Four More Days!!!!!

In the spirit of Football season:
This is one of my favorite little lists - it is so true!

The Difference Between Football in the North and South
WOMEN'S ACCESSORIES

Up North: Chapstick in their back pocket and a $20 bill in their front pocket.

Down South: Louis Vuitton duffel with two lipsticks, powder,mascara (waterproof), and concealer. Walletnot necessary, that's what dates are for.

STADIUM SIZE

Up North: College football stadiums hold 20,000.

Down South: High School football stadiums hold 20,000.

FATHERS

Up North: Expect their daughter to understand Sylvia Plath.

Down South: Expect their daughters to understand pass interference.

ATTIRE

Up North: Male and female alike: woolly sweater or sweatshirt and jeans.

Down South: Male - press khakis, oxford shirt, cap with frat logo Female – Dresses in school colors and matching pearls.
ALUMNI

Up North: Take prospects on sailing trips before they join the law firm.

Down South: Take prospects on fishing trip so they don't leavefor the NFL their senior year.

CAMPUS DECOR

Up North: Statues of founding fathers.

Down South: Statues of Heisman Trophy winners.

HOMECOMING QUEEN

Up North: Also a Physics Major

Down South: Also Miss USA.

HEROES

Up North: Mario Cuomo

Down South: "Bear" Bryant

GETTING TICKETS

Up North: 5 minutes before the game you walk into the ticketoffice on campus and still purchase tickets.

Down South: 5 months before the game you walk into the ticketoffice on campus and still be placed on the waiting list for tickets.

PARKING

Up North: An hour before game time the University opens thecampus for game parking.

Down South: RV's sporting their school flags begin arriving onWednesday for the weekend festivities. The real faithful beginarriving on Tuesday.

GETTING TO THE STADIUM

Up North: You ask "Where's the stadium?" When you find it, youwalk right in with no line.

Down South: When your near it, you'll hear it. On game day, itbecomes the state's third largest city.

WHEN NATIONAL ANTHEM IS PLAYED

Up North: Stands are less than half full.

Down South: 100,000 fans sing along in perfect 3-part harmony.

COMMENTARY (MALE)

Up North: "Nice Play."

Down South: $*#@% - tackle him and break his legs!!!

COMMENTARY (FEMALE)

Up North: "My, this is a violent sport."

Down South: $*#@% - tackle him and break his legs!!!

ANNOUNCERS

Up North: Paid.

Down South: Announcer harmonizes with the crowd in the fightsong, with a tear in his eye because he is so proud of his team.

AFTER THE GAME

Up North: The stadium is empty way before the game ends.

Down South: Another rack of ribs on the smoker. Planning begins for next week's game.

Catfish

This weekend we concluded the Northwest AR catfish tour with the Ormons and the Greens. It began with the horrible Across the Creek and then the wooden spoon and then we ended with my personal favorite - the catfish hole in Fayetteville. YUM! They have the best hushpuppies EVER! What should we do next? The great pizza tour? Or the great mexican tour? Those could both take a while.
I'll leave you with a somewhat risque' picture of me as a baby. I'm digging the Bear Bryant hat with the Go Hogs button!

Julie and I have discovered the greatest invention since the internet!
We went this morning to Pass Your Plate. In case you haven't heard of this ..... go to the link at the bottom and check it out.
What happens is you go this place and they have everything ready for you to make meals....everything is chopped up and measured out and they provide all the mixing bowls and utensils and you just go from station to station making meals. They give you step by step instructions and then you have these mouth-watering meals in freezer ready containers. You can then freeze the meals (that have ready made stickers that tell you directions on how to cook) and you can pull out one every night for delicious meals in minutes. Each meal makes enough for about 2 to 3 meals when there is just 2 of you. So we got 11 meals (or really 33 meals) for only $150. That's less than $5 a meal for 2 people. I can't cook for that and we certainly can't eat out for that. And the people that worked there were so nice. Julie and I had soooo much fun. We can''t wait to eat our meals and then we can't wait to do it again. Our husbands are certainly going to be happy to come home to home cooked meals each night and we will not be stressed in trying to work and cook. And we have all kinds of things like chicken manicotti, cajun jambalaya, beef and bean enchiladas, sweet and sour pork and chicken saltimbocca to look foward to!
Happy Eating!
www.passyourplate.com

We have begun the countdown to one week until the first game. I'm thinking there might be a lot of football/Razorback posts this week.
I come by my love of the hogs naturally. I really had no choice. My parents both went to the U of A. My dad is a major fan. He passed it on to me.
This picture shows where it all got started. This is me and my grandma.

GO HOGS! BEAT USC!

Feeling Groovy

My mom keeps sending me all of these old pictures of when I was a baby. They make me laugh. Especially the pictures of my parents. They look so young (and thin and 70's style).
These are 2 of my favorites. One with my mom and one with my dad. And both feature the GROOVY couch we had along with the very stylish wood paneled walls. :-)
I am so lucky to have had such great parents. And they had me much younger than I'll be when I have a baby. I hope my children will have as a good a childhood as I did.

Texas Part 2

Saturday morning we met up and headed for Grapevine mills mall. Guy's roommate from OBU and his wife and little boy were in town so they met us there. We ate lunch in the food court and then did some shopping. Scott and I had a little snack of cold stone creamery. I bought several things at Forever 21 and Scott got a shirt and 2 hats at the Dallas Cowboys store so we were both pretty happy. After that we headed back to the hotel to change and head to the concert. We couldn't take cameras in the concert so unfortunately this is where the picture taking ended. Dave Matthews was VERY good. But remind me to never go to a outside concert in Dallas in August again. It was TERRIBLE. It's just miserable when it's still 100 degrees at 10 at night and you can hardly breathe the humidity is so bad. But we had a great time. I was so exhausted from the heat so we slept great that night.
Sunday morning we checked out and headed for Ikea. That was quite a shopping experience. They even have a cafeteria where you can get a full breakfast for 99 cents so we took advantage of that. (and forgot to take our cameras in). On the way home we hit up the Allen Outlet Mall. We could have spent hours there but we needed to get home so around 2:30 (after a quick stop at Dairy Queen) - we headed home. It was a full and fun weekend with friends - DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS!

Going to the Big D - Part 1

Scott enjoying a burger at the Red Rooster
We sat right next to the list of desserts
Guy was our DJ with Scott's Ipod on the way there
Scott enjoying marble slab.
I realized after I looked at our pictures that we really only took pictures of us eating. I'm not sure what that says about us. Anyway.....................
We left Friday morning (after a brief stop at Sonic) and headed for Texas. We ate lunch in Alma at this great little place - the Red Rooster. It was so yummy! They put everything on homemade bread and the pie is to die for. We will be eating there again and again. After a few stops we finally made it to Dallas around 5. We rested and refreshed and then went to the Galleria and ate at a mexican place. Then we walked around a little and had a little marble slab ice cream to round out the evening.

Travelling Man

Last week was a busy week.
First Tuesday night we had dinner with Lisa and Jason Green. They were our supper club partners for the summer. We had such a good time with them. They are such good parents - they are good role models for Scott and I. They have the cutest little boys. The youngest one said the blessing and prayed for me and "Mr. Stamps". I loved it.
Then I left Wed morning and flew to Baltimore. I had a meeting on Thursday and then came back that night. I got bumped to first class so I enjoyed that. It's always fun to go to Baltimore and see people.
Friday we left for Dallas with Guy and Julie. We had a good weekend. I'll give a summary with pictures later today.
It's good to be home!

Sweet Magnolia

Last fall I bought a dwarf magnolia tree to plant in our landscaping. I love magnolia trees and I wish I had a huge one in my front yard but this will do okay for now. It has grown pretty well this summer and yesterday when I got home - it had a pretty bloom on it. I had to take a picture.
I'm feeling very southern today - I'm taking pictures of my magnolia tree, I had fried pickles for lunch and I'm gearing up for SEC football!

"You take the good, you take the bad....."

My mom sent me an e-mail today. She is going through our old family slides and putting them on CD's. Some of you reading this may be too young to have known about slides but I remember my family having tons. And when I was in junior high - we used to get together with our family friends (the Hoppers) and look at each others old slides. (of course if you are too young to remember slides - that means you probably had computers and cell phones in college.) ha!
Anyway - she sent me a few of me when I was young and I liked this one. First of all - this was probably the last time in my life I ever ate a hot dog. (yuck!) and second of all - I like the preppy sweater. I'm pretty sure this was around the time when I wanted to be Blair on "the Facts of Life". I even wrote her a fan letter and got an autographed glossy picture. I wish I still had it. I now have the "real" Blair (Lisa Whelchel) as a link on my blog. She's a Christian author and speaker now and is married to a minister. I knew I liked her for some reason.
Of course, later on, I would wear roller skates all the time and pretend I was Tootie. And there were times I wanted to be Jo too.

"This is the day"...........

I love Sundays. Love them. I love going to church. I love spending time with the 4 year olds and how cute they are. Today we made puppets. It's so funny to see what they will draw and how they see the world and to see their little friendships already developing. I love "big church" and the blessings I always get when I'm there. I love our Sunday School class. I love going in and being with all the couples who have come to be such good friends to us. I love going out to eat for Sunday lunch. Today we went to Copelands and it was so good. They have a jazz band on Sundays and it's always a neat place to go.
I love going to church at night. It's always more laid back and it's fun because all of our friends go and it's fun to sit together. And it's such a good way to end the week - hearing the word preached. This morning I did something I have NEVER done before in my life - I sang in the choir! Today was "ladies day" in the choir. Last week it was the all men's choir and it was a competition. I got nabbed walking to church after SS. We had over 100 women in the choir. I enjoyed it so much. And even though no one will ever ask me to sing a solo - I'm thinking about joining the choir now. Especially since my friend Julie is thinking about it too. We might just try it and see how it goes. As long as they don't ask me to audtion. I may not sing well - but I enjoy singing. And in the words of my poppie - "if you can't sing good, sing loud!"

The wooden spoon

Last night we went with the Greens and the Ormons to the wooden spoon - an amish restaurant in Gentry that is only opened on Friday nights. It was packed out. We ended up having to wait an hour and a half to eat but it was worth it. The food was really good. We all had catfish (except Laurie - she had meatloaf). And then we had delicious desserts. Emily was so good through the whole thing and she even had her first little taste of Ice cream. Something tells me it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. :-)

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young

I love our church for so many reasons but yesterday was youth day and I was just so proud of how awesome the youth in our church are. Last night they had videos and testimonies to tell all about the camps and mission trips they went on this summer. The youth had gone to a camp in FL where they were challenged by compassion international to sponsor a child in Kenya or to raise money to sponsor several children or for $30k they could build a pregnancy wellness center that would give mothers prenatal care to help a whole generation of future children in Kenya. Our senior high youth came back and for 8 weeks had car washes, youth auctions and a golf tournament. Yesterday the head guy at Compassion Int'l came to our church and the youth gave him a check for $42,000 that they raised. That is amazing. I was just thinking or how happy I am to be a church that pours so much into their youth and how hopeful I feel that maybe one day our kids will get to experience growing in their faith in this kind of environment and how I hope they will turn out to be strong Christians like the kids in our church. They also went on a mission trip to cleveland, OH where there are 1.7 million people and 1.3 million of those are lost. (Aren't those crazy statistics for America?). They had basketball camps and had 300 kids come and of those - 165 kids got saved.

Shake and Bake

Our church had a clothing drive yesterday morning. I helped for a few hours - it was really neat. They said in church this morning that 1900 families got clothes. I'm so glad that our church has this and recognizes that in an area of the state that is so prosperous and where most are so weathly - there are still so many people who are in need. Two people that came accepted the Lord as their savior. It was worth all the work for that.
Last night we went to see "Talledega nights" with our friends Guy and Julie. It was pretty much how you would expect a Will Ferrell movie about the redneck south to be. Afterwards we ate at Marias and had fun guessing who in there we thought had either been to see the movie or would be going after they eat (based upon the # of Nascar shirts people were wearing). ha! To end our evening - we drove around and looked at the storm damage in Bentonville. It was kind of like a mini tornado had hit.

We raise our hands in the Santuary

Last night, Scott and I went out to eat with one of my friends from high school , Nicole. She and her husband have lived in Siloam Springs for the last 2 years. He is a doctor there. Nikki was always one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in my class. It's so fun to catch up with her. She and her husband started dating in junior high and got married right after high school and now have 2 beautiful children.
We went to a new place in Bentonville called the Santuary. It's in an old church off the Bentonville square. It is so pretty inside and the food was wonderful. They even brought us out lemon sorbet between courses to "cleanse our pallette". We had a good time visiting and eating. We will defintely have to go there again.

Can't Touch This!

We discovered last week that M C Hammer has a personal blog. If you grew up in the early 90's - you can appreciate how funny it is.
I thought I'd share one of my moments of greatness.
It was 1997. I was working at the Wal-Mart home office and I decided to go out to the coke machine one afternoon and there standing alone was Hammer. Luckily I kept a camera with me at all times. So here we are - me and Hammer. (Yes my natural hair color is dark brown).
If you are curious, here is his blog: http://mchammer.blogspot.com/

OH MY!!!

This is one of my favorite times of year. I've already begun the countdown (32 days), printed and hung up the SEC schedule in my office, read every page of the media guide and begun picking out red outfits for the first couple of games. I can't wait to see how the hogs will do this year. After travelling all the way to CA last year to see the hogs destroyed - I am carrying a small amount of hope for revenge.
And then this week things have begun to go downhill for the hogs. First DMac got injured. There are not words to describe how livid I am at him - not only for what it will do to the team and state - but for wasting that kind of God given talent and unbelievable future with one stupid decision. We all make mistakes - especially when we were 19 - but being out in a shady nightclub at 4:30 a.m. the week before as season when "heisman" is being said in the same sentence as your name takes the cake.
Then I awoke this morning to hear that one of my favorite AR personalities was killed in a car wreck. I can't imagine a Razorback touchdown this year without hearing Paul Eels yelling out "oh my!". It's a sad day in AR today. We have lost a legend. Football season won't be the same without him.