We're back!!!

**I left my camera home for this trip - man, was I mad, but I wasn't about to spend $17.99 at the hotel for a disposable one. So, unfortunately, I have no pictures for this post! :( **

Well, after a long 5 days on the road, we arrived home safely last night!

We started out Wednesday morning on our way to Sandusky, OH to go to the Kalahari. We stayed there for two nights, and it was really ALOT of fun. We wore our kids out - BIG TIME, but they also had loads of fun. My brother and sister-in-law and two of their kids met us there on Thursday, so that was fun too, to have someone else with us!

On Friday afternoon, we left the hotel, and headed out to Ryan's Grandma's house - which is on the way to my dad's. We got there around 3:00, and stayed there for a few hours. Grandma made us a nice roast dinner, and we just had a nice time visiting!

Friday night, we made the trek to my dad's house which was just a little over an hour away from Grandma's. The kids were so good in the car, and we just overall really good kids all week. My brother called me on my phone to see where we were, and I told him we were about 5 miles away! YIPPEE!! Almost there! Owen then announces that he's going to be sick. "I sick mom, I sick mom!" Yep, 5 miles from my dad's and Owen gets car sick. We just couldn't believe it. It is inevitable that if we take a road trip, that one of our kids is going to be sick at least once, if not more. We got him all cleaned up, and got to my dads. He was completely fine after that and slept all night, so we were pretty sure it was just car sickness.

Anyway - we stayed at my dad's for two nights, and had alot of fun too. Ryan and the kids played on the go-kart and got completely dirty, but had fun doing it, so that's o.k.:) If only I had my camera to take a picture of my niece, Leah. She was dirt from head to toe! :) (Mel - I think Jon took one - you should post it!) Saturday night we had "Christmas." Had a nice dinner, and then, of course, presents! The kids loved it!

When we were ready to leave, Brett said he wanted to stay there. We decided to let him think he was staying there, and then see what he would do. He was completely content with the idea of staying there. Ryan and I said good-bye, and he basically couldn't care less that we were leaving without him! It was quite cute. Finally, I went back in to get him, and he cried, because he wanted to stay there. I told him he could watch a movie in our van, and then he came with us !:) It was really sweet.

Overall, we had a very busy/great time, and the kids were just so good through it all, so that made it more enjoyable for me !:)

Christmas - 2007

WOW!! What an awesome few days!!

Christmas started, for us, on Saturday. We had my immediate family Christmas at my brother's house in the morning. It was a little bitter-sweet, because things changed this year. My mom moved in with them in August, so instead of going to her house on Christmas morning, we changed it to Saturday. Anyway, we had a great time, and loads of good food with good people! :)


Here's most of the group, before the family room got REALLY messy! :)

Owen waiting ever so patiently - he was just so sweet!

Can't forget about my Bretty boy! He was really patient too! Melanie got him a new Geo Trax engine, and he was so excited! :)

Chloe and Simon got Nintendo DS from my mom - they were thrilled!

I think Ryan was more excited about this present that Owen was!

Cameron and Leah got Wii from my mom. We decided to play my brother's, and it was SO MUCH FUN! I can see what the hype is all about.


Dana was playing tennis in the picture - I won't tell you what she was doing the rest of the morning! :) Love you Dana!!!





Then, on Saturday night, we went to my mom's extended family get together. We have to have it in a church, because there's just too many of us! :) Again, we had loads of fun, especially when one of the kids pulled the fire alarm, and the fire dept. showed up!


I had to take this picture for my sister. She LOVES a man in uniform, and unfortunately, she left before the fire alarm was pulled! :)

Sunday, we went to church, which was an awesome service, and then headed out to Libertyville, to Ryan's sisters house. Had an AWESOME dinner, and then opened tons of presents again. The kids are just WAY too spoiled!:)



It gets pretty chaotic with the kids, so I didn't get many good pictures at this family party.




Monday afternoon, we went to Ryan's parents house for his extended family get together.


It's tradition for the kids to play "sleeping log" while waiting for Santa to come.

Santa came - and Owen wanted NOTHING to do with him!


Ryan was buried in paper, sporting his new 3-way LED light! :)

And Ellie and Chloe got these p.j.'s from Great Grandma! So cute!


And finally, this morning, we had just me, Ryan and the kids, and then shortly after the kids were done opening presents, Ryan's parents came over for breakfast.



The look on the kids faces in the morning, is just too priceless! They get so excited! Well, minus Owen - he's just as contect with his patchie and ni-ni!:)

Chloe was so excited to get an ipod and idog!

Owen finally got in on all of it, and had fun opening stuff.

And Brett - finally getting the tractor that he's wanted since September!


And here is the mess in my family room after the events of the morning! :)




This photo was just too cute not to post - Owen with Grandpa watching A Christmas Story.

We had a very lazy day. The kids stayed in their p.j.'s ALL DAY, which is a total change from what we normally do on Christmas day, but it was a very welcoming change. They played with all their new gifts. Chloe got an ipod, and was singing pretty much all day - unless she was taking pictures with her new digital camera. We just hung out and had fun!

Now, they are all snug in their beds, resting up to head out to Kalahari in the morning, followed by a visit to Great-Grandma, and finally ending up at my dads in Pennsylvania! Whew! It's a busy time, but I love it!!

Oh - one more thing! Last week Chloe came home from school with this...


I would give baby Jesus a comfortable bed. Chloe

I asked Chloe if this is what her teacher wrote, and she said, "No, me and daddy were talking about this on the way to school, and that's what I decided I would want to give him!" How sweet!

Oh what a night...and day!!!

This past Friday night, Ryan's mom took Chloe and I, Ryan's two sisters, Heather and Jen and Jen's daughter Ellie downtown to spend the night!

We started off on the train...


Chloe and Ellie had so much fun!

From the train station, we walked to our hotel - the Mariott on the Magnificent Mile! It was awesome! We were on the 12th floor, with floor to ceiling windows, and it was just so cool looking out the windows!



The beds had down comforters, feather pillows and pillowtop mattresses! It was delightful! :)

Next, we headed to Bucca di beppo for dinner. It was so good. If you've never been here, I suggest you try it.


Chloe and Ellie got to drink their lemonade out of wine glasses. Chloe thought this was pretty cool! :)

After dinner, we hailed a taxi (which Chloe also loved) and headed to Macy's to check out the windows. Chloe was fading quickly. She mentioned in the cab that she had a sucker, so I told her to eat it. She needed the sugar rush! :) We had tons more to do yet! :) The windows at Macy's were o.k. they were the Nutcracker.


We walked to the Christkindlmarket (sp?) and unfortunately it was closed. So we went to the big tree, to capture a picture!



Heather has three boys. So she definitely got her girl fix this weekend! :)

We went back to the hotel to let the girls swim, and the moms sit in the hot tub. After swimming, the girls enjoyed cheese popcorn and apple juice in champagne glasses, courtesy of Grandma!


It wasn't long after this next photo was taken, before the girls fell asleep. We packed alot of stuff in a little amount of time.


We woke up bright and early the next morning, and had bagels and cream cheese in our room, and just lounged around and talked before getting ready.

We walked up to State St. to go shopping! We stopped inside Macy's to see the tree in the Walnut Room...



Shortly after lunch it started to snow!! It was absolutely beautiful! It was a bit messy, but it was fun to be downtown during the snow storm!

Ryan's sister Jen and mom.


Next, we took a trolly to American Girl Place.


We made it to American Girl. Now, I've never been in this store, and neither has Chloe. I've heard it was pretty cool, but I didn't really now what to expect once we got there.

This place was so cool! Chloe only has a Bitty Baby, but come her birthday, I think we're going to get her a big doll. (Shhhh...don't tell her though!:)) Anyway, Jen and I had told Chloe and Ellie that we were just going to look, and not buy anything. It's too close to Christmas to buy stuff now. Anyway, Jen came to me, and said that we could get the babies "pampered" for $5. They clean them up, put bows in their hair, and get toenail polish stickers. Great! That was a perfect idea, and just enough to have fun, yet not spend a whole lot of money.


Sarah got all cleaned up in her little salon chair. :) It really was pretty cool. She had permanent marker on her leg that I couldn't get off, but they did. She looked really cute after her little body scrub! :)



Chloe and I headed to the bathroom, and while we were in there, she said to me, "thank's for letting me get Sarah all clean - that was a special time for me!" I was thrilled, because I've been trying to teach her to be content, and not always want more. To be thankful for everything she has, and this really proved it for me today that she was getting it!! Anyway, when we got back, Ellie was telling us that Grandma said they could get an outfit! Oh what fun for them! They were thrilled!



Here's Grandma and her only two grandaughters!


At this point we were pretty pooped! We started to walk back to the hotel to get our luggage, when Grandma saw a restaurant (Grand Lux Cafe) that she liked. SO, we went in and had a nice dinner.



We had to wait for a bit for a table, so the girls just played with their dolls on the stairs.



We had such an AWESOME time! I just really felt blessed that we were able to do things like this. Thanks Nancy, for everything!!! We had so much fun!!

GO VOTE!!

I'm a little late with this, so I probably won't win, but don't forget to vote for my picture!! Go here!!!

THANKS!!:) You have until tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m.!

The cost of sending Christmas Cards

As I sit doing my Christmas cards this year, I am baffled at the amount of money spent. Let me break it down for you.

Christmas Card Picture $17.10
Cardstock $ 8.50
Envelopes $12.00
Stamps $41.00

Total $78.60

This is just crazy to me! I mean, I love to send them out and everything, but it just seems like my lists gets longer and longer every year. This year I sent out 83 cards. (That doesn't include the last minute ones that I'll forget to do.)


I really do love sending out Christmas Cards, I just hate the price of it!


I guess it comes down to the Christmas Card itself...




PRICELESS!!! :)

The picture on my header is from last year's Christmas card. I love that picture, but you can tell that it was "staged." The picture for this year's card is MY FAMILY. And by that I mean, that it's us! There's no fancy clothes - look at Ryan, he's got his hunting hat on for crying out loud - no perfect smiles, but it's us, and I love it! :)

And no, Michelle - the car is not ours! :)

Photo Contest!

I choose to enter a contest from Write from Karen's blog. The theme is holiday cheer!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Don’t you love this time of year? Can you smell the fresh baked goods? What about the pine of Christmas trees? And look at all of those colorful packages! What about the beautiful glow of the candles? Are the kids getting excited? Do you have all of your shopping done? Let’s see those gorgeous decorations! It’s time to post a picture of your favorite holiday moments. Be creative, be fun - the more original the photo, the better chance you’ll have of winning!

Here are the rules. When you have your entry posted, please insert the direct link into the Mr. Linky below. Bloggers/readers are the judges. Please vote for your favorite entry (a voting poll will appear in this post) beginning at 5:00 p.m. U.S. central time December 14th to 8:00 p.m. U.S. central time December 17th (I’ve extended the voting period by one day in order to entice your weekly readers to vote for you!).

So I've decided to enter this picture of Brett watching A Christmas Story! He really LOVED this movie this year!!:) Our favorite holiday moments are spent watching all of the fun Christmas movies that we don't normally watch throughout the year! The kids really look forward to this!!

Happiness!!

This past Saturday Ryan took the kids sledding, while I went out to "finish" my Christmas shopping.

On my way out, I passed the hill that they were at, and decided to park in the gas station parking lot across the street to spy on them! ;) It wasn't too long before they realized that I was there, and they were all jumping up and down and waving, and getting in line to be the next to go down the hill. I could just barely see the smiles on their faces when they went down the hill, only to see Owen jumping up and down and clapping when Chloe and Brett reached the bottom. It was really just a sweet moment.

Such a sweet moment, that I began bawling. Yep, bawling - couldn't control it! Thankfully I was by myself! :) I should've been crying tears of joy, because I was getting away BY MYSELF FOR HOURS!! But that's not why I was crying. I just felt happy for them that they were enjoying such an awesome time with their dad, but at the same time I felt sad that I wasn't a part of that memory. (Well, technically, I was if you call sitting in the van, in a parking lot "part of it") :)

I quickly got over it, took a mental picture in my mind - because, of course, I didn't bring my camera, and headed off to the mall to fight a bunch of other shoppers trying to "finish" their list.

***SIDE NOTE - I DID NOT finish the list, but I got really close! :)

About 2-3 Inches?!?

I'm not really sure of the exact amount of snow that we got through the night, but it was substantial enough to play in it! :)


This is our fire pit out in our backyard. I guess it's about 2-3 inches.


Owen was trying so hard to make snowballs to throw at Brett. Don't mind his purple snowpants and his mis-matched pink gloves! My mom is putting gloves in his stocking, so I'm too cheap to buy new ones for a couple of weeks. And the pants, let's just say that I have a brand new pair of 2T navy blue snowpants that I have been waiting for this day to use, and I can't seem to find them ANYWHERE! Ugghhh!


And Brett tried so hard to get to the top of the slide. He would "slide" down the stairs and the slide, trying to get to the top! :) He was laughing so hard!


Owen was stuck in his Cozy Coupe for a while. I tried so hard for Brett to help him get out, but he couldn't do it. He was pretty stuck. I ended up having to get my boots on to help him out! :) I'm not too keen on playing in the snow. While I love it, I don't want to play in it. That's why these pictures where taken from my screened-in porch! :)


And this was the result when it was time to come in! :) Poor little guy. This is his first year where he is big enough to go out there and play, and he LOVED it!