The Ussery Update

What a FANTASTIC 5 days this has been! I got home from work Tuesday afternoon and it's been non-stop fun and good times since then. Now it's Monday...back to work, reality and eating like a normal human being. I hated to see the extended holiday weekend come to an end, but it's been great and there is much more fun to come in the month of December. Thanksgiving was simply wonderful. After coffee and coffee cake for breakfast, I finished cooking and baking while I watched the parade and John replaced the last of the burned out bulbs on the house. Once we stuffed ourselves completely at lunch, we cleaned up the kitchen, took naps and watch the Cowboys game. Hooray for victory!! The evening was spent eating leftovers, making a shopping list for Friday, playing games and watching the Texas vs A&M football game Friday we ventured out to do some Christmas shopping...what a full day it was. We left our house at 7:30am and got back home about 4:30 - whew! We didn't want to ...

What a wonderful day this has been! After breakfast this morning, John and I went to Starbucks and then to pick up our last minute groceries. We also stopped in Target to buy "Four Christmases" and "Home Alone" to add to our Christmas DVD collection - can't wait to watch them this season. The rest of the day was spent here at home cooking, baking and cleaning. John so kindly cleaned a lot of the house while I worked in the kitchen for several hours doing all sorts of cooking and baking for tomorrow and the weekend. The house smelled so good all day. It was a great time and we are excited for tomorrow. I made a coffee cake to have for breakfast so we are looking forward to that and a cup of coffee while we watch the parade and then work on lunch. John has a few burned bulbs to replace tomorrow sometime and then we will be ready to plug in the lights tomorrow night. Oh and GO COWBOYS!! I'm now off to watch "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" with Jo...

On Saturday, John worked on getting all of the lights on the house and the yard decorated for the Christmas season. Yes, it was the weekend before Thanksgiving, but we haven't actually turned them on yet. In fact, he's still got some work to do. He is off the rest of this week, so he's working on getting it all finished up today and tomorrow. We always do this the weekend before Thanksgiving so that as soon as all of the festivities are over, we can plug in the lights and let Christmas begin. If he had it his way and we had tons of money, we'd have a house like the Griswold's. He's already talking about changes he wants to make for next year. Here are a few pictures of my sweet husby in action... It'll be so beautiful once it's all done - I cannot wait to see the house all lit up. This is hanging on our fridge right now. I am so excited to make and eat everything on it - hee hee! These are our menus for Thanksgiving breakfast and lunch plus our Tree Tr...

Hooray, the week of Thanksgiving is here! This is probaby my favorite week of the year. This year, John and I are staying in town for Thanksgiving...just the two of us and we are looking forward to it very much. Two days of work and then a nice extended weekend. We have so many fun things planned over the next few days. I'm really excited about all the cooking and baking to do for Thanksgiving - we have quite a feast on the menu. We are anxious to celebrate on Thursday and then look forward to getting the house ready for Christmas over the weekend. Shopping to do, cards to prepare, gifts to wrap - fun times. John worked on getting lights on the house this weekend and we'll have pictures to share soon. Oh the excitement... Have a wonderful week and truly take time to thank God from whom all blessings flow! Until we meet again... Riley

Kelly at Kelly's Korner is hosting another installment of the "Show Us Your Life" series and this week we are showing off our pets! I've been so excited about this one...we simply adore our dog. This is CALVIN - isn't he cute? We got Calvin two months after we got married. We were married in February of 2003 and we got Calvin in April. We had been talking about getting a dog once the wedding was over and we were all settled into married life - how domestic of us. John really wanted a beagle and he knew that he wanted to name him Calvin after the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes (one of his favorites). We would look in the newspaper from time to time and finally came upon a man selling several beagle puppies. We told him we wanted a male and arranged to meet up with him. When we went to get Calvin he was the only puppy left in the cage - all 5 pounds of him. So we've had him for almost 7 years - he'll be 7 in January and it's been such a delight to hav...

Well, we have some catching up to do from these past two weekends... The first weekend of November we spent in Mount Vernon, Arkansas with John's family. We had a great time! We played board games, played football outside, watched football, did a lot of cooking and eating, made homemade hot cocoa mix, camped out in the living room, talked and laughed, went to church - all sorts of good things. We also shared an early Thanksgiving meal Saturday night and did our annual gift exchange. Each Thanksgiving, we all draw a name and get that person a little gift to kick off the Christmas season - it's a fun tradition. We took lots of pictures, but here are a few highlights... This past weekend, some of my family came up to visit and help celebrate our nephew Seth's 7th birthday. My Dad, Kristin, Andrew, Noah, Hillary and Bronte all came up LATE Friday night. My step brother, Neil, his wife Amy, Seth and Alyssa live about a half hour from us so some people stayed with them and som...

My apologies for a lack of blogging these past few days. We left last Friday afternoon and returned on Monday afternoon from a trip to Mount Vernon, Arkansas to visit John's family. We had a really nice weekend with them and we will share our pictures once we get them all uploaded. Stay tuned! Life is staying busy for us in all sorts of ways, but life is good! Don't you just love this time of year? So much going on, but so great. Speaking of "this time of year", a few turkeys have made their way into the living room. The turkeys on the DVD shelf were Grandma Stone's and I was able to take them when she passed away - so special. The cute little "Give Thanks" piece was given to me by Carianne as part of a hostess gift for helping with her baby shower. I just love it. We have a turkey on our "Welcome" wreath, a turkey towel hanging on the stove and a Fall flag in our front flower bed, but I haven't snapped pictures of those yet. Hopefully in t...

This post is way late, but it's been a week of sickness and busyness. All is well now!! We had a really fun Halloween . It started off with orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast with milk and coffee. After breakfast, I opened all of our candy and got it ready on the entry way bench and also made some cupcakes for us to have Saturday night. We then spent the day being productive around the house and working on all sorts of things. For dinner, John went and picked us up a pizza and breadsticks. Being the darling that he is, when he came back in with the pizza he was holding a bouquet of beautiful flowers and said "Happy Fall" as he walked in the house. I'm so lucky!! I put them in a vase and set them by the sink. After our pizza, we spent the next two hours passing out candy. We bought more candy this year and STILL ran out. When we turned out the light and blew out the candle in the jack-o-lantern, we had "treated" 161 kids (we had 148 last year). We easily co...

I've been sick this week and Calvin has been quite the snuggle buddy. On Sunday, he laid on the foot stool of my chair and kept me company. He loves the Cowboys too... Until we meet again... Riley

About a week ago, I made some homemade applesauce. I don't make it too often, but I usually try to at least make it once or twice in the fall because it's such a good fall treat with the apples, cinnamon, nutmeg....mmmm! Plus it makes the house smell devine while you are making it! You will need 4 apples (I used Macintosh), 2 cups of apple juice, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg. Peel, core and cut the 4 apples into chunk pieces. Place the apples with ALL of the other ingredients into a medium sauce pan. Stir to mix all ingredients and bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn heat down to medium and let cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. As you stir and all the ingredients cook together, the apples will begin to break up and absorb the juice. Once everything looks fairly mushy, remove from heat and stir until all is well mixed together. I even used my potato masher to really break everything up and stir together. You ca...