What's "Up Chuck"?

What a weekend we have had! As I mentioned Friday, Susan had suggested some excitement for the whole family and let me tell you, it was pretty much non stop....and expensive. Saturday we got up early and by 8:30 we were headed to the Cottontail's Village Arts and Crafts Festival. This is a huge show done twice a year around Easter and Christmas. Inside the convention center was every kind of booth you could imagine. Vendors and artists selling their creations in a space as large as a football field. We stayed for a couple hours and ended up buying a ton of art work by an artist, Joy Arledge, from Houston, Texas. She does great colorful work and we needed some pictures for the kid's bathroom and for my daughter's room. We bought seven paintings, matted and framed. We also bought some stuff from this booth whose website is linked here. The owners are also from Texas. I tell you, if you like soup mixes where you just add the meat or veggies, and mix it all up with the spices then you should check them out. We bought several flavors, and I made the Cowboy Stew Saturday night....Excellent! They have many other types of soups, dips, seasonings, etc. Chuck highly recommends them!

At another booth we found Vivabeads for sale. They are beautiful handmade clay beaded jewelry. We got our daughter a necklace and matching bracelet and my son a bead bracelet where each bead is a different ball; football, baseball, etc. These were a little more expensive than we had originally thought, and had to get T to change her mind and choose another once we learned the necklace she was wanting was $97!

After the craft show we went over near the mall with the intent of going to see a movie. The movie we planned on seeing didn't start for a couple hours so we decided to get some lunch and wait. We pulled into a shopping center and noticed a hair salon next to the restaurant we had planned on eating. Susan took T into the salon to get her hair cut and L and I went into the Sport's Bar/Restaurant and took a seat at a booth in the bar. Susan called me to tell me it would be about thirty minutes till the hair cut was finished so I ordered a 32 oz. draft beer and a Dr. Pepper for L and we waited. Three beers and a couple games of trivia later, the women folk showed up and we had a nice lunch of wings, fried mushroom, and chicken fingers. After all this we were a bit tired so we decided to go on home and watch a family movie together.

That evening I made the cowboy stew and we watched the SpongeBob Movie, then all were in bed by 9:30.

Sunday morning we slept in a little then got up, got dressed and went out to see The Pacifier. It was a cute movie but I personally think Vin Diesel should just stick to fighting and other action flicks and leave the serious acting alone! The kids liked it and that is all that matters. Once home the kids took the dog out for a long walk and Susan and I got busy in the yard. (not that kind of busy!) The weather was in the mid 60's so we took advantage of it and I cut grass, she pulled weeds, then I washed and vacuumed the cars.

Dinner last night was Chinese take out, and we all ate while flipping between the women's basketball SEC Championship game and Extreme Makeover - Home Edition. The game was good, the University of Tennessee Lady Vol's won by two points and the show was a tear jerker as usual. The people featured this week are local to Birmingham, the Harris Family, who were struggling to make ends meet with one son and almost two year old sextuplet's. They are the only surviving family of African American sextuplet's in the country. Pretty neat to watch something like this happen for a local family. Wish someone would come and make over my house!

Now it is Monday morning and my work calls. I hope you all had a great weekend as well!