holidays & occassions

I thought I would share some photos from the Blake and Karli’s football/cheer banquet and Chase’s 8th Birthday which fell on Thanksgiving this year. Notice the box of Hamburger Helper? It was so funny, Chase was so disappointed and he said something like, “I don’t even like this stuff.” The boy does not care for anything with pasta. He wasn’t even going to open it until I told him to. He was thrilled to see a video game was inside! He was also excited to get a Fred t-shirt, which is the kid who makes videos on YouTube and he recently had a movie on TV. He got some other games and Beyblades which he plays with every day. There are some photos of my nieces who were in town for Thanksgiving as well. Ellie is one and a half and has the cutest curly hair that my sister says she wants to cut off…no way I say!!

The weekend sure flew by! Saturday we didn’t do much, just some cleaning around the house and the kids and I played a bunch of new games that I put on my iPad. One game we took turns playing for hours was The Moron Test. It is so fun, yet it drives you crazy because you go through these levels and when you make 1 mistake you have to start over. The boys were also playing Angry Birds Seasons. I am horrible at this game, but Blake is really good! Sunday we went to church and then stayed indoors doing homework and watching the snowfall.

{ click on the photos to view larger }

My Mother’s Day is rapidly coming to an end. I think it should be Mother’s Week at the very least. I really like being able to say, “Do what I say…cause it’s Mother’s Day!”

This Mother’s Day started with eggs and toast for breakfast, but honestly this happens every Saturday or Sunday. Ken always makes eggs, toast and fried bologna for everyone at least once on the weekend. I don’t eat the bologna, yuck! I then demanded (ha!) everyone clean their bedrooms before we took off for the day. I was not thrilled to find Karli had drawn with pen on her wallpaper border in her bedroom. I tried to remove it with a magic eraser and it started removing the pattern on the paper. Oh well! Then I was a little more angry to find an half eaten ice cream bar dried to her shelves in her bedroom. What is with this girl, she is such a slob! Chase was my best helper today, always doing what I ask. Blake and Andrew also cleaned their rooms up and took care of all the dishes. I know you are probably thinking we shouldn’t be cleaning on Mother’s Day, but you know, it’s MY day and that is what I wanted! We have been attending endless amounts of baseball games and today was the first day off in awhile so I had to put them to work for a little bit.

The kids presented me with tons of handmade cards and artwork that they made at school. They also had a piece of paper folded up into a cube shape, which upon unfolding I found a picture of an iPad and a note that said it was on it’s way, WOW! I was so shocked, Ken kept telling me that I had to close my own job before I could get one. He ordered it over a week ago, but apparently it won’t be shipped for a few more days. He got me the Wireless/3G one with the 64GB hard drive. I am not sure why he thought I needed the largest hard drive, but that is just how Ken buys electronics..he gets the best! He sure spoils me so. I am so excited to get it later this week. He ordered me the case to go with it too, the one that Apple sells, but I have seen some other really neat ones online. Later tonight I plan on checking those out to see if I want to cancel the cover and get a different one. I was so shocked because he kept asking me what I wanted and I just kept saying…just get me to Cancun next month baby, that’s all I care about. I will be traveling to Columbus with Andrew and Karli for a few days in June for a baseball tournament and we will be home for just one day and then leave for Cancun for a week. Ken isn’t coming to Columbus because Blake and Chase have games and he will already be missing their games the following week. Oh…we are all going to Cancun as a family, to an all inclusive resort with tons of stuff for the kids to do.

Karli’s sad face must be because the iPad isn’t here yet…haha!

Blake made me this with Legos this morning…

In the afternoon we stopped to buy some hanging baskets for our moms. My mom’s birthday is Tuesday and we celebrated that today as well since we have baseball pretty much every day this week again. We celebrated with cupcakes and the kids trashed her house for awhile. Nothing like a good visit from the grandkids to give you something to do rest of the day. Just kidding, we cleaned up before we left.

Then we went to eat at where else…BD’s Mongolian Grill and did a little shopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Dick’s to my boys is like Target to me. They can always find something they absolutely have to have. Now I am just relaxing up in bed while the kiddos play baseball on the PS3. What a perfect day! Is it wrong that I want to end the day with a little quiet time without kids? LOL!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mommies out there, hope you all had a wonderful day!

(If anyone is interested in buying my Kindle, excellent condition, let me know, I will be posting it on Ebay very soon!)

The kids acted as though I was performing surgery when I asked them to pose for a photo this year. Why they don’t like their picture taken is beyond me…don’t they know I have a blog for goodness sake! Karli is usually full of smiles, but she felt it necessary to mimic the boys I guess.

We had celebrated Easter with my family on Saturday because my niece was in town with her dad. The girls had a blast as usual and it will take Karli an entire week to clean her bedroom. Karli dressed up in last year’s Easter dress on Saturday since Emma was dressed up. I also painted their nails with pink and purple with polka dots. They are such girly girls. I wish they could spend more time together. When the girls were little I always imagined them growing up together and it’s sad that they don’t get to see one another more often. Emma is like Karli’s best friend even though they only see one another like once a month.

Easter morning we actually had to wake the kids up because they were up so late the past couple of nights. After finding all the hidden eggs and their baskets (Chase found all the baskets!), we went to mass. Of course Ken and I had to have our typical argument on the way to church because I made us all late. He complained that we were going to have to sit in the back row and you know how you can’t pray as well in the back row!! We arrived and only 20 or so cars were in the parking lot. I didn’t gloat, okay wait, I did say something like, “Oh no, we are so late!” Okay, I suppose that IS gloating.

After church we went to lunch at Outback and then we went to see Ken’s brothers house he just moved into. It has lots of spare room so someday when I kick Ken out (for yelling at me for being late for church one too many times!) he can live with his brother. We also stopped at some friends house that they are building. Oh how I miss having that new house smell. The rest of the day was spent with the kids outside, logging in their new Webkinz from the Easter bunny, and lounging around. I didn’t do any cleaning or laundry for the first time in a long time. I felt great! Also I figure I will have plenty of time this week since the kids are on Spring Break so I won’t be working as much and we aren’t going anywhere. I wish we would have splurged and booked our Mexico trip for Spring Break, but I just couldn’t get past how expensive it is to go in April compared to June and with 6 people going it’s a huge cost difference. We plan on roasting in the super hot temperatures there this June if all goes as planned.

Karli was playing around with my camera over the weekend and she took this photo. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the photo is, but I thought the colors look really neat. She loves anything related to art so when she does anything creative like this I always save them. I deleted many many photos of the dogs, their food, the dogs eating their food, and other various house objects.

Hope you all had a blessed Easter!

Another Christmas come and gone. They sure are coming faster and faster the older I get. This year Christmas came in the blink of an eye. We were so busy remodeling our house and dealing with all the chaos that came along with it, that I barely had a minute to sit back and enjoy the holidays. Usually we have our tree up the beginning of the month and this year we had it up about a week before Christmas. Which unfortunately is the exact reason why the darn thing is still standing as I write this. Ken swears we have always kept the tree up until after New Years, but I say that Call of Duty is beginning to fry his brain. Oh well, two more days and this tree is coming down.

I have quite a few stories to tell about our remodeling project, but let’s save that for another time shall we. The house still has a couple of things to be completed before I share the end result photos. You will see some of the completed work in some of the photos (some photos are from Ken’s brothers house). We went shopping yesterday to buy the tile for the backsplash for the kitchen (why does everyone save this for last?) and Ken got sick during our shopping expedition. All of 6 of us have officially had the flu now. Let this be it for the season, thanks.

This year for Christmas the kids actually slept until 8:30am! The kids opened presents from us and Santa and then my parents came over as well as Don and Emma. We had brunch and the kids opened more presents. Then around 2pm, we all went to Ken’s brothers house to celebrate with his family. They also invited my parents and Don and Emma for dinner. It turned out to be a really nice day, not too rushed, yummy food, and the kids had fun opening presents and playing all day. The day after Christmas we went to my parents house to visit with my mom’s side of the family and my sister came in town too. Her baby girl is such a cutie. I never did get my camera out when we were there because we got side tracked with Emma who had an allergic reaction from something. (Send me some pics of the girls from Christmas Heather, lol!)

Some Christmas presents still have not found a good spot so our house is still a little unorganized. I figure why bother cleaning because the kids just keep getting everything back out anyways. Soon they will be back to school and I will be back to work. I haven’t worked much this month and I am ready to get back into the swing of things. This year has been an amazing year for our family, we are grateful and can’t wait to see what the new year will bring. Happy New Year to Everyone! Thanks for visiting our little spot on the web!

View all of our Christmas Photos Here.