Thanksgiving and Dad's Retirement

This past 4-day weekend was a blast! Jeff and I drove to Normal, IL on Thursday and then celebrated Thanksgiving with my family on Friday. Then on Saturday, my family held a retirement party for my Dad whose last day of work was TODAY!

Here are some pictures from the festivities (click pics to see them larger):

The sisters and my niece, Claire, who is soon to be a whopping 3 years old!


Pretty Claire....she knows how to pose for the camera!


Autumn...always being a silly girl!


My Mom and Dad!


The retirement take-home-treats...ZAK Happy Face spoons. (The tags were made by my mom. They looked adorable! Check out her site if you have any dishtowel orders to fulfill...many of her towels are sold with ZAK spoons or bowls.)


I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Here's to hoping the weather cooperates for our Christmas drive to Tennessee!

Fire!

Yes, fire, but a good kind.... After three winters in our house, we decided it was finally time to buy some gas logs and get our fireplace working. Jeff hooked everything up today and got it going.

Me, posing by the fire after a long day of shopping. :-)


Full view of the fire. The mantle is the only natural wood besides our stair case that we did not paint white. If we painted it, would probably have to re-tile too and I just wasn't up for that!


A grasshopper on the hearth is supposed to bring good luck to the home. =-)


So, maybe the fire will help me be more optimistic about the upcoming winter. Those of you who know me, know I despise the winter and it gets worse each year! I'm going to try to look at the positives of the winter....and a nice cozy fire is positive #1! =-)

Bean Pod Frog Shop

For any scrapbookers or card makers out there, you have to check out the Bean Pod Frog Shop blog. My mom and sister, Lisa, has teamed up in producing digital stamps and have begun to market their first batch, "Relax." Digital stamps also make great gifts if you know of someone who is into stamping. There is a link on the blog to their Etsy shop. So easy to purchase and isn't gratification! You don't need to worry about shipping or waiting to receive your stamps! For only $5, you can't go wrong! Check it out!

Gifts and Visits

Hello blog world! It's been awhile!

I try each month to get to see family, whether it's me go there (Illinois) or some of them come here! (One day it'd be cool to have everyone out here at once but there are so many of us and we all have different schedules so it's not possible right now.) But, my parents got to visit a couple weeks ago!

My mom made me an awesome hostess gift and a cool 4th of July package! The hostess gift contained a pink "Zak" bowl with an embroidered watermelon towel, a nice candle, and some cute stamps. I love the ZAK bowls and have three of them now...green, white, and pink all pictured below.

The 4th of July gift is yet another lovely embroidery creation from my mom. Two very patriotic towels for my kitchen displayed on a cute lobster platter! The pictures don't do the towels justice. The eagle on the blue towel looks as if he really has feathers on him...the way she embroidered it is just soooo cool! I love all my gifts but was just glad to have my parents here to visit.

We did chicken on the grill when they arrived. Saturday, my mom and I ate at The Elephant Bar, while my dad and Jeff went to Oklahoma Joe's (which, I might add, is on the top 10 list of places you must eat before you die...pretty cool! We love that place!) Saturday, my mom and I did a lot of shopping....Stamper's Ink, The Scrapbook Page, Archiver's, and a final stop to Joann's. We then went to church and met up with Jeff and my dad for a dinner at Red Robin.

Last weekend, for the 4th, we went to Memphis, TN to visit Jeff's family. We were there for 4 days...so that's the longest we've had to leave Fozzy alone. Had me nervous but we came home to an intact house and no hairballs...just an attention lacking cat that was VERY happy to have us home! Memphis was a lot of fun. Stayed out until after midnight the first night and until 2am the next night. It was great to see everyone and hang out with Jeff's sister and husband with their friends at a house party.

Other than having family visit and going to visit family, nothing too much different has been happening here at the Raggett household this summer. I'm looking forward to a couple weekends from now....for the annual Merry Sister Weekend get together!

And another picture of some petunia's that have been living by God knows what....I don't water them as much as I should but for some reason, they keep on living!

Memorial Day 2009

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend and got to enjoy some time off work hopefully! We traveled to Illinois that Saturday and to Iowa that Sunday to my Aunt's for her annual Memorial Day party. We had perfect weather! We had a great lunch, played volleyball and badminton, had good drinks, and tons of fun visiting with everyone. My mom also made all the ladies a take-home-treat! Check them out at her blog: Dishtowel Dame! See below for some pics and the festivities (and click it to make the collage larger)!

Is my cat spoiled?

We let him sleep like this every night. :-)






--Heather

Off Broadway, Extra Virgin, and Stinky Rabbits

Hi everyone out there in blog land! It's 11pm and I'm not tried...very out of the ordinary...so, thought I'd write.

Jeff and I are on our 3-day weekend. We live for these weekends! However, Jeff has been fairly busy with studying. His PE exam is at the end of this month; a day before his parents visit for the NASCAR race. I'm sure Jeff will be happy once the exam is over. He has been studying so much!

Today I ran some errands including buying a much needed new pair of work shoes at Off Broadway. I really love that place. I'm so picky when it comes to buying shoes...I can rarely find anything I like but at Off Broadway I always seem to find a lot! So, went shoe shopping, to Chick-Fil-A (only had a garden salad, no meat for me on Good Friday) to Hobby Lobby, and Price Chopper. I cooked Mahi Mahi tonight. I know...not that hard but it really is rare that I cook. We are trying some new dishes lately...some healthy dishes.

At Hobby Lobby, I bought 2 tan mats for my BigKick machine. My nestibilitie collection now consists of two designs - scalloped ovals and rectangles. My MOM informed me I can emboss with those and not just cut. Thanks MOM! I did a lot of practicing tonight and finally made a card I was happy with. I still have a long ways to go but I'm glad I have a neat tool that I can use the correct way now! =o)

Tomorrow night I am trying a new restaurant with some girlfriends. Well, it's new to me. They may have been there already but I don't know. The place is called Extra Virgin and it's in downtown KC. I can't wait to try some Mediterranean dishes! Looks yummy!


On Easter Sunday, Jeff and I are going to church at either 7:30 or 9...I can't decide yet. Then, we are doing our traditional eating out at a Mexican restaurant. We've done this the past two years so I'm calling it a tradition now. Mexican for Easter. Sounds good to me! I imagine the tradition will change when we have kiddos but I like it for now the way it is. =o) My family is organizing a little Easter egg hunt for my nieces, Claire and Autumn. Katie got them some Easter dresses and my mom is making them some little capes since it might be chilly out. I am soooo looking forward to the pictures of this!! =o)

We had a visitor tonight in our flower bed...a fluffy orange and white kitty that looked like our own Fozzy! He didn't seem to mind the visitor and neither did I. I welcome any animal that comes my way...even the rabbits that dig a hole in our mulch and poop under our front step. Stinky! But, I'm a huge animal person so it doesn't really bother me! =o)

I am done rambling now! Happy Easter everyone!