HELP our Friends!

I am writing to ask...plead...beg...pester you to help our friends win a kitchen makeover. If any of you have ever entered a contest where the number of votes you get determine if you win or not, you know how important this is! Justin and I helped them out a few weeks ago by making a video with them for the contest. So by voting for them, you would also be showing us love too. :) Here is how you can help them win a kitchen makeover.

1. Go here
2. "Like" the page
3. Click "Allow Access"
4. Click "Allow"
5. Click "Browse Entries"
6. Click on the Woods video and give them 5 stars.

August 4th is the deadline so please vote before then!

I know there are many steps to the but please take the time and vote for them. The video is funny if I do say so myself. Also, make sure you only vote for the Wood's video not anyone else's! You are only able to vote once so make it count.

Your vote is greatly needed and appreciated. Thanks you so much for your vote!

A High School Graduation

May was a month full of travel for us. The weekend after my brother's graduation we traveled to Atlanta to celebrate the high school graduation of a family friend. We arrived in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon. After spending some time reconnecting with the Fosters we headed out to dinner. There are many reason I love going to Atlanta and the Fosters are one of them. We are like family and it is never a dull moment when we are all together. I think another reason why I love spending time with them is because we are always doing fun girl stuff. When you grow up being the only girl you don't always get to spend your days going shopping and getting your nails done - which is what we did Friday. How could we allow Daly to graduate without having a morning of pampering with some manicures and pedicures? Sorry...I didn't get any pictures because the day was full of running errands.

Now on to the graduation. I have not thought about my high school graduation in 9 years. I guess I was just so excited to be done with high school. Don't get me wrong I have thought about my high school days many times over the last nine years, but I never really think back to my graduation day. However, during this graduation old memories came back to me of my own graduation. It was great to take a walk down memory lane. During the commencement, Daly gave a speech to honor her teachers, which she did a great job with. After the ceremony there was a reception. It was fun/weird watching all the seniors taking pictures together and talk about what they were going to do over the summer and where they would be attending college. Weird, because I seem like yesterday I was doing the same thing.

My camera was acting weird so forgive me for the pictures.


Saturday was a another great day. Most of the morning was spent getting ready for the graduation party Daly and two of her friends would have that night at the house. Well, in all honesty it was the guys that spent most of the morning getting things ready. The girls went around town looking for candles to put on the tables and other things for the party. After everything was ready Justin, Abe, Lindsay, and I decided it was time to head downtown to shop.This is off topic but I just have to say that I really miss the shopping in ATL. When we got back home everything was set up and the party was about to start. Everything about the party was great. I am so glad we were able to be there for Daly.


It was a wonderful weekend celebrating with Daly and her family. We are all so proud of her!! She will be following her mothers foot steps and will be attending Auburn in the fall. My parents are big Mississippi State fans so I am sure there will be some tailgating when State and Auburn play each other in September. I will be cheering for State that day.

So Close...

Hey, it's Justin. Yes, I actually write the posts on here every now and then (okay, this is only the second time). As you know, Sally often writes about various projects that we work on. Well, this time I had a project that would have been the perfect bloggable project. I went into it camera-in-hand, ready to document my way through so that I could write a wonderfully informative post as a celebration of the successful completion of the project.

What was this project, you ask? It was the replacement of the driver's door lock actuator in our Honda Accord. Of course, I expect that all of your know what a lock actuator is, but for those of your who (like me) should be reading "Car Repair for Dummies" instead of attempting projects like this, an actuator is the small electronic piece that actually creates the movement that locks and unlocks your car door.

Unfortunately, a few months ago our driver's door lock stop working electronically. It would still lock/unlock the door, but it wouldn't do so when we pressed the remote button. After a little Googling I discovered that the cause was most likely a bad actuator. I ordered a new one on Ebay, found a "How to Replace a 2005 Honda Accord Actuator" tutorial online, waited for a few free hours on a Saturday afternoon, and had a go at it.

Things were coming along quite nicely. I got the door off, peeled back the plastic sheet on the door, and located the actuator. I removed the power from the actuator and plugged it into the new one to test and see if it would work - it did! The only thing left to do was to actually remove the old actuator and put the new one in.

Sadly, that's about the time my project ended. Apparently when they put cars together, they hire the winners of the "World's Strongest Man" competition to put in the screws. I absolutely could not get the old piece out of the door...not without starting to strip the screws. But rather than try harder and risk stripping them completely, I thought it would be wiser to honor Sally's one request given before I started the project: "Please just don't break anything."

And so my project ended there...so close, yet unsuccessful. I'll guess I'll just have to suck it up and take it to the Honda dealer :(

Here's some pics showing how far I got:

This is the door with the interior panel removed. I had to peel back that plastic stuff to get to the actuator, and after that it was still tucked behind the metal part of the door on the left

I taped a mirror to the inside of the door so I could see the piece. Those two black plugs are what I removed and plugged into the new actuator to make sure that it would work.

The culprits. Screw these screws!! No seriously, I wish I could have...or unscrew them rather...

The new actuator. If only I could have removed those screws...

What can I say...I tried. I'm just glad I didn't break anything.

Abe the Master

In May (I know I am still two months behind) I went to Louisville, KY to celebrate my brother's graduation from seminary. I had never been to Louisville but had heard what a great place it was. I was very excited to make the trip with my parents. It was a long 8 or 9 hour drive but when you can sleep in the backseat it does not make for a bad drive.

While Abe was in school he worked at a hotel and was able to get us a room here. It is a very nice hotel downtown. Abe scored us a room on the concierge floor in the Gatsby suite. The room was nice but what I loved the best about the room was the shoe shining box. I had never seen one before and thought it was amazing. I just wish I had shoes that needed shining. This is the view of the box from inside the room.

When we arrived it was dinner time so we went to a place my mom had read about in the Southern Living Magazine. I can't remember the name but it was a real treat. It is a very eclectic place that has a fun gift shop. You know me, I love any kind of shop. While waiting for our table we had a great time trying on hats and looking around the shop.


This is a view of the inside of the restaurant. I have to stay that this image does not do this place justice. Another thing that set this place apart was the fact that they had toys at the table for you to play with while you waited on your food. Not just that game with the golf tees like at Cracker Barrel but real toys, like toy horses, a "seek and find" game, crayons, and a few other things.
When we finished dinner we took some time to have a fun photo op with the outdoor decorations. There was a lot more stuff outside that I just did not take pictures of but it was just as eclectic as the inside.

After dinner we walked around part of the city and wasted time until we had made room for dessert. We finally made our way to the Pie Kitchen. As I am writing this, my mouth is watering just thinking back to my experience. I wish Clinton or even the Metro Jackson area had a good dessert place that had more than ice cream or yogurt. I had a delicious piece of apple pie and a scoop of peanut butter ice cream. It was so good!!

The graduation was at 10:00 in the morning so we arrived in time to get good seats and did some people watching while we waited for the ceremony to start. The weather was great until 10:00 when the ceremony started. That is when the sun came out from behind the clouds and fried us. Other than the sun it was a great experience. It was all worth it to watch Abe graduate with a Master of Divinity form Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.



Later that afternoon Lindsay and my mom put together a cookout at a great park on the Ohio River to celebrate. We had steaks cooked by my dad along with chips, potato salad, broccoli salad as well as some other things that I can't remember. The highlight of the night was the great cupcakes that Lindsay had made. They not only tasted great but looked great too. Here a few shots of the food table and some of people that came to the party.





It was a great trip! I am glad that I was able to make the trip to see Abe and Lindsay. Now I only have to drive and hour and a half since they moved to Louisiana two weeks after this weekend. Since they have moved we have made many trips to each other houses.

Welcome to the Beach

In May we took a beach trip to Gulf Shores with a few of our friends to have a farewell weekend for our friends who moved to Australia. We borrowed my parents car so we could all be together and loaded all our stuff in the car and drove five and a half hours playing games and doing anything we could to make the time go by.

When we got there it was late and we all were really excited to see what the condo would be like. We booked this particular condo, site unseen. It was wonderful! We had three nice bedrooms each with its own bathroom. I didn't get any pictures of the inside of the condo but take my word for it, it was really nice and we had lots of space.

On our first real day at the beach some of us didn't use a high enough SPF and, well...we got burned. We laid out until later afternoon. It was great just sitting on the beach. The guys laid out some, but got antsy and played football and frisbee.


A beach trip is not complete without a foot in the sand picture. What is funny about this picture is that we are all wearing the same color nail polish.

After taking all the sun we could for one day we when back to the condo and got ready to going shopping and for dinner. You can kinda tell that we are a little red but this picture does not show how really burned we all were.


After dinner we went to a souvenir store to look at getting a boogie board. While we were there Justin and I had a great time trying on hats.

The second day was also a blast. I didn't spend as much time on the beach because I was burned, but I did use a better sunscreen the second time around. Justin had a big scare in the water while he was boogie boarding. If you see him you should ask him about it. All I have to say is that I am so glad I didn't know what was going on. After lunch some of us took naps while others went back out to the beach. Before heading out that night we decided to try and take some pictures on the beach. It was a bust because of the wind. I am not sure we were able to get one good pictures. Here are some of our attempts.

The same thing about this picture is that all of them look just like this. Mine and Jessica's hair are blowing in our faces. Somehow Heather was able to keep her hair out of the way.
We spent out last night playing putt-putt and eating at LuLu's and went and got ice cream for dessert. Also this was Sunday night so when we got back to the condo we turned on the TV to watch Obama tell the world the Bin Laden was dead. I know that has nothing to do with anything but it was something that made the last night a little more memorable (in an odd way).

We had a great time and are very grateful for the time we were able to spend with our wonderful friends!