It's Time.

It's Time.  (name that movie)

College Football Time, that is.  We have a busy, busy weekend ahead:  my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and sweet baby nephew are coming into town for the season opener, we have the football game, a birthday party, a house to clean, and laundry to do. 

One thing is for sure....come Saturday afternoon, you'll find us in the SWAMP (where only Gators get out alive) enjoying some Gator football.

source

Happy College Football Season, y'all !

Cousins

When my brother has his daughters with him at the beach, I always try and get a good picture of the kids together. 

My boys and his girls LOVE each other to pieces!!!!  You never hear any arguing or anything!  It's wonderful!

I'm pretty sure this one takes the cake.  I love it!

Sweet cousins!

An Organized Desk

I'm ALL about serious organization.  I love it!  I'm just the type of person that if my desk is a mess or my surroundings are a mess, then I feel a mess and cannot focus. 

The desk in my home office/library was overflowing with junk and very disorganized.  I hadn't had time to clean it out or organize it in a long time and it was overdue for a good clean up and purging session!

 See what a royal mess it was???  Oh my!  Totally disgusting!!!

 Step one was to take everything out of the cabinet and sort through it!

 I am loving these!  My sister-in-law bought these for me at Christmas and she knows I'm a sucker for some good organizational-type fru-fru!!

 I'm all about using what you have for containing items!  I used an old envelope box for stickers, pencils, etc.

 Then, after I purged lots of items I didn't need, want, etc. I had THIS!!  MUCH BETTER!

 Next up was the top cabinet shelf.  It houses my label maker, pens, pencils, etc. and looks so much better now that I went through all its items too!

 Just look at this messy desk!  OH MY.  I shudder when I look at it.

 I went through all the papers and folders on the shelf and organized everything!

 Doesn't the finished product look SOOOOOO much better? 

All clean and organized!  Just the way I like it!

Cleaning Out The Beach Bag

When I got home from the beach, I decided a little "decluttering" of the beach bag was in order. Merciful heavens we had all kinds of stuff in my beach bag!

First was to take everything out of the bag!

Then I wiped everything down with warm soapy water, threw out any sunscreen that was almost empty, etc. and let the rest air dry.

Then I bagged up all the like items, i.e. my sunscreen in a bag, the kids stuff in a bag, toys in a bag, etc.

And voila!  A nice, clean, organized beach bag ready to go on a new adventure!

Family Vacation 2012 {Daytona Beach}

My family LOVES the beach!  (well, the boys and I love the beach, the hubby says he works in the heat every day so the beach is not his cup of tea)

This year was extra special because my brother and his girls were there all week!  It was so nice being with them for the whole week and just being able to hang out and do things together!  My boys and his girls get along SO well together and we all have a great time together.

My boys LOVE the hot tub at the beach.  I have NO idea how, in 100 degree heat, they can sit in that thing, but they are smiling and happy, so I let them. 

 They have really gotten into boogie-boarding the last few years.  I have to say though, this is the first year they have REALLY been brave and went pretty far out in the water.

 Hubby never comes the whole week with us, so I have to rely on my brother's help when it comes to the ocean.  As much as I love the beach, I hate the ocean.  Have you seen Jaws?  Yep.  That's why.  This is my  brother and Carter heading out to catch some waves.  I'm so thankful to have my brother's help!

 We have a shuffleboard court at the condo and my boys enjoy playing shuffleboard every single day while we're there!  Many times, it kept them occupied while we were grilling our dinner! 

 Speaking of food, we never lack any while we're on vacation. Whether staying in or eating out, there's always plenty of food!  HA!

 This is what Cecil gets when we are out at one of our favorite restaurants, Down The Hatch!  He loves crab legs!

 I always choose the coconut shrimp!

 This year, we tried a new to us restaurant.  The restaurant was very very casual--we're talking silverware in a paper wrapper at your table and they bring you sweet tea in a plastic pitcher casual.  WE LOVED IT!

The boys and I at Boondocks, while waiting on our dinner..... 

We always end our week with family pictures on the beach.  The one of our family wasn't the best in the world, but this one of the boys was PRICELESS !

We had such a good time this year.  We ate a lot, got lots of sun, and spent amazing time with  my family !!

a few BEACH pictures...

I just realized I never blogged about our annual BEACH vacation!  Two GLORIOUS weeks at the beach is "just what the doctored ordered" for me!  I'll leave you with a few teaser pictures....I hope y'all have a wonderful weekend!  For once, we have NOTHING on the calendar and it feels great!

The boys found treasures on the beach - 

 My brother and Carter in the ocean -

 Beautiful morning on the beach!

 My brother went kayak fishing one morning and brought back these fresh fish for us...he grilled them one night.  SO GOOD.

 YUMMY crab claws!

 My cute Carter in a pink shirt and lawsie mercy some seersucker shorts!

 Beautiful evening at Boondocks restaurant....

I love the beach...it's in my blood !  I'll be sure to post more about the beach next week (I hope!)

~CB~

First Day of School & Back to School Shopping

Monday was the boys' First Day of School.  I always take the day off work on the "first day of school" because I don't want the boys being rushed and starting school stressed out.  I want to enjoy their first day with them.  And it's tradition.  And I love a tradition.

 Y'all know from my past posts that school supply shopping is one of my MOST favorite things in the entire world.  This year proved to be equally as fun, as we purchased all new supplies and got ourselves ready for school!  Shopping for clothes was a disaster this year and I'm convinced designers have all girls, because the boy sections are terrible.  TERRIBLE.  We didn't have Patricia there to help us organize our clothes this year (she was busy), but I managed to get it all done. 

This year, the boys are at different schools.  In our little town, the (public) school is broken into K-2, 3-5, 6-8, then 9-12.  Carter is still in the first category, as he's in 2nd grade, and Nolan moved up to the second this year, since he moved into 3rd grade!  Their schools start about 10 minutes apart and I knew I would not have time to get Nolan to school and Carter on time the first day!  I decided to take Nolan to school and Cecil took Carter.  Both boys were familiar with and knew their teachers so the transition was not hard at all.

We are very very happy with their teachers and the boys got to "meet the teacher" last week, before school started.

 We actually had Carter's teacher last year for Nolan.  She was teaching second grade, but moved to first this year so Carter is in her class and Nolan was placed in a class that has a pair of young, team-teachers.  He has Mrs. C for reading and writing and Mrs. R for science and math.

We are looking forward to a great school year for both boys!

Lofty Goals

I'm a goal-oriented person.  I enjoy (I know I'm a dork), making a to do list and seeing how much I can get accomplished.  It's nothing for me to have 3 or more to-do lists going at once.  One BIG item on a to-do list is paying off debt!

You'll recall on my "Promise of a New Year" post back in January, the hubs and I wanted to continue toward becoming debt free.  We're not there yet, but we're trying, and we'll get there one day.

If there's one thing I know, it's "slow and steady wins the race".  We've made progress (not as much as we had hoped) but progress is good and less debt is better!

Here are a few ways to help with progress in saving money/becoming debt free:

• eat dinner/meals at home  (make a menu)
• take your lunch to work rather than eating out
• use coupons
• shop sales, and make a budget for Christmas gifts
• cash in your loose change and pay off debt (even if it's only $5, it's $5 less debt than you had the day before!)

These are only a few ways to help your family in becoming debt free.  Do you have other ideas?  What progress have YOU made in becoming debt-free??  OR--if you're already debt-free, how did you do it?  Give me some tips and tricks!

 ~CB~

More tales from the trails.....

You might be tired of seeing all my pictures from Colorado by now, but just a few more and then I'm done, I promise!

Our days in Colorado were pretty lax.  We had no concrete plans.  During the morning, Cecil and I would go tour the city or a landmark, then meet up with Max and go eat lunch or hang out.  After that, we would take him back to the field and head back to our hotel to get ready to go to batting practice and the game.  

I've said it before, but we really enjoyed being able to go to the field early and watch batting practice (BP).  The guys were very laid back and it was just a nice, casual atmosphere.

After the game each night, we would go to dinner with Max.  We were all starving by this point and tired too!  But we flew too far for too much fun to worry about being tired! HA!  Here's a picture from dinner one night.  It's kind of dark, but Cecil took it with his phone.

Max signing autographs one night after a game.....

 Wasn't this moon beautiful?  This was one night during a game!  I had to get a shot of it!

 Overall, we had a fantastic trip and some much needed time away!

Go GJ Rockies!