A little southern snow

After a very long wait yesterday watching the skies and grumbling about having just rain (well, that was mostly me doing the grumbling), we finally got our snow last night!  A few minutes before 9:00, that cold rain changed to sleet and at 9:00 on the dot, huge, beautiful flakes started to fall.  Here's Larry out in it just after it started, in his shorts and flip flops!  He's filming me taking a picture of him. :)

We were home all day yesterday since both the base and the college were closed due to the bad weather that was coming.  Atlanta was a mess!  The snow came earlier and harder than they had expected.  We felt so bad for those folks who were stranded and stayed in prayer for them.

Once we had some snow on the ground, we gathered some up for a big bowl of snow ice cream.  It was delicious!  And it was Larry's idea to add raisins and cinnamon.  Yummm.

We made a snowman head, too.  Good thing we did because today, the snow was so dry that it was almost impossible to form a good snowball.

And then we had the best snowball fight in the house!  We were laughing so hard, we could hardly even throw.  I hit Larry so many times in the back and he hit me once under my eye and then it was ovah.  :)

This morning we got up and let Tabbie Hoffman go outside to check out his first snow.  He wasn't afraid of it at all.  But he was ready to go back in pretty quick!

We bundled up and got out and walked around our yard and neighborhood and I took over 80 pictures!  Everything was so beautiful and peaceful.

 Icicles hanging off our house

 I love this picture of Larry in the "wilderness".  :)

 

Hand to God, he told me to hit him in the face.  

How could I say no to my beloved?  :)

 This picture got some giggles on Facebook.  The perspective makes me look like a little person.  Larry said he had him a little hobbit girl.  :)

I was so very happy to be able to share these two snow days with him!  Now I'm ready for a little sunshine and a warm up!

Sunday Cake

When Larry came home last month, I started baking him a cake every Sunday.  He's had German chocolate, carrot and last week's was triple chocolate fudge.  Today's Sunday Cake is strawberry!

I liked it because it's pink.  He liked it because it's cake.  :)

Finding Crackhead Santa

Yesterday, Larry and I went to Forsyth to the Circle of Care thrift shop.  Ami, Brian and I had gone in September and had the best time.  I couldn't wait to take Larry!  We went looking for albums and we bought 14!  We lucked up and found some really cool ones!  Peter, Paul and Mary, The Moody Blues and John Denver's Back Home Again are just a few that we got.  And Larry found this awesome handmade watermelon potholder that I just had to have.  For 75 cents!  I absolutely love it.  It looks so cute in my kitchen!  We went looking for lamps for our bedside tables but didn't find any that we liked.  I want old, vintage, mismatchy and Larry wants a touch lamp.  The thrill of the hunt is what I keep telling him!

 We added a few Santas to our collection
 

I just had to have this one. Crackhead Santa is what we call him.  :)  He just looked like he needed a home.  And some rehab.
 

Y'all know I had to clean them folks out in their sheets and pillowcases!  We got two fitted sheets, two flat sheets and six pillowcases for $8!

We had lunch at Forsyth Country Cookin' and had the catfish and shrimp lunch with french fries and it was delicious!

We stopped by the furniture liquidation place to look at lamps there but it was so cold in there, we didn't stay long.  It was colder in there than it was outside so we left pretty quick.  We saw some really good deals, though, and said we'd go back.  When it's warmer!

Speaking of cold, there's a rumor going around that it's gonna snow Tuesday!  Oh, I so hope we get snowed in!!  I've been saying if it's gonna be this cold, it needs to snow and make it worth it.  Looks like maybe, just maybe...

We went over to some friends' house last night and grilled pork chops and played cards.  We had the best time!  We went to church this morning and had Sonic burgers for lunch.

Pinch me.  I'm that happy.  :)

House of cards

Larry and I spent about eight hours today working on our foyer wall.  We put 857 of our sports cards on it and it turned out great!!  Larry has thousands of cards, most of them are autographed, but he picked out ones that meant something to him, Atlanta teams, the Indianapolis Colts and pretty much anybody Georgia- or Indiana-related.  There's even a Jeff Gordon card up there somewhere.  I think it looks amazing.  I love it.

It was indeed a labor of love.  Except for having some soup for lunch, a quick trip to Target for some more double-sided tape and having supper, we worked on this wall all afternoon and most of the night!

Speaking of the vegetable soup we had for lunch, we also had some of our Sunday On Monday Cake.  Triple chocolate fudge with fudge icing.  It's so rich I told Larry we were going to get it to pay our bills next month.  :)

A little update

What have we done this week?  What haven't we done is a better question.  We have been organizing closets and making more room for two in this very small house and we have done great!  Larry is amazing at arranging and organizing.  We bought some bookcases to house our huge library and Larry has worked so hard going through his massive autographed photo and baseball card collection (there are over 11,000!) and clearing out the closet where I had been storing the boxes.  He consolidated them into fewer boxes and now we have more closet space.  We bought a small chest to keep seasonal things in, too. 

We got a new computer, too, since my laptop is four years old and is starting to really slow down.  Larry has two online classes and I really didn't want him having to deal with the frustration of a slow computer AND getting used to using a computer and the internet.  We got a Samsung laptop and we love it.  It is SO fast!

Last Sunday afternoon, we went to the Big Peach (or as I call it, the Byron antique mall) and spent three hours just walking around and looking at stuff.  We found some really cool albums and I finally got that green vintage Pyrex mixing bowl I've wanted forever.  I love old Pyrex and Fire King and the Big Peach is full of that stuff! 

Tuesday, we went to the doctor to get Larry's right elbow checked out.  He's had some pain there after he played football in October.  Dr. Kinnebrew x-rayed it, said it was just tendonitis and gave him a cortisone shot.  We left there and went to Macon to drop off some donations and since we had a little time before I had to be at work, we went to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.  It was so much fun!  And quiet, too.  We had the place all to ourselves!  We walked around looking at the museum displays and we watched the movie in the theater and then Larry played a little bit upstairs.  He tried out all of the interactive exhibits and played basketball and football.  He's such a jock.  I watched.  And took pictures.  :)

Today after church, we had lunch at Mama Mia's.  I had spaghetti and meatballs and Larry got a pizza. It was so delicious!!  We brought all but two slices of the pizza home with us.  Their food is so good and they give you so much!!  It's authentic Italian food and the place is owned and operated by two brothers from New York. Two very large brothers.  They put their money where their mouth is!  Or vice versa.  Ha!

This afternoon, I helped Larry change the idler pulley on his truck.  First time I'd ever actually worked on a vehicle!  I held the belt in place while he changed out the part.  Teamwork makes the dream work!  :)

I've been baking a cake every weekend, too.  I call it our Sunday Cake.  I have this week's in the oven now.  A triple chocolate fudge.  Last week, it was carrot cake.  I'm late getting this one done today but it's okay since we're both off work and class tomorrow.  It's a Monday Cake this week.  :)

Little Birdie

Wednesday, Larry called me at work and told me he'd found a little bird on our patio.  He knew something was wrong with it when it let him pick it up.  We decided he must have hit the glass door and was too stunned to move.  Since it was going to be below freezing that night and since birds roost at night, Larry brought him in the house and we figured the cat carrier would be the safest place for him to spend the night.  Tabbie Hoffman was most interested in the little birdie.  :)  

When I got home, I filled a ramekin with water and we got him settled for the night.  We put him on the bathroom counter and closed the door so he'd be warm and safe and out of a certain kitty's curious reach.

I checked on him through the night and each time, he was flapping his wings, ready to GO. 

As soon as we got up, we let him go.  I held Tabbie Hoffman and Larry took the carrier out on the patio and as soon as he unzipped it, Little Birdie took off like a bullet!  I circled him in red so y'all could see him.  I commented on Facebook that his chains are gone, he's been set free.  :)

I told Larry the whole time Little Birdie was with us, I was singing "Little Birdie" from Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving.  :)

Weekend three

 

So hard to believe this is our third weekend together.  Yesterday we went shopping at the mall here, had Chick-fil-A for lunch, popped in to Bath and Body Works and Victoria's Secret but didn't stay very long at either place because they were having their semi-annual sales and were soooo busy!  We bought some really cool albums at f.y.e, Janis Joplin and Crosby Stills and Nash and I got a Michonne bobblehead!  She's my favorite Walking Dead character and I just love her bobblehead.  I think she looks awesome on our coffee table.  :)


 


Larry even rode the Garfield car!  Well, not really.  But he tried.  He could barely get his legs to fit.  :)

Last night, we went to our pastor's house for a couples night.  There was us and three other couples.  We had Mexican -- tacos, guacamole, salsa, cheese dip and chips, sliced apples and dip and just had a really, really good time.  We played games, too.  Heads Up and Battle of The Sexes, which was downright hilarious.  We laughed so much our cheeks hurt.  We played girls against boys and the girls won!  The guys cheated SO BAD that I was starting to feel sorry for them.  Ha!  It was really sad.  :)

Today we attended church at Trinity United Methodist, trying to make our rounds to all the churches who supported us and prayed with us throughout our long, long journey.  We have quite a number of churches to visit!  The one furthest away is in Canton.  We'll make that one a weekend trip, I'm sure.

Tonight, we're watching movies and having chips and salsa and cheese dip.  We didn't quite get enough at the party last night!  It's supposed to be c-c-c-c-cold here the next few days so we picked up some starter logs for the fireplace today.

Life is good.  Still SO good. 

Welcome 2014!

Things have settled down a bit for us at home.  Normal, every day life is actually pretty sweet.  Larry has been setting up his workshop and fixing stuff around the house, he's worked on the "closet from hell" full of his 10,000+ autographed pictures and some mementos from the 70's that I've just held on for him to go through and throw away if he wanted.  We bought a couple of bookcases and he put them together so we'd have more storage space.  And now I just about have that closet space back!

I think we've got Larry pretty much set to start college on Tuesday and we went out to our pastor's house today for the two of them to talk about some prospective weekend work he may have for Larry.  God has been really, really good about placing the right people in our life at the right time! 

On the way home from our pastor's house, we saw this old Army truck, Larry called it a "deuce and a half", parked on the side of the road so we stopped to check it out. 

It's almost identical to the ones Larry drove in the early 70's but he said this one was probably from World War II.  It looks like it even has the original paint, too.  Pretty cool.

Those of you who have been reading my blog a while probably know we have tons of trees in our yard.  Hickory, oak and walnut trees with all their many bazillion leaves every year.  Larry got out there and raked them and the two of us bagged them all up Monday morning!  17 huge leaf and lawn size bags!  

I took this picture after Larry had already grabbed two bags to take to the curb.  It is SO nice to see the backyard again!  We're going to sod the backyard in the spring and plant a few veggies.

We saw in the new year last night with fireworks, sparklers and sparkling white grape juice.  Wild and crazy folks we are!  And I cooked the traditional New Year's must-haves today, collard greens and black-eyed peas with ham hocks, and I roasted two Cornish hens and made wild rice to go with them for our New Year's dinner.  I baked Larry's favorite cake, German chocolate, last night and it was out of this world!!  I have never made homemade coconut pecan frosting before and I am so happy with the way it turned out!

We took our beautiful Christmas tree down today and I was a little sad about it.  But it's New Year's Day and it's time.  Time to write this new 365-page book of ours and see what happens next!  I can't wait.