Jeremy Herndon

Guest post written by Sharlene Brooks

For once, I’m not going to have to worry about which pie I’m fixing for our huge  family gathering for Thanksgiving Day. I always wonder about that because my family is all about the pies and I like to make sure that we have no repeats. But instead of doing the normal thing for Thanksgiving this year, I’m going to take my family to see the Thanksgiving Day parade!

It’s something that I’ve thought about doing for a few years now, but I finally decided to just go ahead and do it before the kids get a little older and have other things that they need to do during the Thanksgiving break. I was online a few months ago booking our hotel and everything for it when I ran across some information on getting a hearing aid. That’s also something that I’d been thinking about for a while, so I decided to go ahead and get fitted before the big trip.

I think that we’re going to have so much fun with the parade and I just want to make sure that we’re all ready for the trip and pack everything. It’s going to be a whirlwind of a trip, but I think that it’s going to be amazing!

Several years ago my mother-in-law gave us a couple of dining room tables with matching chairs. She was in the process of moving to a smaller house and was giving away a lot of furniture. The chairs were in very sad shape, however, and the seats in about half of them needed to be replaced. We didn’t know how we were going to fix them, and so they have been gathering dust for a couple of years in the garage. My wife has been reluctant to throw them away, so I was humoring her.

Yesterday a box arrived on the doorstep – a box full of new seats for the chairs! Seems as if my resourceful wife found a website where she could buy replacement seats and she ordered them, just in time for the family gathering planned for later this week! Now all we have to do is break out a couple of screw drivers and fix them up!

When asked what my favorite home style cooking restaurant is I always have to say that it’s Cracker Barrel, they serve breakfast all day and all night, so people who like to (or get to) sleep in late can still have pancakes when they go out to eat. They also have daily specials of comfort foods, like baked chicken, meatloaf, pot roast. My favorite day for specials is Thursday – it is real roasted turkey with dressing.

I like to poke around in the gift shop – they change the merchandise out often and there are always plenty of new items to look at and and coo over. Sometimes while waiting for an empty table in the dining room we will sit out on the big front porch and rock in the wood and rattan chairs that they sell.

Contribution by Stevie Kirby

Birthdays at our house are always a big deal. My husband and I make it a point to make our kids feel very special on their birthdays because our parents did the same growing up. When I was little, my parents let me pick what I wanted for dinner on the night of my birthday and sometimes I got to go out to dinner alone with my parents, which was a treat since I have three younger siblings. My husband’s family goes out to lunch on the Sunday around each family member’s birthday. This year our son will be turning three and after trying to think of something to get him, we decided to Get WildBlue internet so we could do some online research. We found him a really cute tricycle that I think he will really like. He is pretty coordinated, so I think he will have no problems riding it. I can’t wait to see how excited he will be when he opens it. The only problem is I ordered it a week ago and his birthday is in three days and we haven’t gotten it yet. I guess I should probably call the company to make sure it shipped.

A couple of months ago I decided to buy a couple of tomato plants.  I’ve never grown tomatoes before, and I didn’t know what to expect.  I planted beefsteak tomatoes, and they are ripening at a good comfortable pace so that we are not overwhelmed with fresh tomatoes.  I never expected fresh tomatoes picked out of our garden and eaten the same day would have so much great flavor!  My wife is surprised that I’m eating them because whenever we go to a restaurant and get a salad I order it without tomatoes, proclaiming that I don’t like tomatoes!  Well, now I’ve decided that I like them a lot, but it will be hard for a restaurant to come up with tomatoes that taste as good as what I’ve got growing right outside my door!