Thanksgiving Day.... which merged into Black Friday

 This year for Thanksgiving, Sharon and Amanda made the drive down to Mobile. I'm pretty proud of the dinner I cooked. It was tasty. What I really love is an excuse to use my fancy plates and linen napkins.

  Caleb made all this fit somehow. This is the hardest part about cooking a big meal- how do you get everything hot at the same time? There is a lady at our church who has a warming drawer in her kitchen. I think I definitely want one of those one day.

 After we ate, we went to the movies and saw "Arthur Christmas." IT WAS SO GOOD! If you are thinking about seeing a movie, I highly recommend this one. It shows all the technology Santa uses these days and the whole thing is genius.

 And for the event we anticipate all year long.... Midnight Madness at the Foley Tanger Outlets!!!!

This is our BEFORE picture. We left Mobile at 8:15 pm on Thanksgiving Day.

 A pretty full trunk. This picture was taken around 4am on Black Friday.

And the AFTER picture. This is taken at 6:30am on Black Friday... 10 hours after the Before pic was snapped. Caleb had already left for the hospital by the time we made it back home. 

This shopping all-nighter seriously messed me up, but it was worth it because I got ALL my Christmas shopping done. That's right. DONE!

Mustache Fun and My 15 Minutes

 We found mustaches. They were leftovers from the "Mustaches and Mayhem" Party Molly went to (and helped host). She made those mustaches on a stick, which I think are HILARIOUS!

 Don't I look mysterious and dastardly?

Also during my weekend trip to Starkville, I made my second appearance on WCBI. You may recall the first time I graced the news.... I was in the 5th grade, and Mrs. Moore took the chorus to sing Christmas carols at Leigh Mall, and WCBI aired about 7 seconds of it while credits rolled.

Thus, a star was born.

 Anyway, here are some shots of the studio. I took these to show my TV Production kids. Maybe this will buy me some cool points with them. When your last name is Butts, you need all the cool points you can get.

Aundrea interviewed me and some other photographers on the Mid-Morning Show. I must say, she is so good at what she does! She really put my nerves at ease. I refused to  watch it myself, but I'm glad I did it. I also made a really good friend, Katie McDill who also does photography. Check out her website here.

I'm posting this while parts of Thanksgiving Dinner is in the oven. Pictures of my culinary delights (sarcasm) to come soon!

A Weekend Post.... a few days after

 We had a great Starkville weekend full of great things such as:

-celebrating my Dad's birthday
-having Friday off of work
-meeting Andy Arnold (he is completely precious and huggable)
-spending some good quality time with Andy's Mom and my good friend Lauren (not typing Moses just feels weird)
-eating a LOT of good Starkville food
-seeing Mobile friends in Starkville (isn't it weird how we live minutes apart but only see each other 4 hours away?)
-attending the State vs. Bama game (not so fun: all the students ribbing me the following Monday. I might have talked a LOT of trash.... ug!)

 Mobile friends that we rarely see in Mobile, but run into pretty frequently at State Games. 

Who needs a sunset when you have this? Go State!

Bad Dog

And of course this happened mere minutes after I had vacuumed the house.

Her sins have no affect on her conscience. She is sleeping so peacefully. 

She's such a dumb dog. That is HER bed.

Welcome Home Caleb!

Caleb lived in Birmingham last month. 

Three cheers for having him back in Mobile!

Here is a recap of some of my adventures while he was gone:

-the first week, all I ate for dinner each night was a frozen egg roll and a LOT of ice cream

-the next week I went SHOPPING. Seen me lately? You may have noticed my sassy new blazer/dress combo

-PJ Joey slept in the room with me. I LOVED THIS. Except the night she barfed everywhere. 

-Yes, PJ Joey threw up all over the bedroom floor one night (app. 3am)

-One night around 9pm, West Mobile lost ALL power. It seriously was like being in a cave. Guess who doesn't know where a flashlight is! Note: the glow of your cell phone is NOT enough light in case of an emergency. I encourage everyone to have flashlights (with batteries) placed strategically around the house. 

-PJ bit me one night. It hurt, so I beat her. Then she threw up. 

-PJ has thrown up a lot this month.

We did get so see each other every weekend, so that was nice. But it is better having him back home. His surgery rotation at Baptist went well. Go Caleb!

Cheese of the Month

 SWISS!

I normally don't like this cheese, but when merged with other ingredients, it's delish. 

See Quiche. Yum! I made these for Nana's party. The title of the recipe was "Easy Mini-Quiche." LIES!

They were probably the worst thing I have ever made. They seriously took 3.5 hours and only yielded 40 mini-quiche. And don't even get me started on how long it took the clean the mini-muffin pans....

But here they are in all their glory. They sure were good though.

 

So go ahead and incorporate some SWISS in your November.

Surprise Party for Nana

 Riding to Brandon... anticipating the big surprise....

 

 The party table.... lots of yummy food...

 Look at the wonderful cake Mom made!

 All the planning was worth it to get this reaction...

 

Over 30 of her friends showed up to celebrate her 80th Birthday!

Drive-thru's, B'ham, and Church

 Another week down with Caleb in Birmingham! Before I could drive up to visit, I had to help out with Baker's last football game broadcast. Afterwards, we treated the kids to Taco Bell (we're big spenders), but the lobby was closed. Being ridiculous teenagers, they walked through the drive-thru. Geez.

   

When I finally got home and got the broadcast upload going, it was midnight and I was pooped! About an hour into my sweet dreams, PJ started barking like crazy and she was sprinting back and forth to all the doors. Being alone, this SCARED ME. Every Criminal Minds scenario started going through my head. She finally quit barking and I went back to sleep for another hour until she woke me up again. This time, she was barfing everywhere. So at 3am, I got up again and started cleaning up her doggie barf. 

Needless to say, I was super grumpy on my drive up to visit Caleb in Birmingham, but when I finally got there, we ended up having a really great weekend. 

Birmingham is GORGEOUS this time of year! In Mobile, the leaves don't change colors, they just die and fall. Not in B'ham. It's awesome. Perhaps we'll be living there this time next year, who knows! We got to spend a good chunk of the weekend with our friends Tyler and Arielle which obviously made the weekend perfect. Here's me and Caleb at his home away from home.... the Medical Inn.

 

 And here's the Church at Brook Hills where we went Sunday. This is where David Platt (wrote "Radical") preaches so we were really interested in checking it out. He basically preached on what their vision of a church is and what they're all about which is basically glorifying God and making disciples to impact the world. He preached on Psalm 67 and I'd encourage anyone to download the podcast and listen. It has really made me think on a lot of things this week. I haven't heard a sermon in a long time that really stuck with me like that.

On that note, I've also been thinking a lot about Prop 26. I'm not a resident of MS anymore, but a lot of blogs I read have been talking about it. It's left me feeling really weird about how Christians are reacting. Most of what I read from the viewpoint of Christians who support P26 quote the Bible verse about how we were "knit together in the womb" and go on to talk about how every life is precious. Of course I agree with that- only monsters think a human life is not precious. 

What leaves me feeling weird is that it stops there.The argument is against abortion, but I feel like people's passion for the unborn child fades once the baby is born. An unwanted baby typically becomes an unwanted child, but where's the fight for them?

If we claim every life is precious, I feel like we as Christians need to follow through in a major way... volunteering at after school programs and daycares, adopting a Mississippi child into our home and family, giving food on days other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, making sure children have warm coats and aren't living with child molesters... the list is endless. It's easy to be against abortion, but if we're going to fight it so vehemently with our words, I think it's only fair to say we should actually help make things better. This probably offended someone, although it wasn't my intent.