Our Redneck Skybox

I left off a picture of the setup of Kenny's tailgate tents.  They have quite the spread, including a flat screen tv, grill, plenty of chairs to relax in and lots of food to enjoy!  Not everyone can tailgate in style like these 'rednecks' do...

Tiger Bait

This past weekend, Jamie and I were invited by some great friends of ours to go to the Alabama - LSU game in Tuscaloosa.  Yes, THE game of the century.  #1 vs. #2.  Needless to say, it was a BIG game and we were thrilled to be invited to go, especially since we didn't get to go to a single game last year (blame it on this very pregnant momma.)  Thanks to my parents for keeping the boys, we were able to go to Birmingham Friday evening and join Kenny and Shana for dinner at J. Alexander's to celebrate Kenny's upcoming birthday.  My goodness, how I have missed these two! I have always loved spending time with them because we all have such a great time together.  Jobs, distance (they live in Athens) and kids have prevented us from spending as much time together as we used to.  Following dinner, we headed back to Kenny's sister's house to finish up preparing our tailgating treats and to get ready for our early morning departure to T-town.

Jamie, Kenny and Kenny's sister Kim headed out EARLY at 6:30 for Tuscaloosa to get the tailgate ready and kindly allowed me and Shana to sleep in.  It was a 7pm game and there's no way I could've made it all day if we had to get up before the sun even rose to be in Tuscaloosa.  Shana and I made it there a little before noon. The guys and Kim had everything set up for the day with Kenny's DELICIOUS pork tenderloin simmering on the grill.  The quad was jam packed with people celebrating the impending show down between the two teams and the excitement was undeniable.  Of course, there was the usual mouthing off between rival fans, but it was all in good fun.  We even had a few LSU fans tailgating with us for the day.  An eclectic group of people, including a very foul-mouth Opthamologist that kept flirting with Jamie and Kenny and an air traffic controlman that introduced himself as Poat Chop, not Pork Chop, but POAT Chop .  Needless to say, he was quite the character!

Midway through the day, Shana and I made our way to the Strip for a little retail therapy.  We both found ourselves fighting the crowds in a local favorite, The Locker Room.  I found a cute long sleeve tshirt for Noah and one for myself, while Shana found shirts for herself and both of her boys.  Together, we bought 5 t-shirts all for the very inexpensive total $130 (yes, sarcasm intended.)  We were told about 4 different prices by the college kids that work the store so when we checked out, we were quite shocked at our totals.  For the discrepancies, the owner gave us each a Locker Room koozy.  Gee, thanks! 

A few hours later, it was almost game time, so we joined the mob of people heading towards the stadium.  The excitement was palpable.  I've been to alot of Bama games since my parents were season ticket holders for alot of my childhood, and Jamie and I used to be before Noah was born, but I've NEVER seen anything like it.  Fans of each teams were chanting cheers and taunting rival fans as they marched into Bryant Denny.  Quick funny story... I've been having some problems with my back (stenosis and pinched nerves) and since our seats were in the very top of the upper deck, I chose to ride the golf cart to the top.  Shana waited in line to ride with me, while the guys went on up.  Yes, I realize that makes me sound really old that I stood in line to take the golf cart, but I was afraid that my back would begin hurting on the walk up and I wouldn't be able to enjoy the game.  During the wait, we made friends with the guy in charge of letting people on and off the carts and begged him to get us on the next cart (They only had room for 16 and we were #17 and 18 in line and kick off was in 20 minutes).  When the carts came back down to load people on, we squeezed on the carts... we didn't break line in front of anyone, however 2 ladies that we supposed to ride this rounde, weren't able to get on the carts.  The reason was because an older man (who by the way, was wearing a flashing Scripted A hat... yes, flashing, as in blinking red christmas lights...i.e. tacky) and his wife, who weren't even in line, but happened to be walking up the ramp as the golf carts stopped to load up, JUMPED on the cart, completely breaking line!  Well, the guy in charge tried to blame US... umm, HECK NO.  Thankfully another lady defended us and pointed out the old man and his wife broke the line and that they should be the ones to get off the cart.  That man just sat there with his head tucked down trying to hide and wouldn't budge from his seat off the cart!  I was shocked that this old guy would do that and so I again, told the guy in charge that the old guy had broke and we weren't the ones at fault but the man in charge wouldn't say anything to them! (my guess is because they were older?)  Needless to say, Shana and I moved from our seats to allow the 2 ladies on the carts... thankfully another couple let Shana and I squeeze on the seat with them.  I was fired up.  Normally, I love old people and would NEVER be rude or disrespectful to one but these people's behavior was ridiculous.  After our almost-fight with the old folks, we made it to our seats and the "game of the century" started.  I'm fairly certain that you all know how it went... it was a good game to watch, a defensive battle and came down completely reliant on field goals.  We made mistakes that cost us, there were a few bad calls, and LSU came out on top in overtime 9 - 6.  Even though we lost, I still had a really, really good time. 

Following our disappointing loss, we headed back to the Quad and fired the grill back up. Earlier in the game, Shana had told me that me that one of her lifetime goals was to learn the Electric Slide... so to keep ourselves warm from the drastically cooler temperatures, we taught Shana the Electric Slide, as well as taught eachother a few others, such as the Thriller dance, the Tootsy Roll, and Shana's favorite, the Funky Chicken. :) Since they won't let cars into the Quad to load up tailgate equipment until 2 hours following the game, we had some time to kill.  Finally around 11pm we began breaking down the tailgate and packed everything up (all the while, foul-mouth, flirty opthamologist girl stood there wrapped in a blanket, smoked cigarettes (of course, cussing about some boyfriend drama) and watched us...free-loader).  Around 11:45pm, Shana and I got on the shuttle to head back to my car.  The guys didn't get the truck loaded up until around 1am, which is how long it took us just to get BACK to my car.  Traffic was terrible.  We didn't get OUT of Tuscaloosa until after 2am and made it back to Birmingham at 3:15am.  Our poor husbands were awake 22 hours.  It was a LONG day but thankfully, we gained an extra hour due to "falling" back.  Despite our loss, we still had a great time with our friends!  Needless to say, once we returned home on Sunday, we were exhausted and hit the bed by 8:15 and slept until 6:45 Monday morning.  I guess once you're in your 30's, it's much hard to recuperate from staying up past midnight!



Peace, Love & Frights of the Night

Jamie and I were invited to two different Halloween parties this past weekend.  We began the costume search several weeks prior but it's SO hard to find a woman's Halloween costume that isn't slutty!  After much deliberation, we finally settled on our choices.  The first party was a friend of Jamie's family, Joyce's annual Halloween party. She goes ALL OUT with tons of food, drinks and a band. But the best thing about her party every year is the decorations!  Seriously, it's a sight to see... every square inch of her house is decorated with spooky trinkets, creepy animatronic serial killers from all the horror movies, ghostly framed images hanging on the walls, and cob webs draped in all the corners.  The lights are dim throughout the house and you never know what you will jump out to scare you around each corner.  Each year, I'm more and more amazed at all the work she puts into the party.

We also attended another party at Erika and Sean Presley's house.  It was great seeing our friends decked out in their creative costume ideas.  We dined on deliciously gruesome desserts and enjoyed a little Witches Brew while dancing it up on the makeshift dance floor.

And without further adieu, our chosen costumes...

And here's Frankenstein and his bride, Derrick and my sister, Lindsay

Even though Jamie and I are substance-free hippies, it is somewhat appropriate to take a picture with Dwight, the guy dressed as a marijuana leaf

Just a snippet of the decorations in her den...

Nothing like waking up to all of this each morning

Me and the Zombie Hunter

I was so happy to be reunited with my long lost friend, Sarah Beth, or Punky Brewster 

Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet

This year, my boys dressed up as a cowboy and a horse. I wanted coordinating costumes and every cowboy needs a horse! Sunday evening we took the boys to our chuch for the GLOW night.  They blacked out the entire Kids department and had black lights and strobe lights everywhere.  There were games in each class room and each of the sunday school classes were responsible for putting together a game.  Our class did a football toss into hoops involving a glow-in-the-dark football.  It was fun and Noah had a blast!

On Halloween, we headed out rather early in the evening to make the rounds of visiting all of the grandparents.  It was around 6:30 before we made it over to my parent's house where we loaded the kids into the wagon and took them trick-or-treating to some of my parent's neighbors.  After the kids filled their Halloween buckets full of candy and treats, we came back to my parent's for dinner.  The rest of the evening was spent handing out candy to all of the other trick or treaters.  I think Noah enjoyed handing out candy as much, if not more than the actual trick or treating!

In Search of the Great Pumpkin

We took the boys to McGee Pumpkin Patch last Saturday.  We didn't get to make it out there last year (brand new baby) so I was excited to go back, plus it was Jamie's first trip.  Our first stop was to look at the goats.  Noah was brave enough to try and pet them, although I was nervous they would try to bite his hand!  They were kind of aggressive! I guess they act that way because they are used to people offering them feed. 

We then headed back to find a pumpkin.  We chose not to take the hayride out to their pumpkin patch, simply because all 4 of us have TERRIBLE allergies and were already congested without sitting ourselves in a pile of dusty hay.  Maybe I sound like a Debbie Downer, but until our boys are asking us to take them on the hayride out to the field, we'll opt out.  We chose our pumpkins from the ones that they had already picked. 

I think we need this one, Mama

Such a good big brother

After choosing our pumpkins, I tried my hardest to get some cute fall photos of the boys.  TRIED being the operative word.  Noah refused to look at the camera and Collier kept picking up hay and leaves and putting them in his mouth. This was the best I got!

See what I mean? No happy smiles from Noah when I pulled out the 'ol camera.  It's like he's learned to look mad, uninterested, or bored when my camera makes an appearance.  Either that, or he'll look everywhere EXCEPT at the camera.  I promise he had a good time!  If it were up to me, I would have kept trying to get a good shot, but I have a husband who doesn't quite have the patience to sit there for more than 5 minutes trying to make Noah and Collier both look at me while simultaneous smiling perfectly.  Regardless, we still had a good time and came home with 2 good-looking pumpkins!