Garden Tea

Since the seasons are changing, if you have any fresh herbs and are wanting to use them up...here is a yummy way to do it.

Mint and Sage are suppose to last through the winter, but basil will die as we get more cold weather unless you move it indoors.  So, I decided to make some tea with some of my herbs.  I'm going to call it garden tea because when I shared a glass with my neighbor, her comment was..."yum, this tastes just like a garden".

Pictured below you see the basil stems, mint stems and sage leaves I cut.

To prep for the tea I pulled off some leaves and washed them real good with water.

Next I used boiled some water, placed two green tea bags in the hot water to steep and added my sage, mint and basil leaves. (forgot to take a picture, but was nothing fancy)

 I left it there for a little bit...then combined it all in a pitcher (pictured below).

The final touch was two tablespoons of honey to add a little sweetener.

This is a very mild tea and not very sweet, but very refreshing...enjoy!

Birmingham Reunion Part 2

 One of the days everybody was here, my dad's side of the family came over from all around Birmingham...Georgia, Huntsville, and we had a cookout.  It was interesting...there were 25 people who came in and out of our house that day.  We, of course, love having a place for everyone to come and get together. 

And here are a few pics to document our weekend...

Uncle Debe with Russ and Dad..

Some of the girls

Gramme and Pa

Some more of the guys...Justin trying to be cool

John-boy (Jonathan), Sandy and Grayson

Dad's brother

Joey, David, Spec (Becky), Michael and Jason. 

And yes all those boys really are as tall as they look in this pic

Dad's sister

Dane, Debe (Steve), Kathy and Mallery

Dad's brother

The Bob (Bobby) Parker family...

we are the only ones who have reproduced..so far :)

Gramme and Pa

The ones who got us all here

Great Gramme and Pa with all the babies

Nobody wanted to be sitting...they were all wanting to play

If ya blink, you will miss this little lady....Momma Jean (mom's mom)

She came over from Georgia for a few hours to see the kids and my mom of course.

She followed all the kiddos around and spent some time visiting with all of us. 

So we crammed all these people into one day.  It was a packed, fun-filled day where we got to see family, eat yummy food and spend some time together.

We feel very blessed to have such a great family and enjoyed all the time we got spend together.

Birmingham Family Reunion

We had our annual Parker family reunion weekend at our house in Birmingham.  It was fun.  Check it out...

The boys thought it was fun to terrorize the cat down the street

Ra-ra supervising

Fun times outside

Briggs focused on something?...

Ra-ra keeping Brooks occupied...

Dad thinks he is being sneaky by covering up the LSU sticker with his home-made "Go Bama" sign.  Don't worry...it didn't stay there long :)

Yes...that's my "little" brother...Russ.  

A teaser for what the rest of the day held

I'll do this in a separate post...some of the girls from our family

We can't ever get dad looking at the camera and smiling :)

Parker is in this pic too...you can kind of see him (baby bump)

Josh wasn't able to make this trip b/c he was out of town

Great Gramme and Pa with all the babies.

They all just wanted to be running around.

All the boys LOVE uncle Russ...he kept them all busy for the weekend

Just a few candid shots of the babies...

Me and Abs with our babies, minus Cade

It was a fun weekend as always.  Lots of food, fun, and thank goodness Briggs had started walking about two weeks before so he was able to chase his cousins around.  They are all so cute together. Can't wait until we get to add another little guy to the gang.

Packaging

I'm always looking for things to share with my neighbors, because they are so awesome and b/c I just like sharing.  But...packaging is sometimes my challenge...so thought I would share some of my inspirational finds for packaging from pinterest.

Since I didn't have any cute fabric, I just cut a paper bag in strips and wrapped it around the loaf pans, then tied some rope around them...

A personal message is always nice...and then Briggs and I delivered them.

It was inexpensive and a quick way to spread a little love to our neighbors.

Garbage Disposal Cleaner

Another pinterest project...it was quick, easy, and I'm liking it so far...

If any of you have garbage disposals...you know what kind of a smell can come up from one of those things...I know..GROSS!  I found an inexpensive homemade cleaner and gave it a try.

All you need is a bag of lemons (or you could just buy a couple individual ones b/c doesn't take many), bottle of vinegar, and we already had ice cube trays.

I used one lemon per tray, covered the sliced lemons with vinegar, popped them in the freezer and...

You come out with something looking like this.  

Note:  I'll definitely do this again, but next time I think I'm going to put  a little less vinegar in each tray slot...just so there is more lemon verses vinegar smell when I use them.

Picture Art

I found a version of this idea here, and decided it would be a cute thing to do with Briggs, so here it goes...

It's pretty self explanatory.  We got some paint, put it on our hands...

handprint on paper...

We let ours dry completely and then for the real challenge...

It was pretty tricky getting Briggs to hold his hand open and then to the paper...but we did it (got a little messy, but I think it gives the picture character).  Looks like somebody was having fun :)

Final product...

Another angle....

This was fast, simple, cheap...and I think turned out pretty cute.  I didn't write Mommy/Daddy on the pictures.  I might do that later, but I just wanted to keep it simple for now.

It's a.....

                   BOY!!!!!!!!

I'm sure some of you were waiting to hear from me.  Excuse the silence...it was for no reason other than the fact we have been very busy since we got the news.

And I'm sure many of you are surprised that we even found out.  There are multiple reasons we found out this time...but the main one is...I just needed to know.  Justin actually wanted to wait, but I won that one :)

We got the ultrasound technician to put this picture with everything clearly marked, in an envelope for us to open at dinner.  I had to go for an appt with the doc after the US, so me and Briggs went to Justin's work after we were done...we begged him to let us open it then...and he gave in.  It's funny that we waited the whole pregnancy last time and didn't find out, but this time I couldn't even wait until the end of the day :)

I have had many exciting text and FB messages about how happy people are for us...and then of course you have the..

• Do you wish it was a girl...I don't WISH anything..Justin and I both THOUGHT it was a girl b/c I was much sicker with this pregnancy, so we were a little shocked but we are so excited it's a boy!...REALLY!

• Are yall gonna try for a girl next time...uh..we just found out we are having a boy..how about we get him here first

 CLOSING THOUGHTS: We are tickled we will have two boys.  The ultrasound showed he is healthy and growing just perfect.  As Justin so eloquently said...the Lord has chosen to bless us with two boys for now and if he continues to bless us with more boys as we have more children, we will continue to say how grateful we are to him for his blessings and will do our best to raise them to honor him with their lives and hearts.  As fun as a little girl would be to add to our mix of 5 boys total between all the grandbabies, we are not looking anxiously to what the future holds, but instead we are living presently in this special time with hearts very full and happy.

Parker (still working on a middle name) Poland will be our new little guy's name.  Briggs is excited about the news too, he just doesn't know it yet.  They will be so close in age (20 months) that it's great they are both boys and will be able to share a room and clothes and be best friends :)  My sister and I are 24 months apart and I honestly don't know what I would do without her.  My prayer is that Briggs and Parker can have a connection like that.

As things progress we will update...but for now..I'm going to go chase my little guy around the yard :)