We Bleed Maroon

There are many colleges in this country, and even some pretty good ones in this state. But when you're done, you tell people, "I went to SMU," or something like that. It's just a school.

But if your degree says, "Texas A&M" on it, it's different. The school defines you. You tell people, "I'm an Aggie."

Present tense.

Chubby Pants

I went to the outlet mall with my mom and sister after work today to hunt for some new capri pants. There weren't very many people in the store since it was pouring outside, but I did notice one couple shopping. The poor guy looked like he had been dragged along. I passed them again as I was leaving the fitting rooms and I saw the lady (who was heavyset) modeling the pants she tried on for her boyfriend. They decided she needed a larger size, so she turned around for him to look at the tag so he could retrieve the next pair. The type of pants she had chosen were labeled "Curvy", but her boyfriend couldnt remember that so he turned around on his way out and said "16 Chubby, right?". Oh, you should have seen her face. "It's CURVY not CHUBBY!!!" Poor guy. I doubt they are on speaking terms now. So much damage done with one question. LOL. It was all I could do to stifle my laughs till they were out of sight. Can you imagine if they actually named them chubby pants? I dont care how cute they were - no one would by them. Period.

Meet Sophie

This past weekend Frank and I made a trip to good ol' College Station to visit my grandmother. It's the first time we've seen her since my granddad's funeral at the end of May. She seemed to be doing pretty well, but it's obvious that just beneath the smiles she is still heartbroken - understandably so. This weekend she told me that the hardest part is the time she is alone - especially at night when the house is quiet. As much as we would all like to be there for her during those times, it's not always possible so we felt like getting her a puppy may be just the distraction she needs. Sophie is an 8 week old "Boodle" (Bichon/Poodle mix). She is absolutely adorable and these pictures do her no justice. She is very spunky and playful, but also very cuddly at the same time. Laura, Amy, and I decided that she was so cute that she deserved her very own polo shirt. We found one at Tuesday Morning for only $3! She looks just like a stuffed animal!

While the girls played dress-up with the puppy, the boys worked on installing the "invisible fence" (a.k.a electric shock). They got to play with the cement saw, which they were very happy about. I guess thats a man thing.

Unfortunately, while Sophie was in the front yard playing with Laura and Jon's dog, she rolled in some..uhm...droppings. I carried her inside and while I was holding her I kept smelling something foul, but figured she must have gas (since there was an episode of that earlier that morning). ha. A few minutes later I got a wiff of my hands and decided there must be more to the story. I picked up Sofie again and examined her feet. What I had assumed was mud, was in fact....not mud. So Sophie got her first bath that day and hated it. She quickly went from adorable stuffed animal to wet rat (but a cute one of course). We handed her off to "mom" to be held after the tramatizing event.


The rest of the day was spent cooking, eating, visting and more cuddling with Sophie. I wish we could have stayed longer, but Frank and I had to head back to Dallas after church on Sunday morning because of some of our obligations here at our church. Grandmother did tell me that she wants to come to Dallas to visit us soon, so we are really looking forward to that. We are also hoping that Jon and Laura make a trip to visit really soon. Hotel Barnett and the Dollyhigh Inn are always open!!! Hint Hint!!!


P.S. Thanks for the Memphis Mess Aunt Susan!
-k

Another Transformation at Casa de Barnett

Projects are still looming at the Barnett house, but we are checking them off one by one. I personally love this stuff - especially this project. Believe it or not, it was my favorite. I LOVE to organize stuff. It makes me happy for some strange reason. Given that, if you take a look at our garage you'll see how I could find it stressful. It wasn't very overstuffed, but it was certainly unorganized. Add a couple of cars to the mix and you have a mess. We not only wanted to clean out and organize the garage, though, we decided to seal the floor with Epoxy. I had never heard of it before moving here, but our neighbor has it and their floor looks fabulous. We started the project last Thursday night by hanging a shelf on the right wall, and I assembled a shelving unit to store our "outside shoes".
Friday night we took everything out of the garage and scrubbed floors for about 3 hours. That was the worst part, but necessary. We were up till 11pm scrubbing away. Saturday we painted! There is a semi close-up of the finished product below. The sprinkles were my favorite part. I had a blast throwing them on the wet paint yelling "SPRINKLES!!" Frank didn't think I was funny.
We had to let the paint sit for 72 hours before putting everything back into it's rightful place. Today was that day. So we got back out and reorganized all our stuff. What a difference!!


The next project on the list is to roof in our back porch. Frank's uncle Randy has graciously offered some of his time to help us see that dream become a reality. Construction will begin in just 10 days!! I can hardly wait. We are lucky to have such wonderful, helpful families!

Here is a fun picture of me making dinner last week. I was trying to make the gravy for chicken fried steak (Frank's favorite) and I somehow managed to launch the spoon that was in the flour all over the kitchen. Luckily, my shirt was able to catch most of it. Frank walked in just seconds after it happened, so he missed the show. He did, however, run for the camera.

Projects and Eric's Birthday!

Here is a cute picture of Alex and Maggie playing Friday afternoon. They each have blankets that they tote around the house, and Alex likes to wrap himself in one and let Maggie chew on him. The purple one is Maggie's because it's girly. Alex has one with Spiderman on it - much more manly.

This weekend has been a whirlwind. We tend to stay pretty busy as a general rule, but this weekend we've outdone ourselves. I'm to blame of course since - as I stated in my last blog - I found the perfect paint for my living room/kitchen. We painted this room back in September with a color that I settled for. I had searched long and hard for the perfect shade and it never came out quite right. We ended up with the non-color you see below. It took us days to paint these rooms, and it was so frustrating to have people come over and say "So when are you going to paint?" Finally, 9 months later I've gotten the itch to fix it. I added some more paint samples to my garage and finally got the perfect shade!
I went to Lowes to pick up the 4 gallons of it, and the guy mixing the paint for me told me that this color (Warm Buff) was recommended by Oprah on her show a while back. Apparently all of her faithful followers rushed out to pick some up. At least I know now that I'm not the only one who thinks it's pretty. Friday afternoon we moved all the furniture to the middle of the room and got to work.
Of course, Alex -being the panicky dog that he is - freaked out when he noticed change. When I sat on the floor to start painting he quickly crawled in my lap and refused to leave. It's precious and pathetic all at the same time.
Frank and I worked till 11pm and still had a ton left to do. We started again at 10am Saturday morning, and worked till 5 that evening. Unfortunately, we are still not finished. Frank is taking a nap right now and when he gets up, we will try to knock out the kitchen and put the paint away for good.


We made plans to meet Amy and Eric (my sister and brother-in-law) for dinner at Gloria's in Frisco to celebrate his 26th birthday. We had already done a surprise party for him about 2 weeks ago while his parents were in town from North Carolina, but we still wanted to go out for some drinks and fajitas. We got Eric a grill set to go with his new grill. Now he has to cook dinner for us and show off his skills. :) Happy Birthday, Lips!!!










Sunday morning we went to church. It's always fun seeing my girls. I still had my camera in my purse from dinner the night before so I made them pose for a few pictures. We decided to conduct the lesson outside since it was so beautiful (although hot) and it's finally not raining! That didnt last too long though. I think we were out there maybe 10 minutes before they wanted to go back in.



These are Wes's kids, Lizzy and Keira. I taught Keira, the younger one how to use my camera (kinda). She took the picture of Frank below. She wasnt so sure how to aim it, so Frank had to just make sure he would be the shot. Haha.


After church we met my parents and Amy and Eric again for lunch at Saltgrass. They wanted to celebrate Eric's birthday some more so who are we to argue with a nice steak meal? Thanks, dad!



Here's me and Bear - one of Amy's bichons hanging out on her couch. I love that he will let me flip him over and hold him like a baby. Too cute.

Ok - back to painting. *sigh* My shoulders are so sore! I'll post pictures of the final product sometime this week. I almost gave myself a deadline there, which is destined to fail. Let me rephrase - you will eventually see pictures. :)

-k

July Fourth

This was a good day - almost perfect. And by "almost" I mean tarantulas - yes, that was plural. I'll get to that in a minute. I slept in late to celebrate my freedom. Frank woke me up around 10 with breakfast made, which is so sweet. We planned to go to the big Melissa parade that morning because we were invited by one of the HS boys who would be in the drum line. The website said it was from 11-1 so we rolled in around 11:45, and it was OVER! We were pretty bummed that we missed it, but we got to see our student anyway. However, we did learn that apparently anyone in Melissa can sign up to be in the parade so we are SO signing up next year! That would be hilarious. I havent been in a parade since high school. Frank and I split ways around noon and I headed to Allen to meet my mom so we could go shopping and make returns. We went to Lowes first and returned some curtains, and then it happened - I found the PERFECT paint color for my kitchen/living room!!! YAY!! Sounds simple enough, but I probably have no less than 15-20 paint samples in my garage of failed attempts at finding this shade. So I now have a project for the weekend and I couldnt be more excited. Frank had to talk me out of breaking our July 4th plans so we could start paining right then. :) Anyway, my mom and I also found a really cute lamp to go in the Master Bedroom. I'm on a huge decorating kick, so that was also extremely exciting. After Lowes we headed to the mall to make some more returns. Of course, when you are a girl, "return" usually ends up meaning "exchange" so that would probably be a more accurate description of events. We both walked out with 2 new shirts!

That evening, Frank and I were invited to another cook-out at our neighbor's house (Charles and Peggy). Our neighbors are a very close group - so we knew it would be a good time. Big John was our cook for the evening. He grilled about 20 HUGE steaks that were delicious!! Everyone brought sides, and of course dessert.

They made frozen margaritas, but I really wanted my diet coke so I ran across the street to grab my beverage.

It was a beautiful day outside. There weren't too many clouds and there was a very nice breeze. I wasnt expecting good weather, so the evening was a pleasant surprise. Speaking of surprises - back to the tarantulas. I don't remember how it was brought up, but the neighbor in the house directly to my right mentioned that his grandson found one walking across his lawn last week. I'm in shock. Then Frank shared that the new neighbors directly to our left found one in their yard that day. WHAT?!! Then the kicker. Charles pipes up and tells everyone that he has one in his garage (present tense) and it's RIGHT BEHIND ME!!! Never have you seen me move so fast. I'm absolutely horrified that I live there now. I had sat in that seat the whole time I was eating - unaware that I'm sitting next to the lumber where his spider hangs out. Now, I did not actually see this thing, but I wasnt going to pick up the lumber looking for it either. That was all I needed to know. Frank now has to call the exterminator again and have them come out ASAP. I can no longer walk anywhere near grass and I'm afraid of my garage. I may start parking in the driveway. Why is this happening to me?? I'm going to start doing research on spiders and locate a climate where they can not survive and I'm moving there. I hear people say all the time "I feel the same way about snakes". My immediate thought is "Wow, that must be horrible for you! I hate it being afraid of something I will never find in my yard, but only in cages at the zoo. Yes, that's EXACTLY the same thing." I'm not bitter or anything. Whatever. Back to my "pleasant" story.

I think Frank ate like 3 steaks. Everyone got a kick out of how much my boy can eat. I think he even ate more than Big John. So proud.

Here's me in my festive red shirt hanging out with the other ladies in the neighborhood - sitting in my A&M chair, of course. WHOOP!

Here's Big John and Little John after LJ instigated some rough-housing. Guess who won. Haha.

Think again. LJ gets creative. They were funny to watch. Frank and I actually met Little John before we knew our neighbors. He came to the disciple now camp with our church youth group. He, Frank, and the other HS boys did a dance together for the "Disciple Now Idol" contest. I had video of the whole thing so I shared it with everyone. We had to watch it twice, because it was SO funny. Ok, you had to be there.
Charles was playing DJ all night so people kept breaking into random solo dances throughout the evening. Go Peggy!

Charles and Big John taking the stage while the rest of us took some incriminating photos.
We starting hearing the sounds of the fourth a little later, so we grabbed our lawn chairs and headed for a good viewing spot. We walked a little ways down the street and found a great place where we could view about 5 shows at once. As we were heading back we ran into the guys who just moved into the house next to mine and the were loaded with fireworks.

We followed them to the new area in our subidivision that only has about 4 homes built on it and set those off. It was a pretty good show, and a great way to meet the new neighbors. Welcome to the neighborhood!