Butt Cake

We celebrated Fred's birthday with dinner at Chili's and a "Nothing Bundt Cakes."

For someone who can be so coordinated with most everyone else's birthdays, I woke up and realized that I had nothing for my own husband.  October 12th just snuck up on me!

We took him to Chili's (at his request) for dinner.  They were SEVEN orders behind.  I had decided to splurge and get my all time favorite sandwich ever, the Grilled Chicken Sandwich.  It is usually so good and the only place that makes one better is Cafe Express and I haven't had that since our office was over on Midway and Keller Springs-- so that was like 10 years ago. (This post just went off course, somehow.)

When they finally brought our order out to us my sandwich was room temperature.  The plate was piping hot, but the food was not.  It made a big difference in the enjoyment of my dinner, let me tell you.  Fred and Jonathan enjoyed there hamburgers.  And, I believe that we had been waiting on Jessie's veggie fajitas.  I was so very sad. 

When we finally made it home... you know after waiting for what seemed like hours for our dinner... we celebrated with a "Nothing Bundt Cakes."  Well, everyone except for Jonathan.  Jonathan and I are not big cake eaters.  He said that he wasn't eating a "butt" cake.  Even though I generally, don't enjoy cakes, I have to say that I did enjoy this particular cake. It did seem to ease the sting of my really bad dinner.  Score 1 for me!

I still owe Fred a much better celebration, but at least I redeemed myself with the Butt Cake!

To the Best Person I Know

Happy 43rd Birthday to Freddy Fortenberry!

(I am so thankful that he has finally stopped reminding me that he is 8 months younger than me!)

We have been celebrating his birthday together since 1991... that's a whole lot of birthdays.

I guess we are officially oldish.  And, clearly, I'm slightly older than Fred.

Fred's the best person I know and I'm so thankful for him.  I'd be happy celebrating his birthday every single day!

Dog People

In life there are two kinds of people, dog people and cat people.  

We are all dog people in our house.  All of us.  Except for one.  She is cat people.   

I am dog people. Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, I thought I was cat people.  Turns out, I only liked MY cat, Miss Kitty. 

Nope, I'm dog people.

Courage and Heart

Well, it all started on Friday night.  I went to pick Jonathan up at 6:45 p.m.  Supposedly they got out early, because they had to be at the school early for their Saturday contest in Denton.  As it turns out, it was past 7:00 before I saw in band members heading back to the band hall. 

I had shown up before 6:45 p.m. so that I could claim a prime parking spot.  Little did I realize that I was parked next to James who happens to be the brother of one of my very favorite band members (not counting a certain tuba player).  

So, anyway, Faith spotted me as she was headed out to get in her car and gave me a big wave.  I jumped out and gave her a hug.  I would like to point out to you (and I already pointed out to Jonathan) that while Faith was nice and sweaty from all of her hard work, she smelled fresh as a flower.  Jonathan says that is because she is a girl and probably just used more deodorant before leaving the band hall.  He said he didn't have time for more deodorant.  He was just ready to go home.  Faith asked if I was coming to the contest on Saturday and I told her I wasn't sure, which actually meant that I hadn't planned on it, but now I was having second thoughts.  I had already told Jonathan not to expect us, but now having a second person ask about it, I was starting to be swayed.  If one more person had asked, I would have committed right then and there without talking with Fred.

So, I went home and told Fred that I felt compelled to go to the contest.  So, he struck up a deal.  Fred loves to strike up deals.  It's his favorite thing.  He told Jonathan that if they made it to the finals then we would be there.  Jonathan was super excited and held us to it.

On Saturday, I got a text letting me know that they made it to the finals.  Performance time?  9:00 p.m.!  What kind of deal did Fred make?  Why wouldn't he just commit to the preliminaries?  Tickets were $16, so we got there in time to see almost every band perform.  Fred said he wanted his entire $16 worth!

In the Finals, all bands were judged against each other regardless of size or ability.  One of the first bands we saw was Atoka (I think).  They were so tiny.  I think they had 14 band members 4 flags and 1 drummer and he was on a trap set.  I seriously teared up when they marched out.  I wanted them to be amazing.  The guy behind me was laughing and his wife was shushing him.  I cried for their determination, heart and guts. I texted a picture to my brother and asked him if it reminded him of his band at Community.  I'm not sure that we were even this small my first year and we had the luxury of including 7th and 8th graders.  And, we were probably only bigger by about 6 more members.  What courage it took for them to compete against a huge band like Wakeland High School.  Way to go!

There were some pretty amazing bands competing.  All were more seasoned than our band and many were larger than our band.  The Knight Band did a great job on the field and put on a magnificent performance.

They came in 7th place behind some very fine bands.  Wakeland was 1st and Colleyville Heritage was 2nd.  Honestly, Fred and I thought it would be the other way around.  They were both outstanding. (In the preliminaries, I understand that we were 2nd in our class and 5th overall.)

Fred and I sat next to the Denton High School band.  At first, they were loud, annoying and stinky.  I guess all band boys stink.  A few used inappropriate words.  It was not behavior that I was used to.  I have been fortunate to spend time around some amazing youth from our church and school.  It is no secret that I just love young people and I ended up falling in love with the row of girls directly behind us.  The group as a whole was still unruly, but I loved those girls.  They were so in to each and every performance.  And, they got excited over every group.  They cheered for every band that was competing against them.  They would yell, "Nice!!" when they would do something especially impressive or "Alright!!"  I didn't notice it at first until I heard the most enthusiastic girl cheering for our Knights.  They were on their feet applauding Colleyville Heritage High School.  

What a great way to conduct our lives.  We can all learn something from those girls.  

I've Done Gone and Broke My Blog

So.... I broke my blog on Friday.  It's a true story.  I was inspired to change out the background, so I went to the Internet and found a free template.  The only thing required of me was to copy in some html code, which I know nothing about.  Seems the Blogger has changed a little since 2008, when I jumped on board the blogging train and it seems to have really changed since the last time I changed my background.

I managed to get lost in a world of html code, gadgets, widgets and who knows what else.  I was clearly lost!  There was a time when the blogging world was made easy for us "Mommy Bloggers."  I ended up losing my Navigation Bar which allows me to sign in to my blog.  That's a big deal, right?  My blog was adorable, though.  I hunted through the code looking for what the help sites said I needed to delete, so that I could reclaim my precious NavBar.  Couldn't find the jacked up coding anywhere.  However, let's take a step back and remember that I'm in Marketing, but graduated with an HR degree. None of this makes me qualified to decipher html code.  So, I went about it a different way and found another template, that would allow me to access the NavBar.  But, it didn't quite work.  It was from a site that I had been using for years.  Guess, Blogger has changed their format.  So, I ended up using a free background from the Internet along with a template from Blogger to get by for right now.  So, what you see is a big mess on my blog.  I also managed to lose some of my buttons on the side and my labels. (Those items are easiest enough to reclaim though-- I think.)  I'm sure there are more things that I lost and I don't even realize it.  However, I found that precious NavBar!

In the next few days, I'm going to be playing with the background of my blog.  I can't stand this one.  Just can't.  Sorry.  I thought I could, but it's pretty much killing me and there is nothing I can do to get the old template back.  So, I'm sure I'll make a mess out of my blog over the next couple of days. Wish me luck.  I'll die if I kill this blog.  Just die.

Do you think it is a coincidence that I accidentally blew my blog up right around the 1,000th post?

Playing Dirty

Happy Friday!

Do you know what I hate about Thursday games?  They make us super tired on Fridays.

But, do you know what I love about them?  We get a Friday night off!  We pick up Jonathan at 6:45 from band practice and then I plan on being lazy!  Usually, he doesn't get finished until 7:15, but he gets out early due to a marching contest tomorrow at the early hour of 7:00 a.m.

Thank goodness for General Conference weekend, because we need it!

Oh yeah, and way to go Knights!  They almost beat those sneaky Titans (48-41)!  So proud of those boys.  They worked hard.  I have limited football knowledge and told Fred (who left early) that the Titans played dirty and let the time run out at the end, so that we couldn't try to tie it up.  Fred said that isn't playing dirty.  He said that is just football.  

I say that football isn't very fair if you are allowed to play dirty!

(Put that on a shirt.)

1,000th Post!!!

In honor of my 1,000th blog post (oh yeah, that's right, 1-0-0-0), I felt like I needed to do a little Throwback Thursday and pay homage to Angela's birthday, the State Fair of Texas and these boys that truly love each other!

So, first of all Happy Birthday to my crazy friend, Angela!  You haven't changed a bit-- you still look and act just like you did when we were in college.  Amy, your hair was a little higher in college!

I feel like there are several things to point out...

1) That "kiss" sure is awkward

2) I wonder if we planned our coordinating outfits.

3) Check out Dave's flip phone held together with electrical tape.

4) Fred needs a hair cut.

5) Why did they pose like that?

6) I believe this is the one and only time that I have ever been on the Texas Star.

7) I wonder if I needed Dramamine.

8) Can I say Amy has great hair?

9) Again, do we know why Dave and Fred posed like that?

10) I'm just going to keep asking the question about Fred and Dave until someone answers it for me.

I don't think there will be 1,000 more posts, but here's to a few more!

Thanks for reading!

P.S.  Here is last year's tribute to Aunt Angel.