Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find....

I tend to think daily of musical theater lyrics.. or., any lyrics that go along with whatever situation I am in, at any given moment of the day. It wasn't too long ago that my sister and I were together, and whenever that happens, atleast once during our hem-haw, we break into a chorus of "Sisters" from White Christmas. (The musical is coming to Memphis THIS December!) The particular situation I'm trying to think of now has escaped me, but... we were doing something.. when something else happened, we both looked at each other and busted into the same exact random song. Wish I could make the details of that a little more clearer. Ha.

Once upon a time something really funny happened, but no one can remember. Isn't that a grand story?

Oh me, .. the strange things my mind does. As it would happen, I am currently behind two computer screens at the moment, (I know, I'm really just begging for a migraine.) proctoring an exam. This is the only chance I get to update my blog. So, a while ago, I needed a break to pop some ibuprofen, reason for that will come later, and when I went to do that, naturally, I spilled half a bottle of water on myself trying to get the thing open. Great. I walked back into the room full of prospective college students with my shirt all wet. Geez.

One more story about me and then I'll get on to the main point. Brad and I have decided that, in the name of being more healthy, not losing weight, just being more healthy... ("losing weight" makes me nervous.. and more than likely will end in failure) that we will become professional mountain bikers. See, I need realistic goals here. We dug our bicycles out of the garage two weeks ago, shined and oiled them up, and took a spin around the block. Ouch. Riding a bicycle was MUCH more painful than I had remembered, but then, the last time I really rode, I was about 14 years old. Woo. It took me about ten 5 minute bike rides to lose the pain in my sit-bones over the course of two weeks, and then we hit Shelby Farms yesterday afternoon.

It really did scare me to ride on gravel.. its very unsteady, and so every time I came to a downhill ride on gravel, I got off my bike and walked it down. Haha. Lame, I know.. ahaha. As the afternoon went on, I got more and more courage about switching gears on an incline and breaking while going down hill. It is very difficult to keep a bike steady on the little bike trails. They are literally the width of the tire and thats it. So here we go up this hill, Jack (the great dane) running in circles all around us, bike ruts everywhere and big ruts from rainwater, and I'm punching it as hard as I can trying to get up this hill. I'm in the lowest gear, and thought I was really going to make it up when Jack the bonehead gets right in front of me and STOPS! Haha.. so instead of putting my left foot down on the ground, I put the right one down (I had a 50-50 chance of getting it correct) which happened to be over a pretty deep rut. And down I went into the dust and ruts. I just laid there covered in dirt and laughed. What can you do?

Ok, so thats my bike story for the week.

June 11, 2011 - YARD SALE in Midtown! Caroline, Mary Ruth, and Yours Truly, pooled a buncha JUNK together and made some real play money at the yard sale. Must do this again! Sure was an early Saturday morning, though! Whew.

Jack just HAD to play dressup in what was left from the yard sale stuff.

On the way home from the office one day.. I came across two gigantic tractors pulling discs down GERMANTOWN PARKWAY at lunch hour! WHO DOES THAT? I mean... I guess when you need to get somewhere you need to go, but.. really?? Tractors?? This ain't Lauderdale County!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match. Find me find, catch me a catch! This is how Grammy plays with her GrandSON.

Isn't Eli such a cutie here??? Wait... yup, you guessed it! This isn't Eli. Its BRADLEY!!!!!! Cunning resemblance, right?

Peace.

June Is Bustin' Out All Over

Greetings!

I'm not for sure on the reason why I have put off updating my blog for over a month.., but, ah, it happens. May was CAH-RAZY for us Harrell folk! I think I got as far as Mother's Day in my previous post. After that, (May 8) I had several playing gigs for churches and schools, etc. Come to think of it, May is very similar to December in the concert world... concert, concert, concert. Very busy... but pretty lucrative.

Mid-way through May I even began a part time job at Union University Germantown campus. Yup, where Brad works too. I'm helping the sweet admissions folks out the office for the summer...and man, could it not have come at a better time! All my private piano students take breaks over the summer, well most of them, I think I have 4 or 5 now..., and so the extra income is very nice.

Here'a few images from the month of May and early June from the Harrell Plantation:

Friday, May 13 I played at my music club's annual spring tea recital. Eli and Brad came to cheer me on... actually, I was somewhat shocked that Eli sat through the whole hour long recital with no hollering out.. !! He is so good, bless his heart. That, and he loves music! But Brad was exhausted from being in baby-entertainment mode during that time.

Eli got his first harp lesson in the orchestra room at church...

April and May were very stormy months... this was the last big storm we had. It was on a Wednesday evening, so the Prices held up with us through the storm! We graded music papers and made oreo balls and even grilled out during the tornado warnings. hahah.

Eli went swimming for the first time at Aunt Freda's house on Memorial Day. This picture was taken a couple of days later at our condo complex. He LOVES the water!

He is getting to big for his little baby cradle thing. :(

Dr. Harrell, I presume

The Final Fabulous Finish Line and Mother's Day

Last week was a pretty high-octane, killer week. Brad spent each day in Jackson with his students who flew in and drove in from all corners of the globe for "on-campus" week. I had several rehearsals lined up for upcoming recitals and concerts, and I was on the final stretch of editing my Master's thesis. The final cut was printed Thursday afternoon May 5 and I got that things bound and presented with a big shiny "A" pasted on the front. Too bad she really didn't have a big hot pink "A" sticker to stick on it..., but then again, I guess I'm not in preschool...

The week began (where I left off in my previous edition) on Saturday. I came home from a morning of teaching lessons and running errands to find my two loves enjoying the beautiful weather on the patio.

Tuesday came around quickly and while Mommy was rehearsing at a nearby school for a choir concert, Eli got to meet and play with his newest friend Adrien - who happens to be two and a half years old and is pretty fluent in English, Chinese and French. We need to visit there more often. :)

This is during one of my practice sessions at the piano. I always turn the little TV on but mute it so I can play. The piano sits right behind this sofa and at one point I didn't hear the racket of toys clanging together, so I turned around and this is what I found. Of course he's more interested in watching Mommy play than in watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Haha.

Wednesday evening I was very surprised find this scene when I turned the corner to pick him up from the nursery at church. He's getting so big. This sitting up thing is new this week.

Friday morning my Daddy drove down south for a morning of his daughters and little sweet Eli. Breakfast at IHOP turned out to be one of those "misses" in the "his restaurant experiences are hit-and-miss" category, as it fell right during his morning nap time, but we had a good time anyway.

I had to include this one. Brad worked a 12 hour shift in the ER Saturday. This was at breakfast before his loooonnnnggg workday.

I need to find pictures of Wyatt's (Eli's cousin) first birthday party that we attended on Saturday afternoon to include here. We drove up to Ripley, my BFF Kayla in-tow, and went to the big first birthday bash for little Wyatt. Can't believe its been a year since our little family has entered baby-dom!

Later on that night Kayla and I drove to Jackson to attend a beautiful wedding on the campus of Lambuth University and danced and partied our little hearts out at the reception until midnight. Exhaustion set in promptly after that. But we SHO needed a night out to let our hair down and have some FUN! Congrats and Best Wishes to Mr & Mrs Tucker!

So after the huge wedding celebration in Jackson, we decided to bunk at Kayla's in-laws' home instead of driving the hour back to Memphis. So on my very first Mother's Day I woke up in someone else's house, without my baby! :( But I woke up super early and hit the road at 6:30am to make the drive back home in time for church! But, when I got there, we had a big breakfast and went to sleep! Yikes! (Eli had spent the night in Ripley with his grandparents after the birthday party)

We got in the car (again) and drove an hour to Ripley to celebrate Mother's Day with my husband's family out in the country. A big lunch, a tour of the backwater (the MS River is SOO high right now), some lazy talk, playing with cousin Wyatt's new birthday toys, and visiting Grammy (my Mommy) made for a full Mother's Day.

Here is a picture of me, my younger sister, and Mama sometime in the late 80s I would say. Maybe 1988 or 1989. Happy Mother's Day!!

Happy Royal Wedding Day!

The time currently is 1:21pm. I have a slight tired headache because, yes, I set my alarm for 5:00am Central Standard Time to be awake when Kate Middleton walked into Westminster Abbey as the blushing bride of Prince William Mountbatten-Windsor. What a glorious day London has had! I'm thinking it is now about 6:30pm and I'm sure all involved are exhausted to the point of death. Oh Happy Day! Many blessings to the newlyweds!

Yesterday was pretty uneventful mainly because I finished up the final first draft of my masters thesis! Yay! The struggle is over! As a reward to Elijah for literally entertaining himself for the last 2 days, I gave him a pretty little tree in the northeast corner of his bedroom. Looks great... I think I'll do another couple or so around the room later on... But.. he seemed to like it, .. I think.

When Daddy arrived home from Jackson today, we all had quite a hankerin' (that means "craving" for all my yankee friends..) for some Mexican food, so while Daddy and Eli waited on Momma to get everything out of the house in preparation to go, Eli got his first driving lesson. :)

This is a picture of Eli at the restaurant. As long as he can find something to focus on, he's a-okay!

And naturally, this is what he was focused on. Hahahah

Back at home for the evening having HIS supper.. isn't he such a big boy now holding his own bottle? :)

Peace.

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Happy Easter everyone! I trust everyone woke this morning and gussied up with bonnets and hats and special new dresses and new shoes to go to church and worship the risen Christ!!

We sure did! Bellevue was busting at the seams this morning at the 9:30 service and had a big ol' crowd again at the 11:11 service too. The orchestra and choir lead the worship at both services, so we arrived bright and early in our "uniforms" (no new easter dresses or bow ties for us!) promptly at 8:15 and parked in the soccer field parking lot. (We were asked to park there to leave room for visitors in the main lots.) We three Harrells boarded a BBC shuttle bus with a couple of other orchestra friends and rode through the parking lot to the church. Everyone was so excited! The excitement of everyone was so apparent from the door greeters to the nursery workers and everyone else we met in the hall. The choir room was FULL of food and was buzzing with Easter greetings, the aroma of coffee and old spice, and ladies applying some last minute lipstick.

The worship service was glorious. And when I say glorious I mean you could SEE the Holy Spirit in that room!! Amazing! We prayed and laughed and sang some amazing music! The choir and orch went back to the choir room for some of that food that was in there and we actually watched the sermon from the choir room. (Since there was no room in the inn! - i mean, in the sanctuary for any of us to sit since the Prodigal set is still up and the choir loft really isn't there right now...)

It wouldn't be truly a day in the life of the Harrell family if some silly little tragedy did not occur. Brad and I had our little plates of breakfast food (some AWESOME cheesey grits casserole!) and glasses of orange juice with us on the top row of seats in the choir room. Brad thought it would be a good idea to set his glass of orange juice down on the pathway through the riser. Oi. I SO saw that accident waiting to happen. One lady passed through and stepped over it. Phew. Another mother and daughter were coming through. The mother stepped over it...but alas, the daughter kicked the whole glass of orange juice over, spilling juice not only on the top level where we were but down onto the lower level and I'm sure dripping all down underneath. (The levels are like risers.) Nobody made any type of mood to clean it up. Nobody! So.. here goes momma Harrell, with napkins in hand and butt high up in the sky trying to dry up the juice. BRAD!

Ok, ok... so after church we headed straight home to crash.., and crash we did. After a very light lunch of hamburger surprise, we popped in the new DVD we were given at church this morning of the Prodigal performance, put Eli to bed, and then put ourselves to bed. We slept until 5pm. All three of us. lol.

After a couple of hours of more tv and more R&R, we went over the Shelby Farms to get some fresh air and to let the dog run and jump like he likes to so every now and then. We loaded up Eli in his trusty stroller and off we went. Home again in about an hour and to bed everyone!

What a wonderful day in the Lord we spent together!

Easter Eve

Greetings, all! Happy Easter! He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!!

Today is Saturday - the day before Easter Sunday! I have such fond memories of the day before Easter growing up in the Asbury Community in Ripley, TN. We always had a great big Easter Egg Hunt on the church grounds. The "prize egg" was the most coveted egg hidden and it was always a potato wrapped in foil, if I remember correctly. Wonder why the "prize egg" wasn't even an egg?

Anyway, today I happened to be out early this morning running an errand, about 10:30am and I ended up coming back home through Bellevue's parking lot. I saw the Easter Egg Hunt. Wow!!! So many people and children and then I saw a whole soccer field literally covered in multi-colored eggs! Hahah... That brought a big smile to my face. I wonder if Eli will be big enough to hunt eggs next year... oh the fun we will have!

Today Grammy and Papa Don came to visit. Sister also visited during her lunch break and we all had quite a feast of pork tenderloin and rice with artichoke hearts. Yum. Eli had sweet peas and some yummy formula. :) After dinner and after Sister went back to work, the four of us went on a stroll around the community.

A much needed break after a long walk...

A nice warm bath to end the day and to be fresh and smellin fly for church in the morning!

Dr. Brad went in to work today at the hospital, and so he's been gone all day. I got my house back in order, which was an all day process with a four hour break in the middle to visit with the parents, and then after Eli went to bed at 8:30p, I finished my day up with putting away clean laundry and baking some chocolate chip cookies that'll be fresh when Brad gets home tonight. Good night!

Happy Easter!

Rolly Poly

Here is Eli's little SeaWorld Jungle Gym that he can lay in on his back and look up at things to play with. He has been using this since he was a week old and has been quite successful at playing in it. Yesterday, however, I laid him down in it and proceeded on to the kitchen to get some cleaning done and when I walked back in to the nursery to check on him FIVE minutes later, this is what I found! Hahaha. He had rolled all the way over in the middle of the floor in the dirty clothes pile. Movement, here we come!