The World's Best Meal

This is what my kitchen looks like at the current moment

however, the meal was SO worth the clean up!

Blake has been wanting to prepare

"the world's best meal"

as he refers to it, for quite sometime

so we decided that there was no better time than the present!

"The world's best meal"

consist of his favorite dishes

from some of his favorite restaurants:

Reata, Perini and some Texas cookbook.

We had nothing on the books for today

so we devoted the afternoon, evening and night to the kitchen.

Preping the onion rings.....

Cooking the onion rings.....

The finished product....

Hands down, best dish of the evening!!

This was a meal for my daddy;

all brown and fried!

For the main course we had

onion rings,

chicken fried chicken,

chicken fried steak,

and jalapeno cheese grits.

Our first dessert..

Blackberry Crisp with Vanilla Bean ice cream

And because one wasn't enough,

Strawberry Shortcake

(homemade buttermilk biscuit, strawberries cooked with sugar

and heavy cream drizzled on top)

I'm still awake blogging

becasue I am so uncomfortably full the thought of lying down

makes my stomach hurt worse

(if thats even possible).

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

CMG

Officially Red

Blake and I have officially turned red.

"When in Rome do as the Romans"

Well, while in Texas

act like the Texans, right?!?

This was the office window pre red....

And here it is after.....

We have officially become Texas rednecks!

CMG

Heat Wave

So our AC started having issues last week while our landlords were in Mexico.

We toughed it out as long as we could

and finally broke down

and called the AC people to come and check everything out Friday.

The guy said it was just because it was so hot outside

and the house is old with poor insulation.

Well on Monday evening we got SUPER hot

so I went and checked out the thermostat

and saw this:

it was unbearably hot!

(and yes that says 86 degrees in our house)

Our landlords returned late Monday night

and called the AC people first thing Tuesday morning demanding some answers

(she wasn't buying the insulation thing and quite frankly neither were we).

Turns out the unit was freezing up because there isn't enough return air.

They rigged us up until Tuesday

when they are coming back

to put another return air vent in our bedroom

to help the unit not have to work so hard.

With today's high being 112 degrees lets hope this works!!!

Hope everyone is staying cool.

CMG

Weekend Recap

First things first,

BEG and I rented our house in Shreveport

and we are beyond thrilled about it!!

We were headed to Shreveport for July 4th weekend with our families

and it ended up that the renters are moving in July 8

so we will spend part of the weekend loading up all of the remainder of our things

that wouldn't fit in our rent house in Lubbock onto a trailer to bring back west.

Since we are bringing everything left that we own out here

we decided the smartest and easiest thing to do would be to rent a storage room.

We decided to move our storage closets (full of our off season clothes)

that were in the office to the storage unit

and other random things we don't access often (skis, snowboard, etc) this weekend.

We are planning to put our sleeper sofa where the storage closets once were

so I can hangout with BEG while he is at his desk!

Saturday,

I decided to try a new recipe I found for

homemade dark chocolate ice cream.

Preparing the ingredients...

Finished product....

BEG enjoying our new delicious treat...

Today, we finally decided to put together the stand that came with our swing.

I blogged before about the one BEG built for the front yard,

which we enjoy sitting in

but we thought it would be nice to have one in the backyard as well.

This one is moveable and has a canopy too.

Halfway finished....

Hard at work....

the finished product....

After the heat I needed one of these...

We've been battling the sun in our room for quite sometime now

but we finally dealt with it today!!

The far 3 windows have the room darkening shades underneath;

such a difference.

Oh so nice for some shut eye!

P.S. I covered the 4th window after the picture,

just needed an undercovered one for effect!

This is next weekends project!

Blake's office gets SO SO SO hot.

Not only does he sweat to death when studying, etc

but since we are putting our sleeper sofa in there,

which can sleep 2 people,

we thought a room under 90 degrees would be nice for our guests!

His friend owns rental houses

and had a few ac window units laying around

and gave us one so.....

next weekend this will look a bit more redneck =)

With this heat out here

you just do what works!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend

CMG

Dads

On this Father's Day,

Blake and I are so grateful for the wonderful dad's in our lives.

Mike was such a good role model for Blake

in how to be a wonderful husband,

among many other things,

and for that I will be forever grateful.

My sweet Daddy!

Oh Dad,

we have shared some wonderful memories over the last 27 years,

too many to even try to discuss here,

that I will treasure forever!

I feel so blessed to have you as my dad and friend.

I hope you both enjoy your day doing what you love best

(besides being with your favorite children, of course)

GOLFING!!

Love you both,

CMG and BEG

Dog Door No More

RHETT won't quit chewing through the wood fence

in an attempt to find us

so we had to out smart him

and put a full door back on.

george henry is a little peeved as he now gets "stuck" outside

but we decided after 5+ escapes,

bloddy noses

(he scraps it trying to squeeze through the miniature holes he chews),

phone calls from strangers,

expensive bills for boarding

and just the ridiculouness of it all

that a solid door that keeps him secure inside was the way to go!

So bye bye (forever) dog door........

CMG

June 10-12 Weekend

This past weekend I headed to Memphis, TN for my cousin Jimmy's wedding.

Sadly, I have ZERO pictures...

I stole all the ones you will see on the blog from others.

The whole family stayed at the famous Peabody hotel in downtown Memphis

and had so much fun all being together as always!

The Peabody is famous for their ducks

so we were definitely in attendance for the duck march Friday evening.

It was quite comical,

even Murphy thought so! =)

On their way from the lobby to the duck palace for the night

Down the red carpet from the fountain to the elevator

The rehearsal dinner was at Itta Beana's on Beale Street and was delicious.

After the rehearsal dinner we headed back to the Peabody

where Aunt Kelly and Uncle Andy hosted a "Fondue and Friends" party.

It was great to have additional time to visit with everyone.

Saturday morning we woke up SUPER early.

We wandered around the hotel

and then daddy and I decided to go to Beale Street for some cold beer.

We surveyed the scene from the night before

but didn't find anything too interesting

so we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding

which started at 1:30.

We made it to the church just in time for the wedding to start.

It was beautiful weather

and just an all around lovely day for a wedding!

We headed to the reception

where we enjoyed dancing to the band from Atlanta

until we headed back to the Peabody around 8.

After hanging around in the lobby for awhile

a group of us decided we needed to eat supper before we turned in.

We headed to Huey's, a Memphis favorite, for some grub

I really through the little hostess for a loop when at 9:45 at night she asked

"how many" to which I replied "15".

She looked a bit surprised and walked away only for another lady to walk by

and ask "how many" to which I then replied "20".

She said "if there's 20 why did you tell the other girl 15.

I said b/c as we are standing here waiting for a table more people keep showing up."

I informed her there were 50 family members total

and if they didn't hurry up and seat us they were liable to all show up!!

We were seated almost immediatley after that, ha!!

And sure enough 5 trickled in right after we sat down =)

Sunday morning the majority of us woke up and hit the road to Tupelo, MS.

Since all the family was intown and close to Tupelo (an hour and 45 mins.)

Rebecca and Tom decided to have Murphy's baptism.

Here we all are:

Told you dad's side of the family was HUGE!

After church, they had everyone over for brunch

and then everyone hit the road home

or back to Memphis to catch flights that evening.

Monnie, M, Momma, Daddy, Grandmother and I stayed n Tupleo until Monday.

It was nice to be able to play with Murphy after everyone else left.

Momma is in Tupelo all week babysitting Murphy

while Rebecca takes a class in Oxford

so Daddy loaded up the Lincoln and drove me, M, Monnie and Grandmother towards Shreveport Monday morning.

They dropped me off at the airport in Jackson

to fly back home to these in Lubbock.

I think my boys missed me while I was gone

(or atleast Blake and RHETT did...

george wasn't to interested in seeing me, ha!)

It's always sad to get back to reality

after a wonderful weekend with family you don't get to see too often.

We talked about getting together every year from here on out, or atleast trying too,

so that gives me something to look forward too!!

CMG

First Day of Class

Got air in his tires,

Lock for his bike,

Book, pens and paper in backpack........

BEG is all ready for his first day of class!!

He said it went well.

Just going to be tough

cramming Physics (with a lab)

into 4 weeks!!

Cutest student on campus =)

CMG