the SURGERY!!! dum dum DUM!!! (but i survived!!!)

well, i had my gallbladdar taken out this past friday. but the day before, i was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!!! know what i mean??  by friday morning though, i had convinced myself that all was gonna be fine, and it was! but then i walked into the “get me ready for surgery” room and this is what was waiting for me on the bed!! yippie! map came in and told me that was the most expensive lingerie that i would ever wear…..he was probably right! i bet the gown cost $500 or more! and that nice little hair net! i actually had to get the large one to fit in all my hair! and my big head! ( i got up the morning of surgery and fixed my hair all up…only to be upset by it later…that explaination to come) i even thought starting an iv would nerve me (bein that it literally 30 mins to find a vein) but it didn’t. no, what actually put me on edge was the fact that i hadn’t noticed that i was long overdue for a color. when i stepped in the florescent lit bathroom to jump into my lovely purple nighty i peeked in the mirror to admire my pretty, rolled, surgery day hair, i saw THIS!!!!! EEEEKKKKKKK! i have NEVER let it get this bad!! i bet not many of you knew i was GRAY!!! not just regular gray, but nice shiny gray!!! anyway, i got a call in to the hair guru for friday! pics to come later !

i made it out of surgery fine and i tried with all my might to not let my eyes close when they put the “smelly plasticy” mask over my nose……i thought to my self “don’t close your eyes, don’t close your ey…….” and that was it til i woke up in recovery!  i think the anasthesia is still wearin off cause i was making carrot cupcakes today and when i cracked the eggs, i cracked them into the cake box instead of the mixing bowl!? it was the anasthesia, right?

memorial day :)

hope everyone that reads this post has an empty belly 'cause by the time you get done you're gonna feel like you're gonna bust a gut just by seein all this good food! this was our menu for our memorial day cookout!

this is just the beginnin of the meat that MAP had on the grill. as i said before, he can cook ANYTING as long as it can be cooked on the grill!

anyway, he had three slabs of babyback ribs that he "rubbed" real good the night before and they were screamin "put me on the grill" at 9 that morning! YUM!

here we have a pan full of chicken (chicken on the grill is his specialty if you ask me). it has a sauce on it that i mixed up the night before and he brushed it on there right as it was aobut to come off the grill...can you say cock-a-doodle-doo!?

at the end of the pan we have our "heart attacks waiting to happen" as i like to call them. inch thick pork chops stuffed with sausage and then wrapped in bacon. now you tell me, what would you call them?

okay, so this here little yum yum almost broke my and my bff's 33 year friendship. she brought one of these here little "7-layer salads" to rivers birthday party at the lake this year and i became somewhat addicted to them.....had to have one every other day. seriously! i was on the verge of not liking her.

finally, the addiction wore off...lucky for her! until monday, i hadn't had one in about 2 weeks. they are so good!

here we have our regular 'ol cold salads: the usual pasta and potato salad.

and here is another little piece of heaven...a homemade (what else?) squash casserole! (check out that iron casserole dish holder. scored that little pretty at the thrift store for only $2! i used to sell Southern Living at Home and those things sold for like $25-$30!  yall should check out the Habitat Thrift Store in cordele, especially if you like dishes and glassware! awesome!

alright, so we all know NO southern summer cookout is complete without some warm garlic bread that was previously smothered in buttered. am i right? can i getta AMEN?

my aunt brought these yummy homemade (sorry yall, all we do is homemade)patriotic cupcakes. her son-in-law is in iraq right no for like the 3rd or 4th time. i thank him for being so brave and for all he does! he has the sweetest wife and baby boys at home. i know he misses them and they miss him too! we are all very proud of him! THANK YOU RIC RAMIREZ!! AND ALL THE OTHER GUYS AND GALS OVER THERE!!

my other aunt brought this delish pound cake.....wanna guess? yep, homemade, too!

oh, and i almost forgot to mention the strawberries and whipped topping (not homemade, but only because I didn't bring it).

oh my dear heart! this is my a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e weakness!! fresh HOT peach cobbler!!! nuff said! it looked like this when i showed up at grannies for dinner cause when i cooked the nite before, well, dang! i had to try it to make sure noone was gonna die from eating it!

my grandpa had to have a blackberry cobbler so i made him one of those...although everyone else ate on it too!

this was my plate. i'm shocked i didn't have to make another trip to the er for my gall bladder after eating all that! it's a thousand wonders that thing didn't explode!

we were out ridin monday after eatin all that good food and bessie (that's not her name, i just thought she looked like a "bessie"...i don't even know if it's a "her")  came over to thank us for not havin any of her or her relatives for lunch that day. i though pioneer woman might like this photo if she ever saw my blog. i enjoy her cow pictures. actually i enjoy all of her pictures! anywho!  

last but not least, for my cousin ashley, this is the sauce i told you about that was put on the chicken and ribs.....it has probably 1 1/2 cups ketchup, 1/4-1/2 cup brown sugar (the more the better i say!) little worchesteshire heck yeah! i spelled that without even lookin! and i think i got it RIGHT! and then some bar-b-que meat rub, mccormick i think. chop up some onion and some fresh garlic and BAM!

emma claire's 5th birthday!!!

we went to the YMCA Sunday after lunch for emma's  birthday party. her momma was so worried that it was gonna rain and i think everyone else thought it would too! we had good reason 'cause there was a 60% chance!! luckily it held off til right before everyone was packing up! everything was so pretty! it was a hello kitty theme as you can see. i made these cupcakes for her and her mom bought a cupcake tree...very neat! 

here's emma's mom getting everything ready for the party. balloons streamers and all the good stuff!

and here's emma's dad. he walked around ALL day with that camera every time you turn around, THERE HE WAS!! i mean the papparazzi follow me around enough! i don't need someone else doing it when i go to parties and gatherings with friends and family!! geez!

this was the cool water area the little kids got to play in and then there's a large pool on the other side of the fence.

i litterally had to go and grab this childs arm and get ther to turn around to take this picture! she didn't wanna slow down for ANYTHING! she had so many little girls to play with and she loved it.

dang! there's that guy AGAIN!! i just cannot get away from them! i guess he thought he was hiding behind the water!

here's my baby girl playing "alligator". she's a good one.

jake had fun over here too. he was up on this ledge spraying everyone with a non stop water gun.

if i could get away with it, i secretly want to go down this red slide! it looks like so much fun!! you'd do it too wouldn't ya!?

okay, now this little girl had me laughin the whole time i was out there with her! she was trippin me out! i really believe if her mom had turned her back for more than a second  she'd have swam off! she would sit up then take a turn and on her belly she went. she was scooting/ swimmin/kicking so hard! AND she was actually moving!

i must say that i've been a little smitten with this widdle man ever since i first saw his newborn picture. he is soooooo pretty! sorry to his dad, but he is pretty!

i do believe if i was under a year old i'd be his girlfriend!  :)

ms. emma was quiet the social butterfly. she made sure to make her rounds and spend time with all her party guests. she chatted with rivers for a while and then  with her cousin.

emma's mom had hello kitty tattoos for the girlies and dragon tattoos for the "guys". after all the time rivers spent in the water that afternoon and then yesterday, she still has that tattoo on!!

brotherly love! ben looks funny to see him now. i gave him his "summer" haircut last nite. man did that boy ever have a lot of hair!! he walked around the rest of the nite sayin he was bald!!!!

i think the party was a big hit. everyone had fun. i kinda wish i'd have taken a bathing suit so i could've gotten in. it sure did turn out hot! it's that time of year now when even if it does rain it doesn't cool it off ANY!! rivers was so tired that i thought she was gonna fall asleep eatin her cupcake! she partied hard!! 

in this picture there is a lot of emma's family and my baby girl slid in this picture too! ms. swimmer girl was tryin to get her grandma to put her down so she could swim back to the deeps of the sea! she was a little mermaid. but then agian, aren't all little girls at some point? and alligators, too.

my boys would've stayed on this slide all day long if they could have. by the time we had gotten ready to go, they figured out that if you fold your arms to your chest and lay back, you can get up some major speed and hit that water like a bullet! needless to say, they were ready to hit the sack when they got home too!!

i got ben just as he came off the slide and hit the water.

and jake looks like he is sittin on top of the water.

]

rivers was playin like she was taylor swift in the rain...and then she was an alligator again! funny girl!

she is so precious!

this picture also reminds me of taylor swifts video! yeah, if i'd have had my bathing suit, i woulda played taylor too!

this little princess just could not get enough of this water! she was havin just as much fun as the big girls!

friday visitors

 

we had special visitors on friday. rivers was so excited to finally get to hold her cousin that shares the same birthday as her. all she wanted to do was hold her and stare at her! we also loved looking at her little itty bitty feet!!

they are so precious! she almost made me wish i could have another one! but then she started to cry....and that was the end of that!

MY, i mean Ben's new baby.....

okay, so let me tell all of you that don't know me well.....i'm not an animal person...i don't like them...any of them. i'm not all about killing them for unnecessary reasons or anything like that-i just don't much care for them.

and here's the reason why-when i was young, i saw way too many of my animals die. they'd get run over. pretty much all of them got run over; hit by cars. some of them didn't die right away, therefore they had to be killed. i have a HUGE heart. i did have a very BIG soft spot for animals, but i keep myself at enough distance from them so i'm safe from getting to close to them. i thought i'd let myself get too close to daisy (our mama dog that got RUN OVER about 3 weeks ago). i was safe. i didn't get upset when i saw her die. boy was i close! anyway, yesterday morning ben and i were the only two up and he came runnin in the kitchen from the back porch and this is what all the commotion was about. as quick as i saw her i knew it was all over!!! i have an even BIGGER soft spot for kittens. dang this wittle gway kitty! needless to say ben has'nt parted with this kitten much since he found her and i haven't had many complaints towards him carrying her EVERYWHERE! seriously! you can look at the picture and see she accompanied us to the pool today. she - excuse me- SMOKEY napped while we swam...ya wanna know where she is fast and hard asleep at right now?? MY bed under MY pillow!!! how did this happen?