Show Us Your Life--Things that Make You Happy

Kelly's Korner is showcasing your favorite things today on this fabulous Friday! It's the beginning of Memorial Day and besides the sun, lake, friends, family, good food, and a good boat, I am so thankful for all the Veterans who put their life on the line or lost their life in the line of duty to protect our country and defend our freedom. Now if that doesn't make you smile thinking about it, I don't know what does! God Bless the USA!

My favorite things.....

Obviously, first thing is first. Kody is my favorite thing ever! Him and the dogs are right at the top of my list...He works so hard to provide for us and is the best husband and "dad" we could ask for! Our families rank right up there too!
Babies...gotta love babies, I especially love Drew Mason Thompson! I get to see the sweet boy next weekend!


He's growing so fast!

My TV shows also make me super happy....

I've always loved....
Of course who doesn't love this fabulous foursome?
And what an inspiring show... I love summertime and laying out.... and homemade ice cream...hello heaven!
Mexican food and pizza are my all-time favorites! A good steak also makes me really happy though!

Old books make me really happy and of course anything on the Kennedy family!

There are lots of other things that make me happy...

fresh cut grass

flowers in the summer

a healthy, plentiful garden

church on Sunday morning with the band singing away

the light shining through the stained glass windows during Sunday morning

Friday night Football here in West Plains... and my newest favorite thing...driving down the road in my new car listening to XM radio! :) Love it, Dr. Laura and Dave Ramsey!


Have a great and safe Memorial Day weekend!

Remember why we have this weekend and what we are celebrating. We live in the greatest nation on Earth!

5 Question Friday!

Hello Sweet Friday! It's Memorial Day weekend and I'm off for the next 4 days! It's time for 5 Question Friday too! :)

1. Is there something you've always wanted to try but just can't muster up the courage to actually do yet? I would like to go sky diving or bungee jumping off a huge building. I've bungee jumped several times before but not too awfully high!


2. If you had $100 handed to you in cash without your significant other knowing about it, what would you spend it on? Knowing me, I'd save it. I'm saving for a SLR camera and would just do that!

3. What was your favorite piece of playground equipment as a child? The swings!! I used to swing til I felt sick. It's relaxing!

4. Do you prefer a sweet or hearty breakfast? It totally depends on my mood. I will eat both very happily. I love biscuits and gravy but I also am a huge donut lover!

5. Are you a Neat Freak or a Messy Bessy? I'm a Neutral Nancy! My house is livable but I don't over exert myself to make it smell like bleach all the time. I love it to be clean but I have too much going on most the time to keep it clean, plus our house isn't huge but it takes awhile to clean it all! That's when I miss the little apartment days!

Landscaping!

I can definitely tell I'm getting older. Instead of spending money on an expensive purse, I'd rather buy plants or something for our garden. A greenhouse in town was having a 50% off sale everything there. Hello sales! I love a good sale and this was it. We got there shortly after 6:30 this morning and joined the rest of the 150 people in looking for what we needed.

When we moved into our house we were clueless (or at least I was) on doing anything in the yard. We had some little kind of landscaping up front but it's been dying off and what was dying was just plain over grown and crazy looking. I really didn't let it bother me because I am not one of those that freaks out about stuff like that. (Bigger fish to fry!) Buttt....with 50% off I thought we definitely needed to go look.

We ended up with 3 deep pink Knockout rose bushes, 6 small Boxwoods, and 2 Nandinas. I know the rose bushes won't be green year round, but they are so pretty all summer. The Nandinas will be greenish red year round. We're going to plan our 2 peony bushes in our bed and go back tomorrow for a miniature tree. Hopefully they still have some Dwarf Alberta Spruce trees left. We want to put it between the deck and our big windows.

Kody got cranky while we were there because he thought we were spending too much. I don't know where he changed, he is a tightwad now! Ha, I actually love it because I'm pretty tight. I told him though it would help our curb appeal! ;) Anyways, with as cranky as he got he was the one who said we needed to go back tomorrow for a tree. God love him! He told me he didn't have time to dig out and plan all of the stuff for about 2 weeks. Here is where I showed him. I told him that was fine but that I would do it myself.

I started out tonight with it all looking like this.....
I know these do not look that bad and are still green, I'm going to prune them up and maybe use them at the end of the bed somewhere.


These were crazy looking, I just was tired of looking at the part-rainforest plants....
Remember, these are all BEFORE shots! I'll get the after on here sometime this weekend I hope. Here's what it looked like after it was all gone....


I'm dead-beat tired and off to bed! I hope to have the after pictures soon! :-)

What a Small, Small World!

Remember that city picnic we had a few weeks ago? Well, let me tell you a little thing that happened that day that I just think is more than a coincident! I was talking to an older couple, Mr. & Mrs. Fletcher. He asked if she knew who I was, meaning who I was before Mallory Thompson. She said yes, I just love your Grandma Prewett. She went on about that for awhile and then said she had seen our wedding announcement in the newspaper. She asked if Kody liked West Plains and if he was homesick. I told her that he really liked living in West Plains and has done his best to make it a home for him by having his house and land. I told her I didn't think he was ever too homesick, and it helped that West Plains was about the size of where he was from. She said, "Where is he from?"

I told her he was from Jackson, MO and she immediately said, "Oh Warren! Who were our friends from Jackson?"

They both were racking their brains and said, "Alice..........................Alice...............and ??? BILL!?"
I said, well Kody's grandparents were Alice and Bill.....they asked their last name and after I said Thompson they said, "That's it!"

They asked if they owned a nursing home and I said yes they had at one time. She said that they went to nursing home meetings together in Jefferson City throughout the years and always hung out with them. We couldn't believe that their friends were my relatives! Small, small world! They asked how they were doing and I told them they had both passed away, Bill in 2000 and Alice sometime shortly before. Here's the real kicker.

Mrs. Fletcher said she had something in her China cabinet that she just knew was a gift from them and came from Alice's store, Alice in Wonderland. She said if I can find it and it still has the sticker on it, I want you to have it. Sure enough the sticker was on it that says, Alice in Wonderland, Jackson, MO...it's a crystal decanter with 6 little glasses with it. Kody was tickled to death to have something from his Maw Maw and Paw Paw.

Kody often says that I remind him of his Maw Maw, who was at the top of his book. Some of the things I wear, things I say, or how I may dance around or sing, he says often that I remind him of her. That makes me feel pretty special to know he even sees us on the same page! Even if I'm his wife! He is a truly blessed boy to have 2 sets of loving grandparents. Even though I never met Maw Maw or Paw Paw, I smile when they all talk about them. Seems to me that they were both quite characters and knew how to have a good time. My mother-in-law said they would have danced all night at our wedding. The gift from the Fletchers was a little more than a coincident to us, we truly believe it was a wedding gift from Maw Maw and Paw Paw. Althoug we don't need anything, I think they sent it straight from Heaven! How else could we have found our connection and gotten this neat gift?! Here are a couple of shots. Kody's already made the comment....My Maw Maw's store was probably full of the most gaudy stuff out there! I doubt this is a piece we leave out or let our best company use, but we are thrilled to have it.



My father-in-law, John, have called them Mr. & Mrs. Jackson. They were the heart and soul of their community and had so much interest in it. He has followed in those footsteps and taught each one of his children to take pride in where you live and to give back to your community when at all possible. It's safe to say they all abide by that rule. I've been told several times by people in Jackson how much they adored Alice and Bill and how much they miss them. Sure wish I had the chance to meet them....and thank them for our gift!

Pictures!

Remember I said we went to dance lessons Friday night? Well afterwards we went to the Judds house to play Just Dance on the Wii. Here are some of the pictures. I refrained from putting myself up here! HA!! Brian and Kody were my favorite though!!

Here are some shots from our day at the River....it was so nice and hot the water felt excellent!

The river was up so much that this 1 man canoe got stuck under the bridge. It was hilarious watching them try to figure out how to get it under.

Jax is normally very scared of water but he did great! Better than Bo actually he just played and played. :) Bo whined too much!

We went over by a spring and as you can tell by the water it was ICE COLD! We didn't get in, but Bo felt the need to, so he fetched a stick.

The Judd family was there also, along with Brian's parents and sister's family, who's another friend of mine...Lindsey! Brian was crazy enough to jump in the spring but Hunter stayed back! :)

Yay!

I've got a meeting to go to today, but I was excited from last night's finale! It was great to see all the Biggest Losers looking so great and toned! Congratulations to Mike and Ashley for the top 2, but Mike took home the prize!
His Mom looked amazing too! :)

River Day Sunday!

Sunday is one of my favorite days, just hate that Monday follows it. Kody is off and we're home together for the only day of the week. We talked about Organizing the Church during the service and how we need to be proactive in keeping our church family alive and growing. So here's me doing my job, Come to church with us Sunday! I'm serious, any of my readers are more than welcome to join us on Sunday mornings at the First United Methodist Church. We have a good time. The praise band (that are really awesome!) sang some of my favorite songs, Hosanna, Lord Most High, Amazing Grace, and on our way to church we heard Amazing Love. and

If you have XM Radio you should definitely try to find channel 32, the Message. It's my favorite channel in between my country stations. So we walked into church just a singin'!

We went to Sunday School by ourselves. We're slowly making other friends in the class. It's hard because they are all older (early 30s) and probably think we wouldn't have much in common, but I bet we would surprise them. We are old souls! Plus we love kids and love people with kids, so we'd get along right there! Anyways, we talked about what we were going to do next, since we finished up the Effective Parenting in a Defective World. We voted on the Faith Under Fire series. I'm really excited about it. It will be questions that could be asked by our children, friends, family, etc, on our faith. We then watched a movie for the Nooma group, on Whirlwind/Job (pronounded Jobe). It dealth with questions on suffering, loss, and how to cope with those. To be honest, it was a bit emotional for me, but answered some questions I had had. We are always looking for answers when we go through difficult times. Why did this happen to me, God? Why did it happen to that couple? etc. I just thought especially about a friend who has lost her baby and just couldn't contain myself for them. I cannot imagine. We talked about what to say in their time of need, do we say anything at all? We discussed it's probably ok to say, I'm here for you when you are ready. I just always pray they don't think that offer ever expires. You may not be ready for a really long time. Even if you being "there for them" is just going out to lunch. It's something.
Watch this preview of it. It gave me chills watching this at the beginning. This man, Rob Bell, is amazing!

After church we drove around and ended up at the Community Garden Park. Wow! There are tons of little plots with lots of plentiful vegetables. Looks really good, I was drooling over the different kinds of lettuces! We had lunch at my mom and dad's and sent my brother off for a month long class in STL--physics. YUCK. I don't even know what all that entails. Hopefully he does well though!

After lunch we headed home and changed. We live very close to the river here in WP. Almost any direction you go, you are about 20-30 minutes from the Norfork River. We decided to trek down there Sunday afternoon. We packed up the dogs, some water, and sunscreen and headed to Patrick Bridge. We met up with the entire Judd family and let the boys splash around. I was really nervous how Jax would react since he hates water. Big surprise, he was SO good and loved the water. He just dug for rocks and stuck his head under and everything. He did so well! Bo did fine too but whined the whole time. Sometimes I wish that dog was mute! He is constantly whining! A little after 4 we headed to Dora! Dora is a tiny town off the river. We ate lunch at the famous Roy's Store. It was really good. Nothing fancy but great food. They had a huge menu and a little bit of everything in their store. Even had Kody's favorite, hard salami!

Once we got home our house was 80 degrees. Yes, that's correct, we had not turned on our air conditioning yet. I used to be the kid that would brag that we had our air on in March because my brother had allergies and we couldn't open the windows. Now I pay the bill! I was ready to turn it on awhile back and Kody said, let's see how long we can go. I said ok, it's a deal. We made it through some really hot days. We would get home and the house would be 75+ and I'd cook dinner, which made it even warmer, but we'd work outside all night and then come take cool showers. By then with the windows open and the attic fan on, we were cooling off. I was tired of feeling like we were camping because I do not camp! My hair wasn't doing much and I decided Sunday night late after a little cranky spell we had to have A/C. Kody said you did good, let's turn it on. Now my house is 74 or cooler and feels like a dream. We'll see how long it takes us to turn it down even lower. We may be crazy, but we had fun out of that. We really wanted to last until June 1st, but with these past few days of 85 degrees or hotter, I'm not sure I could do that with a smile on my face.

Sorry for this long post, PS can you tell I learned how to upload videos? HA! I'll add pictures from the river later tonight!