Labor Day at Lake Murray

We spent Labor Day weekend at Lake Murray with friends and family.  It was a great weekend celebrating the end of summer.  It has been such a fun summer with lots of firsts for Wilson!

These 2 are 2 peas in a pod.  Grrrrrand PaPa's motto is "Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired."  If you have a toddler, you know they love that motto.  You also know this momma likes a schedule.  So those rules only apply when Papa Curt is around.

We all wore our Georgia gear for the first game against Clemson.  Even though we lost, it was a great game.  We actually kinda like Clemson, too, so we can just cheer for them the rest of the season.

Because every Gigi buys the baby a Labor Day present...  He actually LOVES these big legos and had a blast playing with them.  Thanks for spoiling our boy : )

Uncle Sonny and his whole fam came for the day on Saturday, too.  They're already dressed for next week's rivalry.

Aunt Linda enjoyed some Wilson cuddles.  He's only still when he's got his blue turtle cup full of milk.

Cousin Christy walked him a lot!

Jeanie and her whole family came, too!

Nicole and Dusty brought Hampton over for some play time, too.

Wilson got ready for his nap in the middle of play time.  Attitude.

Loved laying out and spending time with these two!  Anna had just gotten off a 12 hour night shift, and she was a trooper!

Post nap cuddles.  I love that bed head.

We had a great time riding the pontoon!

Aunt Britt to the rescue with some yogurt as a snack for the maniac!

Wilson in his happy place - It was perfect weather for boat rides and swimming.

Both of these boys are in their happy place.

Wilson is starting to enjoy the jet ski rides a little more now.  You can't tell b/c his fat and life jacket are shielding his sweet face, but he smiled a lot.

2 lake bums

Low country boil is probably my favorite lake meal. 

Caleb, Wilson, and I spent Monday at home relaxing and doing stuff around the house.  I love it when he falls asleep on me.  I'm trying hard to get him to attach to his blankie and lovie for daycare this week.

We ended Labor Day with a delicious dinner with the Epps family.  It was our first taste of dinner out with a toddler.  Wilson was out.of.control.  Honestly, though, it's asking a lot to expect a curious, busy, energetic, little person to sit still for over an hour.  From now on, it's take out at the house!

I'm thankful for a long weekend!

Too soon?

I think yes.  Wayyyy too soon to be in the lake water wakeboarding.  This weekend proved my theory that girls are smarter than boys.  Brittnee and I stayed in the boat Saturday during our ride around the lake, but the boys chose to get in the 60 degree water.  John, Jordan, and Caleb took a dip in the cool water, and they all faked being tough guys while wakeboarding.

Having a new boat was definitely a big player in the whole "let's wakeboard in March" game.  I think the boat will be just as fun in June.

It wasn't all fun and games at the lake.  The boys did a few chores early Saturday morning after a hearty breakfast.  Not heart healthy.  Just hearty.

Jordan, the pyromaniac of the family, gave us all a little entertainment while we helped out in the yard.

It was such a great weekend, weather wise, perfect weather for grilling.  We had burgers at a friend's house Friday night, and Caleb wanted to do some grilling of his own today.  I give Caleb a hard time for grilling being his only contribution to our at home meals, but he does a superb job at it.  He grilled us this huge hunk of meat for lunch, and it was yummmmmy pork tenderloin.

The sad part is...the 2 of us ate almost 1/2 of that meat in one sitting.  

Go Bananas!

I love sweets of all kinds, and we tend to always have some sort of dessert in our house.  Caleb and I both grew up always having dessert, and he's convinced me that it is A-okay to continue it.  It's usually something simple like cookies from a box or Publix brand frozen yogurt.  So it's still a special treat when we have a homemade dessert.

Well, this week I made banana pudding.  It was actually for Bible study on Tuesday night, but it ended up being cancelled because everybody's kiddos were sick.  (I hope I didn't share my sinus/ear infection last week!)

So what does that mean for us?  We have a whole banana pudding to enjoy.  We ended up sharing it with my parents and brothers so we wouldn't be too tempted, but here's the yummy recipe (from my Mama).

Ingredients:

1 box vanilla wafers

3-4 bananas

2 large boxes instant Vanilla pudding

5 cups milk

8 oz. sour cream

1 large whipped topping

In large bowl, mix pudding and milk.  Then add sour cream and 1/2 of whipped topping.  Place vanilla wafers on bottom of dish and cover with sliced bananas.  Pour in pudding mixture.  Top with whipped topping!

And yum!  There are lots of variations our there for Banana Pudding, but for some reason, this one is my fave.  And so easy : )

Flashback

After work last night, I met a friend from PC at a Thai restaurant on main street in Spartanburg.  It's called Lime Leaf, and I've been wanting to try it for a while.  Caleb isn't one to branch out and try new restaurants, especially Thai food, so I love when I have a friend in town who will do it!

I had dinner with Rachel, a girl who is currently applying to the PA program at MUSC.  Her interview is coming up next week so we just chatted a little bit about that whole process.  It was so neat to remember all the nerve wracking thoughts and preparations that I had back then.  I remember cheering at a PC basketball game, and my mom waiting on me to finish so she could drive me to Charleston for the night.  She actually dropped me off for my interview the next morning, like a little kid going to kindergarten, ha!  I stressed over every single detail like it was life-changing...oh my!  Well, I guess it worked!  With a few migraines along the way...

Anyway, Rachel is such a smart, sweet girl, and she's going to do great!  Lime Leaf was pretty yummy, too!  I'm so excited for the path she's about to go on, but I'm equally as excited that I'm already done with all that stressful stuff!

Happy Birthday, Momma!

We celebrated my mom's 50-something birthday last night at John and Jordan's house!  John, Jordan, and Brittnee did most of the cooking.  My contribution was salad and dessert.  It's nice to prepare a meal for our parents and not let them do anything.

Here's the classic timer group pic.

I think Mom liked my peanut butter pie made with Splenda.  I wanted to do something at least  semi-okay for a diabetic.

My dad wrapped her present in newspaper!  I'm not exactly sure what she thought about it, but she pretended to love her new fishing pole!

We hadn't seen John and Jordan's dogs in a while, and they have gotten SO big.  And SO crazy.  They just kept jumping and tackling each other.  Jordan ran around with them for a little while so we could watch just how insane they are.  Hilarious!

We had lots of fun celebrating Mom!  She does so much for all of us so it's nice to do something for her!

Yay Jesus

Here's our dessert from Bible study last night.

Best Milkshake Ever

I had dinner with a few girls last night at a new (to me) restaurant called Ice Cream and Coffee Beans.  Surprisingly, we didn't have any ice cream or coffee there - so we opted for dessert at Zaxby's afterwards.  Sounds crazy - dessert at Zaxby's.  Try the birthday cake milkshake, and it won't sound so crazy anymore.

Yummy!

We split one milkshake among 3 of us.  Smart decision because it's super SWEET.  (And it has around 800 calories...oops!)

These chicken places are surprising me with milkshakes  - the birthday cake is right up there with the Chick-fil-a peach milkshake in my book!

Sassafras

I love downtown Greenville!  We always have so much fun when we go, and we decided to spend last night's "date night" there!  We tried a restaurant called Sassafras.  I heard it was yummy, and it seemed to have a great atmosphere.  It really was a neat place, but I wasn't mega-impressed with the food.  Maybe that's because I had an entire fish on my plate - head to tail.

Oh, well.  Sassafras is still a fun restaurant.  I'll just order something different next time.  We walked around a bit and found out they've been having free concerts every Wednesday night downtown.  There were tons of people there last night just relaxing.  Such a neat idea!  I'm so thankful to live near (but not IN) such a big, fun city!

Crock Pot

Everybody loves a good crock pot meal, especially when you have to work all day!  I thought I was doing the smart thing for tonight's Bible study meal at our house.  I had everything cooked last night and just planned to warm it up in the crock pot tonight.  My mom said to just put in on "warm" for about an hour.  Apparently, hers works a bit better than mine because our meal was still ice cold after that hour.  Naturally, I pumped it up to "high"for 15 minutes before everybody showed up.  By then, I'd call it "cool."  Better than cold, huh?  Luckily, one of the girls in our group had the genius idea to just zap it for a few minutes in the microwave.  That's why God gives us friends with common sense.

Moral of the story:  Get used to YOUR crock pot.  Lucky Mom for having that powerful "warm" setting.  

Have a great Friday!!!

Church on Tuesday?

Sounds like a good idea to me!  We couldn't make it to church on Sunday because of the icy weather.  I mean, even the THREAT of precipitation and 32 degree weather cancels things around here.  We ended up losing power Sunday morning, too.  The power outage just happened to be right after I washed my hair.  Needless to say, it was not a good hair day for me.  That's why we have hats.

And about the Tuesday church thing...
We've been going to First Baptist Spartanburg, and they have a service on Tuesday nights for young adults called Merge.  Tonight was our first time, and we enjoyed it.  It's a very contemporary worship service.  I was pretty bummed about no church on Sunday, and tonight helped fill that worship experience void.  As an added bonus, they have Krispy Kreme at Merge.  Jesus AND hot doughnuts...now that's close to Heaven.

Baked Spaghetti...

...It's what's for dinner.  Yep, we had baked spaghetti tonight.  It's a very common dinner here.  And what's even better about tonight's baked spaghetti is that I didn't even have to cook it!  We had dinner at my parent's house Sunday night.  We do that regularly, and it's been a great idea.  My mom usually sends home leftovers and/or a whole new meal for during the week.  Well, this Sunday we brought home a BAKED SPAGHETTI!  Woo Hoo!  I meant to take a picture of it for the blog, but we ate it too quickly.  Whoops!

Coffee

Not to toot my own horn, but...I made coffee for Caleb this morning.  Sounds simple.  Tons of people make coffee in the mornings.  Oh, not so simple for blonde Kathryn.  In my defense, I drink (at most) 2 Starbucks White Chocolate Mochas a year.  I try to avoid caffeine.  So making coffee was quite a feat for me.  I made several rookie mistakes my first few go rounds of attempting to be a sweet coffee-making wife.

I ran some water into the pot and assumed it went from there.  Who knew you had to pour the water into the maker thingy?  That's mistake #1.  On try #2, I totally forgot to add the scoops of coffee into the filter.  No idea ole' Cuisinart didn't get it for you.  And the ever too common mistake of forgetting to actually turn the coffee maker ON...that would be #3.  So that pot of coffee pictured to the left, that's all me.

So I salute all you coffee makers out there!  It's quite an accomplishment.  Be proud!  For the first time, I am a successful coffee making wife!  Here's sweet Caleb enjoying a sip of that delicious Folgers made with love : )  It's the simple things...