Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving the Sunday before. My Grandma has always done that so that everyone can go to their other families on Thanksgiving Day. Since me and Solon both had to work black friday, and weren't able to travel to see his family, we just had Thanksgiving with my Grandma again. They love the time with Haylee and we enjoy spending time with them.

We learned Haylee is quite the soccer player (she gets it from her mama). Here she is playing with her cousins Blake and Brooklyn. They had a ball and played for hours!

Here's my big girl! She looks like miss priss here...

Now we're skipping a few days to Thanksgiving day. Here she is with Daddy reading books...she loves reading, I honeslty don't know where she gets that from. hehe

If you notice Haylee is wearing her gamecock dress that I ordered off of ebay. It turned out so cute and I only payed $.99!! I would say that's a steal!

And now we skip to Black Friday....no I did not go shopping at 2am in the morning. I acutally had to go to work for half a day. I worked until noon and THEN me and my Aunt Liz went shopping. It was actually quite pleasent then. I think that's the best time to go, in the afternoon. No you don't get all of the "major" sales but there is not as big of a crowd and there are still some sales. I had a good time and still got some good deals. I bought Haylee a pink Christmas tree from target...SOOO cute... pictures to come soon...

And finally here's my sweet messy haired baby with Frosty before we put him outside. She really liked him...I think she thought it was a real person...and just her size :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday. Christmas here we come...I am so looking forward to it!

Chicken and Green Bean Casserole

This is a yummy, kid friendly, very easy recipe with minimal ingredients. I don't know about you, but I love casseroles and so does my little Haylee boo. So it's a must at our house!

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 (14.5 ounce) cans French-style green beans, drained
1 (10.5 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Quickly brown the chicken breast halves on both sides. Do not cook through. Remove from heat, and set aside.
Pour the green beans into a 2 quart casserole dish. Place the chicken on top of the beans. In a small bowl, mix together the cream of chicken soup and mayonnaise. Spread over the top of the chicken and beans. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top.
(I also topped it with french onions like you have in a green bean casserole.)
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven, until the chicken is no longer pink, and the cheese is browned.

So YUMMY! Haylee loved it! She even had seconds!

Kelly's "Show us your life - pets"

Our dog Madison...

Solon bought her for me when we were dating. I grew up having a cockerspaniel and knew that I eventually wanted one of my own. Well he suprised me when he took me to this "puppy farm."

It was a house in the country with tons of cocker spaniel puppies. There were so many to choose from, but there was one in particular that kept trying to jump in my arms and followed me around. (I tell Solon that she chose me :) Anyway there was one brown and white one that was freckled that I loved...she was so pretty. I really wanted that one and had pratically made up my mind. Well when we told the owner which one we wanted...they said that she was not for sale and that we would have to pick another one. So here comes Madison jumping all over basically begging me to take her home. Well 2 years later...here we are.

I am very sad to say that this is the only picture I could find stored on my computer of Madison. She doesn't get nearly as much attention as she did before Haylee came. But I am so thankful that she is still just as loving and sweet as she has always been. She is REALLY great with Haylee. They play together all of the time and she is very protective over Haylee. I think she really does see her as a sister. I need to try to set aside time to pay more attention to her. Sometimes she looks at me and I can just tell she is sad...(of course cockers have a sad face sometimes anyway, it's just how they are.) But I know she wishes it could be like it used to.

I'm glad I was able to write a post just about her because she so deserves it!!

WOF

This was my first year at Women of Faith and it was an amazing experience! This years' theme was "A Grand New Day." Each speaker had amazing testimonys and I felt like each one had something they spoke directly to me about. I know as for our group of ladies, each one felt the same way and we went through a lot of tissues!

We left Friday morning and acutally missed the first session because we were shopping...shhh don't tell!! haha
But we had a lot of good bonding time shopping. I probably spent way too much money...but face it when you put a bunch of women together to go shopping...there is no one saying "Oh you could use that money for something else" or "Don't get it it's too much money"...that's the husbands job...it was more like "Oh you should get that it's a GREAT deal!" or "It probably won't be at a store in Greenville so you mine as well get it!" So basically I bought pretty much what I saw.

After shopping we checked into our hotel to get settled before our night session. We stayed at the Sheraton and it was a wonderful hotel. Very beautiful!! I roomed with a great bunch of ladies, I feel like God placed me with these ladies for a reason.

This is my friend Kristin (we are actually pretty close). She has little boy who is a few months younger than Haylee. We call him Haylee's boyfriend!! hehe Daddy doesn't like that so much...but they do make a cute couple. (If you remember they were Mickey and Minnie for Halloween) In the back is our youth pastor's wife Sheila! Brandy made our fourth roomate but she didn't make it in the picture for some reason.

So this was the main stage. We had pretty good seats, they were high up but we had a good view of the big tv screens. Just seeing the whole place filled with women was awesome to me!! and everyone there for one reason...Jesus! it was just amazing!

Me and Krisin again!

Mandisa!! She was the best part of the show to me. She was amazing! I don't know if anyone saw her on American Idol but she just had such a good story. And her voice is definitely a gift from Heaven...I was moved just from hearing it. I can't wait to get her cd! Our church choir actually went that Sunday and saw her in concert at a church. We didn't get back in time to go but I would of loved to hear her again. She has this song that touches my heart...it's called

"He is with you." Listen to it...it's a powerful song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3CVlv2dz3w

We also heard from Stephen Curtis Chapman. And if you have not heard his story then you need to! I knew about him and his family before the conference. My Dad has been a fan of his since I was little and I heard his story not too long ago on AFR as I was driving to pick up Haylee. I cried my eye balls out...I had to explain to the babysitter why I was crying. Luckily she was familiar and I didn't look like a crazy woman!

Here's the link to their story...I also took a video at the conference of him singing Cinderella that I am going to attempt to attach at the bottom.
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20201819,00.html

He also has a new CD that was just released...it's called "Beauty Will Rise." He sang a few songs from the CD and I also bought it...I highly suggest getting it!!

I got a few pictures of some of the speakers but they were too dark. We heard from Lisa Whelchel , Sheila Walsh, Patsy Clairmont, Marilyn Meberg, and Luci Swindoll.
All amazing women!! I won't give too much away...you will just have to go to one to hear their stories...make sure you bring lots of tissues.

www.womenoffaith.com
You can go here and order books, cd's, dvds and all of the items they have at the conferences. You can also see where the next conferences are and buy tickets for next year!!

And here are our group of girls. We had a total of 17 that went but we were split up into two different sections. From the bottom left: Me, Kristin, Brandy and Sheila (my roomates)
From the Top Left: Beth, Christa, and Joy.

I enjoyed getting to know each one of these ladies and spending this experience with them. We are planning on going again next year and I can't wait!!

I know, I'm a little late...

Happy Halloween!

So Halloween is not my favorite Holiday by any means and we don't "celebrate" Halloween as far as what the Holiday stands for. But we did enjoy some of the festivities this year. I had a lot of fun dressing up Haylee as Minnie Mouse.

Sunday before Halloween, our church had it's Fall Fesitival. I made chili (or well taco soup) for the chili cook off and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. They had hot dogs for the kids along with finger sandwiches and chips. (since most of the chili's are super hot.) We had a costume contest and Haylee won 3rd place! I was so proud of her. I'm not sure if she realized what was happening but she knew everyone was clapping and she smiled so big. And no of course I did not get of picture of it. We also had trunk or treat at the end. Which if you are not familiar with this term, it is just like it sounds. Instead of trick or treating around neighborhoods, the kids trick or treat out of the trunks of cars. People from the church volunteer to decorate there trunk and come up with a neat game and pass out candy. It was a lot of fun! They also had a booth set up to take professional pictures which was new from last year. The first picture was one of the professional ones taken...it was the end of the night and Haylee was pooped but I think it turned out pretty good!

This past Saturday (Halloween night) we went trick or treating with friends from church. Our neighborhood mostly consist of retirees and none of them pass out candy. So our friends had a more kid friendly neighborhood.

They have 2 olders girls and a little boy close to Haylee's age. He was Mickey Mouse

(Haylee's boyfriend) hehe This was the 4 of them posing before we went trick or treating.

This is me and my friend Kristin with the kiddos...they look tired don't they?? Me and Kristin matched and didn't even mean to...our husbands got a kick out of that!


This is what we had waiting for us when we were done trick or treating. We decided to do pizza for dinner but they had asked me to make a banana pudding. They said they were addicted to my banana pudding but I don't even make it homemade...it's like the lazy way to make it...but they like it so I made one for dessert. I even tried to be festive and make a pumpkin out of vanilla wafers. It didn't look exactly like I wanted it to, but atleast you can tell it's a pumpkin!

It's way past bed time by now, but so what who cares? It's a holiday and we are getting an extra hour of sleep before church. So we let the kids stay up and play ring around the rosie. At this point they were full of sugar and had a ball just being kids!



On a different note...I just had to add this picture in. It is SOOO funny! I have looked at it a million times and I bust out laughing every time. It's just such a funny picture...and so candid. I didn't even know I caught that face until after when I was looking back through the pictures. It's a priceless face though...I just love it!!

And I'll finish with this picture. Haylee decided to steal Daddy's hat and wear it for the day. She looked super cute as a little gangster. I just love her death...Can you tell we both like to cheese?

Well with Halloween over I guess Thanksgiving will be here before we know it!! But I have one more big thing I am looking forward to before Thanksgiving and it happens this weekend!!

....

I AM GOING TO WOMEN OF FAITH!!

I am so excited!! We leave Friday morning for Greensboro.
(a bunch of ladies from church are all going together)

I am just so excited...God has big things in store for this trip and I just can't wait!!

"We go together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong..."

This past Sunday we attended 50's night at my Grandma's church. It's a fundraiser they do every year to help raise money for Women's ministrys. Last year it was a cowgirl theme and this year was the 50s! I love the 50s, sometimes I wish I had lived back then!

I didn't have anything "50s" for Haylee to wear but I did buy this polka dot skirt a few weeks ago at once upon a child. I thought it was cute and it went with my 50s outfit. She looked super cute and as you can tell she had a lot of fun!

We posed with Elivs in front of a mock soda shop prop. They did a really good job with the decorations.
I rode with one of my friends, Treva (to my right). These three ladies with me are friends of mine that go to my church, I'm glad that they decided to come, it made the crowd a little bit younger! Not that Grandma's don't have fun, because trust me they do!!

GGliz with Haylee. As you can see Haylee is wearing a scarf and that is just AMAZING considering she doesn't like things like that, hats...scarfs...necklaces so it was really suprising that she kept it on all night!

We had a very fun night. They had raffles, skits and really yummy hamburger steak. I'm excited to see what next years theme will be. I think we need to do something like this at our church...maybe I will mention it at our next womens meeting. hmm..

South Cackalacky

So last minute we decided to go to Columbia for the weekend. I had Monday off for Columbus day so we thought it would be fun to visit Aunt Tina and Grandpa BoBo. We left about 5:30 Friday afternoon. We have figured out that it's easier to drive with Haylee at night then during the day. You can see how happy she is here. We grabbed sonic for dinner and headed out.

I told Haylee to show me her shoes and this is the pose she made. :) my little cheerleader.

We did this for about an hour. She loves to play peekaboo with her blanket. She thinks it's the funniest thing ever. I have a video I'm going to try to post at the end.

Saturday we went to lunch with one of my good friends Alisha and her son Ryder. This was my first time meeting Ryder, he is such a handsome little man. I'm so glad I got to see them. He slept most of the time so maybe next time I will get to hold him.

This is me and Alisha and the babies. We went to lunch at Hot Dog Heaven...it's a restaurant that we both used to work at in Highschool. All of the employees there were different but the food was the same and it was soooo yummy! After lunch we went to Once upon a Child. I found some really cute outfits for Haylee and picked up a few bows and Alisha also found some cute outfits for Ryder. It's a small store, ours in Greenville is much bigger but I found that they had more stuff then ours does. I think we tired them out from shopping because by time we got back home they were both knocked out so they weren't awake for the picture. hehe.

Haylee loves her Grandpa BoBo. And don't ask why she calls him BoBo, that's just what he wanted. All of their family calls him BoBo...it's just a thing they do, everyone has a nickname.


Saturday night Grandpa BoBo and Daddy grilled out for us. We had chicken, hot dogs, turkey burgers, mac and cheese, baked beans and corn on the cob. YUM! I wish I had some leftovers now. Solon's cousin Lena came over and brought Will. Haylee loves her some cousin Will. They played hard all night...coloring, building blocks, chasing eachother around...Haylee kept giving him hugs, I thought it was so sweet.

The kids created a game for everyone to play with the blocks. It was a competition to see who could build the tallest tower, before Haylee came and knocked it all down. For some reason that night she thought it extremely funny to knock everyones towers down...so we just made it into a game. We played it for what seemed like hours. Everyone got involved...it was a lot of fun!!

And then came time to say goodbye. Aunt Tina is going to USC upstate and had to go back on Sunday. I couldn't resist taking a picture of this, Haylee practically climbed in the car herself.

Well we really enjoyed our weekend in Columbia...so much that Solon is talking about moving back. Maybe someday, I really do love it there and it is a beautiful city. So who knows what God has in store for us!