Carving Pumpkins

Jason and I have a Fall Bucket List that we've been working on for the last month or so.
Nothing like waiting until the night before Halloween to check off the "decorate a pumpkin" box!

{I tend to chew on my tongue when I'm concentrating. 

Some people call it weird. 

I prefer to think of it as endearing.}

{Pumpkin guts are gross and stinky. 

I ditched any notion I had of roasting pumpkin seeds thirty seconds into the whole process. 

So not worth fishing through all that slime.}

{Thank heaven for a husband with power tools!}

{Clearly, pumpkin carving is serious and intense work.}

{Or not.}

Happy Halloween from Mr. and Mrs. Petree!

Heeding the call to silence

No, I haven't already flaked on this whole blogging thing. Just taking a day or two to be silent and let things percolate. Back with something other than pictures tomorrow, promise!

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{Nothing says Sunday afternoon for me like a trip to Jo-Ann's for crafty supplies.} 

{October Photo a Day, 14 - Finding photos that my best friends took while I was away from the table definitely make me laugh.} 

{I took today off since the college kids are on Fall Break. I slept through Jason leaving, but I adore his style of a love note.} 

{October Photo a Day, 15 - Miracle of miracles, two weeks in a row of actually having a plan for dinnertime at The Petree House.} 

Saturdays Are My Favorite

After a deliciously lazy morning and during a lull in Jason's college football viewing, we headed downtown for Oktoberfest 2012.

{Pumpkin beer from Brooklyn? Don't mind if I do.} 

{photo credit: Jason}

{photo credit: Jason}

{The Bratwich was definitely the right choice. DELISH.}

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{Scored these two beauties at a random parking lot yard sale. 

They tied with the Bratwiches for best $10 deal of the day.}

{Game time prep is no joke, folks. 

There's an entire game riding on which shirt Jason wears, don't you know?}

{October Photo a Day, 13 - Today's serene landscape.}

 Tell me about your Saturday, please!

There is a castle on a cloud...

Did you know that what is now Covenant College used to be a hotel that was often called "Castle in the Clouds"? 

It's true. 

And this morning, I discovered that the nickname is well deserved.

The last few days have been a wonderful blur of inaugural activities, but I have a deliciously lazy Saturday stretching in front of me tomorrow. It's guaranteed to be the kind of day where I have room to stretch my writing muscles and try to put into words all the moments where my heart nearly burst with joy, pride, and gratefulness. 

In the meantime, I'm that wonderful kind of exhausted that comes at the end of a well worn week filled with good works. The triple espresso I had this morning has long since worn off and we've got a copy of "The Hunger Games" to watch.

I'm ok with this kind of exhausted.

{October Photo a Day, 5 - A shadow kiss to start the weekend.}

Five Minute Post

In bullet form, no less. Ready? Go!

• I feel a little neither here nor there these days. I love my job and I love my husband and our home. Well, I don't so much love the structure that houses our home or the neighbors all around us or the actual neighborhood...I digress. It's just that I haven't really figured out how to balance my time such that the house gets clean, the dog gets walked, meals get cooked, lunch gets packed and I have time to work in some sort of exercise (even though I don't want to do that last one). Don't get me wrong, Jason's willing to do whatever he needs to do to help, I just have control issues, extreme laziness and set ridiculously high expectations for myself where domestic things are involved. Sounds fun, right? Right.You should try living with me. 

• I love my job. Let me say that again, I LOVE MY JOB. Every day is a delight. No joke. It is beyond thrilling to look forward to going to work and enjoy being there all the ding dong day.

• My sister is off at survival school getting beat up for a good cause so that she knows how to (hopefully never) deal with it someday. The big sister in me wants to fly out there and give those instructors what for. But I think they would just laugh at me.

• Like with most things, I went full steam into WIWW and then completely lost steam last week. After being strongly encouraged by Abby, we'll see if it makes a comeback next week. They jury's still out on that one. 

• In the spirit of embracing spontaneity and the freedom we have to do things at the last minute, Jason and I are going to see Brian Regan's show tonight. He's one of the top five things that will make my darling man belly laugh and I can't wait to watch that happen for a solid hour and a half. Seriously, it's one of my favorite things to hear his belly laugh. Count yourself lucky if you say or do something and it earns that laugh, my friends.

• It's been cold enough to merit sassy brown boots and a scarf. In fact, I've decided that I want my fall/winter uniform to be cute dresses, tall boots and scarves.

• I'm about to leave work and have my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season. If you happen to run into me this evening, that should explain the giant grin on my face.

Five Years

A five year wedding anniversary on August 5th feels momentous. Five years feels weighty and accomplished. For five years, we have loved and fought and laughed and cried and loved some more. We've become better versions of ourselves and we've still learning how to spur each other on towards more of that. Five years means well established jokes, phrases, secret gestures that the other knows how to read. Five years holds some heartache and doubt, but it also holds the joy that comes from seeing it through to the other side.

I often think of the incredible toast my sister gave at our wedding. She said,

"If you know Leslie at all, you know she believes in fairy tales, the idea of forever, and that drama is the spice of life. As far as fairy tales go, she's always dreamed of Jason, although he's better than anything she could've imagined. 

I came across this one bible verse in high school that I took on as what I wished for Leslie to find in a man. It's Song of Songs chapter 4, verse 9, "You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes." You can tell by this verse that God believes in fairy tales too, and that's just what He gave Leslie and Jason. It had to be one glance, because they only knew each other for a day and then didn't see each other again for six months! Even as great as it is to see that verse come true for them, we all know that love is much more than a fairy tale. Our mom raised us with one thought on love; that it's not just a feeling, it's a decision. So with that in mind, I have one more wish for the two of you... 

(If you'd all raise your glasses and join me.) 

May you wake up everyday with two intentions in mind. The first, that you never doubt your decision to love each other. And secondly, that you choose to love each other more with each new day."

I love you, Richard Jason Petree. I would say those vows, make that choice and say yes all over again. Thank you for loving me so patiently and so well. Happy Anniversary, my love!

{Past Anniversary posts: 2, 3, 4 }

" Coming in at #19 on the CMT Top 20 Countdown this week, it's Blake Shelton...

...with 'Kiss My Country A$$.' "

Featuring Jason and Leslie Petree!

Ok, let me back up and give you the whole really fun story.

Last November, Jason's sister, Angela, and her husband, Brian, decided to surprise their kids and fly from their hometown of Lubbock, Texas to Nashville to take them to the Country Music Association {CMA} Award Show. Our niece, Scout, and nephew, Will, are HUGE country music fans and this was an amazing treat for them. Angela called Jason and asked if we could meet them in Nashville the next day to hang out before the show. Without a second thought and within fifteen minutes, I had a sub lined up for my class and a personal leave request signed and submitted. Bright and early the next morning, we were on our way!

We hit West End first and had breakfast at one of the best places in town {and because we lived in Nashville for a few years back in the day, a childhood favorite of mine}.

Oh my word, it was every bit as delicious as I remembered! Totally worth the wait.

Before:

After:

While we waited for Brian, Angela and the kids to get into town we checked out a couple of shops and I swooned over some pretty paper.

Oh, how I love me some pretty paper.

After a while, we headed towards downtown Nashville. Be still my beating heart, I love this city!

As we wandered around, we were stopped by a small video crew who asked us if we'd like to be in Blake Shelton's newest video. Um.....yes, please!!! We signed a waiver {I have no idea what we signed away, but who cares? We were going to be part of country music!} and were told that all we needed to do was sing along to the lyrics of his soon-to-be-released song while they filmed us and move/dance/act up as much as we wanted to.

Oh yeah. We've so got this.

Now, the only issue was that neither Jason nor I had ever heard the song. The crew played the song for us once while we looked over the lyrics and then it was go time! We managed to do a fair amount of moving around but I'll admit, I did a lot of "watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" as I tried to keep up with the unfamiliar lyrics. Still, it was so much fun to be in front of the camera and you better believe I worked it for all it was worth.

I know you're totally shocked by that statement.

When we were through, they offered us wristbands and told us that they would give us entrance to be part of the crowd around the stage when Blake performed at the CMAs that night. What the what?!?! Unfortunately, sticking around until that late wasn't to be in the cards. I kind of still regret that, but what would come later would make up for it. However, we also got another little participation prize that was pretty cool.

One Nashville adventure down, we headed back towards the riverfront to meet up with the Carter family for lunch. 

It was kind of surreal to be with our Texas family on Tennesse ground! And oh my lord, how we love these kiddos.

We hit the streets again for more sightseeing and to soak up some more of Music City!

At the Ryman, the video crew was filming a much larger group of fans and this time around, they had cue cards for them. Jason and I gave them a hard time that they didn't think of that for us! Also, some of the fans were much more...how should I put this?...um, rowdy than we had been. The crowd got to see a very enthusiastic female fan moon the camera as she took the song title quite literally. Yikes.

With just an hour to go until the Carters needed to head to the arena, we sat down at an open air bar to people watch and visit. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but there were two hilarious dogs on a parked motorcycle with their own sunglasses. You'll see them in a bit, I promise...

It was a fantastic day, the perfect excuse to play hooky from work! The Carters headed off to the award show and we bid goodnight to the Nashville night life.

Ok, so cut to last month and it occurs to me that perhaps the Blake Shelton video was completed. I checked out his website and there it was. I watched it with bated breath to see if we had made the cut...and we did!! 

Now granted, blink and you might miss us, but there we are at the 0:26 mark, right after the lyric, "...and my woman by my side...," sassy as can be. 

Well, I'm sassy. Jason's just a stud.

Cut to this month and the video is now airing on CMT. I saw it on TV for the first time this morning and I'm pretty sure my delighted squeal was enough to wake the neighborhood.

Here we are in all our one second glory! You're going to want to watch this in full screen. Enjoy!

Kiss My Country Ass - Blake Shelton - Blake Shelton Videos