practically perfect.

Every now and then, at the end of the day, I can't help but grin about how good life is... or, I should say, how good the Giver of Life is. Today's one of those days. This weekend has been practically perfect in every way, if I do say so myself-- as you can see, I'm choosing not to acknowledge a little something-something that went down in the Bayou. Let's just not talk about it.

Friday, Alex showed up around 7. Perfect timing-- I had just woken up from my afternoon nap. A much needed nap after two days of subbing for 8th graders. We-- of course-- pulled a new recipe off of Pinterest and got started tag teaming the eats right away. Taco stuffed pasta shells. Probably my favorite Pinterest find so far. While our food baked, we whipped up a French toast casserole for the next morning (Paula Dean insists that it sit overnight, and I don't argue with Paula) and caught up on Modern Family.

Once we pulled our shells out of the oven, we settled on How Do You Know?, a promising movie with Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Jack Nicholson. Or so we thought. There's not a likable character in the movie and the plot never seems to really take off, so it's impossible to really connect with the movie. About an hour in, the funniest part of the movie was our jokes about how awful the movie was.

Saturday morning, Dad and Al had a little male bonding over ESPN while I hit the gym. They hardly even noticed when I lunged across the room, dripping sweat and grunting. Dad only acknowledged me long enough to suggest I bring them drinks. Men.

After a work out and a much-needed shower, Alex and I headed to the pumpkin patch downtown. Listen, this was the first time I'd carved a pumpkin since I was in a single digit age group. Read: Big Deal. I wandered around that patch for nearly half an hour pondering over the perfect pumpkin. Alex settled quickly on a tall, skinny pumpkin, an obvious pick for him. But on that ideal fall day, I was on a mission for an ideal pumpkin. Eventually, I settled on a shorter, squattier pumpkin that I thought was pretty much perfect.

At home, Mom had made brunswick stew for lunch-- always a hit. So we chowed down on that while we watched the first half of a football game that we won't mention here. During halftime, we headed outside for the carving of the pumpkins. As it turns out, I'm a pretty speedy pumpkin carver, so after I finished my own little work of art, I spent my time taking pictures of Alex carving his pumpkin. So you can look forward to an Alex + Pumpkin album on Facebook any day now. It took longer than halftime to finish up our pumpkins, but as it turns out... that's probably for the best.

Next up, I got started on the apple dip for the Alabama game. Alex watched the first half of the game at my house, and I worked on a sewing project for Mom's deck. If you caught the first half of the Bama-Tennessee game, you might can appreciate that it was lucky I had something to keep me out of the room while my Bama boyfriend tried not to pull every hair out of his head. At halftime, we headed to the Brazeltons, and that seemed to make all the difference in Bama's performance. So you're welcome for that, Bama fans.

This morning, we went to church-- Mom's my Sunday school teacher, and it's been a lot of fun to watch the college and career class grow. She's developed quite the little crew of Snead students, which is fairly impressive considering Snead State is two cities over.

After church, we headed for Oneonta for some family time. I've pretty much been looking forward to this little event for weeks. We celebrated my grandmother's birthday-- her 40th, I think-- and spent the day catching up and laughing. And laughing and laughing and laughing. Mallory provided a good deal of the entertainment as she has learned that when she applauds, the room applauds her back. So every few minutes, she'd clap her little hands and scream, and we'd all clap back and yell, "Yayyyyy!" And that little sasspot would collapse in giggles. I might be a little biased, but she's basically the cutest baby on this entire planet.

From there, the parents and I headed to my other grandmother's house for a little visit, where Dad and I promptly started pillaging her stuff. Sometimes we fancy ourselves something close to treasure hunters, so we climbed up in the attic-- I climbed tights and boots and all, thank you very much-- and rummaged through boxes in search of my Papaw's old wide-brimmed hats. The hats were never found, but I did claim a couple of antique suitcases. I also managed to convince my grandmother that her old wedding bands-- the thin one from her engagement at age 15 and the wider one from later in her marriage-- would look lovely on my naked hands. So it was a pretty successful visit indeed.

For the rest of the night, I've laid in bed and watched TV. And I'm not even embarrassed to say that. I watched ABC's new show 'Once Upon A Time,' and I was not disappointed in the least. In fact, I'm really looking forward to another episode. Like now. Patience was never my strong suit.

And now Boyfriend has called, and that signifies the end of my day. So goodnight, friends.