Category: family

Annie + Art Walk

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn familyLeave a comment

We decided at the last minute to go to the Art Walk downtown. The last time we went I found Annie, this precious little girl who makes the best jellies. We were leaving the Fine Arts Museum and there she was selling her jellies and jams. I had gotten in touch with her mom when I ran out of my orange jelly, but life got busy so I was never able to meet her to buy more. I had also been thinking about her lemon jelly which I was told “packed a punch”. Well tonight I was able to buy both the orange and the lemon and let me tell you that lemon jelly is SO delicious. I love lemon anything so it is right up my alley.

I cannot wait to make toast in the morning.

We walked in one of the buildings and found another one of my favorite vendors. I had been to another craft show and had bought 2 of her bracelets. Tonight I picked up the cutest pair of earrings. Her prices are so good and she hand makes all of her jewelry.

We have a really good fine arts museum that I always love walking through. I really liked the exhibit they had on display tonight.

The accordion players made for good background music.

While we were walking to our car we saw this cool mural down a random alley.

It was so good to actually have a sunny day for a change.

Jackson got his driving permit today. He doesn’t want to do his actual driving part at a driving school, but wants me to be his instructor. I registered and downloaded the driving book. If you think about it, please say a little prayer for both of us because I’m not the most patient person and he really doesn’t want to drive. I know we can do this though.

P.S.

He refused to smile for his permit license so it looks like a mug shot. I swear he does actually smile and laughs in real life.

Rained Out

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All day our plan had been to go see the minor league baseball team from White Oak play.

Even the kids were looking forward to going. The game started at 6 and right before we left I decided to check the weather.

Well, of course, it was going to rain. So we had to come up with plan B since everyone was ready to go do something. Donny suggested going out to dinner, but if you have ever been around us, it takes us at least an hour to decide where to go. Even though Donny doesn’t really like the place I chose I knew the kids liked it and it’s the only buffet I will eat at.

It was really good. I, of course, ate too much. The sushi was really tasty, but my favorite are these cookies. They are so light and flaky.

Hannah loved the little cheesecake squares with the strawberry puree on top.

Everyone was happy and full.

When you have teenagers it’s such a good thing to have a family night.

When I worked for Waitr (like doordash) I would pick up at China King Buffet and they would let me get a soft serve because they have the best. I think it’s what pushed me over the I can barely walk fullness.

So very worth it though.

It still hadn’t rained a drop, but you could smell it in the air. Right as we got home, this is what we saw.

the thunderstorm blew in so fast with lightning and thunder crashing close by and the rain blowing sideways. I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t go to the baseball game. We will get to one eventually.

She Did It

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Today Hannah graduated from high school.

This was not a normal graduation where the kids just walk across the stage and get their diplomas. Each graduate gets to choose a teacher or administrator to present them. They give a short speech about the student and then the student has an option if they want to say something. It is the most intimate ceremony you can imagine. Hannah chose the superintendent, Mr. Lapic.

And then she surprised us by going solo. Yes, I cried like a baby. In fact, throughout the whole ceremony there were many many tears shed by everyone there. Each student had their own story and many were very moving.

The school live streamed the event so Nikki, our oldest, was able to watch it with her family from Dallas and she sent me this text after it was over.

There are so many photos because today was such a special day.

The 2024 graduating class of East Texas Charter School. (all 34 of them)

One thing we love about this school is there is no valedictorian, salutatorian or honor roll. That’s not the point of this school. They just want to make sure everyone improves their lives and does the very best they can.

Hannah and Gavin

Hannah and Mr. Lapic

The family picture. Please note that I had cried all of my makeup off and that, I promise, Jackson is happy. He NEVER smiles in pictures and it drives me so crazy. I think he does it to me on purpose.

Two of Hannah’s favorite teachers.

The teacher above was a godsend to us because he helped her in algebra to where she actually understood it.

What great teachers she had.

inside her diploma envelope, there was a copy of the program and all of the teachers had signed it.

You don’t get this from large public schools, that’s for sure.

After the ceremony we went to lunch at Fun Noodle Bar. It’s a new place that we hadn’t tried and it was really good. There is a glass wall where you can watch them make the noodles.

It was such a great day! Then I went home and took a 4 hour nap. It was much needed.

Family

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All of our family members are scattered all over Texas. Since Donny’s weekends are Thursdays and Fridays, it makes it hard to get to visit any of them very often. Luckily we got to see some of them this past weekend.

Nikki, our oldest, lives in Dallas. We got to spend a few hours with her two oldest kids before they left for their dad’s.

I wish we had gotten to spend more time with Myles and Everly, but we are planning a weekend together when school get out.

We got to spend more time with Phoebe because she is Jake and Nikki’s daughter together. Y’all, she is the funniest kid. And she loves her PawPaw.

Donny was hiding his face from their puppy and Phoebe joined in.

We also were able to go visit Donny’s mom who lives in the Fort Worth area. I didn’t get any pictures because we were all too busy chatting.

Saturday Donny’s brother James and our nephew Justin came up from Austin to take Hannah’s senior pictures. It was so good to see them. We did a photo shoot downtown and boy was it windy. I can’t wait to see the final pictures.

I don’t think I can thank them enough for taking time out of their very busy schedule to do this for us. We all got to have dinner and then they drove the 6 or so hours back home. I wish they would have just stayed the night.

We closed down Don Benito’s.

When we were at Nikki’s we were looking through my old wedding album to her dad and this is one of my favorite pictures of my friend (much more like a sister since I’ve known her since birth) and me after she caught the bouquet.

Oh my Lord, we were so young.

Hopefully during the summer we will get to visit more of our family. Nothing like a little road trip.

And a bit off topic, but I found out that I could remove the candle in my lantern and my oil diffuser fits perfectly. No more ugly white plastic.

Happy New Year

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I cannot believe how fast this year has flown by, especially December. I had so many Christmasy plans for us to do as a family this Christmas season, but because of my surgery and a nasty cold like bug that hit our house, we were only able to do a few things. The Thursday before Christmas we took the kids to go walk around downtown because they always have gorgeous lights.

No one else wanted to be the gingerbread man. Party Poopers.

Hannah wanted to drive around and show Gavin some of the lights we had seen a few weeks earlier. I loved this church with the luminarias. All in all it was a very good Christmas outing finished off with cookie baking, hot chocolate making and Elf.

On that Friday, I had cleaned the whole house, changed the sheets, dusted, they whole 9 yards. Donny and I were in the living room that evening when we heard a crash. We ran down the hall to see what had happened. Donny got to our bedroom first and asked me, “is that shelf supposed to be broken?”. This shelf had fallen, plant dirt and all, onto our bed.

At first I couldn’t figure out what happened. Our cat Bailey was just laying on the end of our bed. Then it dawned on me. A few days prior, Bailey and I were watching cat videos on Tiktok. She was glued to them. Glued. Unfortunately, they were the ones with the cats behaving badly, running and jumping all over the place. I guess she had decided to give it a try herself. No more videos for her. Ever.

I hope this upcoming year is full of happiness. I made pork, black eyed peas, cabbage and mashed potatoes. I know the first three are supposed to bring good luck. I’m not a big superstitious person, but I didn’t sweep, vacuum, do any laundry or take the trash out yesterday. I also opened up our front and back doors and the stroke of midnight. Bad luck out, good luck in. Okay, maybe I’m a bit superstitious, but it can’t hurt, right?

Thanksgiving 2023

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn family, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a huge fan of Thanksgiving. I hate turkey in any form. I’m not fond of most of the side dishes. Last year I tried to make an effort when we rented an Airbnb in Dallas. That was a shambles that has taken me almost the whole year to get over.

The one thing I do like to do on Thanksgiving is go to Cracker Barrel. It puts me in the holiday spirit browsing the store while we wait for a table.

This year we met Hannah’s boyfriend Gavin, his mom and his aunt there. Of course I forgot to take pictures of all of us, but it was such a fun lunch.

Aunt Betty is so interesting. She has a ranch that has cattle and zebras. She is having the zebras moved to her land here so hopefully I’ll get to go visit them.

I found the candy I wanted and I knew I should have bought it before we were seated because after we ate I couldn’t even think of candy I was so full. Dang you chicken fried steak.

Happy Thanksgiving from our family.

We are awful at selfies.

And just to let you know I’m not a complete Thanksgiving party pooper, I wore the earrings Donny got me because he thought it would be funny.

A Thrifty Rainy Day

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Estate Sales, familyLeave a comment

I woke up to a wonderful rainy day. It was so cool outside that I actually wore jeans which I haven’t been able to do in months, complete with my sloggers.

I had to run to Sally Beauty Supply and was sure they opened at 9. I got there at 9:30 only to find they actually open at 10. Luckily there were a couple of estate sales that happened to be right around the corner. At the first one, which was crowded especially for a rainy day, I found the cutest Halloween cat. It was a gift that whoever owned it never opened. I snagged that for $5.00 but didn’t really find anything else.

I couldn’t figure out what the weird package at the bottom was.

Turns out it is a candle holder, but unfortunately the candles didn’t make it.

At the next estate sale i only found one thing. A porcelain little box that i can put my thyroid pill in on my nightstand. I have to set my alarm for 5:30 to take my pill because I have to wait 30 minutes before I can have coffee after I take it and I am still asleep fumbling around on my nightstand always hoping one of the cats haven’t knocked it off.

I still had a little bit of time so I went to Hope’s Closet, the thrift store across the street from Sally’s and found a cute terracotta moon and a gorgeous cotton duvet cover. I swear that thing was brand new. I threw it in the washer when I got home and now it’s on our bed. I wish it wasn’t white, but I still like it anyway. Both of those totaled a little over $12 so it was a good thrifting day.

It’s cat approved.

Also the kids had open house tonight. Hannah had to work and Donny didn’t get off until 7 so it was just Jackson and myself. The kids go to a very small high school. There’s only about 130 kids. The class sizes are very small and the teachers and staff really get to know the kids. Tonight we got their class schedules so we could go to each class and see what they do. The teachers all had to sign off and then you had seven places to take selfies. After you get the classes and selfies signed off on your kids are entered into a drawing to win prizes. I hope they won, but they won’t find out until tomorrow. Anyway, It was a lot of fun.But now, let me show you one of the selfies because they all look the same. My son WILL NOT SMILE IN PICTURES. He thinks it’s funny to make it look like a mug shot. I don’t think it’s funny.

I promise he’s a happy sweet kid lol

Evan’s Corner

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn family, JournalLeave a comment

Have you ever read a book that changed your life?

When I was in the very early years of elementary school, we read a book as a class. I loved it. I read and reread it as much as I could. Little did I know, at the time, that this little book, would stay with me forever.

Even as I grew into an adult and had children of my own, I always referenced this book. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I knew the story by heart.

Today while I was in the shower the story popped into my head once again and I knew I had to find out the name of this book.

And, thanks to an extensive Google search, I found it.

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It’s about a little boy living with his family of 8 in an overcrowded apartment. He just wants a place to call his own so his mother lets him pick out a corner that he can call his. He finds some old crates to use as a desk. He paints pictures to hang on the wall and even gets a pet turtle. He loves his little corner until he realizes he misses playing with his brothers and sisters. He invites his little brother into his corner and they end up picking a corner for him and Evan helps him fix it up. Evan realizes that it’s good to have your happy place but it’s even better when you share it with others.

It dawned on me that my home and this blog is my corner. Just like Evan’s corner, I use what I have to make it work. To make a place filled with the best parts. A small cozy reprieve from the craziness that is happening around us.

I won’t write about breaking news or politics. I’m well aware if what’s going on, but this isn’t the place for it. There are a million blogs out there about those subjects.

When I look back and re-read my posts, I want to remember the good stuff that happened. So yes, if you happen to stumble upon this blog, it might seem hokey and optimistic, but that’s okay by me. I keep it public because sometimes we all need a little hokey in our lives.

Lake Day

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn Day Trip, familyLeave a comment

Our original plan was to go to the lake on mother’s day. Luckily Donny called then on Saturday to see if Caddo Lake State Park was open and it turns out that during the quarantine you have to buy a ticket and they had sold out for the weekend. So we went ahead and got tickets for Monday instead.

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I had wanted to come here since I found the cutest bed and breakfast in a book I had many years ago. It was near this lake and the pictures showed the old cypress trees covered in Spanish moss growing out of the water. Unfortunately, I lived in Austin at the time and it was a pretty long drive, so it was a no to that B&B. Now we are only 45 minutes away.

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The canoe rental was closed, but next trip we definitely plan to rent one.

IMG_20200511_124932 We planned to do a little fishing. There are two really good fishing piers.

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IMG_20200511_132405 Hannah caught the first fish.

IMG_20200511_133039 Jack caught the next one and ended up catching the most. We threw them all back, but everyone had fun.

IMG_20200511_135124 After a few hours of fishing, we decided to do a little geocaching. If you’ve never tried it, you should. All you have to do is download the app.It will tell you how far you are from a cache, give you the coordinates and then you have to find it. The cache can be all different things. Sometimes there are little gifts, but most of the time there is just a log where you sign your name and the date you found it.

The first one we went to look for, we couldn’t find. I don’t know if it was because since the quarantine the “faint trail” we were looking for had grown over, but we got an hour long hike out of trying. Even though we didn’t find it, the hike was fabulous.

IMG_20200512_094041IMG_20200511_160215IMG_20200511_160042 At the top of a hill we came across this structure that was built in the 1930’s.

IMG_20200511_155910 By the time we got back down to the trailhead, we were all pretty worn out. It was getting late so we decided to head home. I had seen that there was another geocache not far from the entrance to the park so we decided to give it another shot and guess what…..

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We found it!!!!!!

IMG_20200511_163116IMG_20200511_163113 The perfect ending to a really good day.

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The Green

On By thefunkyfrugalistaIn family, Longview, tx, Things to doLeave a comment

Every time we were heading out of town we would drive by this park. I always wanted to go see what it was all about, but it seemed as though it never worked out. It was either raining or the kids wanted to go to the trails.

FINALLY last weekend we had some beautiful weather and decided to see what it was all about. We were not disappointed.

Hot air balloon statue since we have the balloon races here, in Longview, every year.

The kids were fascinated with the wire sculptures that were all around the park. The first one we came to.

There is a path that runs around and through the park.

A wind chime made of recycled materials.

There is even a little free library. The kids loved this. We even came back later that evening with books to donate. Hannah took a couple she’s reading now.

There is a notebook in the little library that you can draw a picture, write a poem or just leave a message. That’s what Hannah was doing.

Another one of the kids favorite parts was the music area.

“Bongos”

There were benches by the music area. How cool is this?

See? Recycling IS important. Thank you, Chick-fil-A.

We found two little snails chilling on a rock.

There really is a whole ecosystem here.

THIS!!!!! There is no typical playground equipment. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to play on.

Another super cool wire sculpture.

Little surprises in the trees.

Knife, fork and spoon wind chime.

I can’t imagine how beautiful the trees will look in the Spring and Summer, but they were still pretty without leaves.

We loved this wire fisherman.

This park opened in March 2018. There is a big pavilion that is used for concerts and can be rented out also.

There are several picnic tables around the park, but there is one designated picnic area. I love the Kansas fence posts that are placed around it.

Just plain good!!!

I cannot wait to go back. It is exactly 10 minutes from our home. Why was I thinking it was so much further???? If you ever come through Longview, I highly suggest taking a break and stopping by The Green. It’s relaxing, informative and just an all around great park. I think it could be my favorite.

I’ll leave you with this.

Namaste,

Stacy