Glorious Weekends!

I quit my weekend gig.

Now Saturdays and Sundays are back to being what they were meant to be- awesome. relaxing. etc. It's amazing how easy it is to do laundry now. My last day at David's Bridal was this Saturday and it really was a good time to go because they've started to slow down a little from "Bridal Christmas" which is January through March. We've been having to miss church a lot for this job too, and our church (Cottage Hill Baptist) has so much amazing stuff going on right now and we are so glad that is the church God led us to in Mobile!

So yesterday I took some family pictures for a friend, Christina Talerico. She's in Caleb's class and she has the cutest kids ever.

I put more pictures on the photography website. Click here to see more.

Then last night at our Girl's Bible Study, I made three dozen cookies (I have time to bake now!) and we ate all but about five or six of them. That is about 30 cookies divided between about 7 of us. Wow. We're studying the Names of God and this week was Jehovah Jireh, or God Will Provide. I really learned a lot and thought a lot about how God has provided so much work for me even though many people are struggling to get jobs right now. When we moved to Mobile, it was scary not having a job for two months, but Jehovah Jireh blessed us with ITT Tech and David's Bridal, and now He's blessing me so much with photography business (and I'm not even very good!). One thing we talked about in the study last night was how often we rely on ourselves and not God for what we need and the book challenged us to "confess any tendency to live as though God's grace is cheap." I don't know about you, but that really convicts me!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good week. We are counting down the days to Super Bulldog Weekend!

And this is how I became a raging fan of the NFL:

**Some of you are going to click away from this blog without watching the video. That is a mistake, my friend. WATCH THIS VIDEO.

Sorry Grandkids....

I attempted my first pie the other night. I had such high hopes, and it turned out HORRIBLE! I followed the recipe exactly and got THIS:

This is supposed to be a lemon meringue pie and the pie on the cover of my Southern Living cookbook actually looks like a pie.

The sad part is, I thought to myself, "who cares how it looks! It will still taste good!

WRONG.

Here are some reasons this pie is a disaster:

1. I cooked it in the same skillet I had JUST cooked italian sausage in. Don't get me wrong, I cleaned the skillet before making the pie filling, but I think there is a remnant or two of Italian sausage in my lemon filling.

2. Obviously, the meringue is a total flop. How do Grandmothers do this? Will I just automatically get fantastic cooking skills when I turn 65?

3. When you cut into this pie, there is a filmy egg white layer in between the sausage/lemon pie filling and the meringue flop. This is actually the worst aspect of my pie- the raw egg white layer.

On to other and better things, my wonderful, beautiful, incredible friend Tooley became Mrs. Dorner this past Saturday. Like every good photographer, I got to Tuscaloosa and realized my batteries weren't charged, so I'm waiting for other wedding attendees to upload pics to facebook so I can post them on the blog. I haven't seen Tools since my own wedding and I miss her so much! She looked stunning and I was so glad we got to go to her wedding!

In other news of marriage and birth, Boo Boo had sweet baby Kate last week and I can't wait to meet the little gal!

This is a facebook steal, but look how cute the Fan Club shirts came out! Love you Kate!

Everything is going good with us Butts, though. Other than baking terrible pies, we are doing ok. We're loving the weather outside and really excited about moving into a HOUSE in May and naming our future dogs. Caleb has a tough few weeks and then he'll be done with his first year of Medical School in early May. I can't believe he's almost done with the first year. Praise Jesus!

Weird.

At the beach, I got to visit with Caleb, Mom, Dad, and these lovely blue creatures that chose to invade the sandy shores. The beach was covered up in hundreds of these freaky little dudes. I have seriously never seen a jellyfish like this before! I google "blue jellyfish" and learned quickly that there are 200 species of jellyfish and according to beachhunter.com, this particular jellyfish is a Portugese MAN-O-WAR!!!! I nearly went into a tizzy when I read that and was terrified to go near the water. On the news the next day, the news people said they are called Blue Button jellyfish, not man-o-war, so the jury is out.

Other than the jellyfish invasion, our trip was excellent and very restful! I love living quasi-close to the beach!

Mexican Surprise and Chocolate Schemers!

We arrived last Saturday night at Los Casadores for our weekly Big Burrito and karaoking time to see that Lee has expanded from his One-Man-Band status to a three-person musical group! The handmade sign is still there, but now there is an electric guitar player/singer and a man that plays the harmonica. Here's a quick shot of the Harmonican:


In other news, one of my co-workers, Val, is a rare jewel in the fact that she JUST MIGHT love chocolate MORE than ME. I know! It's a crazy thought! For her birthday, she told, not asked, everyone to bring her huge amounts of chocolate for (what we titled) Chocolate Extravaganza '09. I brought my chocolate in all wrapped up, but two days early so that she had to look at it but not get to eat it. She lasted about 2 hours. I came back to my desk to find this!

She ate half the chocolates then TAPED IT BACK SHUT!

GASP!

One last note, I am at work right now, bright and early at 8 on a Saturday morning... blah, but it's all good because I'm leaving here and going to the beach! Jealous? I went to the Mobile Library yesterday to carefully select my reading materials for the next few days, but the time on my lunch break was winding down and a quasi-tragedy occured- I had to pick out my books in less than 5 minutes. This is no fun, especially when I discovered the two books I wanted were currently checked out. I had to literally, judge each book by its cover and randomly select two that looked half-way decent. If I happen upon a thrilling read, I will let you know.

My first engagement photo "shoot"

Well, somehow, I got strangers to trust me with their engagement pictures! We took them (for free, since I'm not really sure what I'm doing! shhhh! don't tell them!) at the campus of Springhill College, which is gorgeous! I was, obviously, a little nervous about everything, but my muses were great and knew just what to do, even when I didn't!

There was a small crisis afterwards, however. Back at home, I was trying to upload the pictures from my camera to the computer and it was NOT working. In my preparation for this photo shoot, I read on the Internet that professional photographers shoot important events in RAW format, which (as I learned) is a type of compression. It saves the fine details of each image. So, of course I thought I needed to shoot in this RAW thing. WELL. Big Mistake. My computer doesn't read RAW files. I almost went into a seizure when I realized this, but Caleb saved the day and googled "RAW file conversion to JPEG" and he somehow got them all transferred over to JPEG which my computer reads.

So the lesson here is don't think you are a Big Timer when you are NOT. And always shoot in JPEG.

If you want to see more evidence that I did in fact take these pics, click here.
Feel free to leave a comment in case a potential client could be persuaded, haha.

Weekend Summary: Lots of Food

As mentioned in the previous post, my parents drove down for a weekend of awesomeness, a.k.a. Gluttony. When they are in town, calories don't count, duh. I documented everything for my 5 reader's enjoyment.
Meal #1: Blue Gill (possibly my new favorite seafood house on the causeway...look out Felix's!!!!)

Saturday marked the day we've all been waiting for: Gumbo/Chili Showdown. Caleb was part of the team and Dad was a Judge, so basically, me and Mom were VIP's. Not really, haha. Thirty minutes before "gametime" there was a torrential downpour. Here's a pic of Caleb working in the rain. I of course am bone dry inside a tent eating gumbo and taking pictures of Caleb having to work in the pouring rain.

Our good friend Kacie along with Caleb. These studs worked through the rain.... good job guys! (sorry I didn't turn the pic right-sides-up.... I'm in a time crunch)

Here's Mom walking Dad to the official Judge's tent. Still pouring down rain....

It finally quit raining, and the weather was actually pretty enjoyable. Here's an action shot of the Judges hard at work, sampling over 40 varieties of gumbo and chili. There are many funny stories to tell, but to keep the dignity of the cooks, I will not comment. (yes, those are official accountants on the right side, feverishly tabulating the results)

My personal favorite booth was the Gumbo Ninjas. I thought their theme was excellent, and their gumbo- delish! Plus, the actual Ninjas are our good friends, Liz, A. Lott, Stephen, and Kaitlyn (I just butchered the spelling of her name, sorry!) A. Lott really knows how to pose for a quick pic.

I feel like this sign truly encompasses my life's mission statement...

Sassy D and Caleb:
Here's the Judge announcing the winner of the Best Vegetarian Chili!!!!! Dad very enthusiastically said, "And the winner of the coveted golden spoon is......." And coveted it is.... coveted it is.

The Judge with the Winners. Yes, this will be appearing in the Yearbook. Love it.
So that is where the photo-documentary ends. We really had the best weekend. I have to share one more story, however, and I must warn you- it is HIGHLY DISTURBING, so read on at your own risk!!!!

We went to Krispy Kreme Saturday night (sidenote: we left with 2 dozen donuts for the 4 of us.... is that normal?). Mom and I were meticulously picking out our donuts when we realized the boys were gone. We looked around to discover they had zombied out in front of the glass and were watching the process of the donut going from doughy ring to glazed perfection. Mom and I joined them at the glass and we watched the huge batch be made. This is where it gets UGLY.

In a perfect world, every donut is carefully taken from the conveyer belt and placed in a box for a family to enjoy. However, at this KK we noticed that some of the donuts were travelling on along the conveyer belt and were getting kind of close to the end, which is.... A GARBAGE CAN. So now, we have to watch to make sure the donuts don't actually make it into the can. We're watching and some are starting to roll perilously close. We started tapping on the glass, trying to catch an employee's attention so we could save the donuts, but BEFORE OUR VERY EYES, they started to plop, one by one into the garbage can!

We could NOT believe it.

So, I am somewhat distressed over this discovery. I am reminded of what a KK employee said just months ago, "If you don't like that, you can call 1-800-"fo" KRISPY!" I really think I might be the whistle-blower on this.....