Sleepy cutiepie

Thanksgiving

  In years past, we have always spent Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family, but this year we were able to spend the holiday with my dad's side. We actually planned surprising my grandparents for a couple of months before Thanksgiving. Mama Mil didn't think twice about us "staying in Atlanta" or "Rob missed his flight to Jackson and had to stay in Atlanta".

Kids' table

Adults' table

  On Wednesday night, Rob flew into Atlanta from Cleveland and we picked him up from the Marta station and took him to my Aunt Emily's house. My Uncle David had most of his family there for Thanksgiving and my Aunt Margaret and Craig were there also. It was wonderful to see them even if it was just for a little while!!

Cousins with our grandparents

The whole McG fam!

  On Thursday morning, P, Rob, and I drove to Guin to surprise everyone. My parents and sister picked up my brother, Josh, and surprised Mama Mil and Granddaddy Robert at their house. Josh was planning on having Thanksgiving with my grandparents and cousins, so Mama Mil told him to be there at 11:30 to help pack up the car with food to go to my aunt's house. However, instead of just Josh, my parents and sister showed up too! We made good time and pulled up to my Aunt Marcia's house a few minutes after everyone else got there. And, we actually pulled off the surprise on Mama Mil! (She hates surprises and always figures them out, so it's very rare that we actually can surprise her!) 

Celebrating "Movember"

Granddaddy Robert and Mama Mil

  Patrick and I spent the night with Mama Mil and Granddaddy Robert and then drove back home on Friday before the Iron Bowl. As much as I love my grandparents, there was no way I could watch the Iron Bowl with them as they are die-hard Alabama fans and I am an avid Auburn fan. We had some friendly banter back and forth as we read through the 22-page spread in the Birmingham paper, but I think we all knew it would not last as soon as the Iron Bowl started. P and I made it back to Atlanta about 45 minutes before the game started and we picked up the Wrigster.

  Then we drove over to my Aunt Emily's house to watch the game. Well, if you saw the first half of the game, you will know that my grandparents were going crazy and I was really angry. At halftime, I positioned myself at the island (where the food was, duh!) and stayed there during the start of the third quarter. Yeah, and being superstitious about Auburn football, I had to stay sitting on the barstool for the rest of the game and watch the game on the small tv in the kitchen versus the large tv in the den. My cousin had to sit in the same position on the couch for the rest of the game. PHEW, we came back from a 24-point deficit and won!!! I was elated!! SEC championship, here we come! Oh, and you'd better believe that I'm keeping the game recorded for a while! I hope your Thanksgiving was as great as mine and that you enjoyed all the time with family as much as I did!

A little post-Thanksgiving nap

Fall Foliage

  As much as I hate raking leaves, I have to say that we are very lucky to have had such stunning colors on all of our trees in the front and back yards. I took a few pictures after it had poured one day last week before all of the leaves fell to the ground. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

Shopping in Jackson

  While I was in Jackson, my mom, sister, and I stopped in a new store in Ridgeland called Chandelier. I'm not sure how long this store has been there, but if I lived in Jackson, I would have to work there. They sell beautiful, unique pieces and gorgeous linens. I literally walked around the entire store three times to look at everything and I could have stayed much longer.
  Pardon the poor quality of my iphone pictures, but I must share some items with you.

My sister and I are both obsessed with this chandelier with a see-through drum shade. I'm trying to figure out where in my house that I could place a fixture like this! 

This ottoman had the tufted buttons in a soothing beige pattern that I would love to have at the end of my bed. I should have taken a larger picture, but I really enjoyed this bench and if I could have convinced Patrick, I would have brought this home.

The colors don't pop out as beautiful here, but this duvet cover and sheet sheet had a light blue and green that are two of my favorite colors.

  The last item that I really loved was the orange and white Serena and Lily sheets. You must go here to see them: Pimento French Ring Sheet Set | Serena & Lily. Amazing!! Ah, to have the luxury of being able to spend two hundred dollars on such beautiful sheets! Again, I just need to convince P that we need these! I have a feeling I won't get them, but man, oh man, I love them!

Trip to Jackson

  Last Wednesday, I packed up the Wrigster and we drove over to Jackson to hang out with my family. Patrick was having a boys' weekend in Tampa with his family, so I figured we would take a little trip of our own too.

Tucker and Wrigley after we arrived in Jackson

  Wrigley was super excited to play with Tucker and they ran around like crazy the entire weekend. It was hilarious. I think Tucker was happy to have another pup to "dance" with for a few days. He has been alone since we had to put his sister, Pixie, down, so he enjoyed the company. I'm just glad to know that my pup isn't the only one who is such a crazy chewer. I took Wrigley's whole box of toys and he didn't touch any of them! He only wanted to chew on Tucker's toys the entire time we were there.

I just love those little butts!

The stick

 The favorite toy of the weekend was the Kong tennis stick. Wrigley made the most noise as he would steal the stick from Tucker, walk around with it in his mouth, and growl. Poor Tuck spent the whole weekend waiting for the Wrigster to drop the toy or get bored with a toy so he could grab whatever it was that Wrigley had. It was too funny.

Wrigley and Tucker waiting for us to throw a ball

Tucker

Wrigley

Tucker doing the dance with Wrigley waiting

Run away!

Sharing the stick on the baby beds

  Mom and I ate at Little Tokyo on Thursday for lunch and then we went again on Friday when Margaret came into town from Ole Miss. And sadly, the waitress recognized us. Whoops! They use a miso salad dressing that I wish I could replicate! It is amazing and when we were in the apartment, I tried to replicate it but it didn't work at all. I might try to find a different recipe and go back to the Dekalb farmer's market to get some miso paste. I could eat a lunchbox from Little Tokyo every day of my life. YUM! Chicken teriyaki, steamed gyoza with a special sauce, salad with miso dressing. I'm missing it already!

  On Saturday before the Auburn game, we ran over to Keifer's to get gyros and pita with feta. Keifer's is also one of the places that I love to go to when I'm in Jackson. We got home to watch the game and though I'm very glad we won, I was extremely disappointed with all the craziness that occurred at the end of the game. I don't know what happened, but I'm so upset that our guys threw punches after being provoked. I am also upset that someone decided it would be fun to light our trees at Toomer's on fire. Not cool whoever that was. Oh well, I'm excited to have the SEC West Championship game here in Atlanta and hopefully, I can find some tickets!!

Wishing

Right now I'm wishing I could be here:

Spending time with these girls:

WAR EAGLE!! Beat GEORGIA!!

A Trip to Oxford

  I'm still not feeling up to snuff and I'm very irritated about it, but such is life. I just hope I can go to work this week as I had to call out all last week. At least I'm supposed to not be contagious anymore by Monday, but I hope I can survive two days in a row since I've been laying/sleeping on the couch for the last week now.

The boys' tent before

The boys and the tent after

Dad, Margaret, and Patrick at the tailgate

Chris, me, Katie, and Mom

Daddy's girl

Part of my lovely family

My seester

me and Pat

Me with Doc

Carolyn, Corey, and Pat

  Anyways, last weekend we boarded the pupster for the second time (eek!) and drove over to Oxford for the game. My sister is in graduate school in accounting at Ole Miss and it was very nice to have a place to stay. I was quite impressed with her condo and how cute she and Mom have decorated it! I'm sad that I didn't get any pictures of it, but I wish my apartments in college had looked that cute! Due to some car issues, we weren't able to leave until almost about noon and Patrick was dying because he wanted to leave here at 8am. Whoops. We did finally arrive and I started making some applesauce muffins for the early tailgate while we were waiting on my parents to arrive. Margaret's friend, Katie, had come in from Tuscaloosa for the game as did her boyfriend, Chris, who came in from Auburn.

 Pre-game flyover

  When my parents finally arrived in Oxford, we all met on the Square to wait in line for Ajax because Patrick was dying for their country fried steak and macaroni and cheese. At first, I was bummed out because I had scoped out the menu online and knew I wanted the vegetable plate but it wasn't offered on the menu and I couldn't figure out what the heck I wanted to eat. Thank goodness I asked the waitress and she said, "oh yes we offer a limited selection of vegetables" and all four of the veggies were available! Yay! (Aren't mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese considered vegetables?) Unfortunately, our little group of 7 had to split up and eat at two different tables, but at least we got to eat earlier than the wait of like two hours.

Auburn captains

Ole Miss captains

  After we ate dinner, we decided (the kids) to go to a bar on the square before they started charging cover ($10 for most places and $20 in others--so steep!). We all got stamped, walked into the bar, saw a drink mixing a "Skinny B", stood around for about 2 minutes and walked back out to drive back to Margaret's to meet my parents. Then we sent Patrick and Chris out to set up our tent in the Grove since you have to wait until 10pm on Friday nights before the games to set up a tailgating spot in the Grove. An hour passed and we hadn't heard from the boys. They finally rolled in right when I was calling Patrick and they said, "Well, our tent doesn't really look perfect but it's up!" They had two poles leftover and told my dad that most of the pieces didn't really fit like they thought they were supposed to and that there must not have been enough pieces. I can see my dad calculating all of the pieces and how they fit together and it just wasn't making sense to him. So we all load up in the car to see this tent.

My favorite, Nick Fairley

I told P he would be here!! Michael Oher

  Oh my goodness, we walk into the Grove and find our tent and we all die laughing. I mean, the tent was standing, but that was about it! I had to get a picture of Pat and Chris with the tent before we broke it down and started over again. We tried once and failed, but Dad figured out the tent (rightfully so as he has been the only one to ever put it up but hadn't done so since 1997) and we got it fixed. By the time we finally finished with the tent, we were all exhausted and decided to just go back to the condo instead of going out.

My dad's in the middle with the navy vest

Cam eating some cotton candy

  Saturday morning came along and we all woke up and started getting showers (3 girls and 2 boys with 1 bathroom). We picked up our barbeque from Handy Andy and went down to our spot in the Grove. Minor detail but as we looked through all our bags, we realized we had potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, buns, and barbeque sauce but NO barbeque. Off Patrick went to return to Handy Andy where the guy said, "I went to the back to get the meat and when I came back, y'all were gone!" We met up with my parents and started eating from our spread. Man, it was good!  Several of Patrick's friends came by as did many of Chris'. Katie Doc came by and we stopped by her tailgate too for a few minutes.

Cam and Nick

me and P after the game

  After taking a bathroom break in the Phi Mu house (how I wish Auburn had sorority houses!!!), we started making our way to the stadium. Sadly, Mom, Patrick, and I missed both the Walk of Champions and the Tiger Walk while we were in the Phi Mu house. Now I don't have to say too much about the game, but War CAM Eagle!

War Eagle! 51-31!!

  Once the game ended, we headed back to the tailgate where unfortunately, someone stole our cooler with all the contents and wiped out two of the other coolers. Patrick and I were very irritated to lose our cooler and our drinks and it was quite the frustrating end to a good game (for me, at least). I don't think it was because we were from Auburn, but it was still annoying. We had to wait for a while for my dad to get finished with the team as the one of the docs, so we started taking items that hadn't gotten stolen back to the car. Then we decided we would drive back to the Grove and that was a huge mistake as we just sat in traffic so long that my dad met up with my mom and they broke down the tent. Chris ran out to meet them and helped them with the tent and baskets before we even made it to the entrance of the Grove. Again, we sat down in Margaret's condo and decided to go to sleep. It was very sad that we couldn't make it out at least one night on the town, but I didn't miss it that badly.

Nick Fairley speaking to my dad

Pat, me, Devin, and Bryce

  On Sunday morning, I called my grandparents who said they would be home and Patrick and I were able to drop by and eat lunch with them. It was wonderful to see them and catch up even though it was only for about an hour or so. I really miss being able to see them and am thankful that I was able to see them for a bit before it was a year.

Cam in the stands

The rest of the team jumped up after Cam

  Overall, we had a great time sharing our EIGHTH Auburn-Ole Miss football game together! I can't believe that it has been that long!! War Eagle and Hotty Toddy (just kiddin', babe!)!