Christmas 2009

Wow Christmas 2009 has come and gone and I can not believe it!! It seems like we get ready for months and months and months and we plan and we make list and we shop and we party and we attend and host once a year events and we look forward to it all year long and then its over.. But I have to be honest and tell you Christmas is celebrated everyday at The Rays... Sure Christmas is fun and the season is busy with shopping and partying but the real reason for Christmas is the birth of our sweet savior Jesus Christ and without HIM we would not have any celebration at all.. Without HIM we would not have our families, we would not have our friends and we sure would not have anything else at all~~ We have a family tradition that we go to my parents in Memphis and we celebrate Christmas Eve with them with a fun dinner and exchange gifts with them and my brother and his family and we just have a good time being together and then of course Christmas morning we celebrate with the boys and then off we go to celebrate with Chuck's family.. We are so Thankful that God has blessed us with such special families..We hope that each one of you had a Merry Blessed Christmas and we pray that you will celebrate the true meaning of Christmas everyday too!!Luke 2:10,11

Bunco Progressive Dinner

I have been truly blessed! I was asked to play in our neighborhood bunco group right after I moved here and I just love it.. I have made some wonderful friends in this group and we all just have a great time when we are all together..You know how it is when you get a bunch of females together your are always gonna have at least one that others have issues with.. But, not in this group (unless I am the one)lol!! We all just love each other and have so much fun when we are together.. We have our Christmas Progressive Dinner where we bring our husbands and thats alot of fun too..When we play bunco in November we plan the dinner and we also draw names to see who we will buy " Secret Santa" gifts for and then at the dinner we give our final gift and let the secret out and who we are.. This year I had the best Santa.. she brought me some of the cutest gifts... She brought me a monogrammed stocking filled with wine and chocolate and then she brought me beautiful ornaments for my tree and then she brought me the cutest bucket filled with homemade Hot Choc, homemade marshmellows and candy stir sticks and then for my final gift she gave me the most beautiful blinged out Christmas tree with gold, red and green, gorgeous!! I loved my Secret Santa and I love her.. Kristen Jones... she has to be one of the sweetest people I have ever met! she is the one that invited me to play bunco.. she was actually the very first neighbor I met before we even moved in and she has gone out of her way to be a friend to me.. I am so Thankful for her and so blessed to call her my friend! The dinner was a ton of fun and very very yummy.. We started the evening off having appetizers and cocktails it was very yummy and everyone said they wanted all the recipes for the cocktails that our personal bartender Tonya was making and then we moved on to the main meal which was at Barbara's and she went all out with the tables decorated for Christmas and Patty went all out with her delicious beef stroganoff it was amazing and then we moved on to Donna's for dessert and gifts and that was a fun time too.. It is so much fun to be with all of these sweet couples, we need to do it more often than just once a year, the meal that is!! not the gifts but I could go for that too!! I hope everyone had as much fun as we did. Thank you all for hosting and Thank you all for bringing and providing the food and drinks.. We wish yall a Very Merry Christmas and we hope that 2010 is filled with tons of blessings for you and your family!!

Christmas Cookie and Ornament Exchange

Well, I have been to 2 Christmas cookie and ornament exchanges this season.. Well I have been to one and hosted one.. All I can say is FUN FUN and YUM YUM!!!If you have never been to one you have to!! It is such a fun time of fellowship and good times! I love seeing all the yummy cookies and of course tasting them.. The first exchange was a neighborhood exchange and it was just a good time hanging with friends and meeting new neighbors and of course getting new recipes for cookies.. And the ornament exchange is really neat to because you see all kinds, that may be your taste or not but it is always fun to hang them on your tree year after year and remember where you got it and who it came from.. That game is alot of fun because depending on what number you draw you choose a pkg or steal one from another and that gets really interesting when that gets going...Lots of laughs:)The second one that I hosted was for the ladies and girls of our church, that was alot of fun too.. The funny thing is nobody wanted to steal, I guess that's the honest christian thing to do but I think they realized it was just a game so some of them started it and the game began!! We also went around the room and shared Christmas memories as a child and there were some really good ones..I love hearing about other peoples traditions and seeing how similar they are to ours..Its a such a great time of year to share fun times with friends and I hope they all have a very blessed Christmas but I also hope we all realize that not everyone can afford to go to a exchange so this season I ask you to just reach out to one person and give them a bag of Christmas cookies and a ornament and see how much it blesses them and you too!! Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2009

This year we decided to go to Arkansas to spend Thanksgiving with my family.. My parents have a home on Eden Isle which is located in Heber Springs.. It has to be one of my favorite places to go.. It is so peaceful there! When you drive in the gates it is honestly instant relaxation.. I was telling someone the other day that truly the only thing you can complain about is a bird singing to loud so now you see.. So we got there on Wednesday night and everyone was there and it was just so nice, I felt like we were HOME~ We had a great time being with my parents and my brother and his family.. The boys love being with their cousins and their Nana and Papa.. We had alot of chit chats and we played games and ate and shopped and ate some more.. It was a great time.. The boys got to play alot of golf with their Papa and that is one of their favorite things to do... We also got to see our sweet friends The Ennis Family who we met when we both lived in St Louis, they moved to Arkansas about 6 yrs ago and just happen to be about a hour from the lake house so that is another reason its one of my favorite places to go.. We love being with them, they are just like family to us and always will be. They have 3 cuties who are growing up way to fast for me...I took a ton of pics of my family and my friends and for some reason my pic card is not copying on my computer, it just makes me sick.. If I can some how get them to pull up I will post them as soon as I can... We were suppose to come home on Saturday but we decided to stay another day and it was just us with my parents, my brother and his family went home so Chuck and the boys played golf with my dad and me and my momma went to the little town of Heber Springs and shopped in all their cute boutiques and bought some of the cutest things...I just truly enjoyed being with my momma... She is alot of fun to shop with:) Thanksgiving of course is a holiday to eat lots of food and not feel guilty and boy did we do that but it is also a holiday to realize what you are Thankful for and I am so Thankful for everything in my life~~ God has truly blessed my life with my family. friends, health and just everything HE does for me.... I hope that you and your family had a blessed Thanksgiving too...

Halloween 09"

Halloween was so much fun this year! Our boys are a little old to be trick or treating but never to old to have friends over for a good time.. So they invited a few friends and we did too! We grilled out and had yummy desserts and just lots of fun! There is nothing like a house full of family and friends and chit chat and laughter lots of laughter!:) After it started getting late upstairs was filled with boys and the game of rock band was on, so of course this momma had to go rock out with them a little bit and I am sure they thought I was a weird momma but oh well I was singing Eye of the Tiger better than any of them!!lol!! Anyway all I can say is that God has truly answered our prayers when we asked for friends for our boys, good friends that have the same morals and values that we are trying to instill in our boys. They were all so well behaved, very polite, very respectful and very very appreciative!On Sunday morning we all got up and had breakfast and they all went to church with us, we had a pew filled.. Thank you Lord for hearing our prayers and knowing the desires of our hearts. The boys all made a pack that this would be a traditional event every year which is just fine with us!!!!

My Visit to St Louis

I have been wanting to go back to St Louis for a visit by myself so bad and probably about the middle of September, I thought I was gonna go crazy if I did not get there soon. I seriously think it was because it was Fall and it still felt like Summer here.. I was missing all of the fall colors and the crisp cool air and the cute fall clothes and of course all of my friends.. I remember telling my friends here that the day it turned cool in Texas we were going to putt on our winter coats and boots and go to Starbucks and sit outside and drink our coffee.. Oh yes I am now a official coffee drinker:) cant do the black coffee yet but hey I am doing it ok!! It was time to grow up and drink coffee with all my friends here:) Ok anyway I think Chuck got tired of hearing me say I wanna go to St Louis I wanna go.. I miss my friends so finally he said OK... set a date and book your flight.. So I called all of my friends to make sure they were going to be there and to make arrangements with who I was staying with and I got all that settled and booked my flight.. When my boys found out that I was going, of course they wanted to go too but no no no I needed a Momma Getaway.. I left on a Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. and got there at 10:00 a.m. When we were flying in to St Louis it looked like a box of fruity pebbles, it was gorgeous, I got so excited and could not wait!!! My sweet friend Margy picked me up with her son Cole and we took off shopping and then we went to a new restaurant by the name of 54th Street it was yummy and then we shopped more. Her husband Steve came and we all went out to eat St Louis Pizza and toasted ravioli( STL thing) we had so much fun just visiting and laughing with their 3 boys.. They were our old neighbors so I was staying right down the street from my old house which was a little sad...:( The next day their boys had a wrestling tournament and they wanted me to come watch and I wanted to see them because needless to say I have never watched wrestling up close and personal.. Well!!! that was very exciting and very entertaining!! I was so tempted to go out there and pull their opponents off of them and scream get off of my boys!!At noon that day my friend Karen came and got me and we took off to meet my sweet friend Kathy and sweet friend Sue for lunch and then we went shopping in the little old town of Cottleville, it has lots of cute old houses that have been turned into shops.. Oh I had so much fun and bought a few things, the weather was honestly picture perfect!That night I spent the night with Karen and her family, we have known them since Phillip and her son started kindergarten and they have a sweet daughter named Kirsten who is Peyton's age, she is a sweetie pie and has turned into a beautiful young lady...That night that had invited several friends over for a chili cook off and it was a blast, the chili was delish and the games we played were so much fun, they introduced me to a game called sequence oh how fun, I had to come home and buy it,, The next morning my friend Jenn came to get me with her daughters J and Livi.. Oh it was so good to see them and be with them.. We went to church at our old church and that was a really good feeling seeing all of our old church family and hearing our old Pastor preach..I was really looking forward to going to church and seeing everyone but also was afraid of what my feelings might be... I prayed some mighty prayers that God would really reveal to me that this is where he really wants me at this time in my life..And I am happy to see say that he clearly let me know that this is where I belong.. I missed my church here and all my sweet friends.. Its just so funny how life moves on with me and my friends. Of course there are some friends there that I did not want to leave and had thoughts of bringing them with me...But those friends will have a special place in my heart and in my life forever.. One particular was my sweet Livi, after church on Sunday we went to lunch and she said she wanted to pray so we all held hands and she thanked God for letting her step mom come to visit(me) how cute is that.. She has no idea what step mom means but I think she was just thinking of me as her second momma xoxoxomuuuah~~I love you Livi lou!!!From there we met the other girls and needless to say I felt like I had died and gone to girl heaven... I love those girls so much but I have to honestly say sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with their conversations, they all talk so fast and they talk in stereo, lol:)I have to say ok wait wait wait slow down your turn now your turn...lol.. I wonder if I would have stayed in St Louis if I would have been able to keep up with their talking?? lol Oh how I miss being with them!That night we dropped the girls off at home and went out to one of my favorite places Chevys, oh how I hated that place when we first moved there but by the time we left it was one of my favorites..I have so many fun memories there. We met some girlfriends from church and had dinner and chatted for a few hours, it was fun having a girls night out with all my old friends.. The next day, Jenn and I shopped shopped shopped and came up with project after project. We had our annual friendship lunch at THE CASTLE... mmmmmm yummmm it was so good.... The next morning we met Beth,Sharon and Sweety for breakfast and had a great time catching up and then it was time for me to go to the airport.Before we went to the airport we needed to shop just a little longer to get everything in.. We went to the mall and I bought the boys new cardinal tshirts because YES we are die hard Cards fans and always will be~~ and then we had to go to Garden Ridge to get a few more decorating items for Jenn's house...And then it was off to the airport, such a sad ride:) When it was time for me to say goodbye we both cried and cried it is just so hard to say goodbye when you love someone so much and you know you live 14 hrs away.. Some friends are like family and all of these friends definitely are! Thank you all for your sweet hospitality and please know I love and miss you all so much and now I am waiting for your visit!! xoxoxo Hope to see you soon!!!!