FFA and the Panhandle Youth Expo

With moving to a new city, and a new school comes opportunities to become involved in activities/organizations. This year Tyler has done just that. In the past he had never shown an interest in anything related to agriculture so it really surprised me when he wanted to join FFA and told us that he would like to show his FFA chapters Beef Heifer in the Panhandle Youth Expo.
He started showing this interest when school started and one of his classes is Agricultural Science. I really didn’t think that he would be very interested in this class, that it would be just another class he had. Would do the work, make a good grade and that would be it. Well to my surprise he would come home after football practice and talk about what they did that day in Ag Science. One of the things that really helps out for this class, is that they are not just sitting in a classroom all the time. The teacher (Mr. Mauldin) takes them outside for a hands on approach and they LEARN.
So a few weeks into the school year, Tyler informs us that he wants to join FFA. So he gets his money turned in and then a couple of days later he came home telling us that the girl that was supposed to be showing the FFA chapter beef cow wasn’t going to do it, and he had been leading the cow around some and everyone kept telling him that he was doing real good. Well long story short, Mr. Mauldin talked with Tyler and it was decided that Tyler would be the one to show the cow. He only had a few weeks to work with this cow before the show.
On Monday, (the 8th of October) Tyler was up early to get on down to the fairgrounds. He wanted to get checked in and get started with this cow showing business. He showed the cow on Tuesday afternoon for the Beef Showmanship Contest. For it being his first time, he did really well. While he didn’t come in 1st or 2nd place, we were very proud of him. He actually came in 4th, but they only acknowledge 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. He did get a participant ribbon though.


Wednesday they had the Breeding Beef Show. There were only four cows in the group that Tyler showed in on this day. His cow came in fourth place. One thing that the judge said about his cow (and some others in different groups) was that it looked to “cowy”. That night after we got home, Tyler was like, “how can a cow look too cowy?” He said he was fine with it, but really I think he was disappointed.

Birthday Girl

This past Saturday was Kaelyn’s birthday. My baby girl is now officially a teen. Yes, she is now 13. Seems as if time has flown by these last 13 years. How can she be this old already? I sure do miss the days of holding my baby girl and rocking her. Although she did sit down on my lap while I was in the rocking chair the other day. It did this momma heart good for her to do that. As a matter of fact, it brought tears to my eyes.

We celebrated her 13th birthday at my sisters house, with cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncle.  Kaelyn requested that we have lasagna. salads and garlic bread. I made white cupcakes with pink icing for her. And this momma did not take her camera out even once during all the celebrating. Now that I think about it, I didn’t take any pictures while we were visiting with our family & celebrating Kaelyn’s birthday. Bad momma I know.
I am so thankful that God blessed our family with this beautiful blue eyed baby girl 13 years ago.

Catching Up

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Seems like I could keep my blog up to date since I do not work outside our home.  What with ballgames (practice), helping with homework, keeping up with the laundry and just making our house a home I hardly have time for anything else.
We did take a quick road trip to Destin a couple of weeks ago and walked around at Destin Commons. Chuck & Tyler enjoyed looking around at Bass Pro Shops.  I can’t decide if this raccoon is ready to attack or maybe it is a look of mischief.

We ate lunch at Red Brick Pizza. It will definitely be a place we will eat at again. Here’s my two favorite guys before our pizza was served.

After lunch we walked around some more and did some window shopping and just browsing through some stores. We walked into Williams-Sonoma and knew when we saw this,

we wouldn’t be making a purchase there. Chuck took the picture and posted on Instagram with this “I’m getting 3 of these. Anybody need me to pick one up for ya?”  Umm, I don’t think so. They also had all kinds of pumpkin flavored stuff in there.

Wishing they would have had samples of this Pumpkin Parmesan pasta sauce out. Couldn’t bring myself to buy it without knowing if we would like it or not. In some ways it sounds “gross” but then on the other hand it looks like something I might would like to try.  They also had some Pumpkin Spice Latte Syrup. Skipped buying that also, and settled for a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks instead.
Of course no trip is complete without a little fun.

After visiting a couple more stores, including Yankee Candle it was time to venture down to the beach.

No swimming on this trip, but we did walk on the beach.

DIY Fall Décor

I enjoy buying décor for our home, but sometimes I like to make something with the things I have on hand. So a few weeks ago when I was getting my fall items out, I came across some fall ribbon that my sister gave me last year and also these little prickly ball like things that I picked up off the ground and put in a zip lock bag (thinking that they would be good for a project one day). I’m not sure what they are actually called, but if anyone knows please tell me.

I took a vase, those prickly things, Velcro and some ribbon. First of all I measured the ribbon around my vase and cut it, then I put Velcro on my ribbon so that I could easily wrap the ribbon around the vase. Next I stacked the prickly things into the vase.

This was a very quick and easy project. I think I will put some of those small Christmas ornaments in the vase and add some festive ribbon too for a cute Christmas vase.