Happy Birthday Hector!

A few weeks ago, our friend Hector had his thirtieth birthday. Hector's wife Christy threw him a surprise party during our normal small group time. Thankfully, no one let the secret slip and Hector was really surprised. Little did he know that his friends were lying in wait to yell "Surprise"...or "Happy Birthday" We really didn't get that part coordinated too well before he showed up...oh well, he was sufficiently surprised! The guys played corn hole and wiffle ball while the girls chit chatted and played with the little ones.



Christy had ordered wings and several of the girls from our small group had coordinated on other food items. I made Hector and Christy some blondies when Zack and I took dinner to them after their sweet little boy was born, not knowing that Hector loved blondies. So, Christy had asked me to make Blondies for Hector's birthday as they are his favorite. They were, thankfully, a big hit. I also tried a new recipe for some raspberry key lime tartlets.



We are so blessed to have Hector as a friend and we cherish him and his family. They have been a huge blessing in our lives. Hector is a talented and caring guy who genuinely loves God and strives to have his relationship with God be evident in every aspect of his life....Happy Birthday Hector, we love you! ...welcome to old age! :) I look forward to seeing the amazing ways that God is going to use you in the years to come!

Hector is stylin...
Ha! He had his pants rolled up while he played wiffle ball and we didn't give him a chance to roll both pant legs down before we made him blow the candles of his cake out! :)

The Yellow Daisy Festival.

Last year, Mama Sandy, Rach and I went to the Yellow Daisy festival, a huge craft fair down at Stone Mountain...I LOVED it! So, when I found out when the Yellow Daisy Festival was going to be this year I told Mama Sandy and Rach to save the date. Rach ended up not getting to go. She had signed up for a Women's conference at her church not realizing that it was the same weekend. (We missed you Rach!). Mama Sandy and I decided to go on a friday while we were both off of work. It was SO much fun...and I was LOVED getting to see all of the amazing things that people were making. Mama Sandy and I did make a few purchases....I mean, who could resist with so much cuteness calling to you?!


One of Mama Sandy and I's favorite booths was a booth that sold metal picture frames and yard ornaments. They were different, and REALLY cute! Mama Sandy got Rach and I yard signs. Thank you so much for my yard sign Mama Sandy. It looks really cute out in our front garden! I also bought a unique picture frame from the vendor of that booth. I think that it looks really cute hanging in out hallway.

Haha! She's so cute!

We also had really yummy gyros for lunch...yum...I lvoe gyros, but hardly ever get to eat them.

YUM!
It makes me hungry just looking at it!

I had so much fun getting to spend some time with Mama Sandy and getting to wander through the festival looking at all of the crafts. I can't wait till next year!

It's been a while....

It's been a while since I have posted anything. I have lots to fill you in on....but life has been so busy that I haven't been able to keep you up to date on what's going on as it happens. I am going to try to catch you up in the next few days....I hope...

To start off, I thought that I would catch you up on a couple of new recipes we tried in the last few weeks. I'll share pictures of a few more in other posts, but there are 2 dinners that Zack and I recently had that I thought that I would share in this post.

1st, a couple weeks ago, I found a recipe for spicy turkey tacos. I thought that the recipe sounded good and quick, which is a big bonus. The recipe called for cinnamon which I thought was strange, but it tasted pretty good. Zack really liked these. I decided for a differnet twist to serve the taco meat mixture in taco bowls instead of regular taco shells. I had seen somewhere on line that you could take small 6-8 inch flour tortillas put a little oil on them and use the bottom of the a muffin pan to form them into bowls. You then cook them for 8-10 minutes at 425 degrees. They turned out to be pretty tasty.



The second recipe that we tried was turkey white bean soup. I know I was on a turkey theme. I decided to substitute chicken breast for the turkey...partley because I couldn't fine turkey breast at the grocery store the day I went shopping for the week. The soup had pretty good flavor, and I thought that it was even better after sitting over night. The flavors melded ....and it might have also have something to do with the addition of a little shredded pepper jack cheese the second day! Whatever it was, I thought that it was a nice change of pace from what we had been eating. I pared the soup with some feta zucchini pancakes. I have been wanting to try something like this for a while, and that recipe sounded like something that Zack would eat. He loves the flavor of feta and he will actually eat zucchini...so sounded like a winning combination. I decided to cook them like pancacks rather than frying them like the recipe called for...should have followed the recipe. Zack thought that they were great, but they just didn't hold their shape like they should have. Oh well, guess that I will know next time!

Paula vs yeast: Battle Soft Pretzel

I am slowly overcoming my fear of yeast breads. I have been a little scared to tackle them ever since my attempt to make pizza dough went so badly. However, after a successful attempt at yeast rolls a couple months ago, I felt a little braver. I have been looking through cookbooks and cooking magazines over the last couple months, and I noticed several recipes for soft pretzels. I have been wanting to try one of them for a while now and finally found the time to try my hand at making soft pretzels this weekend. They turned out really good and Zack even said that they were the best soft pretzels that he had ever had. I'm not sure that I would go that far, but I was really happy with how well they turned out. We even had a little pizza sauce at home that we could dip them in.

We had a couple more pretzels than Zack and I could eat by ourselves. So, we let a couple of our friends that live within about 5 minutes of us know that they were welcome to come over for some freshly baked soft pretzels. Anna Lauren and Eric stopped by briefly and we sent them home with pretzels for themselves and some of our friends that they were going to be seeing shortly after they left our house. I think that they liked the pretzels too.

Yeah! Paula 2 : Yeast 1

Roma Ultima: Battle Chattanooga

This weekend, Zack had a frisbee tournament in Chattanooga. So, we headed up to Chattanooga Saturday morning for the tournament. The team decided to bring 2 teams to this tournament and so we had a lot of guys/wives and girlfriends at the tournament. Zack played on the Roma A team which consisted of most of the guys that are planning to go to the sectional tournament in a few weeks. The B team was a mismatch of guys that used to play on Dirty South, a few Roma Ultima regulars, and guys that just started playing with Roma Ultima.

On Saturday, Roma had 5 games straight with no breaks. It was going to be a grueling day. Our bracket also had a lot of really solid teams in it.

Our first game was against Tennessee Tech. The guys dominated this game and won easily. The girls had left home a little later than the guys so we missed their first game.

Our second game was against Duel. This was a solid team with lots of talent. I think that this was the first time that we have ever played them. They were getting frustrated to be having such a hard time against a team that they had never heard of before. I overheard one of the players from Duel asking someone on another team if her knew anything about our team and the guy said. "yeah. I think that they are an up and coming team. We saw them at Monkey bowl in Nashville and they were kinda rough, but they look like they have improved alot." Our guys were playing really well and they ended up beating Duel by about 4-5 points.

















Our third game was against Iron Man, a team that our friend Zach used to play for while he was in college. We had played them once before at our last tournament in Huntsville and had lost to them. We were playing hard and ended up having a heart breaking 9:10 loss to them.

















Our forth game was against Ball and Chain a masters level elite team that we have played a couple times before. The last time we had beaten them by 1 point, but we ended u loosing to them. We were coming off of a loss and just were playing like we were already defeated. I feel like we really beat ourselves during that game.

















Our fifth and final game on Saturday was against Glove Slap a team that we have played a couple of times in tournaments. We easily beat them to finish out the day.














Our guys were exhausted and hungry by the end of the day. so, we headed to shower and grab some dinner before everyone fell into bed.

Day 2 everyone was a little tired, but was anticipating the day. There had been some errors with determining the seeding for the 2nd days brackets. We had been seeded 4th, but actually should have been third. Thankfully, they got it all straightened out and we started our first game.

We played our first game against VALPO. It was a fairly easy victory for our guys.



























The second game on Sunday was against Brah. I found this team extremely obnoxious. They were a number 1 seeded team from one of the other brackets from Saturday. They had had a bi and thus were fresh as they took the field. This team was also filled with fast, athletic guys who had great skills with the disk. This was a disadvantage to our guys who were coming off of a game already and who were a little bit tired. We were down from the start, but we started to climb our way back into the game after half time...it just wasn't enough to come back and win. We ended up loosing to them 13:7. That was our last game of the day. They did not have brackets filled out any further than that. Zack did take some consolation in the fact that Brah, the team that we lost to ended up winning the tournament.
























While it wasn't the outcome that our guys would have hoped for, it was another tournament under our belt. A little more exposure for our team...and more experience for all of our players. This will only help us at sectionals in a few weeks!!

We all headed out to Cracker Barrel befoer heading home. I fell asleep as soon as we got home. I was exhausted. It had been a long, busy week.