Happy Veteran's Day

Today was a very emotional day. Along with honoring our Veteran's today, we laid to rest my great-uncle. He served in the United States Army for almost 30 years, he fought in WW II and loved his country until his last breath. He was buried with full military honors and the service was beautiful! It was fitting for him to be buried on Veteran's Day. Thank you to ALL soldiers and veteran's today, I LOVE being an American!


Loyd Leon Sample
1919-2010


This photo is one of my very favorites! I took it this summer, this flag flys over the battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The never-ending "to-do" list

Seems lately my "to-do" list gets longer and the "crossing off" almost never happens! The approaching holidays have my excitement level going up! I am having Thanksgiving AND Christmas at my house this year!!! I am so excited for that! My fall decorations MAY make it until Thanksgiving! I am so ready to decorate my tree! I will try to control myself and not make my family look at a Christmas tree or listen to Christmas carols while we dig into the turkey!
I have been very busy getting ready for a Christmas show I am doing in Dec. The Polka Dot Factory has been in overdrive trying to get orders out for Christmas! I am SOOO thankful that it has been blessed this year! I hope you come see us in Antlers on Dec 3 and 4 if you are local!
Yesterday, I headed to Sam's for some netting for my wreaths. I needed some other colors besides what HL had. Clints nephew and his wife went with us and we ended up running into two other couples we know inside! We got there about 30 minutes before it closed so I was running through the isles trying to gather what I needed! I know that employees were glaring at us because we were in a big group talking and laughing. I got what I needed and enjoyed the visit too! We then ran to Target and the boys stayed in the car! Ray and I headed straight to the baby dept, they are expecting a baby in the Spring so we looked at all the cute stuff Target has for little ones, and there were some cute stuff!!! We wanted to grab something to eat before we went to a movie so Cheddars was our choice! It was delicious. I have been watching my carbs so I had the veggie plate with tortilla soup(ok, it had a few carbs) with steamed broccoli, green beans, and carrots. Yummy! It felt good to not "over-stuff."
Today, I am catching up with my house! I have a list to get through today, I am currently working on a "home-keeping" notebook with weekly lists of things I want to do. I think that will help me get ready for the holidays and not be over-stressed.

Little trip to the South

Clint and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in September! We put together a little trip with my parents, who will be celebrating their 41st in November.
We decided we wanted to get in the truck and drive - East. We landed in Mississippi. We spent 2 days visiting Vicksburg and touring the battlefields, cruising down the Mississippi River and just relaxing. One day for lunch we stopped at this little hole in the wall place. It was literally 3 "shacks" in a row. One was the cookshack, one the ?storage? and one was where you ate and paid.
It was so whimsical and quirky. There were fresh produce bins lined on every table. It was a place you could look for hours and see something new all the time! I took some pictures, actually a lot of pics! Everything was so bright.







We drove down the Natchez Trace Parkway and spent the next 2 days in beautiful Natchez! We loved it. We ate, walked, ate, shopped, and ate! Fat Mamas Tamales while watching some SEC football on Saturday, that was fun! We toured several plantations while there. We toured Rosalie, Longwood and Stanton Hall. We had brunch Sunday at Stanton Hall, fried chicken, seafood gumbo, andouille dressing, itty bitty biscuits and jelly, creole cheesecake (to die for!) and sweet tea. Oh, it was SOOO good. We had a wonderful vacation. It was so nice to get away for a few days!

My newest obsession! (new post just for Sherri!)

I always love a new challenge! A few weeks ago I helped host a baby shower for a dear friend. We had decided we wanted those cute little decorated cookies for our guests to take home as favors. I piped up that I would make them! Have I ever made a decorated cookie, you ask? Well, no, but I am sure I can figure it out!!! So, I made a trip to Hobby Lobby, looked at a few blogs on-line and off I go! I invited my bestie over to help. She is my confidence booster! We made up the cookie dough and had to do a little taste test! It was wonderful!!!
As some of the cookies were baking, the icing got started. It posed more of a challenge in the fact that we had to quadruple the recipe and we decided it definately DID NOT have enough liquid in the recipe. So, a little of this and a little of that later, we had a perfect royal icing. LET THE DECORATING BEGIN.........

5 hours later, we had a finished project!!! They turned out so cute and they were delicious!!!

AND.... as for the title of this post, we are decorating Halloween cookies this Sunday afternoon! And I have basketball cookies to do, and Thanksgiving cookies to fix, and Christmas cookies to decorate....well, you get the picture!

Babe Ruth Southwest Regional baseball tournament

My summer has been filled with baseball, baseball, baseball. And, I wouldn't have it any other way! McKenna, my stepson, at one point, was playing on 3 different teams. We were practicing everyday for one team or another.
But, as of this weekend, we are officially down to 1 team!! YEAH!!
McK was a part of the Southeast Oklahoma All Star team that went to the Babe Ruth Southwest Regional Tourney. The tournament was this past weekend and we had a blast, didn't win it, but had a blast. We started with the opening ceremonies on Friday morning, then we played our 1st game Friday night. A lot of family came out to watch McK play. He was the only player from our town to be selected for the All-star team. My niece, Macey, came out to watch. She is leaving this weekend for college, where she will be playing softball. She gave McK a lucky bracelet that she wore in the State Softball tourney this year!
She is such a sweet girl! We are going to miss her. Unfortunately, we lost. Our second game was on Saturday at 2 p.m.
I don't know if any of you have caught the weather lately, but the entire state of Oklahoma was under a heat advisory! It was 105 degrees when we got to the field on Saturday. Hot was a mild word. Very mild. We lost this game too. SO, we are spectaturs we became! It was a very nice experience though. There were teams there from Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. It was a wonderful put together tournament too, lots of extra stuff to do. Thursday night there was a dinner and banquet, kinda a meet and greet.

Summertime!

It hit a 100 degrees here today! Oh my, it is so hot! The kids and I enjoyed staying in the pool today! I brought out some lemonade to cool us off!!

Tell me they are not spoiled!
We had an enjoyable afternoon splashing around and relaxing! We LOVE our pool! I don't know what we did without it!!!
It's sad our summer is almost coming to an end, school starts in about 3 weeks and we are all a little sad. We still have a few activities before it ends. McKenna is playing in the Babe Ruth tournament next weekend, we have a trip to Dallas scheduled for school shopping, and hopefully a weekend at the lake.

We just finished VBS at church! It was a wonderful week, exhausting, but wonderful. I love VBS! I teach pre-K-6y/o and we had 21 kids!!! It was crazy! It took 6 teachers to corral all those kids! I told another teacher, it was like herding cattle - 1 gets away from the pack and they all scatter!!! It is a learning experience to have that many kids! They are so innocent and funny!

I hope the next 3 weeks CRAWL by!! I'm not ready to get the kids back in school!

Sweet strawberry goodness!!!

It's that time of year again! Strawberry season! I've had a strawberry garden since the first year we built our house out here (5 years). I have nutured these babies every year and slowly built up from getting a handfull of berries to a WHOLE BOWL! My neighbor across the road had a beautiful strawberry garden, and every spring he would invite us over to pick all we wanted. The first year we lived here, everyday for a week I came home from work to find a 3 gallon bucket of strawberries on my porch! So I called his sweet wife and asked her, "what in the world do I do with all these!" She said in her sweet, soft voice, "Make jelly, honey!" SO, that was the first year for my jelly. I get requests every year for it now!!! My step-daughter took some home with her to her "other" brother and she said, "Dakota thinks you should sell this jelly in the store!"
Well, this year, I have enough berries at one time to make more. I had to "borrow" some from my mother-in-laws garden but not many.

I got all my stuff going early this morning. I washed and cut up the berries, mashed them a little for that sweet juice to start flowing. UMMMM!!

Cooking away!! The only part I hate is the "stirring constantly." I did take a break for a photo!!!

Time for a bath, sweet babies!!!!


Doesn't get much prettier than that!! I get so excited to hear their tops start popping! (That means the seal took!!!) Yeah!!

Ok, is there any question what the Pierce's are having for breakfast tomorrow!!! Biscuits!!!!!

Cleaning Therapy

I took out my pent up stress on my living room today. I decided not to go back to work until Monday, so this morning I asked Clint if he would help me clean the upper stuff in our living room.
Our ceiling is cathedral and the highest point is 20'. So, needless to say, the upper window and fan don't get much attention! A few days ago, I looked up as the sun was shining through the window and there was an ENTIRE village of spiders living up there!
Awful, I know! But, not anymore!!! I swear it was even brighter today as all the sunshine was getting through!!!!

It's amazing what you can get accomplished when you put your mind to it! Who knows what will get cleaned tomorrow!

We've had a good day today! It started out pretty emotional but we recovered. Tonight, McKenna had a baseball game and literally, we couldn't watch it for all the people coming to us to give their condolences and share memories of Brad. It was hard on Clint, but I know how much it meant to him to hear all of it. My new motto is "Today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today!" Only time will heal and we can only take it one day at a time. Please continue to pray for our family!

I've been GONE a LONG TIME!

Gosh! I have been gone a long time! My life, it seems, is going in fast forward! My small sewing business has really taken off, I've done oodles of orders and just participated in my 1st craft show! It was a wonderful success! I, unfortunately did not get a picture of my booth, but it was cute!!! I have now to tackle a stack of custom orders to do!
On a more somber note, please remember my husbands family in your prayers. We lost my brother-in-law on Saturday. It has shaken our family to the core and we are just at a loss for words at the overwhelming outpouring of the community! He leaves a wife and 5 children (all Sr. in high school and older) It has definately put into perspective how short life is!

I promise to stay up on this better from now on!!

Spring Break 2010

We spent a week in Wolf Creek, Colorado for Spring Break. We traveled with the Sullivans and Mr. Schutts. We had such a wonderful time. It had been 2 years since we had been skiing so we were all excited to get there and hit the slopes! We stayed in a house in Pagosa Springs and so glad we did. We cooked breakfast each morning before we left and then a delicious meal in the evening.



Hunter had not skied before, but after 1 day of lessons, the girl was hooked. She did very well. Next year we will work on stopping better! haha (Sorry Mr. Schutts!)



We were able to see some great friends on the mountain. We ran into several people we knew. I laughed as I told Shannon, 20% of my senior class were there! Yep, there were 3 of my high school graduating class there (we had a grand total of 16!)

Sweet Walker! He was our guide on the mountain! When we got off the lift, we said, "Which way Walker?" and off we'd go!

Our well-deserved lunch break!

We had a wonderful time. We were thankful for a injury-free trip and most of all, can't wait until next year!

Love and Respect

We are in week 4 of a Bible study at church called Love and Respect. It has certainly been an eye-opener! So far we have learned men and women are totally different beings! (It didn't suprise any of us, huh!) Last week we talked about how women and men deal with emotions...well, considering Clint and I went into the study Sunday a little miffed at each other, I would say God had a hand in what particular lesson we studied. Women have a need to talk about their feelings, emotions, problems, etc. We ask lots of questions, want answers, and expect the FULL detailed version of all of the above. Men, on the other hand, like to be on an island, ALL ALONE. They don't like to talk about it, don't want to be questioned, and give only the limited info needed to get out of a situation. The speaker used a really great mental picture of how we relate...he said men like to be on an island, and when you have a problem, your wife wants to help you solve it. So, she gets in her boat and she rows out to the island, and she circles and circles, and bumps the shore until you let her come ashore. She doesn't give up. I thought that was hilarious because it sounds just like Clint and I. When he gets quiet, I know something is up and I ask and ask until he finally tells me. Another thing he spoke of is how women are multifacited. We can multi-task...here's an example...2 of your children come to you at the same time, talking at the same time, about 2 different things. Women can process what they said, answer each, pat them on the head, tell them we love them and send both away satisfied. He asked if we have ever watched a man in the same situation...a man listens to one while holding up the quiet sign to the second. One at a time! It has really been a good study, I look forward to it each week.
We are getting ready for our ski trip! Yeah, can't wait. I am starting to pack and get things together. McK is at a educational/Science camp the week before so I am busy getting his stuff together for that. Lists, lists, lists! We all are certainly ready for the weather to start warming up. Doing chores in the cold is getting old! Bring on Spring!!!

I stand AMAZED.

Gosh, I am going to try to re-cap the last few days! I am still recovering! I can basically sum up all the details in 3 words -- I STAND AMAZED! First of all, Thursday we had a wonderful blast of beautiful snow.

In southeast Oklahoma, we don't get a whole lot of snow. It was breathtaking!

I am amazed at the small details God has blessed us with. I was in awe how the snow settles in the crooks and crannies of this earth. We had a good time too! Though, I was the only one that did not get a snow day on Friday, I was able to sleep in and go to work a little late! I had to post this picture, my Bassett, Duchess wasn't impressed with the stuff - of course it came up to her neck!!



Friday evening my Mom, Delena (my SIL) and my Mom's high school best friend Brenda all attended the East Paris Baptist churchs annual women's conference.


The theme was "I stand amazed." Let me tell you, Saturday afternoon when the conference ended I was exhausted and amazed! We heard two dynamic speakers and the music was unbelievable. It was so awesome!
The best part was experiencing it with this group of wonderful women! We spent the night in a hotel had a blast! It was a great time! Thanks Dee for being my roomie! BTW, the speakers were Carol Kent and Dennis Jernigan. Both have phenomenal stories, and each have a website if you want more information. Both stories will knock your socks off!
Saturday evening after we got home from the conference, we had about 15 minutes before we needed to leave to go watch my niece play basketball in the playoffs. We decided to eat in McAlester at Pete's.
It's a popular place in Oklahoma, great atmosphere and food! Italian, yummy! We celebrated Valentine's Day over dinner.
It was nice to spend that time with my parents, Clint, McKenna and Brenda. Brenda was very impressed with Pete's and she liked the high school basketball experience. I'm not sure she was too keen on the winding roads in Oklahoma!!McKenna spent the road trip on the laptop!
We got home very late and went right to bed! Sunday morning we went to church and I had to teach children's church. We had a very cool Valentine's party. I think the kids had a blast. We ended our evening at a Bible study at our church called Love and Respect. It's a male/female relationship study. Very interesting! I think it's going to be great to get inside Clint's heart and mind. Happy Love Day!! I hope all of you had a great day!