Monday, April 30, 2012

Free Stuff and Funnies

Week or so ago, a local grocery store had an ad out that had a typo!  Funniest typo I have EVER seen!!!


Today I received this in the mail from Target!  I saw something post on one of the blogs I follow about signing up for this and I got it!!! I love free stuff and coupons!!!!






Pin It

CRAY-Z Weekend!!!!!

I. AM. BEAT.  It all started Thursday.......Mike had some unexpected work, so I had to get a babysitter to get the kids off the bus.  Becca took them back to her house for the afternoon until I could get them.  I left work at 4:00 and rushed home to get Maggie's volleyball uniform, then rush to Becca's house, then rush to the other side of town for the game at 6:15.  Of course our girls won because they totally rock the court!!!  Go Strikers! We finally got home around 7:30, then it was time for dinner, baths and bed and time for mom to collapse and hang out with the most handsome man ever!

Friday, Becca had to pick up the girls again because Mike was working on a burglary case and had some charity work he was supposed to do for Cops on Top, where they get on top of a Wal-Mart, dance, harass patrons and get donations, all of which to go Special Olympics.  The police department does alot of fundraising for Special Olympics.  Cops really are great people and as long as you obey they law, they won't bother you!  Just sayin'!  My plan for Friday night since he was working was taking dinner to a friend and her family.  Shanon just had a baby two weeks ago, a pleasant surprise, but baby Mac joins this sweet family which consists of Wade, who is 13 and Zach and Garrett, twins who are 11, plus let's add in the fact that Steve, the husband/dad, blew out his knee while at work about a week before the baby was born. They have their hands full right now, so I was taking them dinner.  In the meantime, a friend calls and wants me to have dinner with her and another friend, so of course I say yes, but no babysitter until she tells me that her babysitter will keep all of them and we can split the cost!! YAHOO!!! Count me in!  So.....I get dinner for my friends, stop and get dinner for the kids, drop them off at Kristi's, take dinner to the friends, go back to Kristi's and then we head out.

Oh and let me mention that it took me ONE AND ONE HALF HOURS to get home from work!  I mean really?  It's like I never have plans with friends and the ONE time I do, traffic is horrible, I get behind folks who won't go the speed limit and get caught by every red light and train in the county!  What's up with that? Needless to say, I needed a little girl time and it was great hanging with my friends.

Saturday, me and the girls got up and headed to the other side of town (an hour away) to shop and get some groceries to cook some side dishes for my Dad's birthday.  He turned 61.....still young!  We had a great afternoon with family eating BBQ and enjoying the weather. It couldn't have been a more perfect day. We left my parents house an hour later than I wanted to, AND I had stop at Wal-Mart on the way home so we didn't get home until nearly 10!  EXHAUSTED AGAIN and then I had to clean our bathroom because it had been like 3 weeks since we last cleaned it.  Yeah, I know that sounds gross, but the bathroom wasn't gross, but we do live in our house, we are busy and we have two kids, sometimes things are forgotten.



Sunday, we got up and went to church and it was a special day because we walked down front with Maggie and she made her profession of faith and is getting baptized on May 6!  I am so excited for my sweet girl!  This is the most important decision she will ever make.  I'm excited about what God has done in her life. I treated the girls to lunch at McAlister's, which by the way kids eat free on Saturdays and Sundays, so it was really a treat to my bank account!  Then we went home, Maggie watched TV in the den, I crashed on the couch and Sarah went next door to play with the Silloway twins.  Mike was napping because once again he had to go to work, but I love my man for working so hard to provide for our family.  He is my hero!

Hope your weekend was as fun-filled at mine!





Pin It

Sunday, April 29, 2012

A Day In Nashville

On Wednesday of this past week, I went to Nashville, TN with Maggie, who is in the fifth grade, for a field trip. The kids who didn't get to go on the Washington D.C. trip had the opportunity to go on this field trip, so we went.  I haven't been on a fun field trip like this one so I wanted to spend the day with my girl and her friends.

We left the school at 5:45 IN THE MORNING and headed for Nashville.  It only took us 4 hours to get there, which I thought was pretty good.  First we went to The Hermitage, which is Andrew Jackson's home.  He was the 7th president and his wife's name was Rachel.  She died before he was elected president.  Her sister and brother in law had a whole slew of kids and they had a set of twins.  The sister and brother in law thought it would be a good idea to give Rachel and Andrew one of them so they adopted a son and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr.




Then it was off to eat lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Nashville.  It was a great lunch. They serve us lunch and a cookie for dessert.  The staff at the Hard Rock were so accommodating for such a large group (3 charter buses full), I mean of course they knew we were coming and they were well prepared!  Thanks and kudos for putting up with so many kids at one time!



On the way to our next stop, while driving through downtown, our tour guide told us about a few points of interest and showed us where Taylor Swift lives.  All of the kids were excited and squealing.


Next was the Parthenon!  It was so cool!  We did the tour of the museum and then walk around outside and learned a little history about the Greek gods, etc.  Not much there to see, so we sat under the shade of a big tree and enjoyed the nice weather.




Our last stop was the Adventure Science Center.  There was lots of cool stuff for the kids to run around and play with/on.  They had a blast and it was a great way to end our fun filled day!


We loaded up the bus around 4 and headed back home, and I was very excited.



While on this trip with 5th graders, I learned a few things:
  • They are very obnoxious.
  • They are loud.
  • Some of them stink of body odor. They are 10 and 11 years old, it's time to wear deodorant.
  • NEVER EVER EVER sit in the back of the bus where the restroom is because you will inevitably get stuck on the bus with the "farter" of the class.  Mitchell really polluted the bus BEFORE he even came out of the bathroom!  There was a kid sitting in front of me saying "doo doo pee pee doo doo pee pee" and he kept on and finally I leaned and asked him how old he was and he said 11 and said well quit acting like you are in kindergarten.  I guess he was acting his age after all.  
  • Some of the girls are way more "mature" than my sweet Maggie. Some of those girls could have passed for 8th graders.  WOW!  
Although I enjoyed going on the field trip with Maggie and she was an angel and her friends are so silly and I really enjoyed seeing her interact with her friends, I will think twice about going spending another long day with a bunch of 5th graders!







Pin It

Saturday, April 21, 2012

RIP Bratz

Last weekend, Maggie went with a friend to the school's spring fling.  Sarah was sick and I really didn't want to go, so of course I got from Sarah "Maggie gets to do everything".  Well, she's 10 and you are 6, so yeah.  Maggie, being the sweet girl she is, told Sarah she would try to win Sarah a goldfish.  Well, she did and we got Sarah a tank, a plastic plant and some pretty rocks for her gold fish and everything seemed okay.  That was on Friday.  By Saturday afternoon, Bratz the fish was a goner.  Sarah took it well and we prepared Bratz for a proper burial and I'm not talking the flushing kind of burial. Later that night, Pepper, our dog, dug it up and ate the fish.  






Pin It

Friday, April 20, 2012

DIY Bathroom Update

*NOTE - I deleted the album in Picasa Web Albums not realizing it would delete the pictures on my blog.  OOPPSS!!

My bathrooms need to be updated terribly so at Christmas we bought ourselves some ceramic tile and Mike did a fantastic job putting it down.  We've been toying with the idea of redoing our cabinets, but kind of hesitant, but Mike bit the bullet and bought some stuff we had seen at Home Depot by Rustoleum, supposed to be an easy way to give your cabinets an updated look.


Here is a picture of what our cabinets look like, although this is the cabinet in our bathroom, but they were essentially the same.


We have nasty carpet in our bathroom that will be replaced at some point in time, but like I said the cabinets are the same all over the house.


Here are the cabinets with a new color and new pulls, plus a peek at the awesome tile Mike put down back in December.



Pin It

Disney World Day 3 Animal Kingdom


We started off the day with breakfast at Chef Mickey's!  It is the best breakfast at Disney World!

We got our belly's full then we went to Animal Kingdom where we met up with my Aunt Cheryl, Uncle Terry, my cousin Jordan and her daughter Mercy.  Jordan lives in Orlando and Terry and Cheryl live in Jacksonville so they came and hung out with us. It was so wonderful getting to spend the day with them.  I had not seen Cheryl since September and it's probably been a year since I've seen Terry. 
 It was a great day. 

 The Animal Kingdom closes early so we headed back to the room and took a great nap.  We had dinner reservations at O'Hana and we got to see the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom while we were eating dinner.  It was pretty cool and a great way to end the night.  
We headed on back to the room because we were just exhausted.  



Pin It

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A Day In the Life of Me

It's 9:30 p.m. and the kids still aren't settled in for the night.  Well, now they finally are only because I had to say those dreaded words......DON'T. MAKE. ME. COME. IN. THERE!  Now there is silence.

My day begins at 5:15 or so when I jump out of bed and straight into the shower.  I get out and turn on the news and watch it for a few minutes, then fuss with the kids and get them up and in the shower while I'm fixing breakfast and getting myself ready and making sure Sarah's backpack is put together.  They get out of the shower and Sarah has to go through 10 minutes or so of drying off (she hates to be wet) then another 5 minutes of fussing because she is cold even though I put her towel in the dryer to get it toasty warm.  Then I help her get dressed all the while trying to get Maggie get her butt in gear and get dressed.  They eat breakfast, sometimes Sarah eats and sometimes she sits there for 15 minutes.  Then we move on to the mad rush of brushing hair and teeth and putting on sock and shoes. Then comes the bus and off they go to start their day.

SHEW!!!!  Once they leave, I finish getting ready and rush out the door.  Now comes the real fun! An hour drive to work.  27 miles + 60 minutes.  I work all day, not that it's hard, but some of the people I work with can be exhausting.  Then at the end of the work day, it's another long drive home.  As soon as I walk on the door, someone wants something.  I don't even have a chance to change my clothes (I'm still in my work clothes and it's 9:45 pm).  I find something for dinner, which not everyone is ever happy with.  I get the kitchen cleaned up, sometimes I just rinse everything off and put it in the sink.  Do I whatever housework I feel like needs to be done and I make sure homework is done.  Maggie is good about doing hers on her own, but Sarah is a different story, but she is in first grade, so that's just the way it is.  I finally get them in bed between 9 and 9:30 and I finally sit down and try to chill out.  Sometimes I make myself stay up until 11:00 or 11:30 just so I can sit in silence for a bit.

It's starts all over the very next day, same thing every. single. day.  It's like the movie Groundhog Day.  I love that movie!  I am so tired.  I'm ready for a break.  I could use my quiet time to do things around the house I want to do, like organize, clean out, do a craft I've been wanting to start, but nope, I'm just too tired and it's late.  Oh well.  I'm ready for summer, I'm ready for no homework, long nights of the kids playing outside, no hurry to get anywhere.  Oh summer vacation, where are you?



Pin It

Disney World Day 2 (A Month Later)

Day 2 of our Disney trip started off with us moving from the Pop Century to the Port Orleans Riverside.  We checked in a grabbed some breakfast so we could get on over to the Magic Kingdom.  Of course, I had to put a damper on things when I realized I had left my phone charger at the Pop Century and we spent about 30 minutes trying to get someone in house cleaning to attempt to get it.  All of this happened by 9:30 a.m.  We stayed at the Magic Kingdom for a while and Sarah was FINALLY tall enough to ride some fun rides so we rode Space Mountain and she was little freaked out but loved it and wanted to ride it again.  We went back to the room for about 2 hours and Mike took Sarah to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where she got a Princess makeover and she chose to be Ariel for the day.  She is such a girly girl so this was right up her alley.  She loved every second of it.  By the time she was finished, it was off to dinner at the Crystal Palace to have dinner with Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet.  After a long day of riding rides, getting all glammed up and eating a fabulous dinner, we crashed hard that night!  

You cannot visit Disney World without getting a Mickey waffle and a pound of bacon on the side!




Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique (before)



Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique (during)
Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique (after)
The look on her face was totally priceless and it was all I could do to keep from crying! 









Midnight on the Teacups....this seems to be a tradition for us.  When Maggie was 6, she did BBB and we were on the Teacups at midnight!  



Pin It

Monday, April 9, 2012

Easter

We had a great Easter this year.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous!  The pollen has subsided a bit so we were able to get out and enjoy the weather.  We decided to do a few things different this year.  Normally, we die eggs the night before Easter and the Easter Bunny puts the eggs they decorated in their basket and we get up and go to church on Sunday then rush to someone's house for lunch.  This year we went to the Easter service at Church of the Highlands on Friday night, then had dinner with friends.  On Saturday, we went to my sister in law's house for my nephews family birthday celebration.  On Sunday we got up, the kids rummaged through their baskets and then we dyed and decorated the eggs. I got everything together that we needed to take to my mother's house and then headed out the door! It was a great day.  We didn't feel rushed at all.  I wish every holiday family gathering would feel that way!





I made these. They had the tin buckets at Target for $2.50 each and 
with the help of a black pain pin and some stencils, there you have it!
I'm waiting patiently for my Silhouette!  


They always get essentially the same thing.  They like the same stuff and it prevents
someone (Sarah) from getting mad because she didn't get this or that. 



Hope everyone had a good Easter weekend!


Pin It