HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

to the two greatest father's in our lives! 

Thank you for being there for us, and we love you both very much!!!

My Hubby Don/Daddy...

My Dad Nick/Grandpa...

Beautiful Necklace

I just received another Mother's Day gift! I sure am feeling really special...first I had a wonderful breakfast with Bella at preschool with the lovely plant & card from her, and now this...

My mom sent me this beautiful necklace with a pearl for each child on it and a very touching card! 

Thank you so much mom I LOVE IT and I LOVE YOU!!!

Mother's Day at Preschool

This morning I was invited to Bella's preschool classroom for a Mother's Day breakfast that her teacher had made for us. It was very sweet and wonderful to be able to have that time with Bella. AND to sweeten the pot I get to enjoy a bonus half hour to myself out of this lovely morning....breakfast was from 7:30-8am and she doesn't normally start until 8:30, so I have 4 whole hours to myself!!

Bella enjoying her breakfast...

The yummy egg bake and we also had cinnamon bread and OJ...

Me & my little sweetie...

She painted this beautiful pot for me with lovely flowers...

The sweet card that she made for me 

(apparently she's going by "II" now...we need to get cracking on writing her name)...

Busy Weekend Recap

I think that bullets are the best way to recap our Easter weekend events, so here it goes:

Friday:

• The kids had the day off from school due to Good Friday
  
• Don worked and had three of the kids
• That evening I had Bible Study at my friend's house (which I love) and after that many of us stayed and watched the movie The Passion of Christ. If you haven't seen this movie I HIGHLY recommend it....it is so powerful!! This was my second time watching it and it brought me to tears just as much this time as it did the first. It's one thing to hear the story and read about it, but to watch what it would have been like unfold in front of your face really makes you appreciate the magnitude of what he did for us to a whole new level.

Saturday:

• We went to Weslie's 1st bitrhday party. We all had a really great time but Adriene is in trouble...my kids came home with TONS of candy and might I remind you it was the day before the Easter Bunny came. Payback Adriene is all I have to say!!!!
• After the party I ran my hiney off to prep for Easter Sunday and also had to get Nico to baseball practice. I might add that we only saw Don for 45 mins the whole day until he came home at 9:30PM (I was just a wee bit irritated by this but I still love him).

Princess Bella and Prince Kade

Princess Olivia

Sunday:

• We all got up about 9:30AM and the kids hunted for their Easter Baskets
• After the hunt the kids went through their baskets and ingested as much candy as they could before we put the kabash on it.
• While the kids were shoving their faces I was prepping for dinner: I made napkins (which are cute if I do say so myself), made a bunny cake (which again is so cute if I do say so myself), made pistachio salad (which is very yummy if I do say so myself), cleaned the house (which is always a mess if I do say so myself), and many other things. I was so busy trying to prep for the day that we missed Mass...such a bummer but from what I hear it was PACKED.
  
• Our 1st set of guests, the Spiccis, arrived @ 2:30 to prep the ham and get it in the oven.
• At 3:30 we headed to our association park for an Easter Egg Hunt...the kids had tons of fun and came home with TONS of candy (oh great even more candy)
• After the hunt we walked back home to finish prep work for dinner and then rested for a short time. My sister, Angie, and her beau Joe arrived at this time as well
• At 6:30PM we all sat down to enjoy our FABULOUS feast of: Ham, mashed potatoes, potato bake (reds, sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, garlic, and seasoning), broccoli, dinner rolls, pistachio salad, bunny cake, banana cream pie, and carrot cake.

It was a GREAT WEEKEND!!!

Note: Easter Pictures to follow on next post.

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday

This is Nico sending off the Valentine's gift, that he bought with his own money (he even paid for shipping), for his "girlfriend" Sarah in Indy. So sweet isn't it and it was all his idea!

Mardi Gras

Bella is all ready to celebrate Mardi Gras Mr. T style...

Really she only wore one strand of beads to school but she wanted a picture with all of them on. She brought some for her classmates and the rest went to school with the big kids to hand out!

Amazingly, all of these beads are left over from our Mardi Gras trip to Mobile, AL last year. As a matter of fact we still have 3 shoe boxes full of beads even after today...I guess we're set for a few years!

This is Don & I last year at the Mardi Gras Ball. Actually, this is the only photo that I have of the 2 of us that evening because he was pretty sick and left right after this photo (you can tell by the look on his face that he wasn't doing well). The poor guy missed just about the entire Ball.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!! 

I hope your loved ones treat you well!

My Valentine & I will be headed out to a nice dinner and a movie tonight...I'll let you know how it goes. I also have a very sweet post to share with you as well as some photos of the kid's Valentine's parties.

Have a great day, and Hugs & Smooches to you all! xoxoxo

What are These People Thinking?

My sweet, wonderful, thoughtful, daughter Bailey was really into finding out what everyone wanted for Christmas this year. She even hunted for babysitting jobs so that she could earn some money to use to buy family members gifts this year...she was very determined that she must buy for her family, and I think that was so gracious of her for her age! I'm proud of you Bail! 

This is the great gift that I got from Miss Bail...I have been in serious need of a new pair of kitchen shears for sometime now because mine can't hardly cute paper anymore.

BUT take a close look at this photo and tell me what you think might be wrong with this picture....

Are you stumped? Well here take a closer look....

Have you figured it out? 

What are these people thinking? WHY does one need scissors to open a pack of scissors...are you kidding me? What if this is was the very first set of scissors I was buying...how the heck would I have opened them??? Seriously people, let's think before we package! While I'm on the topic, have you ever had to open a Barbie (or any toy for that matter)...they go so far as to stitch every strand of her hair to the cardboard facade that she comes on? Is it really necessary to secure them down that much to a piece of cardboard....I mean seriously people, it shouldn't take three hours to extract one toy from it's packaging! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD A WONDERFUL AND JOYOUS DAY CELEBRATING THE BIRTH OF CHRIST!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas, but it is always a bit strange to be spending it in a hotel with warm weather, but as long as we are with the ones we love, it's special no matter what the location happens to be! We have been having lots of fun and have been very busy here in San Antonio which is why you haven't heard from me, but I hope to be able to fill you in on our activities tomorrow at some point.
For now MUCH LOVE to all of our family and friends!!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY!!

I'm totally missing my blogging time but the holidays and bowl preparation have sure consumed all of my time the past week! My goal is to do some catch up posts tomorrow before we head off to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl. Also, another goal of mine is to try and post daily while there but I'm not making any promises! :)

Hope to chat with you all tomorrow and get you caught up!

Mizzou Elves!

Go check out Coach Pinkel, Chase Daniel, Chase Coffman, Jeremy Maclin and Truman the Tiger as ELVES...too funny!

One of Don's coworkers found it on the net!

Also, Congratulations to Chase Coffman our 2008 Mackey Award Winner — America's Best Tight End!!!

MU Athletic Dept. Christmas Party

Last night was the annual athletic department Christmas party and this year it was held at the Stoney Creek Inn. We all had a great time with food, drinks, story time (which is a tradition...Mike (our AD) read Twas the Night Before Christmas before Santa came), Santa...which the kids were very excited about especially Liv & Bella, gifts...the kids all got one, Don got a gift certificate to Sophia's & I "won" a gift certificate for a one night stay at the Stoney Creek Inn in a theme room-woohoo, and friends!

Survey

Just for fun I have posted a survey on the side....I'm just curious to see where I fall in the scheme of Christmas shopping!

I will be the first one to answer and next it's your turn! :)

St. Nick Came!!!

A tradition that we have always had in my house is to celebrate St. Nicholas' feast day which is December 6th. What you do is leave your shoes out on December 5th before you go to bed and St. Nick stops by and leaves a small gift....well he came to our house last night and the kids were overjoyed!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas...

This year I decided to put up our Christmas decor a week earlier then normal...with all of the rush that ensues us once Thanksgiving arrives and the bowl game, I wanted us to be able to fully enjoy it! I had the house completely done by Nov. 24th....yeah!!!

Thanksgiving!!

This year for Thanksgiving our good friends, the Spiccis, had us over for dinner! It was so nice to go to someone's house for a change. Since Don has worked here at Mizzou we have not been able to travel for Thanksgiving. So our dinners for the past 9 years have consisted of us cooking or going to the dining hall...both have been great but it was a nice change this year!

In addition to the Spiccis having us, they were also kind enough to have Borts (one of Don's assistants) and Erich (one of Don's students) for dinner as well. The food was fantastic but as with all holidays there was a TON of it! They made turkey, stuffing, dressing, veggies cranberries, mashed potatoes rolls, coconut custard pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie...it was all DELICIOUS! We brought pre dinner snacks, I made sweet potato casserole (it was AWESOME) and two pie (I made apple and Bail made cherry...both SO GOOD)! 

Thanks Tony, Aimee, and Sophie!!!!!

Aimee & Tony prepping and Borts, Bella, & I....

Bella helping to put the silver away (she did a great job) and the rest playing a game...

Bailey's Cherry Pie and my Apple Pie (this one turned out so much better then my last one)...

Gobble Gobble!!

Wishing all of you a very safe and Happy Thanksgiving from our Family to yours!!

We are thankful to have such wonderful family & friends like you in our lives!

We wish that we could celebrate with all of you, but know that we are with you in spirit! We love you all, and hope that you all have a wonderful day with your families & friends!!