Barrel Jackpot Kind of Weekend~!!

I am SO exhausted after these last 4 days!! The Hubby went to El Paso to visit his grandma for her 89th Birthday so the kids and I have been ridin solo since last Thursday!

We were so blessed with FABULOUS weather Thursday, Friday, and Saturday! Saturday DD, my momma and I went to a barrel jackpot and I mean to tell you the temperature was around 70*!! Holy COW it was so awesome! DD was so happy to be outside in a short sleeve shirt and not having to be all bundled up! My girl had kind of a mixed day, she faltered in her exhibitions a little so she got nerved and come time for her open run she just did of lolly gagged or something...It wasn't the best run of her life but she did win 1st place in the 2D~!! She was very excited about that, as was I!

Saturdays runs

So Sunday afternoon we headed out to another barrel jackpot but mother nature was NOT our friend today!! BURR it was cold out there!! I think we hovered around 32-34* most of the time we were out there and of course this arena wasn't fully enclosed...Not to fun! So in a nutshell today was just not DD's day. She did her 3 exhibitions and knocked over barrel one the last time in so wouldn't you know when she came in for her open run she was all tensed up coming into barrel one, teeth gritting, stiff back and literally just plowed the barrel over! Not good...Needless to say she's got quite a nice knot in her leg from hitting it so hard. I guess we all have bad days and this one was hers! The lady that owns this arena let DD come back in after the open so she could *rework* barrel one and leave on a good note, so that made me happy enough!

Sundays runs

Start of brushing to close to barrel one

And just plow her down here!

Another busy rodeo weekend next weekend! We've got some terrible weather coming this week so I'm hoping it doesn't interfere with our plans!

Hope everyone has a super BLESSED week!!

Wordless Wednesday..Lunar Eclipse Style

One hour before the Eclipse started

Just seconds before the whole moon was in the full shadow of the Earth!

The big reveal~! It was Beautiful and Amazing!!

I will even admit to doing a little *happy dance* while photographing these!!

And the stars were so BRIGHT!! I was even lucky enough to see shooting stars!

The colors were astonishing!

Last shot before it came out of the shadow!

Midst Of The Makeover!!

....Part 2....

I literally spent DAYS shopping for things to put in my *new* living room but let me tell ya I am NOT complaining because I am a girl who LOVES her shopping! I basically decided that the only things that would remain in the living room from before is most of my wall pictures and my TV. Other than that pretty much everything was being changed!

I started first with the painting, I did a "brushed suede" on all of the walls in the living room and the stairwell. My living room is 29 x 15 so I knew this would be some work using this textured paint! I had to roll on 2 coats of the paint then after that was good and dry I had to go back and do an "X'ing pattern over the entire surface of the walls...Talk about tiring! I did most of it before my weekend getaway and finished when I got home. Then my next job was painting the ceiling, I thought the walls were hard...well...the ceiling was worse! My ceilings are around 9 ft tall so I had a pretty hard time rolling it on there. I bought an extension for my roller and well I'm sad to say that it didn't last very long before I bent it and it was no longer any help to me! So I drug a chair all around the room to get the job done! The next morning I quickly figured out that my painting was not good enough on the ceiling and I was going to have to do another coat. I should have expected that with as many coats as the walls took but a girl can hope, right?! I decided I could not handle another 4 hours of rolling it on so I would just skip that step and go straight into the "X'ing and do it heavy so it would cover good. Well needless to say it was taking me twice as long and I had a deadline of the next morning because my new carpet was being put in and my new furniture was coming so when it hit close to midnight that night I decided to finish the ceiling off by rolling the rest...UGH!! I was devastated the next morning when I awoke and went into see the ceiling in the daylight to find that the paint was not even and you can see splotches in places...Needs another coat! But nothing I could do about it at this point so it will get done sometime...Maybe...

At one point and time we had talked about ripping out the carpet and maybe going with the original hardwood under the carpet but the Hubby and I both agreed that we wanted carpet in there as that room can get kind of chilly and we just wanted a *homey* feeling. The Hubby and J ripped out the carpet the night before the new carpet was installed and we were SHOCKED at what we found under the carpet! There were patches in the floor where there had been half walls and patches for damaged spots so we were really thankful we'd chosen the route of carpet! I was also shocked to find out that the carpet that we were ripping out was date stamped on the back 1992!! That ugly carpet was 18 years old! HOLY COW!!! The pad that was under the carpet was leaving this disgusting sticky stuff all over the floor, you know those black spongy spots in the pad?! Well it had turned into some kind of gooey stuff! EWW!!

Finally the carpet was out, the walls were done and I was ready to get the new in! We'd scheduled the carpet to be installed in the morning and the furniture to come in the afternoon and I'll be darned if it didn't freaking rain and even SNOW most of the day! Luckily the snow wasn't sticking but I was sure praying that furniture truck would make it down our road! And it sure did! Unfortunately they could not get down our driveway because of our Cedar trees so they had to back about 1/4 of the way down and carry it ALL the way to the house! Which is a pretty good distance!

We finally got that all in and set up where we wanted and our next task was putting in the additional entertainment center and sofa table we bought. Then we put in all of the new pretty's that I bought! I was chomping at the bit for the Hubby to get my new ceiling fans in but that took a couple of days beings DD had rodeo for 2 days during this time! Finally the fans are in and everything is done EXCEPT for the last addition of a little table I am envisioning to put between 2 chairs I have in the *back* half of the room! Once I get that in I will be ready for the big reveal!

My *Brushed Suede* walls!!

I have had a ton of fun redoing this room and I am SO very thrilled with the results! I just LOVE sitting in there being amazed that this is even the same room LOL!!

Coconut Chicken...You Won't Be Sorry!!

So this is the first time I have ever posted a recipe on my blog...SO here goes!! I am really more of a chicken lover than any other kind of meat and quite frankly I get so tired of always cooking with beef or pork because that's what my freezers are full of! So last week I decided to try this Coconut Chicken! This was a recipe I found online and tweaked it a bit to make it faster and more convenient to make.

My family *likes* chicken but not anywhere near as much as I do! When I made this for the family I also made an italian chicken because I was sure DD would be thrown off by the coconut and the Hubby well he has texture issues...Yep texture...Coconut is one of those that falls under the No-No category in textured food. Also the Hubby is a bit allergic to it, everytime I have *tricked* him in the past into eating or drinking something with coconut in it his throat will kind of swell and itch. BUT I did forget about this little inconvenience when I prepared dinner that night. I told him what I was making and that I knew he wouldn't eat it so I was making him and DD the other kind. But then after my first batch came up and I tried it and died and went to Heaven I told him he MUST try a bite! SO after I *shoved* umm I mean nicely fed him a bite he said "hmm yeah not bad...but I hope my throat doesn't swell in a minute"....OOPS...I only giggled a little after he said it....After I had the rest of dinner prepared I dished out DD and daddy the same chicken and J and I the GOOD stuff and then I look over and notice that the Hubby has added a *small* piece of the good stuff on his plate and I smirked just a bit ;)

J really liked the chicken and I of course LOVED it...Every yummy bite of it...Then the Hubby went back in to get his seconds only this time coming out with only the *good* stuff on his plate! And he sheepishly stated "that's some GOOD chicken"!! YES!! So then I got a little scared cause what if he ate it all?!?! I'm gonna fill you in on a little secret here...I don't eat leftovers...Nope. Sure don't. Because I don't like em. BUT with this I was planning on eating leftovers, yes sirree I was!! Luckily there was 2 pieces left and I had lunch for 2 days! YAY me!!

Okay, okay so here's the recipe!

Coconut Chicken

8 chicken cutlets, slightly pounded

Salt & Pepper

1 C flour

2 eggs

1 C Panko bread crumbs

1 cup sweetened coconut

Extra virgin olive oil

Pour a thin layer of olive oil into your pan (eyeball it, enough to get a good fry). Turn it on to a little over medium heat.

Take a cooling rack and put it on a cookie sheet and preheat the oven to 250*, you will put the finished chicken on the rack in the oven to keep it warm and crisp while you cook the remaining chicken. 

Get 3 shallow dishes, in the first one put your 1 C of flour, in the second one beat your 2 eggs with a splash of water, in the third one mix your bread crumbs and coconut together.

Take your trimmed and slightly pounded Chicken strips and salt and pepper both sides then coat in the flour first, then egg, then lastly the bread crumb and coconut mixture.

Then you need to check and make sure your oil is *frying* hot and fry on each side 3-4 minutes until it is a deep golden color.

Eat and enjoy! And NO I did not devour 3 or more pieces of chicken tonight after I made it just to share with ya'll!!

J's Little Trip...To The ER That Is...

Right from kickoff the game was awesome! J played both offense and defense and I just love watching him play! We scored a touchdown within the first few minutes of the first quarter and that just paved the way for our boys' 31-12 win!!! What a great start it was...Well so I hope...

Let me back track here a couple of years....Going into his freshman year J was on the JV team, so they started their 2 a-day practices before school actually started then on the very first day of school at practice before school they were still no contact (so no helmets, pads, etc) and J was having a hard time with one of the coaches and basically got mad and had a temper tantrum...Coach screamed at him to do something so he takes of running through the football dummies and plows into one of the junior classmen who weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 lbs and lays him out. He said instantly ALL of the guys started cheering for the freshman who just took out a junior and he thought it was pretty funny until he stood up and started blacking out then couldn't hear out of his right ear. Coach asked him if he was ok and then had him sit on the sidelines to rest. After a bit his hearing came back but his vision was a bit blurry but he was released to head on to class. Within the first few minutes of class his teacher knew he didn't look right and asked him if he needed to go see the nurse, he said yes maybe so. Just as he was leaving the class he felt sick, like he might throw up so he's running trying to find a trashcan and well found one but a bit late and ended up wearing it trying to avoid getting it everywhere else...So I get a phone call that he's "not feeling well, bumped his head during practice". So I rush to the school to find my kid sitting in a chair in the office NOT WITH THE NURSE covered in throw up and barely conscious....I WAS PISSED!!! I proceed to ask what the heck is going on in here and why is no one taking care of my kid and WHY did they not call an ambulance if he's obviously in bad shape?! And why the heck did they not give him some clean clothes?! They then tell me that "oops sorry...We've been having trouble with our computer system so we didn't notice"...So they then call his coach who helps him get changed and tell me what happened. I then zoom him to the ER and my boy had a pretty bad concussion, he spent all day there under observation and I had strict observation guidelines for a while after that. So since then he has suffered a couple of mild concussions in basketball so I'm a bit worried about this..

Our school doesn't have the best of equipment for our boys and we were going to buy J a new safe helmet this year after last year one of our boys on the team was lifeflighted out of a game with a massive concussion and never allowed to play football again, and a lot of this kids injuries to his brain were due to the crappy helmet he had..So sad for him! So luckily our new headcoach insisted on some new equipment and basically the top 10 kids that showed dedication to the team were awarded this new stuff and J was one of those kids! Score one for my pocket book LOL!

So he now has a Revolution helmet that is designed with superior safety features! So back to the game...He was playing an awesome game and during the 3rd quarter he got tackled and I noticed when he got up he kind of stumbled and bit and my mommy heart flopped, but he bounced right back and went to have his leg stretched so I guessed that was the problem. Then right before the end of the game he took a running back out of bounds and when he went to hit the kid the kid dropped his head and hit J helmet to helmet (so he told me later, I couldn't see it). After their little victory celebration on the field the team walked through and he stopped to give me a hug but seemed a bit funny to me. He just seemed a bit tired I guessed, I mean he had just played almost the entire game. He went on to shower and then some of us parents were going to be feeding them after the game so we were getting ready for that when a freshman girl comes up to me and says they need you by the locker rooms J is getting checked out by the EMT's. I was like WHAT?! She showed me where he was and the EMT said he was being checked because when the coach tried to talk to him he didn't know where he was or what he was doing. He looked at me and I saw something very familiar in his eyes, I see this alot and have always thought he was just tired when he came home from practice. They had checked his vitals and all was good but when they checked his blood sugar it was low, which is not abnormal after just having played a hard game but a little bit lower than it should have been. And with his prior concussion history they wanted him checked out. So I told them I would take him in but I wanted him to eat (he had not eaten since lunch) and see if this helped at all. So they had someone go with him to shower and then he came out to eat and within minutes of eating his lethargy subsided...BUT he still had a slight headache so off to the ER we went.

After we left I asked him what exactly happened with the coach that brought this to his attention and J said the coach thought he looked "ghost eyed" which to me made total sense because that is exactly how he looks after practice many times, but when the coach asked him these certain questions about the date and where he was and what he was doing he said J did not answer correctly but J says he did. He says the coach was being over-reactive, but I agreed that he was being slow to answer when I first walked up. The ER DR seen him and basically told us to treat this as a very minor concussion and so we did; we followed all the rules but I am not so sure that's what it is. I really truly wonder if he doesn't have something going on with his blood sugar. After thinking back on all of these times I have thought that his eyes looked *funny* or he seemed really tired he always says that he's "just tired" or "he's weak", and many other things. So he is now going to be on a stricter diet and eating special protein bars before practice and 2 before games to see if they help. Yesterday they practiced for 4 1/2 hours and he did 10x's better than he normally does and he had his bar before he went! So we will continue to watch him and pray that this helps!