Thanksgiving 2011

We started our Thanksgiving with Warner's program at school - The First Thanksgiving. It was absolutely precious! It was filled with sweet poems, songs, salute to our flag, blessing, and they recited Psalm 100. I was fighting back the tears. We have so much to be thankful for!

The following Wednesday, my family started to arrive! Chris & I hosted Thanksgiving this year, and I didn't know how we would pull it off without a kitchen. We did! We have a house on the farm that Chris was in the process of turning into his office/hunting camp, so we just got busy and made it work. It turned out great!! It was a beautiful day, the kids rode four wheelers, and we just enjoyed being out in the country. We had the entire Rayner side of the family - 10 adults & 6 kids.

cousins

how many men does it take to fry a turkey? It was delicious!!

Friday, we all headed to Starkville for the Egg Bowl.

Saturday morning Chris & I took the boys to the bakery on campus. Fun fun!!

tailgaiting fun!!

#1 and #2 fan ready to go into the game. Go Bulldogs!!!!!!

We had club level seats for the game, and it was such a treat. We were out of the rain!! Jackson slept the first half, so I got to actually watch the game. We loved every minute - the gold shoes and all! It's great to be a bulldog!!

our mess

Back in May we noticed some water under our wood floors in our dining room. We were moving our dining room table to the front yard for Warner's birthday party and while stepping on the floor, water would come up out of the cracks. After our adjuster came out then sent an engineer to check it out, it was filed under flooding. Since we don't have flood insurance, we had to repair and replace everything out of our own pocket. We had the entire back door replaced and were having the floor repaired, when our carpenter discovered that there was still water under the floors days after the last rain. After he started investigating, he found a leak in our kitchen coming from our ice maker...and turns out we had way more damage than we first thought. Our insurance company came back and made it right...and now we are living in a complete mess!! We had to gut our entire kitchen, replace the wall between the dining room & kitchen, and finally redo our floors. It is a work in progress and already taking way longer than I had anticipated. I never took any before picures, but here are some "during" pictures. The floors still have to be put down in front of the door.

Kitchen looking in from laundry room. The door at the end of kitchen goes in to dining room. I never thought I would say this, but I am so tired of eating out!!

MS State vs Alabama

We had another great weekend in Starkville! It was even more fun to spend some time with Kevin, Haley, Kepler, & Dax as well as the Barrett family. We went to the Hump for the basketball game, had fun tailgating with the Rowell's, and took both boys into the football game. Jackson was perfectly content as long as he had his popcorn! We were worn out by the end of the day! Jackson was asleep before we put the car in drive and slept on the table at Newk's after the game. We laid him in his pack-n-play when we got back to our hotel and didn't hear a peep out of him until the next morning!!

First basketball game for Warner & Jackson.

How many boys can we fit on the golf cart? Warner & Kepler on the back, Dax, Joe Barrett, and Jackson up front. They were loving it!
We even got to see our niece/cousin Maggie.

Warner was in heaven in the amphitheater, sliding down the hills on his makeshift sled...all the kids were doing this and it was chaos!

Warner got to play with his buddy, Camp.

In the game and enjoying our second box of popcorn.

We drove through campus on Sunday and stopped to take some pictures.

Blessed to be their mommy!!

We had a great weekend and can't wait to be back in less than 2 weeks for the Egg Bowl. Go Dawgs!!!!!!

helping daddy

Chris has been working in the woods a lot lately getting ready for deer and duck season. There is no place these two would rather be than out in the woods on the four wheeler with daddy. It was such a beautiful fall day yesterday, and I took my camera and got a few good pictures.

last soccer game & trophy

Warner had his last soccer game on Sunday and ended it with a win and scored a goal!! He loved his soccer season and had so much fun out there with his team.

Warner, Anderson Flowers, Will Moser, & Tanner Fava

Anna Sims Wills, Warner, Will, Tanner, Emily Grace Smith, & Anderson

getting his trophy

what I don't have a picture of is jackson thinking he is part of the team and walking out to get his trophy!!

What will do now with our Sunday afternoons??

Halloween 2011

We celebrated Halloween on Saturday night, and it was wild!! We pulled in to town just in time for Chris to drop me off at the church where I was working a booth at our festival. Chris took the boys to the Johnson's house for their annual Halloween party. He was also in charge of the camera...and this is what I got!

Jackson is now in love with the trick or treating. He is going to want to dress up everyday if it means he gets candy!

Sweet boys - Gaines Flowers & Jackson.

Last night (Halloween night) we dressed up again and went out to Mawmaw's house and JoJo & Pops...and I left my camera, ugh!!

San Antonio, TX

Last Monday afternoon Chris told me we were going to San Antonio. We left the next night. It was crazy!! We spent the night in Jackson, and our flight was EARLY Wednesday morning. Our main reason for the trip was to pick out a tree shaker for the pecan orchard, but we made a little family trip out of it. We had fun on the riverwalk, visited the Alamo, went to the zoo, and our very favorite thing we did was Sea World. We are worn out!! When you travel with kids, you need a vacation from your vacation ;)

Riding the shuttle to our rental car - let the fun begin!!

Having a little fun while daddy looked at tree shakers.


World's largest pecan

The Riverwalk

boat tour

The Alamo

Sea World. It was freezing this day, and I did not prepare for cold weather. We all had to buy a sweatshirt in the gift shop.

My favorite part of our trip - feeding the dolphins!!