First Parade!

Wednesday evening we took Sara Kate to her first parade!!

Fayetteville High School's homecoming is this weekend, and Chris decided we should take Sara Kate to the parade. Every kid likes a good parade, right?? Well, I think she was a little too young to REALLY enjoy it but she was enthralled watching everything go by. Before it started, she was running around like crazy and I was having to chase her and keep her contained in the crowds of people (which made this mama nervous!) but once the firetruck came through and things got underway, she was content in my arms was a really good girl.
That's our mayor in the purple shirt.
EmDog is our friend's son. Him and his brother (not pictured) are a hoot!!
There's sweet Ali giving us a thumb's up! She waved at us and Sara Kate waved back! We love Ali!
These are some of Chris' choir kids from the high school. They pegged their teacher with candy.
Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but I'm gonna throw an opinion out there into the blog-o-sphere. I think it's awesome that Fayetteville High School had a PRIDE float!!
Here's a picture of one of the maid's. At my high school, there was 2 girls from each grade (9-12) on the court and then the queen. Fayetteville has 4 maid's and the queen. And they all wore weird hats. This pretty girl is one of Chris' choir kids. And what's up with the kid driving who looks about 13?! :-)
After the parade, they had a big pep rally in front of the Town Center where the band played and the coach talked.
We walked to the other side of the square (where we could still hear everything) and sat on a bench and had a lovely picnic of PBJ's (cheese sandwich for Sara Kate), grapes, and chips. Overall, we had a great evening and minus almost getting pegged in the head with candy a couple times, Sara Kate enjoyed the show. We'll look forward to many more of these as she grows up!

Recipe and Pictures

So here's the recipe for the most delicious Cake Batter Truffles, and I found it on this website (which is a really cool website and has lots of neat stuff on it!).

Cake Batter Truffles
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 cup yellow cake mix
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons sprinkles

Truffle Coating:
16 oz (8 squares) almond bark (or white candy melts)
4 tablespoons yellow cake mix
sprinkles

Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly.
Add 3 tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency. Mix in sprinkles by hand.

Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.
While dough balls are chilling, melt almond bark in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Stir between intervals. Once melted, quickly stir in cake mix until incorporated completely. Dip truffles into almond bark and place back on the cookie sheet. Top with sprinkles. Chill cake batter truffles in the refrigerator until serving. Makes around 24-30 truffles.
Try this recipe, you won't regret it!!

Now, onto a some pictures from our park trip last night. Like I mentioned yesterday, we just set Sara Kate down in the field and let her take off and go where she wanted. I did direct her away from the sand volleyball court, and she never even made it to the playground equipment. She looked like such a big girl in her blue jeans! Thank you Old Navy sales and tax free weekend for those cute pants!! :-)
You can really see her bottom teeth coming in in this picture! The ones on each side of her bottom 2 have now broken through!
Today after church Chris' mom, sister, and the kids came over for lunch and a little play time before Jenny & Co. had to head back to Berryville. Chris snapped some GREAT pictures of Hannah and Hayden before they left! It all started when Hannah was laying in the grass, and I couldn't resist throwing (not literally) Hayden down there, too. I had to put Sara Kate down for a nap, otherwise she might have been included in this photo shoot.
Don't we have the most adorable niece?!? And isn't the picture where she's slinging her hair around awesome?!
And we can't forget adorable Mr. Giant Man Baby!! He's almost 6 months old...doesn't look like a 6 month old!
And here are the siblings. Love these 2 and their mama and daddy!
Hope everyone had a good weekend and has a great week!

Our Day

What did we do today? Well here's a little look into our day via iPhone pictures!

We started our day with pancakes at Meme's with cousins Hannah and Hayden (the pictures of that are on Chris' camera). The girls had fun together and the giant man baby is still a giant man baby!! :-)

After breakfast, we had one major mission...find Sara Kate some new shoes!!! She has finally moved up a shoe size (yay!!) and I've been stuffing her poor little feet into too small shoes for a couple weeks now. But we had success and found some cute stuff for the fall/winter!
We also made a stop by Barnes and Noble so Chris could look at a couple things. I took Sara Kate back to the kids section and just let her walk around. She pulled out several books and looked at them, and then we were in the 'Elmo' section and she started pointing up and saying 'duck' 'duck,' with great excitement. I looked up and there was a Big Bird doll on the top shelf. If you've been following my blog at all, you know she has a Big Bird doll that is her 'duck.' We have such a smart girl. :-)
After our successful shoe shopping mission and stop at the book store, it was lunch time! We had a lovely little family lunch at Chick-Fil-A...yum! Sara Kate loved it, of course!!
After lunch it was GAME TIME!!!!

We had high expectations of finally beating that dreadful Crimson Tide and well, plainly put, those expectations fell WWWWAAAAYYYYYY short! I didn't expect it to be a blow out but I expected it to be a reasonably close game since it was the SEC's top offense versus the SEC's top defense. Well, that dang Crimson Tide is one hard core defense and they smoked us. Oh well, we still love our Hogs! And one of these days we'll get ya, Alabama lovin' family!!
Sara Kate's shirt she wore yesterday to school says 'I've been a Razorback fan my whole life!' :-)
A certain someone in the picture above didn't want to take a nap this afternoon so we made a quick little stop by our friends' the Morton's and made a trip to Hobby Lobby, where some silliness ensued and we were reminded that Christmas is right around the corner.
We followed up our visit to Hobby Lobby with a visit to the park, where Sara Kate just ran around and had a ball until it got dark. The park pictures from that are on Chris' camera also so maybe I can post some of those tomorrow. After the park we had a lovely dinner of macaroni and cheese (no picture needed of that...we all know what that looks like, ha!), quickly followed by bath time and bed time for a certain 17 month old!

I finished up this day by making a batch of Cake Batter Truffles, which I made for the first time last weekend and I have been meaning to post the recipe for all week. They are wonderful!! They're a little different tonight than last week but equally delicious!! I'll post that recipe soon. You all MUST try it!!!
Time for bed! Hope you enjoyed a glimpse into our day!

Game Day Attire

In our household, we are a 2 team household. I wouldn't say we're that 'house divided' thing, but we are a 2 team household because of me. I spent 4 glorious years in Stark-Hole, I mean Starkville, Mississippi, at Mississippi State University getting my bachelors degree, and in those 4 years some my favorite times were spent on the football field at games. I was a majorette for MSU (and if I had a picture scanned at home I would post one here but I don't), and I can honestly say those were some of the best times of my life. We got to travel to different SEC stadiums, travel to different SEC cities, travel to Bowl Games, and even travel the SEC Championship my freshman year. It was so nerve wracking being half naked wearing essentially a sequined swim suit in front of thousands and thousands of people twirling a little metal stick, it was hot, it was cold, but it was all soooo worth it. Then I graduated and a last minute graduate school opportunity landed me at the University of Arkansas. As a child, I always liked to root for the Hogs, but unfortunately, my grandfather and I were the only Razorback fans in the family. The rest are dreadful Alabama Crimson Tide fans....blahhhh!! Horrible, right? :-) These days it's obvious that our Saturday's are spent cheering on the Hogs, after all we are blessed enough to live in Fayetteville, Arkansas, HOME of the Razorbacks, and Chris and I both have degree's from the U of A. And of course I cheer on the Dawgs in my spare time (Chris doesn't really care about my other team). So with a mama who is a Razorback and Bulldog fan, a daddy who is a Razorback fan, an uncle and aunt who are Bulldog and Razorback fans (my brother followed me to MSU and graduated from there too, and then came to Northwest Arkansas and got a degree from NWACC), and a whole slew of other unmentionable family who cheer for the Tide, what on EARTH is my adorable little daughter supposed to wear?!?

I'll tell ya one thing, she won't be wearing any of this, despite a picture floating around in Facebook-land!! This would be a recent gift from my unmentionable Alabama family to their favorite great granddaughter/great niece. By the way, Cody appreciates his new chew toy, ha!!! :-)
This year she finally has some Mississippi State attire so she's been rockin' that the last couple Thursdays.
This picture cracks me up!
Sara Kate's uncle and aunt sent her a new dress this week that she proudly wore on Thursday. Too bad it didn't give the team any luck! But she looked adorable.
Her little Buddah belly cracks me up, too!And OF COURSE, we wear our Razorback attire PROUDLY all the time...spirit day at school on Friday's, game day Saturday's, the occasional Sunday, and any day in between!! And down in the football lovin' south, we start our babies out young!
Last year...
And this year!!
So there's a little glimpse into Sara Kate's game day closet. She has several more adorable Razorback outfits to debut this season so be on the look out! :-) And one more thing, whenever that Saturday in late November rolls around when my 2 teams play each other, the Razorbacks triumph the Bulldogs and my child will be wearing cardinal and white! :-)