BLESS DEM BOYS!

In case you live under a rock or just REALLY REALLY don't care about it, THE NEW ORLEANS SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL!! As I was typing this I did scream that sentence at the top of my lungs and do the second line at the same time. Because you know, that's how we roll!


I'm not a football fan. I enjoy having or attending parties to celebrate these games or any other games for that matter. Truth be told, I pretty much just like to eat and have some beers with friends. So the actual act of the 2 teams wearing really tight pants and knocking each other to the ground for a ball, I still don't get. This year football, wasn't just about football anymore. It was about a city that has hit some bumps in the road. A city that I proudly call home. The Saints are to New Orleans what the Statue of Liberty is to New York. SACRED. I remember being a little girl and my daddy torturing me, by making us all go to the Saints training camp practices.
WHY DO WE HAVE TO GO???
We need to support our players, he would say.


It was BLAH BLAH BLAH to me.


I married a man who would much rather be running 500 miles than watching sports on T.V. Then came along two little boys, Alex and Jakob.


My boys LOVE to watch ANY and ALL sports.


Football. Awesome.
Baseball. Sweet.
Basketball. Cha Ching.
Soccer, swimming, cricket, men's underwater flying trapeze zebra wrestling. Score.

ANY and ALL sports people.
So I have gotten used to the sports seasons and what munchies go best with each sport.

This year, I found myself wanting to be at a sports restaurant on Sundays to watch the game
(In Georgia we only got a hand full of the Saints games on regular T.V).

What was happening to me?

I started to S L O W L Y understand 1st and 4th and a safety (just a little bit) and what games meant what to who and why (again just a little bit).


We won a whole bunch, sprinkled in a few loses.


Then a Championship win and we were Superbowl bound.


Just like the end to all good fairy tales, the good guys won and they all lived happily ever after....

The city of New Orleans wasn't magically fixed by the Saints amazing season. They're still on the road to recovery. What did happen was people, if only for a minute, people can now understand the passion that New Orleanians have. The people in that city greeted the players at the airport after every away game, whether they lost or won. We celebrate our good fortune, our loved ones lives after they pass away, and the fact that we raised on good manners, good food and knowing that your family and friends will always have your back.

And that my friends is what's called being a PROUD member of the WHO DAT NATION!!!

here we go!!

I told our guests that we were doing the second line during every commercial. And at the end of the game we were celebrating NO MATTER what happened.
Well what happened was tear filled cheers and who dat toasts at the end of the night, and a happy happy city!

How much longer until football season???

just a hunk a hunk a BURNING love

Our family loves the show Man Vs. food. We get to learn a little bit about different cities, get a glimpse at what the locals eat and of course wonder, is THIS going to be the time the host has a heart attack in mid bite of his 5000 calorie, 229 grams of fat of whatever it is he is eating this time. Education then humor, you gotta love it!

Brian and Jakob like peppers. We cook with all different kinds and they both like to taste pieces of them as we cook. A few weekends ago, while we were all grocery shopping together, they got an idea. They would do a Habanero eating contest. They tried to talk me, Alex and Hannah into. We explained to them that we liked our sinus cavities and taste buds just like they were and that we would laugh at them while their heads spontaneously combusted cheer them on from the side lines :) They each had one pepper to finish. The idea was to see who could finish it first, without melting into a puddle of sweat. Brian finished his whole one, Jakob did a little more than half. And I think they are both a little crazy or good reality TV material :)

The Habanero challenge

first bites

cooling off the palate

OH THE PAIN!

noting like an ice cube to cool off the situation.

RINSE, DRY AND REPEAT!

At some point this week between 2 of my 3 kids getting sick on the same day of my first Math test, having 2, 3 page papers due on topics that my teacher must of been high or drunk or both when she picked them because I needed an entire bottle of Motrin just to get through the first page, extra basketball practices to get ready for tournaments, a dog who I swear needs to be high or drunk or both because AS GOD is my witness if she pulls down one more item off my counter top and eats its and then throws it up (because you know, digestion tracks aren't made for PICTURE FRAMES, NECKLACES, CHECKBOOKS!) I'm going to turn her into some kind of wall art :) of course all the while Brian was out of town for all the festivities, I LOST MY MIND!

Yes, I know I have talked about losing it before. I was wrong those times. Because this time it literally popped out through my eyeballs, dangled in front of my face, as if to tease me and then fell on the floor. And as my luck would have it, my dog Iris immediately ate it and then puked it up on my favorite red flats.

Thursday came, everyone was better and back at school, hubby was home, and I ran my mind through the dishwasher and properly inserted it back in my head, so that it can all RINSE AND REPEAT next week.

JUST ANOTHER WEEK IN PARADISE!!!

they would make Beyonce proud!

I've been going through all my 2009 pictures and trying to declutter my computer. I swear to you last week I started up my computer and it let out a burp the size of Texas. Trapped in the floating burp were hundreds of pictures of my kids doing something, that at that moment in time I thought was so cute I needed to take 117 pictures of it.

I have found a few videos that we took early last year, that I had almost forgotten about.

This video is the way I'm going to introduce my 3 kids to you. My 2 crazies and my other not so crazy. Gotta love the differences in the offspring! You've been reading about them for 3 years now, now you get to see just a tad of who they REALLY are.

The crazies and all, ENJOY!

shine on baby!

At our new Year's Eve party, one of my girlfriends started to tell my mother in law about her first impression of me. She thought I was a goodie goodie. Much to the delight of my in laws, she told them why she thought this and how quickly she realized she was WRONG!

Another one of my girlfriends that night, said that someone told her their first impression of her was that she was "polished".

I like that word.
I like polished floors, furniture and toenails.
I am not a "polished" woman.
My mouth is to large for the polished thing.
But I do make a mean pot of red beans :)

One of my professor this week, made a comment about some of our papers that we turned in. She said a few of us needed to work on our "polishing" skills. If we saw an X on the paper, then in her words, "we needed to polish away".

I'm testing my wax on wax off skills right now.....

Happy weekend!!

Those were the days.....

I remember one morning when Hannah was a baby, being so sleep deprived that when I was packing Alex's lunch for kindergarten, I packed my cell phone in his lunch instead of his sandwich. On that same day Jakob must of tried to "help" me put the baby (Hannah) in the car seat at least 20 times. At one point I thought to myself maybe he is giving me a sign. Like hey lady, ya you, with the crusty stuff on your face and baby spit up in your hair. I'm putting this kid in the seat, so we can drive her back where she came from!

I remember these days like they were yesterday. And yet yesterday feels like it was forever ago.

I waited for what seemed like ever for Hannah to get hair. REAL hair. She was bald, then she had thin little wispy curls. No bows or barrettes would stay in her hair. When she was almost 3, her hair thicken up and that was when I started my bow investment.

By the time she was 6, bows ARE SO NOT HAPPENING MOM!

I would still try and sneak one or 4 in, in a week. When second grade started this year, I was made to promise (I had my fingers crossed, but she caught me :) PLEASE NO BOWS!

So I haven't asked, I haven't tried to sneak in in the middle of the night and put one in just for fun.....OK maybe the one time.

And this Christmas Break, we laid the bows to rest and my daughter breathed a sigh of hair torture relief.
Another chapter closed, while another one starts.......

this was the revised 2008-2009 version

the last 2 survivors, one for school spirit, the other because it's Fleur De Lis.
She said she is keeping these, just because. I was looking for them the other night while Hannah was sleeping, to UMMM see how they were and I can't find them.

She is a smart little cookie :)

SNOW DAY

SOUTHERN STYLE!

boogie boards+ skiing clothes+ hot chocolate+ wind burnt cheeks = one of the best days The Johnson's have had!

Happy Snow day!