Butterfly, Butterfly, Fly Away!

Yesterday, I went with Nolan and his Kindergarten class on his first field trip to the Butterfly Farm in Melrose.


To say I was disappointed in the "farm" would be an understatement, but it was nice for the kids. I really felt like they rushed the kids through each station and didn't give them what we paid for! We started our "tour" around 10:00 and were DONE with lunch and everything at 11:15 ish, maybe 11:30. I definitely won't be recommending this place to ANYONE.

The most exciting part for the kids was that they saw all kinds of spider webs and their class unit right now is on spiders and bats! They were identifying all kinds of webs and the parts of spiders, etc. but could care less about the rest of the stuff there!

On a side note, Nolan was so excited to ride a school bus for the first time! (ewwww, gross....I don't even want to think about the head funk on the back of the seat.....gives me the heebie-jeebies).

Nolan during lunch

The kids were able to look at all kinds of butterflies and learn lots about them! Then, they dipped a sponge brush in Gatorade and tried to catch a butterfly! It was so cute!




I rode with a good friend (and my hairdresser) Aubrey, who's son, Coye is also in Nolan's class. The boys had a great time at the farm! Here we are ready to head home (the boys were SO excited because they rode home with us)!

Overall, a nice day to spend time with Nolan!

Until next time........

~CB

A Visit from "Aunt Patty"

My Mama has 2 sisters (thus, I have 2 Aunts, plus the Aunts by marriage, but that's another blog). About a month ago (I know, I know...this is late), the Aunt from Washington (state) came to visit! We had an absolute blast! We didn't get to spend much time with her, but the time we did get was awesome! AP brought along her husband Todd and my cousin Logan. Sister Lindsay had to stay home due to college.....

The cousins

Aunt Patty, Carter, and Nolan

When my Mama's side of the family gets together, it's ALL laughter, ALL the time. Constant. You'd never know that we used to spell things around the younger children, especially at Christmastime, or have Karaoke in the living room at family gatherings. Nor would you know that we've been swimming in the winter before and had contests to see which guy would throw which one in first. And live to tell about it!

Our family eats and eats, and eats some more. We cook pancakes for breakfast when we're all together and what would pancakes be without sausage? Most vividly, I remember when the whole family would be together at Christmastime and everyone would covet the beds in the house! There were 3 beds and about 12-15 people or more. There were people EVERYWHERE. And you know what? We wouldn't have it any other way! Ahh...sweet memories........

Aunt Patty, Jamie (my brother), and me

Anyhow, back to the present. When AP was here, we had a blast! The kids played ball and went to volleyball matches, rode the Ranger, and generally just hung out and had a good time. We sat around and ate (of course) and just chit-chatted.

Nichole (my sister-in-law) and Carter playing outside

Me and Nichole

Most recently, my Aunt Patty was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is ready to fight and more importantly, ready to BEAT IT! (isn't that a song? Beat it........ha-ha)
{For those that know my family well, this is the same Aunt that moved to Florida for several months to help out when my Mama (her sister) was fighting lymphoma. It was so nice to have my Aunt here to help--my brother lived in Virginia at that time, and I was in my Junior year of college at UF. Her love, guidance, and humor was a welcome distraction from the agony of defeat.}

While I think we are all a little scared and uncertain, I know ONE who knows EXACTLY what will happen, for you see, HE has it all planned out. We've been very blessed with some good results from various tests and scans that the doctors have done recently, but she starts chemo/radiation in the next week or so, so I'd like to ask all my blog friends to remember her in prayer in the coming weeks and months as she fights!

We were so thankful to get to spend some time with Aunt Patty, Todd, and Logan and look forward to the next time when we get to visit with them!

Until next time....

~CB~

Fall Festival!

Wow! It has been such a busy few weeks for us! We had family in for a quick visit, Fall Festivals, Gator games, and all kinds of other fun things to do! I will catch up on blogging these events at some point in time, or little by little......

Last Wednesday night at church, we had our annual Fall Festival for the children. It was so nice and all the kids had a blast. The theme this year was "God's Creation" and each "station" had a creation aspect to it, or Biblical principle. For example, the station I was at was the cupcake decorating station (leave it to the fat girl to be in charge of a food station--ha-ha). The kids had pre-iced cupcakes (in yellow icing) and candy corns to decorate a cupcake to look like a sun.

Children were encouraged to dress up as something God created, such as bugs, animals, flowers, etc. or anything as long as it wasn't scary or such. Both my boys wanted to be Gator football players. Go figure. After racking my brain for days and days and days on how to talk my boys out of this, I decided to let them be Gator football players. Nolan was Tim Tebow and Carter was Riley Cooper. (yes I know the numbers don't correspond, but you try telling a 3 year old that!) They even got so excited when I brought out the eye-black that had Gators on it!

You know what......after stressing out over this, I decided that Tim Tebow was so perfect and the Gators were having such a good year, that's it's simply a fact we all know.....GOD CREATED THE GATORS!!!!! hahahahahahahaha!

The Fall Festival was the only trick-or-treat type event my boys will get to attend this year because we will be at the Florida-Georgia game on Halloween. They had a good time and they're still eating candy from it!



Until next time.....

~CB~

A Spooky Treat!

I FINALLY started on the project that I blogged about last month! I have been spray painting cans every afternoon and my hands look like I'm ready for Halloween! They are speckled with black spray paint and well--I can't seem to get it off. I've tried everything!

Last Saturday, Nolan and I took a trip to Michael's (armed with my 40% off coupon of course) to get some paper, ribbon, and stickers to decorate the cans with. I left with green, black, and orange ribbon. Ghost stickers, pumpkin stickers, and spider stickers. Fun, kid-centered Halloween paper. And LOTS of ideas floating around in my head! Mostly excitement though, over what I could create with all the goodies I had just purchased.

Here are 3 of the cans I've decorated so far.....Not one is the same (yet!) I have used zots to hold the paper onto the tin can (if you don't know what zots are--you are missing OUT!) I've also experimented with different ribbon combinations and stickers. I think my favorite one so far is the third one with the purple spider.






Until next time.....

~CB~

A Magical Weekend!

While the Gators beating LSU was a magical weekend I'm really referring to the weekend before that when Cecil, the kids and I loaded up and went to Disney! We left on a Friday as soon as Nolan got out of school and headed down to one of my favorite places on earth! And now that we found a "new" way to go (we found it about a year or so ago), we hit hardly ANY traffic at all!

For this trip, Nolan requested that we stay at the Fort Wilderness Cabins, so that's what we did. We're passholders, so I get great rates for various rooms, etc. and we got a steal on our cabin for that weekend. (Carter requested that we stay at the French Quarter when we go back in December)

Anyhow--it was a great weekend and the kids had a blast! That's really what counts in the grand scheme of things! It was very very hot, but neither of the boys complained about the heat NOT ONE SINGLE TIME! That was a blessing! You'd have "thunk" it would be a little cooler in October, but nope--not in good ole' Florida. Here's hoping for cool weather in December!

Waiting for the bus to take us to Epcot on Friday night....


At Epcot, we rode Soarin' (Carter was FINALLY tall enough to go on it and LOVED it!) and also did the GM Test Track (again, Carter was finally tall enough to go on it)! Seems like both my boys might be little daredevils when they get older...I hope not, but I definitely see a little bit of daredevil in Carter!

Waiting for Soarin' to begin!

The BIG surprise this trip was a gift from my mother-in-law and father-in-law--they paid for the boys to experience the new Pirate Adventure at Magic Kingdom on Saturday. It's housed right next to Pirates of the Caribbean and is awesome! You go in, roll dice, get assigned a new pirate name for the rest of the adventure, get your face painted in various designs (you choose which one), get swords, costumes, treasure, goody bags, pictures, and all kinds of other stuff! We were in there for about an hour or more! It was GREAT and well worth the money! Here's a few pictures of Francis Sternskimmer and Simon Ropewalker! (cool pirate names, huh?)



Saturday afternoon, after naptime, it was time for the parade on Main Street USA! This parade was interactive and the characters got down off the floats and interacted with the kids and such! It was great! Here's Nolan and Carter waving at some character...for the life of me, I can't remember who...I think it might have been Mr. Incredible!


On Sunday, we went to Animal Kingdom for a brief period before we headed home! Nolan's favorite thing at AK is "A Bug's Life" show! Here we are with our cool bug 3-D glasses on. Great fashion statement, don't you think?



All in all, a great trip and an awesome break from reality. I always joke and say that whenever I need a break from reality, I head to Disney! That's sure to do it! It's always happy there!

Hope you enjoyed reading and seeing a small portion of our Disney trip--we had some family down recently and I can't wait to post all about that too!

Until next time....

~CB~

Time for a Change

I am thinking of changing the look of my blog. I know, it goes against everything in my poor organizational soul, but I have to. I can't very well have pink and green during the Fall season, right? I suppose that since it's still 90 degrees here every day though, it can be pink and green season for now?

I'll try and update soon! We had a great trip to Disney this past weekend that I want to blog about and also got to see some family yesterday that I haven't seen in a long time. Hopefully my cousin, Sheena will send me some pictures soon!

Until next time.....

~CB~

CUTE Snack Day!!

If you read my previous post on N's Special Day (otherwise known as Show and Tell/Snack Day) then you'll know what I'm talking about here, when I say it's that time again for me to come up with a cute snack idea for N's Kindergarten class.

I didn't want to send in cookies or something super sugary, but this time, I just couldn't help it. I saw this idea somewhere and since it's Fall and Halloween time, I knew that I had to make these cute and easy treats that look like pumpkins! (and send in boring water)

First, you start with graham crackers (break them in half) and candy melts. I used the Almond Bark white candy melt, and LOVE IT! It melts very quickly and easily and is very smooth. I'll admit I was nervous about it, since I've never used it, but it was SO EASY! I WILL be buying more!

Take mini-pretzels and dip them in the white candy melt then let the excess drip off. Place the pretzel on the graham cracker, towards the bottom of it.

Buy some fruit slice wedges or gumdrops. You'll need green, so if you can find a bag of all green, more power to ya! Anyhow, the recipe called for the gumdrops, but ewww...gross! I wanted the nice, fruity wedges--they taste WAY better!!!


Slice the wedge into tiny pieces and then slice that piece into half again. Put that sliver atop the pretzel and sprinkle it (while hot) with orange sugar (like you decorate cupcakes and such with).

Here's what you get when you're all done:
(Listen y'all..I'm no professional and I was doing this at 9:30PM!! WAY past my bedtime! So you'll notice that a little of the white candy melt is not perfect and neither are the cookies...but I figure that it's the thought that counts and the Kindergarten kids won't care!)

Can you tell it's a pumpkin?

I hope you all can use this idea for your Fall gatherings! It's so EASY!

Until next time.......

~CB~

The Honest Scrap.

I received my FIRST EVER blog tag! How cool is that? And...one of my FAVORITE people in the whole wide world tagged me......thank YOU, Lemonade Makin' Mama! You just "sweetened" my day (week, month, year, etc.!) You know I love you more n' my luggage! Keep reading, cause I tagged 9 other people (as part of the rules) at the end of this!



The rule says for me to tell you 10 honest things about myself. When I read that, all I could think was......."as opposed to lies?" ha! It has taken me a few days to come up with 10 things about me.....I tell you girls (and guys)--I'm a really boring person, so if you REALLY want to know 10 honest things, keep reading. But be warned. I'm boring. Really. Really. Boring.

1. I LOVE LOVE LOVE to organize things. My closet is organized by short sleeve/long sleeve and then by color. Yes, I'm for real. My pantry is organized too! All boxes face the same way, tallest to shortest. NO. I was not the scene director for Sleeping With the Enemy. If you haven't seen the movie, you won't understand it, but if you HAVE seen the movie...........the pantry? The towels? That's me.

2. I LOVE to read. Books. Magazines. Both. My favorite author is Karen Kingsbury. My favorite series is The Baxter Series, which actually developed into 2 more series and then another and yet another.

3. I have to balance my checkbook to the penny. THE PENNY. I will search for hours, days, weeks, and have been known to search for over a month for ten cents. If you haven't guessed by now, I've got some serious issues.

4. I don't like lettuce, greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, peppers, and many other veggies. I will eat tomatoes if they're stewed down into a soup or over a bed of rice. Yummm...carbs......(sorry, I'm on a no-carb diet and just the word rice awakened my taste buds).

5. I desperately wanted a daughter. Really bad. I was in complete and utter denial that my second child was a boy until he came out. The dr. was 100% sure it was a boy on the first sonogram, but I was convinced what he saw was the umbilical cord. I have TWO boys. TWO. 100% BOY. ALL BOY. HYPER BOYS. TWO. OF. THEM. I need a girl. Alas, .......read number six.

6. I had a hysterectomy at 26. No girls. Number 5 won't ever happen now. Well....it COULD happen......I still have my own eggs......any of you blog buddies out there want to carry a baby for me? Just kidding. (well, not really). People tell me that the reason God gave me boys was so there was only one QUEEN in my house. Guess who that is? hee-hee. I will tell you that I'm looking VERY forward to the day when both BOYS can go with their daddy to the hunting woods and I get every weekend to myself! Yahoo!!!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong, I love 'em...but boy are they demanding and very energetic. I'm worn out most days. Exhausted.

7. I enjoy photography. I wish I knew more about it. I'd LOVE to take a class at our local community college on photography, but don't have the time for it.

8. Someday, I'd like to own a beach condo year-round AND a mountain house year-round. I have 3 condos in Daytona but they are timeshares--I'm working on my father-in-law about the mountain house. He's my ticket for the mountain house!

9. I don't like tile. Tile floors--ewww.....grout. Tile showers? ewwww....grout. Tile anything? ewww....grout. I like other people's tile, just don't want any of my own. I don't like grout. All my sinks, showers, tubs, counters, etc. in my house are marble. Ahhhhhhhh........no grout.

10. (bet you thought we'd never get here, huh?) One more honest thing about me? Hmmmm.....(see, I told you I was a boring person. Lemonade Mama won't do this again, I bet ya).......Here's something.....I graduated Number 4 in my graduating class. I was beat for "3" by 1/100th of a point. You get that? One-onehundredth. That stinks.

I suppose there are TONS of honest things I could say about myself or my life......like.....

• I drive REALLY fast
• LOVE to write with Sharpie markers (dark colors of course)
• Address my Christmas card envelopes about 2 months in advance
• Buy my postage online
• Love to send people cards in the mail as encouragement
• Told my husband NO when he mentioned going to Africa on a missions trip with the church (don't even ask--I have issues I said. Turns out, the trip was cancelled anyhow, Praise the Lord. Which is probably good, cause then we'd have had to get the pre-nup out and go through it. Just kidding. We don't have a pre-nup. Bet that will get the gossip mavens going though. Seriously though, Africa is a big, fat NO)
• My oldest child has my mother's maiden name as his middle name
• My mother's side of the family has strong Mexican heritage--my mother's mother was Mexican. (there you go Annie--I know you're laughing--I'm paying homage again, hee-hee)
• I love to cook and bake
• I cannot for the life of me cook rice. I have to use Success rice. I can cook anything in the whole world except rice.
• I don't believe in eating organic. Anything. At all.
• I love to get my hair colored. Different color every time.
• I've had the same cell phone number since I was 15. I'm 29 now.
• I've had the same checking account since I was 16. I'm still 29.
• I've been married 7 years this year and JUST had my name changed a few months ago. No that wasn't part of that pre-nup. HA!

Hope you enjoyed! The rest of the rules say for me to tag 9 others and give them the rules....
(please no hurt feelings if you weren't picked--it was REALLY hard to pick only 9)

TAG--You're IT:

Dumptrucks, Babies, and Everything Else
Down The Road She Goes
Forever, For Always, No Matter What
Life of a Savannah Wife
Faith, Family, and Friends
The Ride of Our Life
a La Carte
Celebrate Imperfection
The Perfect Pair

and here are the RULES:

1.) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.

2.) Share "10 Honest Things" about yourself.

3.) Present this award to 9 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.

4.) Tell those 9 people they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving.

Until next time, I send y'all LOVE and Best Wishes from my blog to yours!!

~CB~