Congratulations, Shelby!

I posted a sneak peak of Shelby’s senior photos in March.  Here is a slideshow of those photos and many more.  Enjoy!

Lindsey, Mom, Shelby, & I - 5/7/11

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

You are the best mother any child could ask for.  You are a great role model and help me more than I’ll ever be able to make up for.  I love you!

Love, Tara Ann

Powell, MO has an old bridge they have restored which is where we started the day.

There was also an old store in Powell that was a nice backdrop for some photos.

From Powell, we moved onto the farm.  An old logging truck that is temporarily on the farm provided some cool photos.

Lindsey & Grayson have a really neat old barn and then an old chicken coop that provided the final settings as the sun was starting to set.

Mom & Lindsey even got in on the fun throughout the afternoon.

As I mentioned in my New Year’s post, two of my 2011 goals revolve around blogging and photography.  As you can see, my blog has changed quite a bit in the past week.  You may notice a few items that are still under construction and may change slightly but, for the most part, I think I have it set up the way it will be for a while.  What do you think?

I started a photography class a couple of weeks ago.  We’ve had homework after each class.  Shelby was kind of enough to pose for a few photos last weekend.  The cows decided they wanted in on the action later that day too.

Each year, we spend Christmas Eve with my mom’s side of the family and then Christmas with my dad’s mom.  This year was no exception.

This year I was off work on Christmas Eve since Christmas was on Saturday.  That meant I got to go to my grandparents’ house early to hang out (and, this year, help cook).  This year we decided to have Mexican food.  My uncle made chicken enchiladas and I made beef.  Yum!  (I got one of Trisha Yearwood’s cookbooks for my birthday and decided to give her jalapeno bites a try too.  I’m still partial to the bacon wrapped cream cheese stuffed jalapenos but these did go over pretty well and were easy to fix.)

This year we decided to make sure we took lots of pictures of the family and make sure there were several with my grandmother & grandfather included.  I’m pretty sure we spent a good 30 minutes taking all of the pictures.  We even managed to get multiple pictures this year of some that practically refuse to have their picture taken.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Me, my younger sister Lindsey, Mom, & my youngest sister Shelby

Lindsey & her husband (my bro-in-law) Grayson

Me, my sisters, & my grandmother “Nana Pat”

Me, my sisters, & my grandfather “Papa Jay”

The Grandkids (minus Jeff, who lives in Scotland)

Nana & Papa Kissing under the Mistletoe – I’m just gonna say that I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed my grandparents kissing.  Expect for the occasional adorable hand holding that we witness, they just aren’t into PDA.  Evidently, earlier in the day Christmas Eve before anyone was there to witness it, they did this.  Nana had him reenact in front of all of us.  It was hilarious but so adorable!  I’m glad I got the photo to remember it.

Shelby & Papa “Dancing” – We call this dancing.  It lasts only about a minute but Papa gets into it and, as you can see by the smile, has a blast.  It’s moments like this one that I so enjoy witnessing.

Unfortunately, we didn’t take a single photo Christmas Day.  It was a great day, though.  We also have the traditional Christmas dinner – turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes & gravy, etc, etc.  Mom made a lemon pie this year, which was yummy!

I hope you each had a great Christmas holiday.  Thanksgiving & Christmas are the best times of the year for me.  It’s just a festive time and I love getting together with family and friends.

If you want to see all of the pictures we took on Christmas Eve, check out my Christmas photo album.

Shelby turned 18 on the 17th.  My youngest sister is actually 18.  That’s crazy!  We had a party for her at my parents’ house.  It included pizza they had delivered all the way from Gino’s East in Chicago.  Yummy!

Happy Birthday, Shelby!

Dad’s birthday was the 26th.  We went out to eat at Red Lobster to celebrate.  We had a great waitress.  She had several of the wait staff sing Happy Birthday to Dad.  He got a kick out of it.  After supper, we went back to my parents’ house and had cake.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Friday Night:  Texas State Fair

Saturday:  Southwest Classic – Arkansas vs Texas A&M – Cowboys Stadium
Go Hogs!!!

Day 4 – Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The first location on Tuesday’s agenda was the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.  The Willis Tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere.  It was called the Sears Tower until a year ago.  I still want to call it the Sears Tower, mostly because that’s the most popular and recognized name of the tower.

A relatively new feature of the Willis Tower Skydeck is The Ledge.  One side of the building’s skydeck has 4 sets of plexiglas boxes protrude out from the building.  You can stand on the ledges and find yourself essentially standing over 103 floors of air.  I didn’t experience The Ledge.  My sisters & mom did, though.

After we left the Willis Tower, we took a taxi down to Chinatown.  I’ve never been to NYC or anywhere with a Chinatown so I had no idea what to expect.  The ones that had were pretty disappointed.  They expected some good deals but over half of the shops were groceries and/or restaurants.  All I know is that it was HOT.  Some of the shops we went into weren’t even air conditioned.

Click here to view my photo album from Chicago.

My sister Shelby won a state competition (& a trip to nationals) for a high school club she is a member of.  The national competition/convention was in Chicago.  Mom, Lindsey, & I decided to go along and make it a girls’ vacation while we were at it.  We left Saturday July 3rd and came back Thursday July 8th.  We packed a lot of sight seeing (& heat) into the 4 full days we were there.  I’m going to do a blog entry for each day so I don’t have to pack several stories and a lot of photos into one entry.

Day 1 – Saturday, July 3, 2010

We got into town late afternoon (after having a slight airplane delay).  We checked into our hotel and decided to walk down to Millennium Park (which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel).  We saw Pritzker Pavilion and the Bean (actually called Cloud Gate).  Everyone had fun taking pictures of themselves in the Bean.

The one aggravation we had the entire trip revolved around paying for meals.  There were a total of 9 people in our party.  1 person was not paying for all 9 meals.  However, almost every restaurant we ventured into required us to submit one payment instead of the 6 splits we needed.  It became a math session for some of us to sit and calculate how much everyone’s meal, tax, & tip amounted to and then to try to come up with the right amount of cash (because no one dared put the whole thing on a debit or credit card).  Is it really so strange to want to pay for our own meals?  I’ve never encountered this problem at home.  (As a matter of fact, I went out to eat with my family last night.  We had 13 people and most of us paid separately.)

Click here to see the photo album from my trip to Chicago.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!  I love you!

I know we won’t be home to celebrate this day with you until this evening but I wanted to go ahead and post this as just a little reminder to you of how much I love you.

PS…Get ready for Saturday!  Lindsey, Shelby, Rachel, & I have a great day planned for you, Nana Pat, & Carol.