The Holidays - The Day After Thanksgiving

On the day after Thanksgiving, most people line up in store parking lots in the wee hours of the morning to get thier hands on the best bargains around.

I have only participated in this style of bargain shopping twice.

Once, I convinced my dad to stand outside of Wal-Mart with me at 4 in the morning so that I could get a vcr and tv combo. And while I still think it was a pretty good deal, It took me years before I could brave the After Thanksgiving crowds again.

The next time I went out there I was 7 months pregnant. Mr. Yardbird had gotten his hands on a Thanksgiving store catalog at my parents house and discovered that Best Buy had a fantastic deal on flip video cameras. Because I know how much Mr. Yardbird loves a good gadget, I suggested we go get the video camera that very night.

"But your pregnant," He said.

"So."

"I will feel like the biggest jerk if you are standing out there pregnant with me in line."

I assured him that I had to be there. Being 7 months pregnant and huge wasn't going to stop me.

So that night we decided we take a nap before going instead of staying up the whole night through.

"We'll just watch an episode of The Walking Dead, rest up, and then head over there about 3 am." Mr. Yardbird suggested.

If you haven't seen the walking dead then let me explain. In the show, zombies have taken over the world. A group of people try desperately to survive but every now and then someone gets their arm biten by a zombie and then the group has to decide when they are going to shoot them.

It's a real nail biter.

So a few episodes in we decided to hit the hay before venturing out to the store.

At 3 am, my husband nudged my arm and said "It's time to go. But we don't have to go if you don't want to."

"No, I'll be ready in minute." I said. I put on an odd assortment of layers not minding much that it didn't match, because I doubted anyone would be looking at me anyway. We hopped in the truck, yawning and rubbing our eyes the whole way over there. And just as we pulled up I saw it. My jaw dropped and I gasped so loudly that Mr. Yardbird whipped his head around and said, "What's wrong?"

Apparently I had not rubbed my eyes hard enough, because what I saw was a crowd outside of Bestbuy of slow-moving, lethargic people, struggling to put one leg in front of the other, swaying and bumping into each other with each step. They looked like......zombies.

"I...um....I thought..they looked like...." I mumbled "zombies" so maybe he wouldn't catch it. Because I felt like a moron.

He caught it though. And it's been a joke ever since.

We didn't get the video camera that night. We decided to turn around and go home. I don't suggest After Thanksgiving bargain shopping, but if you must, don't watch a zombie flick before you go.

This year, we opted for my family's tradition of spending the day after Thanksgiving at the fairgrounds betting on horses. While we didn't know the first thing about betting we pretended we did, reading the race catalog and scrutinizing each horse before the race. Sometimes we bet on a horse that seemed calm and sure of itself. "That one's a calm one," we would say. "he's just confident he will win." And sometimes we would pick a horse because it was crazy. "That's a crazy horse." We said, "He will just bust through the gate and take off." More often than not, we were wrong. But that's okay because we didn't know what the heck we were doing anyway and it sure was more fun that way.

"I think I'll go with Horse Number 4...."

Our first win!

Checking out the horses

The girls!

Showing the horses that we loved them. :)

The Holidays - Thanksgiving Day

The holidays breezed through so quickly that it hardly seems they were even here. Wasn't Thanksgiving only last week and Halloween just a minute ago? I still have my fall pumpkins on my porch while Christmas lights twinkle on all the other houses on our street. I won't be winning any award for the best Christmas decorations but what about fall decoration dedication?

For Thanksgiving, we decided at the last minute to stay home. I had packed our car to the tee while Mr. Yardbird was a work and had planned everything for our trip to Texas to the last detail. We only made it about thirty minutes before we realized we were too exhausted to make it that far. The traffic and a baby who hates car seats didn't help either. So instead we stayed back and joined my parents for Thanksgiving.

They didn't seem to mind.

Mr. Yardbird joined my Pops and Uncle Stephen for some political discussion.

While lighter conversation topics took place across the room.

Cousins had a chance to be cousins.

And we relaxed on the sofa and watched football.



Christmas Stockings

After two weeks of late nights, I have finally finished making our Christmas stockings. I realize now after finishing them that I should probably next time use a pattern. What I ended up with were some really skinny stockings that might be good to stuff things like candy canes and snickers. But I guess they will work for this Christmas and maybe by next year I will be able to consider making new ones. I don't know about that.


Anyway here they are:

Because he is a smiley kind of guy, this is Mr. Yardbird's......

 And this is mine.

And because my son loves Christmas trees...this is Hammy's.



And here they are grouped together:

What do you think?

Code

 A few days ago, I was out running errands with Ham and his Maw Maw.

Running errands with a nine month old is not an easy task, but with Maw Maw there, things were running very smoothly.

Maw Maw didn't know she was running errands with us today. She thought we were just eating dinner.

"Would you mind running to the grocery store with us?"

"Sure. No problem!" she said.

And I thought: Thank God.

So off we went to the grocery store.

While Maw Maw chitchatted with Ham and wheeled him around the store, I flew down the isles and grabbed everything I needed.

Maw Maw was teaching Ham how to blow air out of his mouth like you do for your birthday candles. And he hasn't been able to stop doing it since.

When we go to the check out line, I threw everything on the table. And then I realized I may not need that much Heavy Cream so I asked the cashier if she could take some off.

"Oh sure, Hold On," She said. Then she screamed "Code ______!!!" and then again "Code____!!"

And as soon as she was finished screaming the last Code. My son screamed something that sounded a whole lot like "Code".

And everyone in the store within ear shot  turned to him and said "What did he just say?"

My mom and I laughed. "It sounded like he said code"

And then as everyone smiled and chuckled a little, my son turned to the cashier, raised his pointing finger and fussed at her.

I mean really fussed at her. Shaking his finger and pointing at her.

 And I turned bright red.

I don't know what she did to make him so mad, but he was pretty angry.

"Is he fussing at me?"

"Um....I don't know" But I did know. He was.

Everyone looked at him and they then looked up at me. "Yep he's a talker...." I laughed and I gave Maw Maw a look like let's get out of here.

2nd Annual Christmas Tree Lighting

Last night was the 2nd Annual Gretna Christmas Tree Lighting.

After a day spent with my Uncle Frank and chasing his cousins in the walker, my little guy was almost to tired to go. But somehow when I put him in his Santa suit, he found his last bit of energy.

I put him in the stroller and wheeled him down to the Santa festivities with his two cousins in tow.

We passed the florist shop and stopped to check out their Christmas decorations.

And Baby Santa got to see Baby Jesus.

There was hot chocolate and cookies.

And after much anticipation.....

Santa showed up in style on a fire truck of the oldest volunteer fire department in the country. Or so I've been told many times.

And we were excited.

Some of us were just tired.

But not to tired to tell Santa his job was taken.

Deck the windows

My cousin, Sally, has been painting windows in an old folks home since Thanksgiving and today she recruited Marie and me to paint the remaining windows.

It's been too long since I picked up a paintbrush, so I was really excited about it.

This morning we gathered some painting supplies and headed over there.

When we got there, I immediately recognized the main room. I came here to play Bingo with the our school's mission club. It is here that I learned two important things. One was that I love, and I mean LOVE Bingo and the other is that I love Angel Food Cake. For some reason everytime we played Bingo, we almost always shared angel food cake with our elderly friends. And it was awesome.

Anyway Marie and I set to work on three large windows and Sally worked on a window on the other side of us.

And as I painted the windows, I started to notice that I had an audience. I also noticed a lot over things. Call me an easedropper, but this is what I found out.

1) Someone had the nerve to sneak into the nurses station and steal a grill cheese sandwich.
2) The best bet for dinner tonight is the chicken salad sandwich.
3) Bingo started at 3 o clock.

And as we painted and painted.......

And painted....

I realized that I may have some competition.

"Oh, I can do that!" a woman screamed at me. I was crouching on the floor painting some leaves and I glanced up to see who it was. This woman wheeled her wheelchair right next to me. She looked me square in the face. "I can do that."

"You can?" I smiled at her. "Well than sure! We need your help."

She laughed a big old laugh. "Hah! I was just kiddin with ya." And off she went.

And then a little while later. A man came wheeling around the corner.

"I sure hope it rains tomorrow.....I just sure hope it rains....I just love rain. I just love the rain. I just LOVE it when it rains."

I chuckled. "So you love the rain?"

"I do. I just love it."

And then he sang me a song about it. About loving the rain. And when his song came to an end he sang "I love the rain..........like I love maaaaaaaaash potaaaaaatooooos."

I had to bite my lip so I wouldn't laugh, because it was a good song and that is some serious love of rain.

And pretty soon I was hungry and with some change Sally gave me I headed down the hall to the vending machine.

"Could you wheel me to room 23"

Sure I said and I dropped Jane off at her room.

As soon as I dropped her off I was spotted by someone else. "Could you take me to my room?" By the time I got to the vending machine I had wheeled four people. And on the way back I picked up someone to take to the lunch room.

As we wheeled down the hall, whoever I had was worried about how everyone else was doing. They would turn to their friends and say "Are comfortable?" "Do you need anything?"

And sometimes they would be plain aggravated with each other. At one point a man wheeled over to me and almost wheeled through me as I was painting. A woman from our audience screamed "Backwards!" to this man. She looked at me and said "Forwards and Backwards - that's all he understands". And sure enough he backed up and moved right along.

Before we knew it, we had filled the windows with bright flowers and it was time to call it a day. And I was a little sad because Bingo would be starting soon for my new friends and where there's Bingo, there's almost always Angel Food Cake.

Room to Grow

It seems like time is flying by fast. I think it flies by faster when you throw a child into the mix. I never had a chance to put up pictures of Ham's room or explain why I choose what I did for it. Since I feel like it has already changed so much from Day 1 because we had to lower the crib twice, remove the bumpers, and the mobile. I wanted to put together some pictures that would remind me of how it once was, because soon we will have to baby proof it all over again. It won't be long before this little guy is walking. So here it goes.

This was one of first pictures we have from when we were finished putting everything together. Some people use a theme, but I just went with whatever felt right, so there are farm animals, maps, sailboats and pictures of our family.

The wall has pictures from when Mr. Yardbird and I were kids and pictures of our family. The lamp and maps are from Mr.Yardbird's bachelor days.

 These are details of the wall of pictures. The top is a picture of Mr. Yardbird and his grandparents outside by the swimming pool. Below is a picture of Mr. Yardbird on our wedding day with his momma. :)

The "H" was from the Saenger Theater! It was a thrift store find by a friend of mine. The embroidered picture below was something passed down for years and years. I'm kidding. It's new. I'm not telling where I got it though. :)

The bear hanging on the door was a gift from Mama B that was placed on the hospital door the day we had him. The ABC bear on the bottom is gift from MawMaw. Ham likes to jam out to the ABC song it plays when you press his foot. The sailboat bookends were from Mr. Yardbird's college days.

This picture in the frame was taken the day Mr. Yardbird left to India. Ham was three months old. The lamp was Mr. Yardbird's lamp from childhood. The globe was gift to Ham from Mr. Yardbird's trip to Germany. The airplane was bought for Ham on the way to drop Mr. Yardbird off at the airport on his way to India. The wooden hammer was made by our friend in honor of Ham's nickname the "hammer".

This is probably what Ham finds most interesting in his room - his daddy's globe. 

So many long nights in this chair. :)

(The pillow is from Mr. Yardbird's childhood.)

 I didn't have much closet space to work with, but I am thankful that I at least had A closet to work with!

This is the inside cubbie of Ham's crib. Make Way for Ducklings is one that we read the most often. We all love saying each of the duck's names, Quack, Mack, Wack.....even Ham laughs when he hears them. The coaster was from my Aunt Carrie's house. :) I use it to put my coffee on while I rock Ham to sleep. Little reminders of her make me happy. 

I know I'll get a lot of finger shaking for this one. However, we did remove them after he went to sleep. Left to right is Ralph, Ham, Eeyore and Carl.

 This was taking right before Ham realized that when he pushed the bumper down there was a whole other world on the other side. Once he learned how to do it, he never stopped looking.

 This is the day Ham learned to stand up. He was 7 months old. Once he learned we could not get him to sit down. Seriously.

Yes Ham, we threw a lot of things together to make your room feel like home.