Happy Birthday Mom!!

I wanted to wish my mom a happy birthday for tomorrow (November 30). We love you very much. Hope you have a wonderful day!!!

Thanksgiving Feast

Dylan and Emily had a Thanksgiving feast at school. Dylan's was last Wednesday. Each class made something to share with all the other classes. Dylan's class made homemade cranberry sauce which was really good. They all got to dress up as a Pilgrim or an Indian. Here he is in line to get some of everything to try:

Here he is with some classmates:

and again:

Emily and them did the same thing on Thursday. They made different stuff though. Due to time issues they had to have theirs outside, but it was a beautiful day for it. They also got to dress up as an Indian or Pilgrim, but Emily did a little of both, she wore a Pilgrim hat instead of her feathers, but wore her Indian vest and necklace. Her Indian name was Jumping Rabbit. Before they sat down to eat they sang a Thanksgiving song:

Here they are singing:

Here she is looking at the food:

Her with some of her classmates:

Birthdays

We have a lot of November birthdays, but mine, my dads and my niece Cassie are close so we get together and just go out for all of ours at once. Well with every ones crazy schedules the only time we could find to meet was on a Sunday morning for breakfast. So we met at IHOP. Here are some of the pictures from that day.

Cassie:



Joey and my dad:


Todd and I and our kids:

Justin, Hank, Tori, Susan and Hank:

Tori, me, Emily and Cassie:

It was different to have cake after breakfast, but it was a lot of fun. Now on Sunday it will be my mom's birthday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone ate way too much like I did. The food was great today at my in laws house and tomorrow we will have everyone over at our house so I won't be sharing much tonight, but have a lot to share. It has been a crazy last few weeks and when it settles down a bit I will share. Come back soon!

Happy Birthday Cassie!!!!

Wanted to wish happy birthday to my sweet niece Cassie. She turned 17 yesterday and with the crazy weekend (will share more later) I am just getting around to wishing her a happy birthday. Due to every ones hectic schedules we met this morning at IHOP to celebrate her birthday as well as my dads (November 8) and mine (November 14). I have a bunch of pictures from that, that I will share later once I download them. Happy Birthday again, we love you!!!!

Happy Anniversary Honey!

November 12 will mark Todd and I's 14th wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe we have been married that long. In December we will celebrate 18 years of dating/marriage. 18 years!!! That is a long time, over half my life I have been with Todd. I wouldn't change it for anything. I can still remember the day we met at the local park on the basketball courts. When I was growing up my dad encouraged me to go play pick up games at the courts with the boys to help me get better. I did all the time and made a lot of friends and got really good at basketball too! Well one day Todd and his friend Jason happened to come up there to play. I was getting ready to leave as was one of the guys that I played with on a regular basis. As we were leaving they asked us if we wanted to play, we said ok. Well after we played I got to talking to Todd and Jason and thought Todd was so cute. I went home that night and told my mom I met the man I was going to marry. Well I didn't see them again for almost a month when one day I was at the courts again and Jason came by. He said Todd had been working out of town with his dad, but was back home and wanted to know if I wanted to come hang out with them. I said ok, so later that night Jason came to my house and picked me up and took me to Todds and we just hung out and talked. A few days later we had our first date and we have never turned back and I wouldn't change it for the world. 14 years and 3 beautiful kids later I am very happy with the decisions I have made. Anyways...I thought I would share some of the pictures from our wedding.

This is one of us with both of our parents:

A co-worker of my sisters took the pictures for us and he had us feed the cake to each other one time serious and the next time smashing it in each others face. Todd ended up shoving it up my nose, but here we are cleaning each other off:

This is me cracking up at everyone waiting to throw bird seed on us and it hurt:

Here he is helping me into the car to start our new life together:

Thanks for letting me share. I love you honey!

Dylan's Party

On Friday we had Dylan's 7th birthday party at the skating rink. He had 31 of his friends and many other family members there to help him celebrate. Against the wall they have a screen and they put a happy birthday greeting on it:
Here is Dylan when we first got there fixing to take off skating:
The cake was yummy as usual. Rosalie's cakes is the best (too bad she is trying to retire). I took her the invitation I made and said I wanted to use those colors and the monkey and wanted skates on the monkey and she did awesome. It tasted as good as it looks.Here is the birthday boy blowing out his candles.

A fun time was had by all and was nice that I had to do no cleaning up afterwards!

Paper Crafting

For Dylan's birthday I made his invitations one of the view finder cards. See the little white circle on the left of the card you turn that and the next information (time, place, etc.) pops up in the cut out square. I used the little sock monkey stamp set from Stampin Up! To make 37 of these took some time, but I have such a wonderful husband that he helped me out alot:

I also made several little things to go along with the monkey for the goody bag. I bought some banana shaped candy and stuck them in a bag and made a topper with "thanks a bunch" and a banana on it and the monkey head stamped on the back:

I also stamped the monkey on some cardstock and covered little notebooks and gave them gel pens to take "monkey notes" Then while looking for ideas I came across this http://web.mac.com/aninchofcreativity/An_Inch_of_Creativity/Blog/Entries/2008/8/12_I%E2%80%99ve_Been_Monkeying_Around!_Literally!.html and wanted to make this so bad, but only got one made and just didn't have time to make enough for everyone but here is the one I did do:

This is what was in the middle:

So I have had fun getting that all ready. Now it is on to my Christmas cards and then it will be time to start getting things ready for JT's party. Already have the design in my head, just need to get it done. Stay tuned!

Soccer and baseball, oh my!

Have you been wondering where we have been? I am sure you can guess. Between the 3 kids we are at soccer and baseball pretty much everyday. Here are the highlights from the weekend of November 1-2. Dylan and Emily had a soccer game on Sunday:
Emily is #2:

Here is Emily and Dylan taking a break with some of their teammates:

One of Dylan's goals:

That same weekend JT's select baseball team played in a tournament. They didn't do very well.

JT on 3rd base ready to score:

He is leaning back to avoid being hit. As a left handed batter, they tend to pitch inside to him:

Here he is pitching:

That same weekend as the tournament, JT also had 2 soccer games. One on Saturday and one on Sunday. We were lucky none of his games overlapped. Here he is in Saturdays game taking the ball up the field:

and on a goal kick when he was goalie:

We only have this last weekend of regular season soccer and JT's team will be in the playoffs the weekend of November 22-23 and that will wrap up soccer season for this year. Fall baseball will be over the second week of December and I think the select baseball team will be taking a break from playing in tournaments, but not practices during the holidays. But basketball season starts next week!

Better late than never!

I am not a big supporter of Halloween, but the kids don't understand the bad side of it yet and I am not ready to explain it to them yet. Every year in the past we have gone to the church for Hallelujah night, but this year my friend had her daughter's birthday party that night. So the kids wanted to dress up and go to that and we did. A few weeks before Halloween Popsy and Mimi had bought the kids mini pumpkins so when they came home from school Friday, we let them carve them.

Then on they way to the party we stopped by Target and I let them pick out a costume. There weren't many choices in their sizes, but they did each find something.

At the party one of the things they did was go trick or treating in our friends neighborhood. This was the first time ever my kids got to do this and they were very excited about it, until I ruined their evening by telling them I needed to check their candy before they ate it and they wanted to know why so I explained that sometimes their are bad people in this world who try to harm others and might put something in the candy. My kids couldn't understand why someone would want to do that and so they didn't want to go to anymore houses after that or even eat the candy. They still had a good time at the party as Beckie knows how to throw great parties.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I am a little late since it is already after midnight, but wanted to wish my dad a happy 73rd birthday. I hope dinner with mom was great! Love you!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Dylan!

It is hard to believe that 7 years ago on November 5 I gave birth to my second miracle. Dylan has been such a blessing in Todd and I's life. It seems like yesterday to me. Here is a picture of him after we brought him home. (The quality isn't good because I scanned it)




Happy Birthday Dylan!!! We love you!!