2013 Week 42

Letter Tyler wrote to us at school.  It reads "I was good dad and mom."

Tyler's ready to party! ;)
 Friday night the whole family joined our friends to celebrate one of the kid's birthdays at Adventure Landing.  The were having their Halloween festivities there that night so the kids got to wear their costumes.  Ty fell asleep on the ride there, but was ready to go once we arrived.

They did crafts for a while.  Then we all had a blast playing laser tag and the arcade games.

We were celebrating Donald's 9th birthday.  His cake completely matched the WWF belt that was part of his Halloween costume.

Tyler was the only one to wait (very patiently) in line for face painting.  And even though they only had red and blue paint, he insisted that he needed camo so he could "hide better" during laser tag.

2013 Week 41

 There's the birthday girl!  Kaitlyn turned 10 on Monday.  We had snickerdoodle waffles for breakfast and let her open her presents before going to school.

 Then we all went out to dinner at Golden Corral (one of her favorites) before taking her to dance class.  We stayed up late enough to have dessert (cherry cheesecake - she's not into cake cake this year) before heading to bed.

 Finally remembered to take a photo of the dog with the kids to show how much she's grown.  It's a lot!

 Thursday was the Girl Scout hike at Raven Rock State Park.  The girls did fantastic (they're actually really fast hikers and we had to keep telling them to slow down as one of the girls had brought her grandparents and they kept falling behind).

And it was gorgeous.

 Saturday was Kelcee's first birthday party.  Her actual birthday isn't for another month but they will have moved by then.

 So we made sure we got a group photo of all of us Girls.

 It was Minnie Mouse theme - fun!

 More random photos from Saturday, I think.

 

 Then Sunday morning we had a surprise going away brunch for Kelly.  Can't believe we pulled it off.  She thought she was coming over to craft, which we did eventually.

We have kind of a "high drama" neighborhood and have kind of dubbed our little group of friends the "Real Housewives."  We've been joking about making these wine glasses for weeks now, so for brunch Julie and I finally followed through on it.

I've had so much fun with these ladies the last few months.  Love that - love them!

And our parting gift to Kelly.  The quote really does say it all.

2012 Week 40

Birthday flowers.  Happy birthday to me!

Surprise party with my friends - complete with blindfolded "kidnapping."

It was great.  I finally have a great group of friends here.

Daughter hard at work finishing off the birthday gift she made All By Herself (a small bag out of old jeans and fabric scraps - it's pretty impressive actually).
Between the people here in my family, my friends, and friends and family that called or sent messages I had so many things to be happy about on my birthday.  I'm very lucky to have all these great people in my life.

We finished up my birthday with dinner at Red Lobster.  Shopped for an outfit for myself at Kohl's.  Then dessert at home (cookies and cream pie).

At Girl Scouts this week we worked on art/craft bags for kids in the hospital.  Who knew you could overplan for something like that?  We completely ran out of time before we had all the mini craft kits put together. 

 And the big event - Kaitlyn's birthday party!  She wanted to have another slumber party this year so I insisted she keep it small.  The theme she picked was a spa party, which was a lot of fun to pull together.

 Kaitlyn was very specific with what she wanted to do for her party.  She asked her dad to make ham and twice baked potatoes for dinner, so he took the day off to cook.  I'm so glad he did as that allowed me to squeeze in craft day with friends in the morning (mostly I worked on final prep for Kate's party of course), then a friend helped me set up for the party before the kids got home from school.
We did dinner and presents first.  Then quickly did dessert so Kaitlyn could blow out her candles before everyone changed into pjs.  Kate had wanted an ice cream sundae bar for her party instead of cake so we used the brownies (which were one of the toppings) to do a quick tower for the candles.

 Kaitlyn, Bozena, Tori, and Emily - quite the little group of happy, enthusiastic, and VERY LOUD girls!

The girls had so much fun getting pampered.  We did facials, pedicures, manicures and decorated flashlights before they headed upstairs to play for the rest of the night.

 They stayed up pretty late, but most were in good spirits for breakfast (home made cinnamon rolls - again thanks to Dad and orange julius).  Then we pretty much spent the entire rest of the day doing nothing so we could recover from all the fun.

 

 We've had some fantastic fall weather lately so we took advantage of it Sunday afternoon and lit the fire.  We had quite a bit of scrap wood piling up (from building drying racks) so we let the fire burn for hours while we just sat around enjoying it.  And of course we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner.

2013 Week 39

Was out shopping with my friend, Juluisa (Julie), and she couldn't resist buying this for me - and a "good witch" one for herself lol  Mine reads "you say wicked like it's a bad thing."

Kaitlyn says for once she's happy about falling on her bike. It knocked a tooth loose and now she will be getting a visit from the tooth fairy!

Sam had the day off on Friday and decided we needed to start the celebrating for my birthday a little early.  So while the kids were at school we went up to the big mall in Raleigh, had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (love that place!) and did a little shopping.

Tyler had his first every spelling test on Friday and he aced it!

 Family fun out with friends this weekend.  A whole group of us went to the corn maze and had a great time. 
Kaitlyn liked challenging herself with the sledge hammer thing.  And Tyler had to try out all the heavy equipment.

 Then we hit the maze in teams - boys against girls.  The boys won.

 And when we were all hot and tired (it almost hit 90 that day) and ready for a rest we went on the hay ride.
I'm very happy that we've found this great group of friends that like to have fun and get together regularly.  And that the kids are all good friends too.  It really adds to the fun of every-day life.

 Bambi cuddles!  Oh those kids love that dog and she's very patient with them.