Another Graduation celebration

Unfortunately this is the only picture I took with Austin (the graduate) in it...and it's slightly out of focus...but here's the proud graduate and his (even prouder)...mom. Chuck and Pat have an annual crayfish party and this year it coincided with Austin's graduation celebration.

The tents covered the tables used for the food and games. In between boils...they hosed the table off and played "football"....with crayfish as the players.

Inside Pat had the Orange and Blue theme going.

Cake! and cupcakes....of course I had to have one. (I liked the dancing graduates decorating the cupcakes.) Actually cake was almost all I did eat...haha as I can't handle the spicy food...it was tempting...but I didn't have any crayfish, okra, sausage,corn, lemon, onion or potatoes. I ate some bread...hahah. But everyone else made up for me NOT having any...haha There were 5 boils...and nothing was left afterwards but scraps.

Dillon always in on the action.

Chuck and his brother cooking out back. Chuck is an LSU fan...but wore a Gator shirt in honor of Austin...he did put up his flag though..haha

Getting ready for the "Crayfish Bowl" It was the "Florida French Pinchers" against the "Mississippi Mud Hens". Eleven crayfish were set down in the middle of the "field".

The cups at either end of the board were worth points. 7 points for the center cup, 3 points for the cup on either side. The "quarter" lasted as long as there were "players" on the board. Crayfish either crawled into or backed into the cups to score points....or crawled off the board. 100 squares were up for grabs before the start of the action. $1.00 a square. John had forgotten his wallet...luckily I had a few dollars to spare...hahaha. After all the squares were signed off...Peyton and a friend randomly chose numbers from a cup and assigned them to the squares.

Lori (I think) had a "go-cam" to record the action. The crowd was going wild....in other words...we are easily amused! hahaha

SCORE!

At the end of the first "quarter" the score was 13-12...so John and I were big winners!

An Afternoon Tea-Bridal Shower

This afternoon I got to attend a special tea for our friend Laura who is getting married in March.
Lindsey planned the party....and it turned out perfect. Tea sandwiches, sweets, punch, and tea of course.
The bridal party...minus Brenna who is in Alabama and Laura's future sister -in-law, Heather who had to go to another event.
Pretty table...colorful flowers...simple but just right

Anne and Gayle at the end of the table. (love the fun purple hat Kim's wearing next to me...she borrowed it from a woman she works with...apparently the woman wears a hat to church every Sunday... when she got her invitation...Kim knew exactly who to borrow one from!) I was lucky that Brenna had left one of her hats here...too bad she missed this...she loves hats!
the bride to be
Laura with her sister, Lindsey, her mom, Gayle and her future in-laws who look a bit like gangsters with those shades on...hahah...it was sunny)
Lindsey and one of the guests
opening gifts

most of the bridal party...minus the best one...Brenna who is up in Alabama.



after a couple of games and the gifts...we all posed for a picture. Art took these for me.

Cute favors for everyone.. some chocolate candy and we each got to take the tea cup and saucer we used at the party

The end of October

It was party time...we decided to have a few people over to watch the Gator game
It just so happens that John went fishing Thursday (with Ron, Ben, Charlie) and Friday (with Reid, Chandler, Art) and they caught fish both days. Dolphin, tuna and a big wahoo on Friday!
Chuck and Pat helped roll some sushi. Ron made "Dolphin Parmigiana". we seared some Wahoo and also ate a bunch of other good food.
It also happened to be Reid's 55th birthday today...so we celebrated that....good thing...because we weren't celebrating Georgia's victory over FL...
It was a nice afternoon/evening...met some new people and enjoyed our old friends.
we all ate until we were full.
Then danced some of it off...when the game ended and we got out our WII games.
Ellie and I danced to "Cotton Eye Joe". She danced her shoe off...haha
check out the moves!
Reid enjoyed the party...and we all had fun.
Now if we could just do something about the Gators....... :)

Who doesn't love a costume party?

Who doesn't love a costume party????Certainly not a Burton family member!!! haha Last week Brenna got some free tickets to a function at the United States Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Al....costumes were optional..so Brenna was in ! Right away she was calling me to decide what she was going to dress up as... maybe Connie Conehead........Judy Jetson......something... which sent her to the stores looking for some sort of inexpensive cape to "Bedazzle" hahahaha (she's always loved that bedazzler thing!...haha)But it's tough to find silver capes in April...haha so she had to think a little harder.
I told her about the time Martha, Dixie and I went to the Mardi Gras Ball (hosted by our church) as Martians when my parents were on the committee and the theme was.... SPACE... of course.. We dressed up just like Martha in this photo( seen at this Halloween party circa 1976!) The night of the Mardi Gras Ball...We drove around in Dixie's car and when we stopped at red lights we rolled the windows down and said "Beep Beep Beeep" and laughed to people in other cars and then we went ot the local 7/11, and Martha and Dixie went in and asked the clerk if they happened to have Moon Pies. HAhahahaha oh...we were easily amused!
Better yet.... she could dress like Elizabeth did at one of our Halloween parties...as a piece of Skylab. This was October 1979, and that was the year Skylab was falling from the sky...and no one knew exactly where it was going to land....in case you are too young to remember that little piece of space history. Anyway...Liz put this together...a few NASA stickers, red, white and blue shirt, shorts and tights...a couple of flags and she was good to go. I figured that would get people's attention at the Space and Rocket Center...but Brenna had other plans...haha By the way...the night we had our Halloween party back in 1979...it wasn't ON Halloween night (it was on the 27th)...so not everybody was dressed up when we stopped in at the local spot (Mac's 5th Avenue) later that night. There were some other people from another costume party there though...and between the two groups we convinced the owners to have a costume contest. The winner was the one who got the most applause...we had more people in our group than the other group had in theirs...so it wasn't really fair...haha so lo and behold...Liz was the WINNER! I believe it was a bottle of something...but we didn't really care about that!
Well, Brenna scoured the stores for items that might work for a Conehead...or Judy Jetson....but then decided to be Leela from Futurama. She already had the boots....haha so the rest would be easy and inexpensive...here you go

First Big catch!

Saturday...John, Ron, Reid and Chandler went offshore looking for tuna. This time they found some! They caught their limit. No other fish out there(mahi, that is) but they were thrilled to finally find some big yellow fin tuna. John's not trying to look tough...he's having trouble holding the two fish while I was trying to take his picture. haha
cooler full of fish...haven't seen that sight since two springs ago.
Ra and the girls had to come check out the fish. We tried to get them to stand next to the big ones to compare their sizes...but they got shy. This is the closest we could get them to the fish. well...after a few minutes Olivia decided to touch one. :) As you can see John was putting on the goofy face for the photo.
C and the fish bag...ready to start cleaning.
Cleaning table full of tuna!
When the word got out about the big catch...everyone had to come see for themselves. And as usual...John invited people over for a cookout and sushi rolling party. The weather was perfect!
Pat volunteered to make the rice and roll some sushi. Mike R. was in charge of the grill...a slice of seared teriyaki tuna...tastes just like fillet Mignon! Ben also grilled some fish.
Once Pat started rolling the sushi...she had a few volunteers. Eddie, Amy, John M., Pat G. gave it a try...they rolled...we all ate. We had cucumbers, carrots, avocados and as the evening progressed...we got creative. Theresa had brought cream cheese with Spicy Pineapple Rum sauce from Pampered Chef. It was good on crackers....and then Ron suggested we add it to the sushi...Eddie complied and it was tasty. I think we are all going to be ordering Pampered Chef 's Spicy Pineapple Rum sauce!
we all enjoyed the afternoon/evening, the great fresh food and assorted salads ( that Denise and Theresa brought) and the dessert...of course! Fruit salad and lemon-coconut pound cake.
We were inside (March Madness on TV) and outside...talking, laughing, listening to the music. I think about 25 people came by in all...some came and went quickly...others stayed all evening. We all had fun!