excuses, excuses

I know it's been a sweet forever but I have a good excuse.


Christmas was last week, and this week I have been at Kari's loving on Peyton while simultaneously eating m&ms & working for a living.  So there's that.


Yesterday Kate & Company drove up to visit and eat pizza and help restore my sanity :)
(Just kidding, Peanut, you know I love ya!)

She also brought this.  


Needless to say, it was a good day.


Sadly, I now have to go because see above, but I leave you with the following picture in an effort to make things right...

Happy Friday :)

deck the halls

Can you even believe it?

It's Christmas around here, again, and we have all manner of details to attend to.  


Fortunately, Audrey is more than willing to help a Naynay out :)

I think i like living in a very small town right next to a pretty big town

So today I stumbled upon a lunch that made me six different ways of happy.  Maybe seven.  And by stumbled I mean Kari & Drew mentioned it yesterday and I didn't want to miss out on some kind of undiscovered terrific.


Enter The Dairi-O.


Y'all.  
Over & over, since moving two whole hours south I run across these scenarios that feel like my childhood.  Which is strange because my childhood was, well, not the Carolinas.  


Anyway, my lunch excursion was another one of those times when every part of it was familiar in spite of never having been there before.  The Dairi-O is a little burger place that I can only imagine was probably a small-town Dairy Queen knock-off a million years ago that refused to go away.  


I liked every single thing about it ;)  


I liked the professional types walking out to their cars and presumably back to their Very Important Jobs, passing right by the families in their swimsuits sitting outside with their littles all sweaty & giggly.  

I really liked the sweet little high-schooler and her ponytail with the ribbon who took my order & my money & chatted it up a little bit with her Carolina drawl. 

I liked the burger that inexplicably tasted not at all like anywhere else but exactly like small town in a way I can't quite describe...


...and I really, really, really liked the piping hot crinkle fries that - no kidding Mary - were even yummier than Frank's.


But perhaps the very best part of all?  The frigid fountain Pepsi they served up over a bajillion tiny little ice pellets.


(Let me just take a moment here)


Rumor has it they have hand-dipped ice cream they use to create ridiculous absurdities like banana splits & hot fudge sundaes & what-not, and of course I can't be sure but I'll be very surprised if I disapprove because, you know, the ice cream, it's hand-dipped.



Anyway, this whole burger & fries experience got me to wondering...
Do y'all have any particular tastes that remind you of a different time? 
I'd love to hear about them :)



Happy Middle-of-Summer!

happy independence day!

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... 



Today is a good day...


It's a day for thankful...a day for humble...a day for putting aside all the bickering and the politicizing, the name-calling and the fault-finding, and remember what we have...
and how very expensive it was to acquire.


Today we celebrate the big, messy, often dysfunctional family we are as Americans,
and in spite of every bit of the mess I thank God above for this indescribable, precious gift!


Happy 4th of July :)

so how was your day, dear?

Blogger is being a big baby tonight and I simply don't have it in me to try to recreate what I already said for the third time.  (No, I'm not aggravated ticked off cranky, why do you ask?)


Anyway, I'm opting to leave you with the picture below, 
which I feel sufficiently sums up my day. 


(Spoiler Alert!  It was a good one!)

In my opinion, it's all good when you have a floor full of Leggos.
(ps - remind me to tell you sometime when I'm not aggravated ticked off cranky about Owo and his Leggos.)