Flight

This weekend we've been lucky enough to have Doc's parents here with us and all to ourselves. The kids just returned home from camp on Friday and Doc's parents will be picking them up from their mom's house Monday morning to take them to the great state of Indiana for a week.  I have a feeling they're going to have a lot of fun with their Lala and Poppa this upcoming week! Since we were kid-free for the weekend, we decided to go out for a nice grown-up dinner Saturday night. Doc and I decided we should take them to Flight, a restaurant that serves flights of wine as well as flights of every other course of the meal.  It's a great way to get to taste lots of things on the menu!

We all prettied ourselves up for the occasion.

You may have noticed, but my husband is one fine-looking man.

He must get his good looks from his pretty momma. (Sorry, Bill!)

My meal got off to a great start with a flight of wine.

And before we knew it, our table was full of food.

A flight of salads for Pat:

One big salad for Doc:

A flight of soups for Bill:

And a big bowl of soup for me: (delicious!)

Next up were the entrees. For me, veal tenderloin with lump crab meat and asparagus on the left, beef filet and onions over potatoes in the middle, and shrimp and grits on the right. I probably don't even have to tell you how awesome it was. Surprisingly, the veal tenderloin was my favorite.

Doc had (from back to front) lamb chop over spring vegetables, rib eye over au gratin potatoes, and grouper with black rice.  He said the grouper was his favorite.

Patricia had the lamb chops that Doc had, plus the beef filet special with au gratin potatoes, and seared tuna over an asian salad. Is your mouth watering yet?

And finally, Bill had the veal tenderloin like me (in front), the grouper over black rice like Doc (back), and orange glazed duck over rice (in the center).

Good food + full bellies = happy people.

While the idea of having three desserts each sounded phenomenal, we were way too stuffed to go through with it. Plus, there were still cupcakes at home that needed to be eaten.

While waiting for the valet to bring our car, Pat and I took a picture in our semi-matching outfits.

And here's a pic of three people who I'm glad to get to call my family.

Next time anyone's looking for somewhere good to go eat, head to Flight! And if you want company, call us. We'd happily go again!

Family and Frogs

After the impromptu party last Saturday night, and the triple shower Sunday afternoon, it only made sense for us to invite my family over Sunday evening to help us eat all the leftovers. Bren came and brought her momma with her.

And ooooh does she love her momma!

Parker brought his momma too, and he showed up ready to eat!

Bren looked the apples over to decide if they were good enough for her to eat.

Both of these little kiddos really love their Poppy.

Doc and I may have been really tired, but we were very glad to have help eating all the leftover food so it didn't have to go back in our fridge.

I have been telling my five-year-old nephew, Jett, about all the frogs we have in our neighborhood. Some nights, they're everywhere! He loves frogs, so we have been planning a big frog hunt at my house. And we decided last Sunday night was the night. After dinner, we headed outside.

While we got our hunting gear ready, someone tried to escape.

We passed out all the frog holders and were ready to go.

The two little ones stood back and watched while Jett and I chased the fast frogs.

We finally got a hold of one! As Jett said, "Awww, yeah."

We hunted and hunted but we never found anymore frogs. It was still too early in the evening. And for any of you animal rights activists out there, yes, we let the frog go.

Our hunting trail conveniently led us straight to the playground, and the lack of more frogs was quickly forgotten.

Did I mention that it was really, really hot? All of us had sweaty heads before long.

But that didn't stop us from climbing on top of everything!

There's nothing sweeter than seeing cousins holding hands and sliding together.

Bren's playtime took a quick turn for the worst. Can you imagine putting all your energy into climbing on top of the fort,

sitting down and thinking all is right with the world,

only to look over to see your mom pushing your cousin on the swing?

That can tear a little girl up, you know.

How could her mom do that?

Even the thought of going down the slide wasn't helping in this situation.

But finally, her mom came to her rescue and everything was ok again.

That's when we decided we should call it a night, and our third party of the weekend came to an end.

Who wants a cupcake?

We made 84 of these tonight.

Are we throwing a party tomorrow? No. Are we going to a party tomorrow? Nope. We made 84 cupcakes just for us to eat. :)

Actually, I want to make mini cupcakes for the shower I'm hosting next weekend, so I bought a new tool to see if I could make them look decent enough for a shower. I got to practice the icing 84 times. And now, after all 4 of us have had more than enough dessert, we still have 74 left.

I iced them as the came out of the oven and then Anna was in charge of sprinkles.

We had a professional taste-tester try them out for us.

He approved.

Unlike the hydrangeas, these little bites of deliciousness are not the size of my head.

Did you know Anna is learning to play the guitar? After we had all taste-tested the cupcakes, she gave us a mini concert. First up was "When The Saints Go Marching In."

And then she played and sang a little ditty she made up herself. It was funny and was stuck in my head for a while.

Wyatt worked on his college football rankings tonight.  I think some of our friends will be thrilled with his number one choice. Notre Dame is number 31 on his list.  Hopefully they'll finish the season higher than that.

Time to hit the sack...please come over and help us eat cupcakes tomorrow!!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Last night when I got home from work Doc and the kids were sitting out on the front porch enjoying the light rain. I walked outside to join them and immediately noticed that Anna had sparkly hair.

She told me it's called hair "blang" and she got it at a salon yesterday. I nearly fell out when she told me how much it cost, especially since it's basically a few pieces of tinsel tied around a couple strands of hair. It's supposed to last 2-6 weeks, but I can't imagine that it'll hold for that long.

I actually like it much better than the hair wraps she usually gets, but I don't think her dad was a fan of the sparkly hair at all. He's being a good sport about it, though.

While we were outside I decided to grab a pair of scissors and give somebody a hair cut. And no, it wasn't this curly-headed boy. He wants to let his grow out until school starts.

Instead, it was this scraggly haired pup.

The hair on her ears was getting a bit long.

This picture is pretty bad but it shows all of her tufts of hair that stick out.

I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried this before or not, but it's very hard to trim the hair of a wiggly dog.

By the time I finally gave up, I had cut a pretty good amount of hair off.

I think her hair cut looks nice!

She's a little embarrassed about it but I keep telling her it'll grow back out.

And that was the most exciting part of our Friday night!

4th of July

It's waaaay too early to be up on a Saturday, but I'm wide awake so I going to try to play catch-up.  I have tons and tons of pictures from the 4th of July and I think some are really cute.  Let's see if I can quickly go through them...

The afternoon started with us turning the regular play set into a water park.  To get started, the first thing you have to do is empty the pail of water down the slide.

Then you get seated at the top and get ready to go.

Weeeeeeee!

Parker loved it! The water on the slide really helped him gain some speed, and he was able to catch some air and fly into the pool of water every time.

Now, you know I wasn't going to let him have all the fun...

Big kids can play too, right?

Even with so much fun to be had, you can still sometimes have a meltdown.

The pool was filled with water from the waterhose and it was freeeeezing!  Parks had to warm up with his Woody towel.

Mom was pretty pleased with how the water park turned out.

It wasn't long before the other cousins showed up for some water park fun.

Jett decided to try to water slide head first.

And I think he liked it!

Aren't his little boy muscles the cutest thing ever?

Of course, Parks had to go head first too since his older cousin was.

I think he liked it too.

And that's how the afternoon went. The boys went down the slide over and over again. They had a blast. I asked Bren if she wanted to go down too, but this is the look she gave me.

"Are you crazy?"

She was NOT going to go down that slide.

She's a much bigger fan of the swing. If someone would push her, she would swing all day.

"Yo, can I get a push?'

My dad moved the sprinkler to water the new flower bed and then, just like that, the water slide wasn't the most exciting thing anymore.

My parents decided to host a last-minute cookout for my dad's side of the family. We all got cleaned up and ready for company and good food.

Doc manned the grill, as usual.

This is the best picture I could get of my brother and his family. Once again, Bren wasn't very interested in me and my camera.

I tried to get her from the other side of the bench but she wouldn't look at me then either.

Jett kept telling me he cut his lip but I didn't ever really see anything...

Doc and I wore our patriotic colors in honor of the holiday.

I think everyone had a good time at the cookout. The heat wasn't too unbearable so we were able to spend a lot of time outside.

We taught our relatives how to play cornhole and had a small couples tournament.

Guess who thought it was her turn in the kiddy pool since it was kid-free?

All in all, it was a great fourth of July. Very low-key and relaxed, just the way I like it. Hope you all had a great 4th too!