Happy New Year (a couple days late)

2016 is off to a great start in our household!  Coach and KJ spent the evening at Jerry World watching Alabama play, T was in New Orleans with Pony Boy and friends for the Sugar Bowl and I ushered in the New Year with a glass of wine and a bubble bath.  I think I was asleep by 10:30 pm. It was glorious!

Christmas was really great.  Very quiet with just the four of us but very relaxing.  Since the girls were very little, we've always gotten a new game for Christmas and we played it Christmas Eve.  We all slept in on Christmas morning and had our traditional breakfast casserole.  I think everyone was happy with their Christmas gifts (Coach got a FitBit, the girls and I got lots of Kendra Scott, James Avery jewelry, Hunter boots, Michael Kors bags, clothes, etc.).

Lax season is fully underway.  KJ is super duper happy with her lax team. It's a combined FloMo/Marcus team and she said the girls are all incredibly nice and have been exceptionally welcoming.  A couple of the girls knew a couple of her volleyball teammates so that was a Nice ice breaker.

The weather has been so crazy the last week or so.  Last week I had the heat off and some windows open, the weekend was noticeably chillier and the heat is back on. 

We've had a nice relaxing 3-day weekend. Friday KJ had a half day and the three of us had an awesome lunch at a little local place we've been dying to try.  We also did some furniture shopping and ended up buying a new patio set.  Saturday was rainy and dreary so Cosmo and KJ started painting the office. It was a dark, dark green and felt like an old man's office (previous owners had dark window treatments and old, boring golf prints).  I picked out a nice light color that's hard to explain ... not tan or beige but not ivory either.  The color perfectly matches the tab-top curtains I had in the upstairs hallway in our Alabama house.  The room looks so bright and airy now and ten times larger than it did!

Sunday the sun came out and warmed up a bit so KJ and I spent the afternoon walking around Grapevine. Such a cute little Main Street with great shopping!

We also bought new light fixtures to go over the kitchen island.  I like all of the light fixtures in this house, they had all been updated before we moved in.  However, I positively hated the dark Tiffany stained glass pendants. We bought very simple ivory shades to lighten things up and it makes a huge difference. 

The patio set was delivered Sunday afternoon; now we just need the weather to cooperate so we can have some steaks on the grill!

Happy 4th!

I love having a short work week!  Whoop!  Whoop!  We have no major plans which is good because the weather doesn't look like it's going to cooperate.  I've got some stuff I can do in the house if it rains and I've got some good books loaded up on my Nook. 

Have I mentioned how much I love having my T-bone home?  She ran stadiums today and then brought me some Zoe's for lunch.  I love the chicken roll-ups and their slaw.  And then T made a fabulous dinner.  We had grilled citrus salmon and she also drizzled some olive oil and lightly seasoned the grilled asparagus.  Tomorrow she's got steak and some kind of exploding, twice baked loaded potato planned for 4th of July. 

We had such an awesome weekend in New Orleans.  Just the two of us; it was a nice girls weekend get-away.  It was one of those totally last minute, on a whim kind of trips.  Friday morning I checked the Marriott discount for hotels in New Orleans and got a $59 rate at the Renaissance Arts which was very convenient to just about everything!  We took the cable car to the Garden District and had a great lunch at the Blind Pelican.  We walked around a bit, checked out one of the cemeteries  and went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.  We had 8:15 PM dinner reservations at the Red Fish Grill.  I am SO glad I went on line the night before to make the reservations.  Saturday night the wait was over two hours.  We walked in, they had our table ready for us and we were seated immediately.  We had some crab claws for appetizers, T had the fried catfish and crawfish and I had the citrus marinated amberjack on a bed of black beans topped with corn salsa.  Everything was delicious!!!

We walked down Bourbon street to meet my nephew Lou and his buddy Jeff but when we got to the bar, our friend Evan was waiting outside.  Lou and Even were standing right next to each other and had no idea who each other was.  We had such a fun night with the guys!  They took T under their wing and didn't let us pay for anything all night.  I also felt much safer walking around Bourbon Street with the guys.  It's so skanky and skeevy.  T was wearing a Happy Birthday sash and everyone on Bourbon Street fussed over her.  Everyone wished her a happy birthday, gave her beads, offered to buy her a drink, high-fived her or gave her a hug.  She even got her picture taken with 15 or so Marilyn Monroe look-alikes (a couple were Asian, a couple were black and I think there was one guy in the group too). 

Sunday morning we took the cable car down to the French market with the intentions of having beignets @ Café du Monde.  The line was over 200 people deep so we decided to have breakfast at a little place across the street.  We walked around Jackson Square, did some shopping, checked out some of the sidewalk art and headed back to hotel to check out.  It was just a nice relaxing quick weekend. 

Monday was T's 19th b-day and what better way to start your day than with a deep tissue massage at the Spa?  Yeah, that's how T-bone rolls.  It's tough to be T.  A bunch of friends came over that night and they grilled out down at the pool.  I would say T had a wonderful 19th Birthday!