Happy Thanksgiving

Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving?  We sure did!  We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and the kids were entranced watching the singing and dancing.  Matt grilled the most loved food by many in our family, bacon-wrapped shrimp.  He learned the recipe down at the Greenbriar, and anyone who tastes them, loves them....except me.  They really aren't my favorite, but I know any family member who reads this will call it blasphemy.  Anyway, he made them, and then we rushed out the door and headed south.  We spent the rest of the day at Marty and Dena's house, my aunt and uncle.  Most of the rest of my dad's side of the family was there, so it was nice visiting with everyone.  The girls had a wonderful time playing with the other kids.  They played hide and go seek downstairs in the basement, a game called headbands, jumped on the trampoline, and ran around wildly.  I think all three were asleep before we hit the end of the driveway!  And of course, the food was awesome too!  I enjoyed every morsel.

Next of course was our annual day of shopping.  We aren't those crazy people who start on Thanksgiving or get up super early on Friday.  We met at Aunt Lisa's at 9:00is and then spent the next hour looking at ads and making lists for everyone.  Then we finally set out at around 10 or 10:30.  We hit all the usual stores, Meijer, Kohls, etc.  The lines were the worst at Kohls, but I think I got the best bargain there too (king size comforter for $25.00).  We had lunch at Old Bag O' Nails in old Hilliard.  We were all running out of steam by that time (it was about 2:00) and needed some fuel.  I had fish and chips - yuuummm!  Then we headed up to the mall for our last round of shopping and were able to get a few things there too.  It was a successful venture and a good time too.  I was completely exhausted at the end!

Saturday was the BIG game.  Matt attended with his brother and had a blast, especially since we pulled out a win, whew!  I wasn't so sure at one point.  Watching the games with the kids is not always the most enjoyable experience.  They don't always want to let you watch in peace.  You might get one quarter of peace, but after that someone will want a drink, a snack, a diaper change, a toy, a crayon, a book....you name it, they want you to get it for them.  Or they will be fighting every 30 seconds.  Or they will be getting into something they aren't supposed to have.  Usually that's Emma but sometimes the others too.  Anyway, it wasn't too terrible.  The fourth quarter was par for the course, but it's about as good as it gets.  At one point, the older two went upstairs and were "dressing up."  They had their hair pulled up and belts around their tank tops.  They thought they were stylin'!  They came downstairs, and Laura told Hannah,"Come on Hannah, let's take selfies!"  How does she know what a selfie is?!  Here are a couple of them.  Hilarious.

Of course Johnny, our Elf is back too!  He made his debut the morning after Thanksgiving in full Buckeye attire!  In case you can't read the note he left -  he let our kids in on a secret that Santa is a Buckeye, and the Grinch is from Michigan.  Makes sense.

Sunday has been the catch up day, as usual, BUT, it is a special Sunday, as it is the first Sunday in Advent.  To kick off the Christmas season, we did some preparation activities.  Matt put up the Christmas lights, and the girls LOVED them.  The kids just love looking at lights on the way home in the evenings, and they always want their house to have lots of pretty lights too.  So Matt obliged and got it done while the weather was nice today.  (He actually put them up in shorts!)  I did normal chores like laundry and cleaning.  But in the spirit of Advent, I did some preparation tasks too.  I finished uploading about 1200 pictures to Snapfish.  Matt makes me a calender each year, so I have to get the pictures out there!  I also did my second round of toy cleaning.  We got almost all of  toys back into the toy closet.  Everything fit except for the doll accessories (stroller, crib, highchair) and the pony castle.  I consider that an accomplishment.  We did one other fun activity for Advent.  I read this somewhere last year, so this is not an original idea.  We are opening a book each night of Advent.  Tonight we opened There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell.  I knew Laura would love that one since one of her favorite books is There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow.  Now as I write this post, the kids and Matt are watching Laura's favorite movie, Despicable Me.  She loves minions!  Who doesn't?  Have a nice week everyone!

Dentist, Snow, & Maleficent

It's been a long week, but we made it through.  We had dentist appointments Monday.  My sister is our dentist, and so the kids love going there.  Laura had another filling, but she loves getting them, which is a blessing.  For some reason, her teeth didn't form real well, so she has had quite a bit of dental work for her age.  I'm thankful she's not one of those kids that has anxienty at the dentist.  Hannah did really well too.  She just had a cleaning.  Next round, Emma gets to join us!  That ought to be interesting.  Emma is my defiant one and likely will not sit in the chair and follow directions.  We'll find out in June!  That wasn't all for Monday.  Monday started out a little unusual for November 17th - we got about 4 inches of snow!  And it was freezing cold.  So schools were delayed, which throws a wrench in our schedules.  Juggling schedules is the hardest part about working and having kids.  Whether it's Christmas/Spring breaks, summer break, illnesses, school volunteering, or weather related, moving work schedules around is painful.  It is definitely one of those burdens of working mothers.  I am very blessed that my parents now live close and are willing to help us out in those scenarios whenever possible.  In fact this time, my mom came down and spent the night, which was awesome!  So that is what we did Monday morning - juggled schedules to accomodate Laura's 2 hour delay.  I always feel bad for her on those days because our school does not serve lunch when they have a 2 hour delay.  We are to pack a snack for them to eat in the classroom.  That's a long time to wait to eat.  I try to pack her a heavy snack.  She had a cereal bar, apples and veggies.  It was a quasi-lunch.

Speaking of motherhood, Momnipotent started Tuesday night at our parish.  I am participating in this study group at church with one of my besties, Syd!  It is a group that will discuss embracing our feminine strengths, motherhood, and our faith.  I'm really excited to be participating in it, and I'm really excited to see Kara for eight weeks!!  Unfortunately in the throws of motherhood, often women our age lose track of our friends because life just gets so busy and overwhelming and we need to be reminded that those friendships are important.  They are important for our health, and they are important for our humanity. 

Wednesday and Thursday felt like catch-up days.  The evenings were busy with work and homework, but nothing overly exciting.  And then Friday finally was here, and it was sweet relief.  I made another recipe from the best cookbook, Southern Living's Easy Weeknight Favorites.  It was the ham and grits crust-less quiche.  It was sooo good!  I don't think the kids loved it, but they really only like plain things, and this had lots of good flavor.  I think I'm going to add spinach to it next time.  Then we watched Maleficent with the kids.  They loved it!  I wasn't sure at first, but it was a pretty good movie.  The two littles put on some Christmas jammies, and they were so cute! 

Speaking of Christmas, if you haven't been able to gather from recent posts, Matt and I are exceedingly excited for Christmas this year.  We have been budgeting and making lists and planning for the kids.  Every year we have consistently went overboard on the kids.  I would really like to scale back this year and to emphasize the real meaning of Christmas and focus on making memories.  But I'm not sure that Matt can do it.  He gets great enjoyment out of spoiling them on Christmas.  So we will see.  Kendra Tierney at CatholicAllYear had a good post about limiting toys for kids yesterday that I appreciated.  Although our situation is slightly different in that our kids are not "toy-trend sheltered."  They are in school and daycare and therefore are exposed to all the new toys.  So what do you all do at Christmas?  Do you limit toys, or do you go all out? 

Next week is Thanksgiving week!  And also Beat M*ch*gan week!  I won't go into why I hate that those two weeks coincide.  That would be a whole blog post to itself.  Nevertheless, it will be an awesome week.  And then into the Christmas season!!!

Week In My Life 2014 - Sunday

We made it to Sunday - barely!  The sleepover sure was fun, but boy, am I tired!  I think that's my sign I'm gettinqg old.  Laura absolutely loved it, and I'm so glad that we did it.  I think it will be the first of many sleepovers!  In fact, as far as the kids are concerned, they are getting another sleepover tonight.  Grammy is spending the night!  We are getting 3-5 inches of snow here in good ole O-H-I-O, as old man winter is making his appearence.  I really would not care about the snow at all if I didn't have to drive to work in it.  Ugg.  I'm sure the county invested in plenty of salt.

Back to Sunday.  We started off much earlier than I hoped.  The girls woke up at 6:30 or 7:00 and continued playing where they left off last night.  Matt came downstairs and made them mickey mouse pancakes and bacon.  They they played Just Dance on the Wii till parents started to show up to get them.  Matt and I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and the living room a little.  Then we took a breather, drank some coffee, and ready the Sunday paper.  Yep, we really are old! 

Then we got ready and headed off to church.  It was a shockingly calm Mass for us.  Normally our family is a cry-room gang, largely because of little Emma.  She is still too antsy and loud.  But today was different.  I think she was wiped out from that party too!  She fell asleep in the van on the way to church and slept through the entire service!  What a treat for us!  After church we headed to Kohl's so I could use my gift card and get myself a little birthday treat - which was new tennis shoes.  Next Matt headed to work for awhile and I stopped and grabbed some lunch for me and the kids and then headed to Kroger's to grocery shop.  Man, I really wanted to skip the grocery shopping.  I was crashing at that point and really needed a nap.  But I powered on and got it done.  After unpacking the groceries, Aunt Ellen stopped for a visit!  The kids were so happy to see her.  She had Laura's birthday present, but the best part of the visit for Laura was doing Mad Libs with her.  Laura got them from one of her friends for her birthday, and she was laughing hysterically at them. 

Ellen wasn't gone thirty minutes, and Grammy called to tell me she was coming down to stay over.  That the was the icing on the proverbial cake for the kids.  This weekend was perfect  for them!  I threw in some laundry and settled into my computer for a little work.  The weekend was finally winding down, and I cannot wait to hit the sack....right after I finish this post :)

Have a good week Everyone.  If you want to read about other WIML14, go to www.teamwhitaker.org

Week In My Life 2014 - Saturday

I'm sitting here watching my third Barbie movie of the evening - what does that sound like to ya?  If you guessed 7 year old sleepover, you guessed right!  But we'll get to that.

The day started with another birthday party.  Hannah was invited to one of her classmate's birthday party, which was this morning at 10:00 at the bouncy house.  Hannah hasn't really bonded with anyone in her new classroom (at the new daycare we've been at since June).  Hannah is super shy and struggles to make friends.  So I thought we should try to go to this party, and Hannah loves bounce houses.  Well, I'm glad we went, but she really didn't do that much bouncing.  She mostly played chase with one other little girl.  I asked her if it was who she played with mostly at school, and she said that she is.  So maybe she is making a friend.  I want her to make friends, but I worry that she will make friends only for us to pull her away from them again to start kindergarten.  Poor Hannah.  She'll survive, but I hate to see her struggle.

When we got home, it was time to watch the Buckeyes!  They pulled out a win, but it was not pretty.  We were really hoping they would blow out Minnesota.  Not so.  And we were hoping that Nebraska would beat Wiscy big, and that didn't happen either.  But ND lost, so that was fun.

On to the main event - Laura's sleepover.  As I posted before, we told her she wasn't going to have anymore big parties until she's ten.  She could have a few girls over for a sleepover but nothing fancy.  I also wanted her to invite some of her friends from school because I wanted to make sure that she is bonding with them.  Maybe I obsess too much about my kids friends.  Anyway, she invited the neighbor girl over, another friend, and four girls from school.  I figured about half would be able to make it.  We also weren't sure if people would let their kids spend the night since we don't really know any of the parents.  People are little more cautious about their kids staying over anymore.  We ended up with four girls, which was perfect. We played bingo.  That was funny.  I never thought that a game enjoyed by 70 year old would be so loved by 7 year olds!  We fed them mac and cheese and hamburgers and hot dogs.  We did a craft, or I should say Matt did a craft with the kids.  I don't really do crafts.  They were Christmas bulbs and came our really nice.  Laura opened her presents, they watched several movies, and there was lots of running and screeching.  A LOT of high-pitched screeching.  I think it was a success.  Laura is actually laying here watching this latest Barbie movie, and I think she wants to sleep.  She keeps hinting at her friends.  This is rare for Laura.  Laura is usually the last kid to be awake at sleepovers, but this time she is wiped out.  Funny.  Oh my friends would probably giggle about this.  I always fell asleep first at sleepovers, and they always messed with me.  But those are stories for another time!!

                                  The whole lot of them up in Laura's bunk bed.

                                

                                     Crazy faces!

Pancakes in the morning!

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Week In My Life 2014 - Friday

Yay!!!  It's Friday!  Thank goodness we made it!  I ended up keeping Laura home from school again today.  The nice thing about her age is that I really don't have to take a day off work since she is old enough to entertain and care of herself.  She draws, watches TV, plays games on ipad or reads.  She was wheezing a little this morning, and so I thought I should probably watch her and not expose the rest of her class.  But by noon, she was pretty much back to normal.  Now of course, I'm paranoid that my little ones are getting it.  Hopefully I am wrong.

Tonight was all about preparing for Laura to have a few friends over for her birthday.  I told the girls after Hannah's bouncy house party earlier this year that we were not having any more birthday parties until the girls are ten.  We agreed that they could a have a few friends over for a sleepover but nothing elaborate.  So we went to Meijer tonight to get some food for them and a couple of activities.  I would have not even gone as far as to plan activities.  I figured a few girls could come over, and they could just free play and hang out.  But Matt was way too anxious about that idea.  So weird because normally I am the planner, and in this case he is the one that has to have a structured gathering.  We switch roles whenever there is an event or gathering.  Strange.  Anyway, we have everything needed for a successful 7 year old sleepover.

By the time we got home from shopping with three excited, rambunctious kids after working all day, all week, we were completely beat.  Matt and I plopped in the living room and watched a couple of DVR'd shows.  While we watched shows, the kids played.  I snapped a couple of shots of them in the middle of their imaginative play.  I'm not sure what this assembly of stuffed animals is, but I can tell you as I am sitting here in my bed that they are still downstairs scattered all over the living room floor!  Of course they got them all out and didn't put anything away.  Oh well - a battle for tomorrow.  It was cute to watch them play.

Every single night, Emma wants to wear a princess dress.  We have acquired numerous princess dresses over the years.  In fact, some of them are starting to look pretty tattered, and I am going to have to start sneaking and pitching them :)  Anyway, tonight Emma went upstairs and got into the girls' closet and pulled out Hannah's flower girl dress from my sister's wedding earlier this year.  She dragged it downstairs, and I helped her into it.  She was so happy!  She twirled around and acted majestic.  She pranced about in it and acted all dramatic.  So funny.  Right now she is laying beside Matt with her t-shirt, diaper, red fancy shoes, watching the ipad.  Everyone wears red fancy shoes to bed - right? 

Hope everyone is enjoying this little glimpse into our lives.  Wish us luck tomorrow night!

Week In My Life 2014 - Thursday

Today was a little on the "cra-cra" side, as Laura would say.  It started just like any other day, but quickly went ary, as Laura's school called and said she was wheezing.  I was thinking to myself, "wheezing? what could that be?"  I talked to her on the phone for awhile and then made the decision to go get her.  We made a dr appointment for an hour later, and ate lunch while I juggled work.  Then went to the appointment to find out that she has croup.  Croup - she's 7.  I didn't know 7 years olds could get croup, but apparently any kids, or even adult can get it.  The difference is kids her age and older can handle it without steroid treatments.  Laura had this when she was a baby, and it was horrible.  She had to be transported by squad to Children's Hospital and have several steroid treatments.  Now it's just a virus, like any other.  So of course, I'm most worried about it hitting my little ones.  Laura and I wiped every surface and toy today with Clorox wipes, and poor Laura had to spend the evening in her room with her books and the ipad in an attempt to isolate her.  I ended up working at home, while Laura relaxed, watched TV, and the like.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Me and my sickie!

At dinner time, I had planned to make a quiche dish out of Southern Living Easy Weeknight Favorites, a recipe book recommended by our host Kathryn.  However, I realized after I had begun that we were missing an important ingredient - the eggs!  What's quiche without eggs?!  So I went to the cupboard for one of our stand-byes, spaghetti.  It was a hit as usual.  

On an upside, I had a wonderful evening with a few friends at a women's event tonight at my friend's parish to prepare us for Advent.  The speaker was Sr. Pat McMahon was the speaker, and she did an outstanding job.  There was an amazing amount of food there and wine to boot.  What could make a better evening!  Thank you Beth for inviting us!  It was a much needed enjoyable evening.d  I wish I had taken more pics!


Have good one everyone.  Enjoy more #WIML14 posts here.

Week In My Life 2014 - Wednesday

It's the middle of the week!  We're on the downward slide now!  I spent the day in our downtown office today.  Enjoy some pictures from the 32nd Floor of Nationwide Plaza One.

Matt picked Laura up tonight and took her to the dress rehearsal for the Marching Band concert.  That was fun for Laura on two fronts.  She got to be a car rider after school, which is a treat.  And she got to go see the band with Daddy one-on-one.  Laura is excelling at school in both music and art - shocker.  So she enjoyed it.  She and Hannah will start piano lessons in January.  We are super excited about that!  I took piano lessons as a kid, and I regret stopping too early.  On the downside of her extra activity, she got a late start to the evening and to homework.

I came home to another awesome dinner by my mom - salmon, green beans, and rice.  Yum!  I should have taken a picture, but I didn't think about it.  I just wolfed it down! Dinner for my little kids is a struggle most nights.  I'm sure it is just a phase, but I almost always have to fight with Emma to eat dinner.  The crazy thing is that she usually eats if I can get her take a few bites.  She is just defiant when being told virtually anything.  Today we fight about eating dinner and getting dressed; in a few years it will be over coming home late or using the car.  So I guess I just need to enjoy her while she's small.  And on that note, she is cute!  Here is a picture of her riding "Dreamer" which is the name of my mom's horse.  She and Hannah were playing, and Hannah was the magician and trying to cast a spell on Emma as Emma was riding away on her horse. 

I remembered a quote from Hannah from last week on my birthday.  We were getting ready to leave for work in the morning, and Hannah said, "You have to work on your birthday?" in utter disbelief.  Yes, Hannah you have to work everyday the rest of your life when you're a grown up.  Enjoy childhood. 

Matt and I made a discovery tonight.  Emma watches Frozen like a million times a day.  She has literally watched it hundreds of times.  Anyway, she had the volume on the ipad turned up, and very loudly we heard the part where Christoff tells Anna that men eat their boogers.  Matt looked at me with wide eyes, and then it clicked for me.  We have had trouble for a while now with Emma eating her boogers, and we couldn't figure out where she was getting it.  Well I'll betcha that's where!!  FROZEN!!!  Well I leave you with that tonight.  I'm hoping to watch The Goldbergs here soon.  Have a nice night.

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Week In My Life 2014 - Tuesday

It's Laura's birthday!!!  My first sweet angel is 7 years old today.  I can hardly believe it has been 7 years since we brought her home from the hospital and set her carrier on our kitchen floor in utter disbelief that the hospital let us a take a real human being home!  But alas, here we are 7 years later, and we have survived.  And so has she.  She was pretty psyched for today, so it was an easy wake up.  Generally Laura does not like getting up in the morning, but today both girls jumped out of bed.  Hannah was so sweet.  She stretched and turned to Laura and wished her a happy birthday.  Then she said, "Laura since it's your birthday, someone will have to sleep with me, but you can sleep by yourself tonight!"  The back story is that Hannah is afraid of the dark, and so Laura has been toughing it out and sleeping with her many nights, much to her dismay.  So that was a sweet thought from Hannah.  (Never mind, it didn't happen, and they are sleeping together tonight.)

Anyway on with the morning.  Laura requested cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and so she had them!  Then off to school and work for everyone. She was excited for school, since she knew her birthday would be on the announcements, and she had $5.00 for school store.  She loves school store!  She ended up getting some kind of packet of note cards or something.  She gets anything that she can use to draw.  And then she got a nut pass, which is a "no uniform today" coupon for school.

Laura had requests for the evening as well - thankfully not too demanding.  She wanted tomato soup for dinner.  So after we had everyone picked up and home tonight, I made tomato soup and grilled cheese, while Laura did her homework.  All the girls love tomato soup.  I make three cans, and they generally eat it all.  Then we put candles in a chocolate brownie (another request of Laura's) and sang Happy Birthday.  And finally of course the best part, she got to open her presents.  She got a cowgirl set for her doll and a Nerf gun set.  Matt very wisely also got two smaller Nerf guns for the other two girls.  So the evening ensued with Nerf games.  It was generally an enjoyable evening.  I think Laura had a nice birthday.  She is really looking forward to her birthday party on Saturday.

There was a round of cleaning up and disciplining unruly kids and various other normal events of the of the evening.  But eventually, While the girls played Nerf, mommy and daddy watched The Blacklist, recorded from last night.  I love that show.  I am so mad that I have to wait until February!  Seriously.  My Tuesday nights just got a little less exciting.  Well all the kids are in bed, and I am exhausted.  It's only Tuesday, and it really needs to be Friday.  Does anyone else feel like they're just trying to make it to Friday every week?

Another funny quote from Hannah tonight - we were just pulling in the driveway, and Hannah asks what holiday comes after Halloween.  I responded that Thanksgiving was next.  Hannah says, "Good, we get to each chicken!"  Yep, Hannah you can have chicken if you want.  I'll be eating turkey. :)

I hear the wind howling outside while I type this.  Here comes the polar vortex!  Ugg.. Keep warm!

This morning getting out the door for school/work.

 Look at Emma's ornery grin.

 My sweet 7 year old.  Love her.

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Week In My Life 2014 - Monday

Whew!  Everybody knows Monday is a marathon!  I know that it is that way in every family, and it is no different in ours.  Matt and I have been getting up to exercise in the mornings for a while now.  Then we get Laura up for school and get ready for our days.  Often while we get ready in the mornings on days the little girls stay home, they lay in our bed and watch Sophia the First (which we DVR).  Laura gets dropped off at school at 8:15am every morning and then off to work.  We'll skip work, since it's the mundane part.  I pick Laura up around 5:30ish and head home.  On Mondays and Wednesdays I get to come home to my rockin' mom's home cooking!  We had chicken, baked potatoes and veggies tonight.  It was delicious! 

There was also another surprise tonight.  Papa stopped by for a birthday surprise for Laura and brought her a present.  (Her birthday is tomorrow.)  She was SO excited.  She got riding pants and a top.  She loves horse back riding and is exciting to test them!  We got to enjoy dinner with Grammy, Papa, and Great Granny.  The kids played Perfection with Grammy and Great Grammy while Dad and I chatted after dinner.  It was a nice change of pace.

We did homework while we waited for Matt.  He came home and visited with the kids.  Then Laura headed up to take a shower while I caught up on some work.  Now the kids and Daddy are watching Sleeping Beauty (recorded from last night) on TV.  They have to go to bed in a few minutes!  It's 8:25pm.  They won't be happy when I tell them to head upstairs.   And then we start all over again tomorrow.  Ahhh...the rat race of life. 

 I couldn't resist this pic.  It's the girls playing in the leaves - Fall 2014!

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Catching Up

I'm starting up the ol blog again.  I took a little hiatus - of over 6 months!  It was a lively six months at that.  Where to start, where to start....  I guess we'll start with the summer highlights.  

 It was a good summer for the Adams crew.  We went on vacation, the girls started a new daycare, and our 4th of July was a blast.

We went on vacation again to Hilton Head Island, and it was amazing.  I'm not sure we have had that relaxing of a vacation in recent history.  Every morning we leisurely woke up, had coffee, ate breakfast, and decided what we wanted to get into that day.  There were no time frames or deadlines.  Most afternoons we spent at the beach or the pool.  Laura really loved the waves this year.  She used a boogie board and rode the waves in as they crashed on the beach.  Both Laura and Hannah wore floaties this year at the pool rather than life vests, and it made a huge difference.  Their swimming skills really developed this summer.  To keep up the momentum in that arena, we did two rounds of swim lessons throughout July and August.  Laura is now able to swim completely independent of any flotation devices.  Hannah still needs them, but hopefully by next summer she'll get over the hump too.  But back to vacation, we ate a lot of decadent, fresh seafood, drank plenty of refreshing beverages, and indulged on our share of ice cream.  We took the kids on a pirate cruise, which was one of the highlights of the trip.  They got to dress up as pirates, look for treasure, and shoot water cannons at "Stinky Pete".  They loved it.  I recommend that excursion to anyone heading down to the beach.  In general we relaxed and enjoyed each other.  I won't mention the painful 14.5 hour drive home.  Ouch!

Hannah and Emma started a new daycare in June.  They are now at Primrose, and so far we are extremely happy with the move.  They seem to be better staffed in both number and caliber, have better safety policies, healthier menus, and a much nicer facility.  The kids especially enjoyed Kona Ice Tuesdays throughout the summer, where they got snow cones every Tuesday and the splash pad.  This school has a splash pad that the two younger girls get to use twice a week.  Laura was also there for the summer, participating in their summer camp program.  So she went on a field trip once a week along with all of the other activities.  Figuring out what Laura is going to do this summer already has me a little stressed.  Summers with school-aged kids and working parents are not fun.  I felt guilty leaving them at daycare when they were babies, and the guilt doesn't go away when they older.  I wish that she could have the kind of summer I had as a kid.

I would be remiss to not mention how much the girls enjoyed over the summer and continue to enjoy their "Grammy Time!"  Little Emma gets so excited when she finds out Grammy is coming on a given day to watch them.  She just LOVES her Grammy.  In Emma's world the ranking is 1.  Grammy 2.  Daddy  3.  Sisters  4.  Toys  5. Milk  6.  Mom... only if absolutely necessary.  Grammy watching them has added so much balance and enjoyment to their lives.  We are truly blessed.

The 4th of July was again spend this year at my uncle Marty's and aunt Dena's.  They have a great spot for us to enjoy the outdoors.  The kids swam in the pool, rode on the four-wheeler with Papa and watched as other fished in the pond.  They jumped on the trampoline and generally just ran around wild - a kid's heaven.  We ate, drank, visited and played a lot of corn hole.  Of course the evening was capped off with some awesome fireworks.  The 4th of July is my favorite holiday, and this year was no exception.

On to Fall.  We have been busy as usual this Fall, with Laura in 1st grade, football season and football season.  Our Falls generally revolve around footballs season, and this year has been no exception.  Matt and I went to the Virginia Tech game, which turned out to be a disappointment, but we had a blast anyway.  Stupid Buckeyes.  For Matt and I to get to tailgate without our kids was a treat, and our seats were really good for the game too!  (Thanks Dad!)   Then I went to the Cincinnati game with my college girls, Rachel, Desiree, and Michelle.  We tailgated that game too and had a fun day catching up.  We don't get to see each other too often, so it's more fun visiting than drinking at our age!  (There's our sign!)  Matt has went to a couple of other games, but I have not taken the kids down this year to tailgate as I have in past years.  Emma in this stage in quite challenging.  She is completely fearless and extremely independent, a frightful combination.  She has run away from us a couple of times, one time for about a 20 minute period, which was terrifying.  So in short, I have not been up to taking the kids tailgating, only to be stressed the whole time trying to chase/find/keep track of Emma.  Maybe next year.

First day of 1st Grade

 Tailgating VT game

 Desiree, Michelle and I heading to the stadium for the Cincy game.

Halloween was a great time this year.  We did Boo at the Zoo, which the kids enjoyed.  It was a nice afternoon the day we went, and the kids got to see the brown bears eating pumpkins and do other enrichment activities. This 1200 pound bear walked right up to the glass where Emma was standing, and she didn't even flinch.  I thought that it might scare her a little - nope.  Then we attended a "Halloween" themed birthday party at one of Laura's old friends from daycare.  The girls got to where their costumes and hunt little plastic pumpkins with candy in them.  And they did a pinata and other fun activities.  Then of course the main event was Trick or Treat night, which turned out to be a beautiful night this year.  My parents came down for it, and we walked the neighborhood.  The kids got loads of candy.  They even went through a haunted house that someone had set up in our neighborhood.  It was pretty scary, even for adults.  Even little Emma went through with my mom.

I got to volunteer in Laura's classroom for the Halloween part this year, and it was awesome!


Now we are gearing up for the Holidays, and I am SO excited.  I don't think that I have ever been this excited for Christmas...and Thanksgiving too.  I'm excited to decorate.  I'm excited to shop.  I'm excited for the food.  I'm excited for all the activities, like getting the tree, going to the Nutcracker, going to see Santa and everything in between.

So hopefully I will be better at blogging regularly going forward.  I am going to try to do a link-up for the first time this week, called A Week In My Life #WIML hosted by Kathryn at Team Whitaker.  We'll see how it goes.  Wish me luck!

Here is another fun video of the girls having dance part this morning!