It's All in the Name...

In case you haven't heard, there is a new sushi restaurant in town, Takosushi. Except that when I originally heard about it, I thought it was Taco/Sushi.

A few weeks ago, we were meeting our friends, the Smyths, for dinner. We had 3 requirements:
-downtown, so that it would be convenient for all of us since we live on opposite sides of town
-kid friendly, since between our families we have 5 young children
-somewhere new.

Since we adults enjoy sushi and frequently went out for sushi before having babies, I suggested Taco/Sushi. Oakley's response, "What will the children eat?"

Me: "Tacos, of course."
Oakley: "Umm. Brantley. It's Takosushi with a 'k.' I'm pretty sure since its a Japanese place they won't have tacos."

We had a good laugh and I felt pretty dumb. At that point we all had tacos on the brain so we ended up at Cantina 76 (yum).

Fast-forward to Tuesday night...Oakley and I were going to a play and we wanted to grab a quick bite downtown beforehand. So...again, I suggested Takosushi, since we still hadn't tried it.

It was delicious...and you won't believe this, but they serve tacos after all!!

Checking on the Chickens

Mason often announces to me that he needs to go check on the chickens and then he will leave the room. He'll return and tell me that he needs to check the water lines to make sure the chickens can get water. This will continue with other "checks" -- chicken feed, alarms, etc. -- always taking care of the chickens. It's not your run-of-the-mill "pretend" game for a little kid, but he loves it. I can assure you that my 3-year-old is much more knowledgeable about chickens than I am!

When he spends time at my parents' one of his favorite activities is going to the chicken houses. On Sunday afternoon I tagged along in checking on the chickens...

Checking the water lines...in case you can't tell, he takes this very seriously...




The houses are warm and humid, which causes my lens to fog...

The Zoo

Tara and I have been trying to work out a zoo trip for the past few weeks but have had conflicts...we finally settled on Friday, which was perfect timing since Mason's preschool class just finished up a segment on zoo animals this week. Although Friday morning started out a little cooler than the rest of the week, it quickly warmed up and turned out to be perfect zoo weather. Sunshine, 70 degrees, zero humidity, good company -- what more can you ask for?

I am so bad at getting pictures at the zoo...I enjoy watching the animals but spend most of the time making sure Mason hasn't climbed the fence into one of the exhibits my boys are behaving. On this trip I actually remembered to bring my camera and managed to snap a few pictures.













I told Tara that it seems like yesterday that Mason was sitting on the baby lion...so of course I had to dig up the picture. Here is Mason at almost the exact same age (he was 19 months in this picture, and Roper is 20 months now).

Someone thinks I'm stylish...or at least she thinks my blog is...

My friend and favorite photographer, Heidi Graves, nominated me for a "Stylish Blogger Award!" Thanks, Heidi! This is especially flattering coming from Heidi because I can attest that she has great style! :)



As part of the award, I am supposed to list 7 things about myself. For all of you that read my blog, I feel like you already know most everything about me! So I've tried to think of really obscure facts that you might not know. These random facts most certainly fall short of proving my stylishness...I couldn't really think of anything interesting about myself that would support the claim that I'm a stylish blogger...oh well! Here goes...consider this my award acceptance speech. :)

1. My boys' birthdays are (kind of) reciprocals of each other. 9-16-07 and 7-16-09. What's more...my water broke around the same time with both of them (7:30 pm with Mason and 8:00 pm with Roper) and they were born at around the same time (3:16 am with Mason and 2:26 am with Roper).

2. I was the first woman to receive the Appraisal Institute's MAI designation before age 30. I received it when I was 29. And a half. It was hard work -- and I had two children along the way. In case you are wondering what in the world MAI means -- it stands for "Member of the Appraisal Institute." It is a professional designation for commercial real estate appraisers. The requirements included a series of classes that took me about 5 years to complete (I managed to finish the classes before Mason was born), an experience review in which an appraiser from the Northeast went through 5 of my reports with a fine-tooth comb, a 2-day comprehensive exam in Nashville which I took 3 weeks before Mason was born, and a 200+ page demonstration appraisal report that I submitted 6 weeks before Roper was born. Boy, am I glad I'm done with all of that...and I'm so glad I put forth the effort to get it.

3. I made my media debut at age 1 in my hometown's local newspaper, The Laurens Advertiser. I was sitting atop my Daddy's horse at a Laurens Saddle Club trail ride. Next time I'm at my parents' house I'll have to try to find the picture so I can share it with y'all.

4. My great-great-great grandfather, Dr. Thomas Wier, signed the SC Ordinance of Secession. Each district (this was before counties were formed) sent a representative to the Secession Convention which was held in one of the downtown Columbia churches in December 1860, and Dr. Wier was one of the representatives from Laurens. The group of men unanimously agreed to secede from the union. Dr. Wier was too old to fight in the war, but he sent 4 sons and one son-in-law to battle. Only one made it home.

5. I have my concealed weapons permit, and I made an almost perfect score in the field (shooting) portion of the permit examination.

6. I once won the lottery. I don't typically buy lottery tickets -- but once shortly after the lottery came to SC, I bought a powerball ticket and won $100. I'm probably one of the few people out there that has actually won more money than I've spent in the lottery.

7. I can't dive. Or turn a cartwheel. But I can do a head stand. Or at least I used to be able to...I haven't tried in a really long time!

Well hopefully now that I've shared all of those random facts the award won't be taken away! :) Have a good weekend everyone!

Fishing and 3 Birthdays

We spent most of the weekend with Graem's parents, celebrating birthdays and fishing. We met them for dinner on Friday at our favorite fish camp, Old McDonald's, to celebrate Graem's dad's birthday. The next morning we took the boys fishing at the land in Edgefield.













After church on Sunday, we headed down to North Augusta to celebrate our cousin Aidan's 5th birthday. Mason spent the entire time rotating from the slide to the bounce house and back to the slide.







Nana taught Roper how to eat cotton candy...









And today is my birthday. My phone has been blowing up with birthday wishes on Facebook all morning! I feel so loved. :) Last year's birthday post was definitely one of my most enjoyable posts to write...I loved digging up all the old pictures and reflecting on the past ten years. Another year later, and now I'm not just "30" but "30-something."

Leader's Conference

Last week Graem was recognized by his company as one of the top sales agents in the country at the Colonial Life Leader's Conference. I have always known that he is a leader; it is so nice that his company agrees with me. :) Most of you know that after spending 8 years in the Colonial home office, Graem chose to leave his corporate role and is now managing a sales team. The transition from "home office" to "field" did not come without much prayer, thought, sleepless nights and of course number crunching. I never doubted that he would be successful with his new challenging role...but I think it surprised both of us when he qualified for LC in his first few months on the job!

We had a great trip...I don't have tons of pictures because I didn't tote my camera around the whole time like I do when we take trips with the children. :) In Graem's previous roles at Colonial, he worked closely with agents all over the country, so we were fortunate to have many friends with us at LC. We came home totally exhausted. There is something about taking a trip with lots of friends sans children that makes you stay up entirely too late! Maybe we were trying to prove to ourselves that we could still hang like we used to?!? There was definitely a sense of "Work Hard, Play Hard!"

The LC trip changes every year...this year Colonial chartered a Celebrity cruise ship, so we had the whole ship all to ourselves. We left from Miami and stopped in Key West, Cozumel and Costa Maya. Neither Graem nor I had been to any of the ports before so we were glad to see some new places.

Adios, Miami!


In Key West...(sometimes when you ask your waitress to take a group picture it turns out blurry, oh well!)


Awards Night...


We rented a boat for fishing and snorkeling in Cozumel...Elana, Mary, me & Julia:


Us and the Shealys...yes, we were the dorks wearing our name tags!


We had a wonderful trip but I'm not convinced the boys didn't have even more fun than we did. They stayed with my parents at the farm. My brother is a poultry farmer and he got a new flock of baby chicks while they were there. "Flock" seems like such an understatement when you are talking about 120,000 baby birds. They are delivered on the day they hatch -- they still have eggshell in their feathers! Both boys had a grand time riding tractors, checking on the chickens, feeding the horses, playing with their cousin Robert, and getting spoiled rotten by Grandaddy and Bebe!

Don't Do It...

Crepe murder, that is.

We have three crepe myrtles in our yard and they have gone without pruning for the past several years. No biggie, but last summer I noticed that one of them actually had another tree growing up amidst the spindly crepe myrtle trunks, and I made a mental note to take care of that before Spring 2011 rolled around.

I knew how not to prune a crepe myrtle, thanks to an article I read in Southern Living years ago. Pruning our crepe myrtles was on my weekend to-do list, and I was happy to find that the article has been updated and is easily accessible via the world wide web (isn't everything?).

The Grumpy Gardener's article is a must-read. I've considered printing it for distribution in our neighborhood. :)

This is what I started with...ignore that big beautiful box in the background (I planted 2 loropetalum in front of it last year but they don't seem to like the spot).


Here you can see the tree that was making itself right at home in the middle of my crepe myrtle. Nothing that a hacksaw couldn't take care of!


And the finished product. I'm looking forward to the pretty pink blooms!


Changing subjects...G&I have just returned from a wonderful vacation...I'm working on getting all the pictures together and will post later this week!