezing at race time and J's first basketball game is at the same time so our decision was kinda made for us. We're toying around with the idea of signing up for the Nashville half so we will have a reason to keep training. I went ahead and picked up my race packet and t-shirt today after my sushi lunch with Amber even though I'm not running. The shirt is cute but the 5k shirt was a lot cuter, it was green!

Thanksgiving

I've really gotten behind on here. 2 weekends and Thanksgiving to catch up on. Ok, well when I left off it was a Friday afternoon and K had left to go hunting. J had basketball practice and then we had to get a new battery for my car.

Love the sweet guys at Autozone! :) After we got that taken care of, we stopped by Heather's to see her. Her mom had died and I wanted to visit with her for a bit. Saturday morning, J went to his dad's and I headed to Pickwick with the pups to meet K.

Mom and Roy were up there too. When K was through hunting, he came to the lakehouse and we watched some football and then headed over to Jon's Pier for dinner. He got up early Sunday and went hunting again and I took a nice long walk and enjoyed the fall colors.

I headed back to Memphis that afternoon and K came home to. We went to Swanky's for dinner and football. Monday morning wasn't too bad since it was going to be a short week. After work, I had dinner with J at Mom and Roy's and hung out with them for a bit. Tuesday was bowling night. I made some pastalaya for K and I and J got to stay late at bowling since there was no school on Wednesday. Jackson came home with him from the bowling alley and we went to the zoo Wednesday to ice skate with Angie D. and her boys and Mel and Drew.

The Christmas decorations were up and they looked great.

After a little more than an hour skating, we enjoyed some time with the animals.

After the zoo, we took Jackson home and headed back to our house to do some cooking for Thanksgiving.

I made an ooey gooey butter cake for the first time and it was fantastic. We got up Thursday morning and went to church with Mom, Roy and Sissy before heading to Mom's for Thanksgiving lunch. We had a good load of people (Mom, Roy, J, K, me, Sissy, John, Tay, Marcia, Jordan, Dillon, Kris, Brian, Carter and Cayson) and a ton of food. The day was going great and we were having so much fun but as we were finishing eating, Bennie called John to tell him that Tom had died. What a horrible thing for their family to lose him on such a special holiday :( That pretty much put a damper on everything. Everyone packed up and headed out. I stayed and helped mom clean up and then watched the Cowboys game with her, Roy and J. K headed out to the hunting camp. J and I made it home later on, despite the heavy thunderstorms and hunkered down for the night with a movie and more ooey gooey butter cake. We got up Friday and did some things around the house, headed to the barrel for some breakfast and then headed to the lake. We met K at the Pickwick Catfish Farm for dinner and then went to bed pretty early. The guys got up and went hunting Saturday morning, I got things straightened up and headed back to Memphis. Aimee invited me over to her parents to watch the LSU game.

We had a ton of fun even though we lost. Her family was great and there were a lot of people there. After the game, we headed over to Heather's who was having people over since Keith Hooper was in town. I made it home way late but got to sleep in Sunday :) I got up and did some Christmas shopping while I waited on the guys to get home from hunting. We napped and then grabbed some dinner at Carraba's before going to bed early to catch up on our beauty sleep and get ready for a full week of work and school.

Mike Bartlett

This week was a rough one for my little angel. Mike Bartlett was found dead in his bed by Jan Sunday morning. Jacob and the rest of the world loved that man dearly. We went to Mom's Monday night for dinner with her, Roy and Aunt Opal. Opal has been on some medication and seems to be a lot better. Tuesday night, we hung at the house with K. I made dinner and we watched some basketball. J had to miss bowling for a disrespect incident in class Monday. Wednesday night was Mike's visitation and yesterday was his funeral. The weather was cold and dreary....like it always is for a funeral, it seems like. After the funeral, J and I grabbed a late lunch at Fattie Mattie's and then headed home for a long nap. J's basketball pictures were last night and then we came home and watched the Alabama football game. We were both a little down in the dumps so it was nice to be low key. Today, I took a long walk around downtown to blow off some steam and ready to go home now.

LSU Homecoming

Damn! We had such a great weekend :)))) We left straight for Baton Rouge after picking J up from school Friday. We made great time and got to the hotel after making a stop for fan gear (J actually wanted a jersey) by 9ish. We had a great hotel suite right next to campus. It had a little kitchen, living room and bedroom and was perfect for the weekend. We were able to make the room meeting headquarters and were able to forget things at our leisure because it was so easy to get back to the room from where we were tailgating. The hotel is brand new and I don't think many people know about it yet. We probably need to go ahead and reserve rooms now for next year. Here is the link for the Staybridge Suites: Baton Rouge Hotel Suite
Anyways, after we got settled in our little apartment, Ryan stopped by. We had a few drinks and some dinner that I brought from Memphis. Saturday morning, we got up and were ready to roll! I grabbed a quick workout and K and J went to breakfast while we waited on Dale and Betty to get to Baton Rouge. They made it around lunchtime and we headed to the tailgating spot. Ryan made it shortly after that. We took J for a tour around part of the campus. We went to the new baseball stadium.

And then we went to the football stadium and to Mike's cage to try to catch a glimpse of him but he must have been snoozing because we didn't catch him.

We stopped by the fan shop and J got some more LSU gear and then headed back to the tailgating spot to throw the football and eat and eat and drink and eat some more.

We had boudin, cracklins, wild hog smoked sausage and jambalaya pasta (pastalaya!) We headed to the stadium a little over an hour before game time to let J watch the players practice.

The game was a blowout (51 LSU - 0 UL Monroe)!

We had a lot of fun and J was able to get a spot right next to the tunnel at the end of the game. He sought it out to high five the players after the game and wound up getting one of the players wristband that he wore during the game.

That kid was so excited by that, it was awesome to see how excited he was. After the game we went back to the hotel and caught up with the rest of the days football happenings and had a few drinks. Sunday morning, we got up and hit the Bass Pro in Baton Rouge. It is so much better than the one here. The guys spent about and hour and a half looking around and probably could have stayed for hours more. I ran to the restaurant they had and ordered us some to go food for lunch and once it was ready, I had an excuse to make them leave. I ordered some alligator meat with my lunch and J got to try it for the first time....he was quite the fan and ate more of it than I did. We got home around 6:00 and chilled the rest of the night. Leslie, Laurel and Josh stayed at the house while we were gone, they were in town for a wedding and Les left me some great "Thank you" goodies...Stockpiled me with toilet paper, shampoo, shower gel and an awesome new insulated cup.

Today has been a cold and dreary day so I grabbed some Pho and spring rolls for lunch and am waiting on quitting time now!

Soups and exercise and work holidays and LSU preparation

Mom didn't feel like cooking Monday night so her and Roy took J and I to Longhorn's steakhouse for dinner. It was the first time I had been and was really good. I took my lunch break Tuesday and picked up things for dinner and went on a 3 miler.

I worked out that morning but the weather was so perfect, especially for a November afternoon that I couldn't pass up the chance to get out and enjoy it. J went bowling Tuesday night and I made a huge pot of Cajun corn and crab chowder with a salad.

I was suppose to take Mel out for drinks for her birthday after work Wednesday but Drew was sick with stomach problems and they had to take him to the ER. I was glad not to be going out after a pretty frustrating day at work. K grilled out some of our favorite smoked sausage and we made Po Boys, had a few beers and caught up on some of our TV that we missed last week. Thursday was Veterans Day and I stayed home from work to get some things done before we head out of town for the weekend. I slept in late and then went for a ride.

It felt great...it had been forever since I had been on my bike. I ran some errands and picked J up from school. I spent the rest of the night cooking for this weekend's tailgating festivities. I made a pot of Taco soup, some Cajun meatloaves for sammies, cupcakes and guacamole but by the looks of it, it looks like K and the pups were the ones hard at work!

 I'm so ready for Baton Rouge!! Just a few more hours :)

Last day in Ft. Lauderdale and home to a perfect and relaxing weekend

Friday morning, we had 3 more hours of training and then were through at 11:30am. Our flight wasn't until 4:30 so Oscar and I headed over to Bimini so I could have one last dose of fresh seafood before leaving.

The day was beautiful, very, very windy but beautiful, so we sat outside. I had the blackened grouper with brocolini and mac and cheese. It was delicious, just like everything else I had there. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare so I picked up a new book to get into.

I got into it pretty good waiting to get back to Memphis and it's a pretty good read so far. I made it back to Memphis around 6:00pm and K and I decided to go up to Houston's for dinner and some drinks. We were both in some sort of wild mood and decided to drink Woodford. We almost forgot to eat but we finally got around to it. I had the Hawaiian ribeye and he had the prime rib.....it wasn't fresh seafood but it was awesome. We slept in late Saturday morning and then spent the whole day watching college football. It was an exciting football day! LSU was able to pull out a win over Alabama with some crazy plays. Later that night, K and I met Marcy and JJ for dinner at Flemings. I got up Sunday morning and did 10 miles.

I really didn't want to do it but after waking up yesterday and weighing myself and seeing that I have lost 10 pounds and the fact that I didn't do a training run/walk last weekend, I had a lot of motivation. I took the greenline to Shelby Farms and it was a beautiful morning.

I relaxed the rest of the day, watched some football, read some of my book and prepared a brisket for K to smoke. I picked up my little man that evening and was so happy to see his cute little face, it had been 5 days since I'd seen him and it was time for me to have some J time. K finished smoking the brisket, I made some potato salad, baked beans and cheddar muffins and we had a wonderful dinner....

...except for what we were watching on TV. The Cowboys game was on (v. Green Bay) and we got to see their SEVENTH loss of the season. So pathetic. They are the worst team of the franchise's history I do believe. I woke up this morning and did an easy ellip session since my legs were totally worn out from yesterday's 10 miles. I got to work to a ton of catch up to do, which is still not close to being done but I had to take a break. Oh yeah AND Wade Phillips got fired today! Granted, I am not crazy enough to think this will solve the Cowboys' problems but it is a start.