A recap...

The past week and a half has been crazy busy around the Shirley household. Let's start with last Friday... since Zach had that evening off, we arranged for our twice annual Dave & Buster's night with our friends. The small group minus two couples, plus my friend, Kristin and her boyfriend, Luke all went out to eat and play games. There were 12 in all... the largest group that I have treated with my blue card. I'm so thankful for these wonderful friends and I'm also very thankful for the means to be able to treat them to a special night.

Shevawn & Sarah (with Baby Girl Kirksey) playing Skee-Ball.

Zach beating everyone else at Daytona racing.

Holly, me, Sarah and Shevawn... (I feel like I stand out in this pic, oh well.)


I think that Angela actually beat all the boys in this race... GO ANGELA!

A good time was had by all and we'll do it again in the spring hopefully!


So then a week went by... I was crazy busy at work last week with getting the financials ready and getting the auditors what they needed. I still made time to workout twice last week which I was thankful for. Then Saturday morning, the girls made a day of shopping, movies and fun... it all started with this....


We went to the Chi Omega Christmas Market at the Dallas Convention Center and spent about 4 hours shopping. I would compare it to Canton, but there wasn't as much homemade stuff there as there is at Canton. There were lots of Boutiques on display as well as more Christmas stuff than you can imagine. I had a hard time thinking of stuff that would be good for other people because I am best at shopping off a list, but I did get a few stocking stuffers. I also came away with this really cute lunch bag and a couple of ornaments for our tree. All in all - a very good experience that I would go to again. So we left the market at 2pm... so that we could make it to our afternoon matinee for this movie....


A great book I might add, but the movie left me a little bit dissatisfied. I have to give them credit the writers had to adapt a 500 page book to fit into 120 minute movie. They took a few liberties in doing so and I would say that they left out some pivotal relationships that were in the book, but overall it was good. They matched the characters very well, except for Eric who I never pictured to be Asian, but that's ok. I would recommend the movie, but not without having first read the book. Always read the books before any movie made after a book!

After spending the day, shopping and going to the movie... we came back to the McSpadden's house to have a night of "Wii are Thankful!" Thanks to the McSpadden's, we had a great non-Thanksgiving meal of Fajitas with all the fixings. We played the Wii to our hearts content (especially the game noted above, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2) and we also flipped the very sad Tech vs OU game. A great end to a very long day. So worth it! Now it's time to begin the Christmas decorating and pie making. So in order to get in that mood, we made a fire on Sunday afternoon. The first fire of the season. As you can tell Bailey enjoyed the warmth while sitting on her pillow. We're holding out turning the heat on in this house, so until we do the fires in the fireplace will keep us warm. ;)


Along with Christmas decorating, projects always come in the Shirley household. The latest project is redoing the landing at the top of the stairs. Back in the summer, Zach found flooring that was being clearanced that matched our downstairs perfectly, so he bought everything that they had. Here was the landing when we first moved in...

Here's the work in process to make it very pretty. We will stain the stair tread to match the flooring. We'll also install a facing on the stair and paint it white... this will eventually be done to the whole staircase, but we have to start small and we also have to save our pennies. It's gonna look so nice when it's done. And once that is finished we'll start on the next project, tiling the guest bathroom and laundry room. More posts about that once the project is started.Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! Eat lots of Turkey!

October come and gone...

On the weekend of October 18th, Zach and I went on our first camping trip together. The McSpadden's and the Hindman's arranged for a small group camping trip at Lake Ray Roberts State Park. We went up on Friday night and everything was already set up for us. Mark and Jason had set up the tents on Thursday and claimed a great spot for us. The site that we were at was a walk-in site, so we had to carry all our stuffs in. There was no water or electric hookup there in the walk-in site, but we had everything we needed. It was the first time for me to ever go camping where I had to sleep in a tent on the ground. Overall, it was a great experience and I would do it again in a heart beat. ;)


The camping crew: Angela, Jason, Issac, Tyson, Helen, Sarah, Mark, Shevawn, Myko, Zach me, and Bailey.Our main campsite


Our tent provided by The McSpaddens: Keith & Kim that is. Thanks!


Bailey's spot most of the weekend.


Myko's spot most of the weekend.



Helen had a blast.
Tyson & Mark trying to decide how to attack the bee bait below.


There were so many bees we set this little trap, but we didn't set it far enough away from our campsite. They just kept trying to attack our food.

The sunset over Lake Ray Roberts!


And when we got home, we crashed... a nice hot shower and a 3 hour nap followed a great weekend of camping!


On Friday, Halloween... the accounting department decided to have a slumber party. It was had to get everyone to participate... but here's some who did.
We decided that if you didn't want to wear your pjs to work, you could just wear crazy slippers. So this is what we got... it was a good day. After work, I did some volunteer time at PowerFM answering the phones during share-a-thon. Then I came home and dressed Bailey up for Halloween to hand out candy to the kiddos.

This is what Bailey wore most of the night... her lucky tshirt from Old Navy.


I put her dragon costumer on her and she just stood there as still as a statue for about 5 minutes. It was pure torture for her, so I didn't make her wear it. But she looked so darn cute!

This year was the first year to pass out candy at our house... it was a good turnout. We probably had about 40-50 kids. A lot more than other people have had. Happy Halloween... now on to a month of Thanksgivings!

Bailey's new pet

So this past Friday, October 10th was my birthday. For that special day, we thought we get Bailey a new pet (or toy, whatever you would like to call it). Here's the opossum that we caught for Bailey's pleasure. Actually... that's not it at all... last weekend I was pulling weeds in the front flower bed and I reached behind a plant to get a weed when I found a huge mound of dirt. I proceeded to yelp and then have Zach look back there because there definitely shouldn't be that much dirt displaced in our flower bed. As Zach went to look at the dirt, he stepped in the flower bed and immediately went down a foot in the dirt. Something was digging.... and it was a giant hole! So we put my dad's live trap to work. It rained on Monday and washed away our bait... we didn't re-bait the trap until yesterday and this morning... we caught ourselves this little beauty. He's actually very ugly... and every time you get close to it, it freezes up. Playing opossum as they call it. So tomorrow animal control will come and get him and then send him to the wilderness (of which there really isn't any wilderness close). Then we'll re-bait the trap and see if we can catch something else. Maybe we'll have another pet for Bailey. Disclaimer: Bailey has not even seen this little guy because I think that she would flip out!



So let's rewind to last week... Thursday, October 2nd. The Kirksey's, Shirley's and the Hindman's went to see the Music Builds Tour with Switchfoot, Third Day, Jars of Clay and Robert Randolph & the Family Band. It was at the Superpages.com Center, which is at the State Fair Grounds. So we left at 5:25 from Dave & Buster's and got there at 6:10 during the 2nd to last song that Jars was singing. At least, we got to hear the best songs off their latest album. Up next was Robert Randolph... I only recognized one of their songs and I really couldn't handle too much of them because they were soo stinkin repetitive... I mean haven't you heard of songs with lyrics! Anyway... then came Switchfoot... they were awesome as always! I believe this is now the fifth time that I have seen them in concert and it never gets old! Love them. Then the headlining show... Third Day. There were definitely some classics and then some new ones as well! It was over an awesome show and a great time to enjoy with the Kirksey's and Hindman's! And some pics from the night....

Tyson & Sarah

Zach & I

Angela & Jason

Helen waving the cell phone

The Kirksey's & The Shirley's

So back to the original part of the post... Friday was my birthday and Zach treated me to a special day! Flowers when I got home... a new coffee table... two cds... and dinner at Patrizio's. It doesn't get much better than that! I love you honey!

So here's to a great start to October... I'll let you know if we catch anymore critters!

Tear down these walls...

Zach and I have become concert addicts the past couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, we went to the Power FM benefit concert to see Since October and Entrust. Good bands... a little hard for my taste though. Unfortunately no pictures to document that event. On Friday night, we made a little trek down to Deep Ellum to Live at Mokah to see Philmont, Our Hearts Heroes, Addison Road, and Pillar. It was an awesome concert and a great venue for concerts. We decided to show some support to the bands that Power FM plays all the time. So I found out about the show from this girl that I went to middle school with... she's the merch girl for the band Philmont because her husband is the lead singer. It was good to see her and show some support to their band as they are new to the national scene. Power FM is playing their new single "Tear down these walls" and their EP "Oh Snap" is available on iTunes. Good times. Too bad we got to the concert a little late and only saw the last song of Philmont's set. Oh well. My other favorite of the night was Addison Road. They haven't been on the scene very long, but they have several songs out that are really catchy. The other day at work I couldn't stop singing, "if I have to jump, then I'll jump and I won't look down, you can cry, you can fight, you can scream and shout, I'll push and pull until your walls come down and you understand I'm gonna be around... cause I'm sticking with you." All their songs are very catchy which makes it a good thing to be singing at work. ;-) The last band to perform was Pillar and they did an awesome job. It's amazing how many of their songs I actually knew and I don't even have any of their cds. They announced on Friday that their drummer was performing his last show with them. Lester, the drummer, has gotten called back for David Cook, the American Idol winner. Pretty cool stuff. Anyway, enjoy the pictures...
Philmont in the last song of their set...
Our Heart's Heroes...
Addison Road during their set...
Jenny, the lead of Addison Road and I.
Last but not least Pillar... notice he's supporting another band "The Wedding."

CANSTRUCTION!

The past week at work we have been building our canstruction projects. We tossed around several ideas - a flag, an iPod, the D&B logo... we came up with a Patriotic iPod with a rotating D&B logo and the special touch of Bevo listening to the music. Our boss is a Texas Alum. The accounting department collected 503 cans of Campbell's soup and it will all be donated to the North Texas Food Bank. Unfortunately, our design did not come in first place... the finance group won and gets to wear jeans all next week. Darn... but it was a fun project anyway. Check out these unique canstructions...http://www.canstructionla.com

Happy Birthday Mom!

Since the last post, there have been lots of happenings. I got my haircut off the day after the Hawk Nelson concert. We've had several outings with the small group. Zach has started school (going into his third week.) and we are working on our quarterly filing with the SEC at Dave & Buster's. It's been busy. Labor Day weekend, Zach and I went to a wedding for a family friend, Rachel Beck. We didn't take any pictures of them, but we did take one picture of us... those are few and far between for us. A little fuzzy, but here's the one picture.
Today we celebrated my mom at lunch with a great meal at Pappadeaux. My mom will be 60 years old tomorrow. Happy Birthday MOM! We love you!The Kilgore girls... we coordinated and didn't plan it. ;-)

Dad and Mom at Pappadeaux

Amazingly another pic of Zach and I. ;-)

My parents in their new Lexus. How snazzy.

Hawk Nelson is my Friend!

So for those of you who don't already know... I'm a total nerd. At least I think so sometimes. Here's where this comes from... Zach and I got tickets to the Faith Night at the Rough Riders game on Thursday night. Hawk Nelson was in concert and well that's what we were going for... not the baseball. The concert was before the game in the side parking lot and it featured Capital Lights as the opener and then a little diddy by Mark Stuart, formerly the lead singer of Audio A and then headlined Hawk Nelson. It was a great concert as they really put on a good show, but I'll just say Zach and I were some of the oldest people there. I don't even think that Hawk Nelson is as old as I am and I'm not even that old. For the most part though, it was all little teenie boppers and some of their parents with them. Then what made me feel even more like a nerd... I wanted their autograph... so I got it. I know that I was probably the only one my age asking for this punk rock band to sign my cd, but I sure didn't care. It was definitely a great night and a highlight of my weekend. Now for some pictures....

Mark Stuart came out as they were playing Big House... he sang a little bit, but his voice was soo raspy. His vocal cords are completely shot from years of straining his voice with Audio A.

The lead singer, Jason Dunn.



Drums: Justin BennerBass Guitarist: Daniel Biro

The whole Band, Hawk Nelson - up close and personal. What a nerd I am!