Girls Weekend 2011

This past weekend we had our 3rd annual girls weekend with the girls in my family. My nieces were unable to make it yet again due to a previous engagement with their mom, but we hope they can make it next year!

Morgan and I left home Saturday morning and headed to meet my mom at her place. Due to snow and sleet and my windshield wiper blades continually freezing (resulting in me having to stop to clean them), my typical 20 minute drive was more like a 40 minute drive to my mom's. I have to admit that my stomach sank at the thought of the typical 2 hour drive to my sister's place turning into 4 hours due to the weather, but the roads were much better in the counties south of me and it didn't take much longer to get to her place than usual. YAY!

We made it to my sister's by 10:30 am then made our way to IKEA. It was my first time experiencing IKEA and it was pretty neat! A lot of the furniture and things tended to be more modern than I like, but I LOVED the space saving ideas that I saw while there. Some day I'll go back for them ;-)

After the IKEA shopping trip, we stopped at Jimmy Johns for lunch then headed to the Hands-On Museum in Ann Arbor. What a neat place!! Morgan just jumped from one thing to another checking EVERYTHING out and it was nice not having to tell her not to touch! LOL!

Experiencing how water moves.

Playing piano and getting exercise at the same time!

Discovering how a toilet works.

Making hand impressions.

Making a bracelet using maritime flags that have been matched up with the letters of the alphabet...Morgan made her name in flags :-)

Morgan's face impression.

The safe way to experience a tornado!

Checking herself out in a wavy mirror.

Next was a stop at Build-a-Bear to use a gift card we had received on some new clothes for Morgan's puppy, Fluffy, that she made the last time we were there. I think Morgan could have bought up the whole store, but we managed to stay within the gift card amount :-)

After Build-a-Bear, was dinner at a place my sister suggested called the Uptown Grille. The food was great and it was a nice way to start winding down for the movie at my sister's place. She had downloaded "The Princess and the Frog" for Morgan, since that was the only Disney princess movie she hadn't seen. (It was okay-didn't care for the voo doo....made it kinda dark.)

The next day was a bit of a lazy day. We hung out at my sister's place discussing wedding plans most of the morning. Before leaving for home, we did some dancing with the Wii Just Dance 2 game. SO MUCH FUN and apparently it works because my arms could feel it the next day! :-)

And that was about it for the weekend. I think the guys all enjoyed themselves while we were gone. Katie's fiance was skiing in Colorado. My dad stayed home and Rich stayed with Blake playing and watching movies nearly the whole time. I think we're all looking forward to another girls weekend again next year! :-)

Christmas and the End of 2010

Happy New Year!! I hope everyone had a wonderful end to 2010 and is enjoying a wonderful 2011 so far. We had a busy, yet relaxing, end to last year....

Last I mentioned was all the cooking/baking I had been doing for the upcoming Christmas parties....and we had several! We had the usual Christmas Eve party with my extended family on my mom's side. It was a really nice time....then home to get the kids to bed and put out their presents under the tree.

Christmas morning, Rich's fire pager went off at 3:00 am for a 4 year old girl who was unresponsive and lips were turning blue. I usually don't hear his calls because he is out the door before the tones finish going off and I had wished I didn't hear that one! I lay awake praying with tears in my eyes for a while before falling asleep shortly before he came home. The little girl was going to be fine (more prayers...of thanks!) they think she had an allergic reaction to some medicine her mom had given her a little earlier. Then 5:00 am Rich's pager went off again and he was out the door before I heard what it was. The kids woke up with all the noise and wanted to see if Santa had come. So I videotaped them checking out the living room, but wouldn't let them look in their stockings or open presents until their dad came home....having no clue when that would be!

The kids got to play with this while they were waiting. I got this idea from the Frugal Fun Family blog and spent many craft nights at my mom's creating my own version...

Morgan LOVES cooking in her new kitchen now...but she says she needs a sink to wash dishes :-)

Luckily Rich came home around 6:30 am and that call is a long story, so I'll spare you ;-) The kiddos were excited to check out their stockings and open gifts.

Blake's gift from Morgan-she'd been wanting to get him Legos for Christmas since Thanksgiving!

Morgan got her first locket with pics of Rich and I and Blake inside :-)

We then left a little after 9:00 am to go to Rich's grandma's for Christmas. We opened gifts there, had brunch and did the annual Christmas shot (peppermint schnapps is pretty tasty!)

After that, we headed to my parents' house to have Christmas with my family. We started off by talking about what Christmas was about and letting the kiddos know that we were going to have a birthday party for Jesus. We read a children's book of The Christmas Story and another book focusing on the reason for the season ;-) and then had dinner. After dinner the kiddos and I put together the birthday cake for Jesus (with a special meaning for everything that went on it) and then opened gifts. While everyone was having a wrapping paper ball fight I hid the riddled clues for the candy cane hunt, then we read The Legend of the Candy cane and my sister helped the kiddos hunt down their box of candy canes.

The birthday cake for Jesus.

The kids on the candy cane hunt.

They found them!!! :-)

We also did a the coloring activity after eating some birthday cake. These are Morgan and Blake's colored nativities :-) I was really proud of how well they did coloring...I think these will be kept for a LONG time! :-)
Morgan ended up staying Christmas night with my family (seriously everyone stayed except Rich, Blake and I), so we picked her up the next morning before heading to Rich's very extended Christmas party on his dad's side....it's almost like a reunion with great aunts/uncles, 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins, etc. It's a nice time, but after the long Christmas day (and the miserable roads!) we just wanted to stay home that day :-/

I was asked to bring Christmas cookies, so I made this :-)

Rich took Monday off from work and we mostly relaxed, then Tuesday the kids and I met with my sister and parents to try on dresses at David's Bridal. My dad took the kids while my sister picked out her beautiful tea length wedding dress and I picked out my little pink dress to wear as her matron of honor :-) After 3 hours there, we went to lunch then the kids and I met Rich after he got out of work at the movie theater to see Tangled. Such a CUTE movie! LOVED it!! :-)
Wednesday, Rich's mom picked up the kids and I after she got out of work. We then got Rich's dad and brother and met Rich at his aunt's house to have Christmas with her and her family. After some yummy pizza and more presents, we made it home around 10:00 pm and were exhausted!
Friday, as New Years Eve, we had a party to go to at Rich's parents'. It was mostly family and close friends of the family. The kids got to see Rich's cousin's little ones (they're really close in age, but live a long way away) and they played and had a wonderful time. We celebrated the coming of the new year and came home to relax the rest of the weekend....sort of.....

Something else that I was asked to bring to the new years party...a BIG chocolate chip cookie-it's the best with chocolate frosting on top!!! YUM!!!!

New Years Day, I read the book Rich got me for Christmas, The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck (very good!) and then cleaned out part of one of the steers' pens. When we came inside we worked on taking down the Christmas tree. Sunday, after church, we finished cleaning up the pen and moved the 2 little steers in with the bigger ones in the clean pen. My parents then came over to see what the kids had gotten for Christmas, since they had been meaning to ever since Christmas :-)

And that's about it for our Christmas/New Years activities! (Phew!) I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year as well! :-)

Merry CHRISTmas!!

I hope everyone has been enjoying this Christmas season. We've been doing our best to make the most of our time together as a family and it has been wonderful!

Our tree search fiasco continued after we put out tree up....it ended up falling over after about 3 days!! It's all good now, though, and the kiddos even posed in front of it sporting matching sweaters made by their aunt a couple Christmases ago!!


We haven't made it out to play in the snow yet, but we've made marshmallow snowmen a couple of times....

...and these popsicle snowmen! Morgan saw a kit for them in the Oriental Trading catalog and really wanted to make them....I was excited because we actually had the supplies to make them on our own! :-)

Morgan has been working on gingerbread in her preschool class. They sent this home (blank) for us to decorate as a family and we had a lot of fun! I wish I could show you some others that kids made in their classes-REALLY creative!!

In her class's newsletter they sent the recipe to make gingerbread dough (to play with), so we went to town making ornaments....

She's also been reading all sorts of different Gingerbread Men/Boy/Girl stories in her class, so when a friend of the family gave our family a huge Gingerbread man, I knew I HAD to make it for Morgan's class too!

We also made a paper chain-it's such an easy craft for a 4 year old! We also made paper snowflakes, when we were snowed in, to hang from it. :-)

The kiddos also get their own Christmas cards from a friend of the family and their Grandma and Papa. This first one is from the friend. Blake got to decorate a tree and Morgan's was a gingerbread house sticker puzzle.

The kiddos grandparents send stickers in the cards for the kiddos too and one sheet had the characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I had to laugh at how Blake was using his imagination when he made this...I hope Santa and Mrs. Claus are okay ;-)

We also celebrated Christmas with Rich's parents this past Sunday. The kiddos got to stay overnight and wake up in the morning and open presents. Plus we had a BIG breakfast and stayed most of the day relaxing just as if it were Christmas....it was a REALLY nice time! (Rich's parents and other brother left to be with my brother-in-law for Christmas. His deployment date got moved to Dec. 26th...there was no way he would have been able to come home for Christmas.)

And I have a tree skirt for our tree now!!! We've been using an old flannel sheet for the past 5 years, but now we have one that I think fits our family quite well :-)

I've been busy cooking and baking for the family gatherings we have the next few days. I'm also excited about a very special birthday party for Jesus that I've been planning too! Christmas day, with the kiddos and my nieces, we'll be making a cake that has meaning and verses to go with every aspect of it. We'll also be reading The Legend of the Candy Cane and having a candy cane hunt with rhyming clues to different parts of my parents' house. Plus we'll be reading the Christmas story and coloring nativity print-offs. I hope to make this a tradition. I think it's neat way for the kiddos to always remember what Christmas is really about. (Thanks to Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom for the ideas!)

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas this year! Enjoy time with family and remember that the greatest gift this holiday season is Jesus! :-)

Remembering....

A year ago tonight my friend, Amanda, lost her husband and 2 young children in a fire. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers tonight, and throughout tomorrow, as I'm sure it'll be tough reliving those memories all over again.

Also, in memory of her family, be sure to give your husband and kids an extra hug tonight...or tomorrow....or all the time! :-)

I'd like to share again this poem that Amanda asked to have read at the funeral of her family:

If Tomorrow Never Comes

If I knew it would be the last time that I'd see you fall asleep,
I would tuck you in more tightly and pray the Lord, your soul to keep.

If I knew it would be the last time that I see you walk out the door,
I would give you a hug and kiss and call you back for one more.

If I knew it would be the last time I'd hear your voice lifted up in praise,
I would video tape each action and word, so I could play them back day after day.

If I knew it would be the last time, I could spare an extra minute or two
to stop and say "I love you," instead of assuming, you would KNOW I do.

If I knew it would be the last time I would be there to share your day,
well, I'm sure you'll have so many more, so I can let just this one slip away.

For surely there's always tomorrow to make up for an oversight,
and we always get a second chance to make everything right.

There will always be another day to say our "I love you's",
And certainly there's another chance to say our "Anything I can do's?"

But just in case I might be wrong and today is all I get,
I'd like to say how much I love you and I hope we never forget,
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance you get to hold your loved one tight.

So if you're waiting for tomorrow, why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes, you'll surely regret the day,
That you didn't take that extra time for a smile, a hug, or a kiss
and you were too busy to grant someone,
what turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today, whisper in their ear,
Tell them how much you love them and that you'll always hold them dear,
Take time to say "I'm sorry," "please forgive me," "thank you" or "it's okay".
And if tomorrow never comes, you'll have no regrets about today.

Author Unknown

Our First 'Real' Snow and a Blizzard Warning!

I had been hearing that we may get some snow since sometime last week. I didn't think much of it because sometimes we barely get a dusting when they forecast several inches. So the snow started Saturday night as a Winter Weather Watch was under way . It was a really wet and heavy snow that made the roads slushy and yucky. We passed up on going to church Sunday morning and Rich ended up on a rescue call for a car accident due to the weather. That afternoon was Rich's Fire Department's Christmas party. As we sat in the fire hall, enjoying good food, playing on fire trucks and Santa's visit (with presents!) the weather continued to get worse. The wind had picked up, it had gotten colder and it was just plain miserable! By that night Morgan's school was already cancelled for the following day and we were under a Winter Weather Warning.

The kiddos with Santa and they didn't even cry!

Monday came and I woke to our house freezing! Rich had turned down the heat because we were running low on fuel oil. (I'll tell you more about that later.) I spent most of the day between trying to stay warm and doing snow related activities with the kiddos for Morgan's first snow day! :-) By Monday afternoon, when I thought the snow was going to let up, the National Weather Service upgraded our Winter Weather Warning to a Blizzard Warning. The system was lingering just east of us over Lake Huron, creating lake effect snow, and was staying until about 7:00 am this morning. Zero visibility, impassible roads, 3 feet of snow in some areas as well as 7 ft snow drifts were all being reported. Morgan's school was cancelled again last night for today.

Throughout all of this, a top concern of mine was having heat (as well as electricity since several others in the area were losing power.) We heat our house using fuel oil and we just started on the keep full program this July. I noticed we were running low a while ago and called last Monday for someone to come out, since I figured we couldn't wait much longer. No one came the whole week to fill it. Rich ended up running to the gas station to get 5 gallons of fuel on Saturday hoping that would hold us over until Monday. Well, with the weather Monday, I figured there was no way anyone would make it out, so I called again, told them what was going on and asked that our guy come out as soon as it's safe. The company apologized and hopefully we have someone coming out tomorrow. Rich grabbed 10 more gallons last night from the gas station....we hope that'll be enough to make it until we get more!!

After this storm, and reading and knowing what others have had to go through to make it through, I have to say that it made me thankful that we made it through safe and sound! Rich was always able to make it out with the truck and went to work both yesterday and today. We didn't end up with as much snow as those north of us did. We never lost our power, so there were no complications there. We still have heat (so far) and I pray that we will, because it's bitter cold out now! (I went out to shovel snow today and only lasted about 20 minutes before my fingers were in pain from the cold! That was with doubled up gloves on, since it was -6 with the wind chill when I went out.) Even though the temp in our house is lingering around 58 and we can feel the cold come through the walls, it still feels a TON better than outside....VERY thankful we still have heat!!!! :-)

Hopefully tomorrow we can get back to normal. Morgan should be going back to school....as long as we get our driveway cleared out and the roads are clean of course. She isn't used to the idea of being both snowed in and not being able to play in the snow. It's so terribly cold I won't let her go out to play and she keeps asking if we can go somewhere! LOL! We should have our fuel oil tank filled tomorrow too! That means we can turn our thermostat back up to the 64 we usually keep it at. And, hopefully, I'll be back to my old self and not cuddled under a blanket trying to stay warm all day! ;-)

Although I didn't get pictures of the blizzard, I did get a few pics today...as you can see we didn't get 3 feet of snow or 7 ft drifts...the tallest drift may be 4 feet.

**UPDATE: Still no school today (Wednesday). It's been too cold for the salt to actually work on the roads, so they're too icy. The snow plows stopped working at sunset last too, so many of the roads hadn't been cleared.