Halloween 2010 - Pumpkin Carving

My goal is to have our Halloween blog posts up BEFORE Thanksgiving. Here's round one with pics from the pumpkin carving party we had at the Wagner's home with our Sunday School class. Believe it or not, Robert said he had never carved a pumpkin before this night. Not sure how I let him skip that tradition for the past five year's we've been a couple.... But since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I apologize profusely for this grave error. We decided to attempt Big Al, which came together nicely utilizing the pumpkin handle/stem I accidentally broke off mid-carving. Laura's kittens were cute too. Wish I had taken a pic of Martin's pumpkin and the other great creations.

Fall Portraits

A sweet friend from the office has recently started a photography business. (Check out here website here.) She did a fantastic job on our fall portraits. We had a great time taking them at Birmingham's news Railroad Park downtown and then along Birmingham's historic Morris Avenue. These are our first formal couple portraits since having our engagement photos taken four years ago. Thanks, Melanie!

Girls Weekend

Julia flew in from Denver in later October to spend a week with us in Birmingham. It was such a treat to see her and celebrate her recent engagement! We can't wait for her wedding in Colorado Springs on January 1, 2011. We just bought our plane tickets this past week and can't wait to fly out for all the festivities.

While Julia was here we celebrated with the excited bachelorette. Leigh and Morgan also came to Birmingham for girls weekend. After the bachelorette festivities we switched gears to baby festivities and celebrated with Leigh the upcoming arrial of sweet baby Jack, set to make his debut in early February. Then, as if we hadn't celebrated enough, these sweet friends helped me bake and set up for our Halloween party. It was quite the weekend. (Halloween party pics to come...)

Thanks Jules for a great trip and for cheering on our kickball team!

Homecoming 2010 - Bama/Ole Miss

Kickball Glory

Yes, I said, kickball. And contrary to popular opinion, it's not just an elementary school game anymore. Kickball is crazy popular with the young professional crowd in Birmingham and throughout the South now due to a Go Kickball league that started the craze. We've enjoyed playing with our KBR team, made up mostly of Robert's co-workers at KBR and also some others. We're about three quarters of the way through with our fall season now, but enjoyed our best game to date last Thursday. We shut out the other team 9-0. Everyone was getting on base. We were making outs right and left, with three-up, three-down almost every inning.

I personally think our amazing win can be attributed to these yummy cakes I made, but some of my teammates are questioning my logic on this one. They may be right, but being the superstitious gal I am, I may have to bring something sweet for the rest of our games.

The cupcakes were for my friend Jennifer's 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Jen!

Celebrating Bryson

We had so much fun at Amy's baby shower on Oct. 2. It was just days after we found out she and Matt were having a little boy. We all can't wait to meet Michael "Bryson" Bogue when he makes his debut in February. I can't tell you how much fun I had hosting this shower with some amazing ladies who all love Amy as much as I do! Since we had the shower in Tuscaloosa before our tailgating prior to the Bama/Florida game, we opted for a tailgating theme. As you can see, lots of Amy's gifts also had a Bama flavor. You can take the girl out of Bama, but you can't take the Bama out of the girl, or her baby it turns out.


Amy with Bryson's grandmothers and great-grandmother.




I am super proud of this side of the diaper cake. It was my first attempt at a diaper cake creation, and I have to say it turned out better than I expected. The Bama side was perfect. The Tennessee side (Bryson's dad is a die-hard Tennessee fan) was a little sparse, but I just couldn't buy all the baby Tennessee stuff. There was too much orange in my house already when I was putting the cake together. Matt is welcome to embellish as he see fits, but no more of my hard earned money is going toward the purchase of licensed UT products. He's lucky I bought the baby socks.


Robert's mom monogrammed these precious onesies for Amy. They turned out so cute!

Bama - South Carolina

So we got whooped in Columbia (whooped real good...), but at least we had fun with family and friends on another great road trip. Following the Tide around the country makes for lots of special memories. The South Carolina game is always a fun trip for us since Robert's family lives in the Palmetto State. This year, we stayed at the Adams family lake house and then drove the hour to Columbia on Saturday morning for the game. Robert's mom and dad were super hosts as usual. Luckily, I snapped a few pre-game pics of the crew before we lost and no one felt like smiling for the camera...


So glad my brother David and his sweet girlfriend Shelby made the trip with us. They are so much fun and always keep us laughing. The trip was a little rough for them though. This was the first regular season Bama loss they have EVER experienced as students. (Yes, you read that correctly.) They're juniors now - much different times than when Robert and I were in school.

We also had so much fun with our friends Drew and Katie, both Alabama alums, who love going to games as much as we do. Drew and Katie have actually been to every football game so far this season. Katie and I were both student assistant writers at the Alabama Alumni Magazine while undergraduates. We're so glad Drew and Katie now live in Homewood too and we can get together often. We're joint Bama basketball season ticket holders with the Crawfords (as of this year) and are looking forward to many a fun Bama basketball game this winter/spring.

And, we also got to see Robert's brother-in-law Reeves, and his dad and brother, who were able to make the game.

The lake was absolutely beautiful. I can't believe we were able to waterski in October, but we did and it was gorgeous.