Just a lot of aimless ramblings...

Okay, so it's really late on Thursday evening (well, actually early Friday morning), and I'm just starting to get wound down from the day. And I'm looking forward to another busy weekend coming up!

Some things going on...

Yesterday after school I took Delaney to pick out her dress for her middle school pageant. She is SO excited about being in the pageant (she watched McKenna do it when she was in middle school and was a tad jealous of all the hair-styling, dressing-up, and making-up she had done!) and has been looking forward to dress shopping. (And let me just say right here, that I am NOT a big beauty pageant fan because I think ALL girls are beautiful and I do not like to perpetuate the idea that looks mean anything in the grand scheme of things! But that being said...it is a lot of fun and as long as Delaney keeps that in perspective I will let her do it! Remember, though, that she is a VERY competitive child. The first moment she complains that someone didn't walk across the stage properly or that she was judged unfairly, she is outta there! LOL)

Anyway...we went to the dress shop, where I was dismayed to find signs all over the walls proclaiming "NO CAMERAS ALLOWED!" Apparently, there are all sorts of risks of spying in the middle school pageant circuit and they don't want pictures escaping. (Hmmm, not really sure I understood that??!!) Besides, I acccidentally left my camera behind. BUT,I did have my camera phone and we took some pictures "on the sly." The only problem is that I don't know how to download from my camera phone, so it didn't really do me any good. But...here is a picture of the camera phone picture that I took with my real phone when I got home. LOL

You can't really see it in this picture (it pretty much sucks; you can't see anything really! ha!), but the dress is such a pretty rich purple. It is just gorgeous on her and I could tell she felt like a princess in it! And it's a really unique color (there were very few purple dresses in the store), so she may stand out in the competition.

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We have a full sports weekend planned, as usual! McKenna's high school football team is still undefeated at 3-0 and will be having an exciting away game across town. We will be traveling across town to see it and are looking forward to it! We are also excited because the band--and McKenna's color guard team--will be doing their entire performance for the first time. They have down a partial performance the first three games, but now have it all together. It is a really good crowd-pleasing jazz show. Send good wishes for their performance!

Then on Saturday, Gary and I will be going to the Alabama-Georgia football game. ESPN will be in Tuscaloosa for their Game Day set-up, which is always a lot of fun. I still haven't quite recovered from the game last week and am hoping that I will not have another Almost Heart Attack inside the stadium this week. Of course, I will share pictures of all the festivities on Monday.

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And speaking of college football (which we were!), go HERE and see my expert prognostications on some of the games this weekend. My blog friend Phats does a post on Friday with predictions for different football games and always has a Guest Picker. I'm it this week! It was fun to do it; thanks Phats for asking me to do it!

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My sister-in-law is having a yard sale this weekend and asked me if I wanted to put any of my stuff in it. Is she kidding? I need to have such a major fall cleaning in my house that it isn't even funny!!! So yesterday I spent most of the rifling through closets and trying to arm-wrestle the girls into finding junk from their room to sell. I ended up filling up my dining room with all sorts of treasures that I'm sure someone will buy (a rocking horse with missing handles! a shirt from at least 1990 that looks like it was involved in a lot of two-step country music clubbing! a couple of Winnie the Pooh rattle toys! some seedy romance novels that I'm finally giving up!). It's amazing what you can find if you just open up some drawers and look under beds!

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Let me share one more Sydney Saying before I leave you on this early, early morning!

I made a really yummy cake last night for a surprise birthday party for one of McKenna's best friends. I knew he loved chocolate and Reese's candy bars, so I made him a chocolate cake with chocolate icing with chunks of Reese's peanut butter cups on top.

When I told Sydney she could help me make it, she yelled out, "Reese cups, here we come!!" (Followed by, "Halloween! Here we come!" and "Christmas! Here we come!') Feel free to use that phrase in all of your weekend conversations if you'd like!

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Here's hoping you have a FANTASTIC Friday and a WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!! See you on the other side!