Heyyy Sarah, I blogged about a bird (:

This Is One Smart Kid!!

Last night was Awards Night at Brianna's school. She's in 10th grade this year and doing fantastic! So wonderfully fantastic that she received two awards last night :)


The teachers choose 1 student from each course to receive an award and Bri's teacher chose her to receive the award for Introduction to BCA. It's a computer class and I can say from first hand experience that Brianna excels on the computer! She even teaches me things and I'd like to think I'm pretty computer savvy. Yep, she's smart. And a good person. And beautiful. And taller than me. She's a lot of good things! except the taller than me part, that's not so good. But the award isn't just for how well she does on a computer, it's also for her attitude and other good stuff! I'll let you hear for yourself:

(please excuse my filming skills LOL I always seem to want to film longwise, but forget that you can't rotate video!! At least I remembered that before the filming stopped this time...we have lots of videos you have to watch sideways!)

She also received an award for her grade point average. The awards aren't just given for keeping your GPA at a certain level for the current year. It's ongoing for your entire high school career. So if her grade point average fell below a certain level she wouldn't be eligible for this award anymore. They gave out awards for GPA's between 3.5 to 3.99 and they gave out awards for over 4.0.

Bri's grade point average.... 4.1429 :)

And Sarah, the BFF, also got an award for 4.0 and above! Here they are after the ceremony:

We couldn't be prouder of them!!

I love Space!

About a year ago we put these shelves up in our pantry.

Before the shelves we were mainly using the cupboards in the

kitchen and 2 small bookcases in the pantry for storage.

Everything used to be stacked on top of every thing else.

It was pretty crowded.

It still is, but much more organized...

when I decide to stay organized :)

On the other side of the pantry was a bookcase that had some appliances and some old cat food bowls and some rags

and an old rug and some dust.

Ok, lots of dust.

I kept my stock pot and my dutch oven on the kitchen counter

and my mixer on the floor in the pantry!

It made no sense!

So this weekend we went back to Home Depot

and bought more shelfing

and brackets to build more shelves!! Yay!

And this is what it looks like now :)

This side looks so neat!

I suppose it's time for me to re-organize the food side again lol.

Momma Bird is Back!

I walked outside this morning and saw that my momma bird is back!! Last year Duane and I watched as she built her nest, flying from tree to tree and bringing back twigs and grass to this large tree in our neighbors backyard. Throughout the summer we saw her up in that tree and the best part was when she started teaching her baby to fly! It was one of the cutest things I had ever seen. That little baby would hop from branch to branch and I wish I had taken pictures, but I only saw it when I was in the pool...

not the ideal place to be taking pictures from.

Then Gustav, the big bad hurricane, came to visit and the top of that big old tree came tumbling down. The tree is still pretty big, but the spot where she had built her nest was gone and I didn't think she'd come back this year.

I was wrong!

This is her and her man bird building their nest.

And bringing back twigs and sticks and grass and stuff.

I wish I was a bird.

I'd love to fly like that.

Except I wouldn't eat worms.

Instead I'd want to eat the yummy looking shepherds pie

that I found on The Hungry Housewife's blog this morning!

Cake on a Stick

Blaire and I made cakepops this weekend!

I found the recipe on Bakerella's blog...along with lots of other yummy things. They are pretty simple to make, but much quicker and a whole lot funner when you have a partner.

We made a total of 58 and ended up freezing about 40 of them before we dipped them in the candy melts and sprinkled them. It worked out so well that way. We didn't get tired of dipping them and melting more melts and dipping more and melting. And dipping. And melting. And sprinkling :)

Throughout the week I've ended up finishing all of them and taking them to work to share.

They're yummy and you should make some!

Or make a lot :)

My New Kitchen!!!

We've been talking a bit about remodeling the kitchen. Currently we have yellow formica counters and brown country cabinets. It's all old. Very old.


So we bought this Home and Gardens program where we could design our new kitchen using our actual measurements from our kitchen. We played with that program for days... measuring walls and placing cabinets and appliances. We ended up with an exact replica of our kitchen in 3D on the computer.

We talked about tearing out the cabinets over the bar to open up the space and then even started talking about tearing out the bar and putting an island in instead. Granite countertops. And a new gas stove! Our stove right now has decided that it doesn't want to heat to anything over 350. Takes forever to cook things. And it's electric. I grew up with a gas stove and there isn't anything better than turning off the burner and the heat is gone. Or when you have an earthquake and you can still make coffee on the stove!

There is paneling in the living room and the living room shares a wall with the kitchen, so there is wood paneling in the kitchen too. We were going to tear out all the paneling, sheetrock the walls and paint them and also remove the popcorn from the ceiling throughout the whole house.

We had big dreams!

And then Duane's truck started falling apart.

Here's my new kitchen:

Beans Beans Beans

On Friday night I made a big pot of pinto beans and some cornbread for dinner. Might I add.... my first pot of beans ever! The recipe (yes, I have to follow a recipe to make beans!) said it would only take 2 hours. Well.. 4.5 hours later we were finally eating. And they were ok. Yeah, just ok. You'd think after 4 hours of simmering they'd be fantastic. Or the fact that it was now 10pm and we were starving that they would be the most delicious beans ever. Nah. They were just ok.

On Saturday though, those beans were transformed. Yeah baby! Transformed into refried beans for tostados. And those beans were good! Better than good! Not only had I made my first pot of beans ever, but I also made my own refried beans. Did I mention that they were good? Yummy! See the picture over there for my yummy beans. They were so yummy that all 4 kids had seconds!!

I must add that my stove is not good and I'll wait to tell you about that another day. I think that's why the Friday night beans didn't work out as intended. I got the recipe from Pioneer Woman, and she hasn't failed me yet, which is why I believe that it comes down to my stove. And by the way, if you haven't had the pleasure of finding Pioneer Woman's blog yet I suggest you run, not walk, right over and start catching up with life on the ranch.

New Orleans Creole Classic

Here is a video of Blaire doing her floor routine at the New Orleans Creole Classic in March. For those of you who haven't been to one of her meets try listening to this music about 40 times each meet, about 10 times a year LOL

Tennis

After Cookin' for our Kids yesterday we went and played tennis. If you want to call it tennis. We have rackets and balls and play on a tennis court, but we don't use the lines. And it feels more like running track then playing tennis.

We play at Palomino Park in one of the subdivisions here. It's a great place to play and it's never crowded. Apparently the rest of Central hasn't figured out how fun "tennis" is. There's a little pond and it's just a pretty place to be.

So yesterday, when we first got to the court, the girls all decided they needed to run down the road to Sarah's Grandma's house. By the way, they don't call them Grandma's here...they call them Maw Maw. And I can't say it. But that's a whole other post.

While they were gone D and I played tennis and waited and waited and sat by the pond and waited. It was windy. And we had to take this picture ourselves since all the girls were down the street using the facilities :)

Finally they came back and played some "tennis".

You'd think girls looking this good with rackets in their hands might be able to play...but sadly, no. They can't. It sure is fun trying though.
Maybe someday I'll post the pictures that aren't closeups and you can really get an idea of how they/we play.

Cookin' for our Kids

Just got home from the annual Cookin' for our Kids festival! Raising money to help area schools.
Ate lots of good food and saw some cool, old cars like these ones:

It appears I was fond of the orange ones!

The girls were dressed in their finest Cookin' for the Kids t-shirts:

Blaire and Brenna

(one of her many BFF's).

Blaire made sure to tell me

that Brenna was taller than me

before she came over.

Brat!!

and here is Bri

before she had to start working the festival.

And by working I don't mean being a social butterfly

and visiting with all her friends...

I mean handing out flyers

and actually working lol

Oh and Sarah (Bri's best friend) made Kittens!
Nooo...she didn't make real kittens! She made the dance team at Central High :) They're called the Kittens. When I first heard she made kittens I thought she meant her cat had kittens and I asked for one LOL.

She thinks I'm a dork.

Here she is performing for the first time.

Go Sarah!!

Here's to hoping lots of money was raised :)

April Fools!

I wanted to make something fun for dinner on April Fools day, but not something so disgusting the girls wouldn't eat it. After some googling I found the perfect meal and told the girls we were having CUPCAKES for dinner!

Here they are in all their yummy cupcakeness...

but wait!

This doesn't smell like a cupcake?!

Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting :)

They were a hit :)

The hummingbirds have arrived.

This year we put our feeder up on March 8th. On March 12th the first hummingbird arrived. While this is not the first bird that found the feeder, it is the first bird I took a picture of this season...so he's special :)

We get tons of them every year and at the height of the season we have 3 feeders that get filled every day!

Ok then!

That looks ok! Now I need to figure out how to make the actual blog look prettier, funkier, not so boooooring!

Off to tinker! (not to be confused with tinkle...because that's not what I'm off to do!)

And away we go!

So, I'm starting a blog so I can keep my family and friends up to date on my life out here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana! We're spread out across the country...Californa, Nevada and Louisiana and don't see each other often. You'd think I'd be better at emailing and letter writing...but I'm not :(

I plan on taking lots of pictures!! Waiting on a new lens for the camera right now, but in the meantime I've been reading the manual for the camera and hopefully that will help me take better pictures!

Lets see how this first post looks....