Brief Photographic Update with Minor Captioning

We went to the Wings over Halls Air Show last Saturday with the kids. It is a great place for history buffs to explore and ask questions. You can go inside of WW2 fighter planes and there's an air show with lots of acrobatics and stuff. It would have been funner if it didn't get blazing hot right around 1. Lunch time. 2. Nap Time. 3. 20 minutes before the air show was supposed to start. So we were all miserable and sweaty and very tired instead of excited about the air show. Next year, or next time we decide to go, I'm sure we will remember to bring our own drinks and lunches so we don't feel as guilty about purchasing fair foods. That would make the whole journey far more pleasurable, I am sure. Anyway, here are pictures!

Having a good time!

Looking inside a plane!

Thomas cheesin'.

Matthew um...not cheesin'. Hahah this is when everything started to go downhill and we eventually gave up and went home.

And last Sunday, there was a fellowship dinner at our church in honor of the revival getting started! It was super delicious and they even had Gas Station chicken, which is exactly what Thomas had been begging for all weekend!

Thomas and me being cute!

Thomas and me being crazy!

Daddy being fierce and Lara not getting the memo so looking just plain old adorable.

Then the kids went to Mommy's house for Hudson's birthday party, and Matthew and I tried our hand at making stuffed portobello mushrooms! I still don't know if we did them right, but they sure did taste good!!

And here is my most exciting piece of photographic art: the completed and decorated set of shelves that Matthew put in his kitchen, just for me! Aren't they just gorgeouso? Atop our lovely shelves is my budding collection of milk glass, plus a lamp for some extra lighting. The middle two shelves have the most utilized items in the household, the everyday Red And Black square plates/bowls on one shelf, and wooden spoons, fruit bowl, and spaghetti noodles, all displayed in clear glass on the other. The bottom shelf is still a bit of a hodge podge that I am not quite satisfied with, but it sure is cute for now! The three books on the bottom shelf make up my entire collection of cookbooks, haha. Kind of sad! But I find all my recipes online mostly, so I didn't expect to have a whole wall full or anything.

There you go loves! An update and a peek at my attempts to turn Matthew's house into our house as I gear up for one particularly fine day in May of next year!

:D
See Y'all!
TFMM

Summer Vacation!

Interesting how my vacation begins just as everyone else down here is going back to school. I'm not complaining. For the next two weeks exactly, I have no college class, no final, no worries, just making money to take up my time. Another fun college fact, I have a 4.0 at Martin. I know, I've only taken 3 classes, but by my third class at Penn...I had to withdraw from one in order to not fail my freshman fall. Yayyy for being invested in my education and yayyyy for not being in a cut-throat money-hungry college anymore! At the moment I'm in the top 25% at Martin, but I'm hoping to keep climbing as my Penn GPA gets tackled by the classes I take from now on. They don't have Phi Beta Kappa at a low-key school like this, or else that would be my goal by graduation. Hahaha

Anyway, I've been enjoying life for the past week. Not only did it feel super good to be finished with school, but I had a light work week and plenty of time to work on some Parrrrty things for Lara. Plenty of pre-purchasing has been done, but no true official crafting has begun. So continue to stay tuned. The sewing machine will eventually be kicking up dust, and things will be built. No, certainly not cryptic at all. Also last week, Thomas and Lara went back to school! Thomas' first day was Wednesday, and Lara's was Thursday. First grade and kindergarten! They are some big kids. And as if Lara weren't big enough, I took her with me to college on Friday; she didn't have school, and I needed to take two finals in order to pass my classes.

Lara and Pandy the Panda Bear being very studious in the library...playing games on pbskids.org..

Typical college student, passed out surrounded by snacks and study materials.

Lara did great at staying quiet while I took my tests, and of course everyone thought she was just the most beautiful person they'd ever seen. So it went pretty smoothly, I have to say.

The thing that has taken up most of my time in the last two weeks has actually been grocery shopping, believe it or not. I started reading a lot on this blog about meal planning and money saving, and it inspired me to not enter married life as the brokest housewife ever to cross the planet. The writer of that blog feeds her family of 5 on less than $200 a month, which just about blew my mind when I think about how much Matt and I can spend on a Sunday evening if we go grocery shopping together. It made me really stop to think what kinds of dinners I can make that aren't just heat n' serve frozen foods. The answer, two weeks ago, was really not that much. July 29th marked the first day of a two-week (TWO WEEK!) meal plan, for which I did all of the grocery shopping at the beginning of the time period. (Sunday's dinner, on the meal plan, was frozen pizza. I know, I was off to a great start on this whole "from scratch" thing. Haha but I knew it was in the freezer so I didn't see any point in not eating it! Especially because my plan was never to eat frozen pizza again for awhile!)

And can I just say, honestly, that grocery shopping trip where I bought all of the supplies for all of Matthew's, mine and the kids' dinners (just dinners are on the plan) came in at a cool subtotal of $76.00. I near enough fell over in Walmart. Meal plans for the win. $38 a week for dinner for four people. Anybody else excited? Okay good. Because I was really excited.

We've been a lot worried about money saving as we gear up for this here combination of finances taking place on May 25th, 2013. Mostly because there is a big long laundry list of "Stuff We Want to Do" in the next, oh, 5 years or so. And as things do, they all involve some large sum of money that we have no obvious way of obtaining. I guess we'll just pray about it and do those of the things on the list that we can!

I think that's most of my updates for right now! Next weekend we're going to an air show with lots of WW2 fighter planes and other stuff of that nature. So I'm sure history buffs will enjoy my pictures, but I'm sure most others won't. Something to look forward to! Hahahaha

See Y'all!
The future Mrs. McCaslin

A Photo-less Recap!

Finally we have had a weekend worth recapping! By the way, is the word "Recap" short for recapitulate? Recapitalize? Recapture? Recaptain? My spell check doesn't believe that "Recaptain" is a word, so I guess it's not that one. I think recapture sounds plausible. Or maybe recap is just a word on its own. Anyway, this last weekend. I finally didn't have to work, and the kids finally didn't have a million things we had to do with them. Yayyyy.

On Friday I skipped school and asked off work so that I could babysit the kids all day. That's something I haven't gotten to do in months and it was super fun. We went over to Toni's house to play with Jace and her friend's daughter Audrey for a little while. All of us enjoyed the chill out, no agenda time together. And I always love spending time with my future family-in-law. Toni's house always inspires me to come home and either clean or decorate, haha. Because hers is in better condition in both of those areas than here.

On Saturday morning we loaded up the family and embarked on a scavenge through a 17-mile yard sale. Probably 30 or 40 houses participate in a yard sale every summer on this 17 mile stretch of road. It's amazing that they still have stuff to give away year after year! But boy did we find some good stuff. Thomas and Lara both bought a few new toys, and I got 5 pieces of milk glass for my budding collection. It was awesome! Matthew hoped to maybe find a new lawnmower, but no cigar. If anyone has one they want to sell, let me know!

Saturday was the first anniversary of the day Matthew and I met. Jessica drove me to her house from Jacksonville airport, and he was sitting on the couch waiting patiently to meet his wife :-D. I still remember Jessica telling me that John's cousin was staying with them, and he was the best man in the wedding. And Jessica told me that John really wanted us to get together. Well I guess he made a pretty lucky guess, huh? In celebration of our Meet-a-versary, Matthew surprised me and took me out to eat some red Meat at Outback Steakhouse. Get it? Meet - Meat? No, just me. That's okay. So Matthew tried his very first Bloomin' Onion, which, as usual, did not disappoint. I ordered a steak, but I was so full from the bread and onion and salad that came before, I took my whole plate home in a carryout box. Haha isn't that the best way to go out to dinner? Get full before you ever get to the good stuff, and then take it all home for lunch the next day. We also had the pleasure of meeting a friend from Matt's work, Gene, and his family. They were super sweet, with two little daughters. And surprisingly enough, we were seated right next to them! So I got to play peekaboo with the toddler daughter for most of the night. Pretty, darn, fun. And at the end of the night, Gene and his wife left and bought us an ice cream sundae for dessert!!! It was really sweet of them (pun), and Matthew and I officially felt so full we thought we may both either explode or collapse before we made it to the car. If you ever read this, thank you Gene and Laurie for the awesome dessert!

Today was the day Matthew and I hung out at Jessica's reception and stayed up until 5 in the morning and went to the beach at midnight. Memories, memories :) I think tonight will be somewhat less exciting and more same old same old than that night. But that's okay, because that night was an exception in both of our lives.

Anyway! I have to start dinner and do some homework for class tomorrow. I hope everyone's enjoying their last few days of summer vacation OR their first few days of school! Thomas and Lara start tomorrow and you know I am more excited for them than they are for themselves :-P. As usual.

Enjoy your Monday!
See Y'all,
The Future Mrs. McCaslin

Catching up on the Last Two Months

As a means of making up for lost time and there really being some things I think I just won't have time to dedicate a whole post to, I decided to just post all of the pictures that I haven't gotten to and give glorified captions for each. That way I can quit feeling guilty about leaving stuff out, and I can begin taking current pictures again so I'm not a week or two behind at all times.

Circa about 2 months ago, we watched a piano and a brother and a Nanny and a Jace ride down the street. This is just as terrifying as it sounds. It's strapped in at the bottom, and we were only going about a mile to our house, but the road was bumpy and we were RIGHT behind them watching its every move. The happy ending, of course, is that it made it to our house!

And now we have a new piano! A lovely lady who is now my hair stylist put up an ad on Craigslist and Matthew got me this little beauty. For those of you who didn't know, he had actually bought me a baby grand piano awhile back, but it was in such bad shape that we decided not to try and repair. This, my new pride and joy, will hopefully be a good start for teaching piano lessons and schooling my kids to be child prodigies. Yay! I love my fiance!

Moving on, here is the most delicious endeavor into Southern cooking I have made yet. A collaborative effort, we made sausage gravy and biscuits (and vegetables, to make sure we're not unhealthy, haha) The delicious idea, the biscuits, and the sausage were made by me, and turns out my Matthew is a gravy makin' fool! So he made the gravy and it was probably almost the most delicious thing we've ever made yet. Soooo good.

Proof that it was sooooooooo goood!

Hey - wait a minute, how'd he sneak in here? ;) Here is Prince Charming himself, looking I do believe very impressed with our cooking skills. He looks so happy ^_^ I like to think I may have had something to do with that smile!

The other man in my life at the moment - Teri's new baby Austin with his Aunt Amanda, Matthew's cousin's wife. In this picture we're all at Granddaddy's surprise 80th birthday party, which was a blast over the first weekend in May. Granddaddy was really touched by the number of people that came to pay tribute to a wonderful man. I can tell he's wonderful and I haven't known him nearly 80 years. But people say that Matthew's a lot like him and looks a lot like him...so I bet we can all say it's safe to assume I'd like him. Anyway, here's an adorable picture of a big ole sleepy baby.

Matthew and his little man checking out the fishing prospects at Granddaddy's pond.

Same ole sleepy baby, now in the arms of Matt's stepmother Candi, who is also now my BOSS. And let me tell ya, she's a  good one. We all have so much fun working in the bakery/deli and it is a great way to spend time with my Father- and Stepmother- in-law.

Thomas enjoying the fishing with his Aunt Shelby and Daddy's foot. 

Lara blowing some successful bubbles. I promise her  look would be a lot cuter if she hadn't had the liberty of choosing socks and wearing a clutch across her body all day. I honestly don't know where either of those ideas came from, but the rest of her sure was pretty!

There's my man again. Still sitting by the pond. Smelling something funky.

Oh wait no he musta just been making a funky face at ME. WHAT?! At least he's happy now ^_^ What a smile. I sure do love him.

Hey the baby woke up! Now in the arms of his mommy and being generally just  the cutest person in our family at the moment.

So...here is a picture I took of the cat...and my attempt to feed him that went somewhat awry. The food did eventually get onto his plate, but uh...it may have gone a few other places. I dunno how he ever got to eat the bits that landed on his back. I guess cats are pretty flexible :P I was just trying to keep him in shape.

Battle scars from my first week at work. 10 points for anyone that can figure out what these marks are actually from! Hint: They aren't bruises and they didn't hurt.

A closer up version of my battle scars, haha.

Just about the prettiest preschooler that you ever did see! So proud of her!  Kindergarten and 1st graders will be in our house from now on!

This cool guy enjoying a spinning flyer that was sent to him as a Grammy gift! We sure do love these!

Andddd kindergarten graduation: Thomas receiving a Science Award! Wooohoo, who's surprised? Not me! Haha

There you go guys. The next post I write up will actually be a little bit current, hopefully. But this will probably keep you entertained for awhile at least. Now you've met Sally and my Car, so we can get on with real life and real updates from now on! Yay!

I'll See Y'all on the flipperoo side!

TFMM

A Ketchup Post

Here's what I think we all need to do regarding mine and Matthew's life - we need to do some serious ketching up. You saw my last post where I grovelled for forgiveness from all of my friends and family. Well, the grovelling is over. I'm here. Not really - I have to go to work in about half an hour and I haven't gotten dressed yet so this is going to be a Speedy Gonzalez kind of post. Like usual. I gotta start setting aside writing time for when I get home and I'm not babysitting and I don't need to fix dinner right away. Today won't be one of those days because I'll be picking up T+L on the way home from work today.

I want to give you beautiful picture updates of everything we've done, I really do. Why am I not going to do that? Because this week just so happened to be Lara's graduation from Pre-School. No connection, you think. That's where you are mistaken. You see, Matthew and I both skipped out of work for an early lunch (really early, we left around 9:30 from our respective workplaces) in order to go to her graduation at 10. We arrived at the school (he picked me up because Food Rite is on the way from his work to her school, precious right?) just at 10:00 AM, and Lara's mommy told us that apparently the note sent home was wrong, and it didn't start until 10:30. This was a problem. We both had to be back at work pretty darn close to 10:30, and now it was looking more like we wouldn't be able to leave until like 11:00. Matt did some quick finagling and called up Nanny to come watch her graduate in our stead. We stayed justttt long enough to see Miss Adorable herself looking all kinds of cute and super excited about graduating, and then we had to skip out. We gave Nanny the camera, though, so all of my pictures that I've taken over the last 2 or 3 weeks are MIA until I get it from her. She has requested a date with her grandchildren tomorrow, though, so I'll make sure to exchange camera for babies tomorrow.

What else has happened? Hm..............................................

Here are some pictures that I owe from awhile back that never quite made it into posts. That's a bit of what has happened. :)

Lara - Look Mawy I can drive with my eyes closed!! She was very impressed with herself.

Lara inside of a set of tires being a ham as usual. We couldn't get Thomas to do the same...they have very different opinions of pictures being taken of them.

Lara the future mechanic learning from Daddy

This picture warrants some serious explanation. We are in the Walmart parking lot where we had to wait an hour for our pictures (Daddy's birthday present) to be done. The kids had gotten new umbrellas for Easter which they were obsessed with, but hadn't gotten to use for real since it hadn't rained yet. I promised to keep them in the trunk of the car so we could use them if it started to rain while we weren't at home. While we were waiting at Walmart, the rain started. For awhile we played in the empty part of the parking lot, over by the pharmacy. This didn't last long, though, because I didn't have an umbrella so I was cold and wet. I had the absolutely brilliant idea to get back in the car, recline the two front seats, and open the sun roof. My car became an instant April Wonderland. The next picture is also a very cute representation of what we got up to while we were waiting.

So happy that it finally started raining!

Thomas loves science projects. We found this one in a Family Fun magazine (Thanks Aunt Sue!) We created a balloon zipline where the air in the balloon is the force which carries a drinking straw down a line of dental floss. They loooved it. We kept it up all weekend and there are still balloons floating around! Not literally floating...I guess sitting. Sitting around.

Once the balloon is off, there is serious excitement in watching it fly 10 feet by itself. See here - excitement. I'm not entirely sure what Lara is grabbing onto. I guess maybe the balloon. She caught it mid-flight!

So there ya go. A little bit of all the fun we've gotten up to. But wait, there's more! More to come whenever I get the camera back from Nanny.

See Y'all!
TFMM

Weekend [Critter] Recap

"SO, Mary, what did you do this weekend?"

Killed bugs.

 And the point of this post is mostly to talk about the bugs, but I will not be able to leave it at that, oh no. Because when we returned to Matthew's house after his dad's birthday party on Saturday, there was also a possum outside of our house. We figured he was stealing Blue's food or trying to break into our trash. I don't have a picture because we all got inside as fast as possible and hoped it would go away. Success! We never saw it again. I'm guessing Blue and he scrapped outside, and Blue, being the most ferocious of kitty cats, probably beat him down and told him that's HIS trash, none available for you sir thank you.

You already saw these guys.

Large alive spider. And Payless Sperry knockoff.

Large dead spider and little guy who wanted to eat him.

 That was just the beginning. Luckily I had the Big Strong Man nearby for all the other critters that we found over the weekend.

Let's see, Thomas showed me the spider he killed with Daddy's flip flop early on Saturday. I was proud and told him he'd be good when the Big Strong Man isn't around. On Saturday morning Lara went to get into her purse that she uses to carry stuffed animals from place to place. No sooner had she picked out the yellow bunny she wanted then the purse flew across the room and Lara was screaming. I mean WAILING. She was so. Traumatized. We figured out why...a spider the same size as the one that freaked me out on Friday was crawling around inside of her purse, about to come eat her just as soon as she dared move that bunny. Didn't take a picture because Lara was just too terrified.

Then, come Sunday evening, I was getting ready to go to choir practice at church when I found this interesting specimen (actually, it should be plural. Specimens.) Here we have two enormous dead spiders caught in a spider web. I'm thinking this picture doesn't do justice to the real situation because you can't see the BEAST that killed them. It was about a third of the size of either enormo dead spider! It was tiny and, apparently, mighty! I wasn't scared or freaking out about that one...but I did take a picture and call Matt over to see it because I thought it was pretty impressive. That little guy must have been mighty poisonous to his friends Tweedlespider and Spiderdum!

And here we have this morning. I returned from my covert operation with Aunt Kerry Lee to find this in my bathroom...it actually appeared to already be dead, but just to be safe, I squashed its yellow-brown guts out with my hulking work boots. Those things make me invicible, as far as I've been able to tell.

So there you go. The house has been sprayed, and it rained really hard today. I'm hoping those two combined efforts will keep the animals a little further away from my bedroom than they have been lately!

On the subject of animals, here's a cat that decided the ideal hang out during a rain storm was on top of my car:

Of course, as soon as he saw me looking at him, he jumped right off the car to come see me. I was lucky I managed to get this picture before he was pawing at the door to come inside. He looked at me, like, "Can't you see it is monSOONing outside? Why would you be so cold hearted and keep me out here?" And I said back, "You lost all chance of me feeling sorry for you when you decided it was a good idea to sit on the car in the pouring rain."

Speaking of Blue, did you know Matthew and I give him a Russian accent whenever we talk for him? Which we do a lot of. Blue is very present whenever we're pretty much anywhere around the house. He's quite the feline. So we have a tendency to pretend he's taking part in our conversation...do you do that with your pets and/or nonverbal children? Matt and I are guilty guilty guilty. Baby Austin, Teri's new little guy, gets to say all kinds of interesting things vicariously through us. And Blue, the bobcat Russian blue, gets to do the very same, but his is with a Russian accent. Naturally.

And those crazy Russians, they just like to sit outside in the rain, I guess.

There ya have it folks!

See Y'all!

TFMM

Celebrating Matthew

Hey All. There are a lot of updates I owe you. A lot of things have happened. Weather has changed, the kids have gotten taller, our internet is rubbish, Matthew got in a bike wreck, but I haven't the time for all those things. Here's what I need to talk about: my fiance is an old man. That's right I said it. He turned a whopping 24 years old on Saturday, right smack dab in between Earth Day and that other infamous holiday in which illegal things are done that of course I know nothing about because I've never known anybody that ever did anything illegal, especially drugs. I've just heard of the day from those rogue ne'erdowells over back in England, and of course, Amsterdam.

So what did we do? Well, since it wasn't on either day, we didn't take part in either festivities. No illegal substance consumed, no trees planted. We did, however, have a big ole day of fun-filled adventures!

Originally, the plan was to do some more fishing like we did last Saturday.

That wasn't an option, though, because the weather was disgustipating. So, instead, Matthew told me he wanted to run his first 5k in 8 months. Sure, why not? Mr. Muscles and the family all drove down to Dyer
School and stood out in the frigidity. Lara seems to be lacking a lot in coordination these days...when Matt picked her up from Granddaddy's house on Thursday, she had a huge gash on her leg from falling down the stairs. Then on Saturday she tripped at the 5k and got a bloody nose and skinned her knee, ripping her jeans. She hasn't quite figured out that when you're as delicate as a china doll, ya can't run around like a sumo wrestler. Oh well, it only looks a little bit like her father beats her, and I'm sure anyone that knows Matthew knows that's not the case.

So how did he do? 2nd in his age group, which I say is not half bad given his herniated disc and pinched nerve and he hasn't run at all since September. Not bad at all my friend, not bad. Although I have been keeping him in shape and on his toes since February when he started chasing me all over the place to try and tickle me. Apparently the squeals are cute, and by cute I think he means torturous and I'm not responsible for any injuries inflicted. I'm a pretty quick little whippersnapper, so he's got to be fast to keep up with me. I also always wear socks if I'm inside, so I can slip around the hardwood floors that he sticks to in bare feet. Mwahaha.

Aside from being 2nd in his age group, he also placed 24th overall. I told him I knew he would have gone faster if it wasn't his 24th birthday, but he decided to be cool and come in 24th in celebration of his age. In fact he counted all of the people in front of him to make sure that he was in exactly 24th place by the finish line. :) He's so clever.

Crossing the finish line!

Then we relaxed at Matthew's house for awhile, and gave him his birthday present from all of us - a big framed print of this:

That Lara is just a pretty lady isn't she?!

The rest of the afternoon was spent...asleep. Everybody fell asleep without meaning to, for two hours. This was great and refreshing, except that I was the first one to wake up and look at the clock. That mean ole clock told us we only had about 10 minutes to get ready before we had to leave for a birthday grill out in honor of Teri (Matt's sister whose birthday was last week) and Matt. So Matt jumped in the shower (still gross and sticky from the 5k, bleck) and the kids got socks and shoes on and we headed out for an evening of fun and festivities!! And cupcakes. A huge number of cupcakes. Toni (Matthew's other sister) made beautiful vanilla cuppycakes with blue frosting and sprinkles, super cute. And I went crazy on the chocolate route and made Nutella-filled cupcakes with Nutella frosting, and Mocha cupcakes with chocolate frosting. We all felt a bit dead after the dessert course.

After a grand ole evening of hot dogs, burger, spicy sausages, and mac n' cheese...and cupcakes o' course, we all headed home serenaded by Silly Songs with Larry and put the kids to bed.

And now the internet seems to be fixed! Yippie kie yay!

Still don't have a real job apart from subbing. If anyone wants to help me out here, I would appreciate it! I need a regular paycheck!

See Y'all!
TFMM

Easter Eggscapades

I promise you I have an excuse! Don't be angry with me! In the last ten days, our internet has been super shoddy - apparently it's supposed to be fixed now! Yay! Also, it was this big important holiday, so we were a little caught up in family visits and festivities. The kids had three or four Easter egg hunts I think! Even right now I'm a bit distracted because it's Spring Break for Thomas and Lara and we're hanging out all day while Daddy's at work. After this episode of Veggietales is over we all have to get dressed and clean and ready for our day!

On Easter Saturday we went over to the church for all kinds of awesome kids' activities. Firstly there was pizza, which had Matthew and me sold automatically of course. After pizza the kids all decorated cookies with icing and sprinkles and M&Ms and jelly beans...all at the same time in Lara's case.

And none of the above in Thomas' case.

Then we got to work hunting some eggs!

Lara after her age group's successful hunt!

Carson with his football basket bursting at the seams!

Thomas checking out his spoils!

Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend Easter Sunday with the chillin's, so we did lowkey Easter baskets on Saturday instead. We skipped dying eggs as well. On Sunday we went to a sunrise service and spent the rest of the day working on the car and spending time with our matchmakers/best friends/cousins at Aunt Regina and Uncle Bubba's house. More on that later. Veggietales is over!!

See Y'all!

TFMM