TRIMMING THE TREE

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR A GOOD LAUGH!!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9633797718

Here's a cool website where you can do this with a picture. It's fun to play around with.

Lily setting the table. It has become her "job" every year. She loves it. Those pink papers are "place cards" she made.
Lily making something---cracking eggs for sweet potato casserole I think.
Wyatt and Lily sitting down to a great dinner.
Visiting Santa at the mall. Wyatt wasn't going to see him, but decided at the last minute he would. He said it was because he knew I wanted a picture. I think he wanted to make sure and cover his bases.
Lily and Wyatt with their Nema and Papaw after church today.


We had a wonderful food, family, and shopping filled Thanksgiving holiday break. I guess the holiday rush is officially on now. We've decided this year to keep it simple and not stress out. Just enjoy what the season is really about.
Here's a book recommendation. Even though I haven't read it yet, my brother is reading it right now and he was giving us highlights and showing us certain parts. It looks very interesting and I can't wait to read it. It's called "The Year of Living Biblically".
Have a great week!!

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!

What I'm thankful for:

~a loving husband

~2 awesome kids

~a nice home

~a job i love

~good friends

~a great family

Wyatt and Lily both said they are most thankful for family.

NOTHIN' LIKE A PILE OF LEAVES !!

TGIF!!!!! Here's why.....

* Dinner at our friends' tonight while 3 of her 4 kids and 1 of my 2 kids is at movie night at school. It will almost be like a grown up night with just 2 10 year old boys who we probably won't see the whole time! Looking forward to a glass of wine!
* Both kids having sleepovers---which always makes them SOOO happy!
* A relaxing weekend without too much planned.
* 2 days off, then 2 days of work and then 5 days off! Yay!
* Looking so forward to spending time with the fam for Thanksgiving! Lots of shopping and eating!

FUN SATURDAY

We had such a great Saturday. Lily and I had a "girls' day"---we met friends for lunch and then went to Beef and Boards theater to see "Alice in Wonderland". The girls loved it. They always have such great productions. While we were gone my wonderful hubby cleaned the entire house---I mean all 3 bathrooms, all laundry done and folded, vacuumed and even mowed the lawn! Yeah, I felt a little guilty that I was out having fun while he was slaving away---I said a "little"! HaHa! In the evening we took the kids bowling at Pinheads. We bowled a couple of games and had pizza. A good time was had by all. Of course, I came in last both games ;-( The best thing about it is that they can program the bumpers to go up and down so only certain players have them. Lily used them and I guess I should have, too!
I can't believe this is the last week before Thanksgiving!! Time just seems to go faster and faster!

Lily had a Brownie field trip to a florist headquarters Wednesday. It was cool to see the TONS of flowers, vases and other things they had to make up arrangements. The girls all got to make their own arrangement. They loved that. TGIF!!!!

This is a cool story. So inspirational and shows how far hard work and hustle can get you!! Wyatt is a friend of his brother---played football with him and goes to school and church with him. And, of course, we love UK and live in Noblesville. So, the connections are just kind of weird.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007711050469

http://www.ukathletics.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=37&url_article_id=20819&change_well_id=2

GRANDPARENT'S DAY

Lily and her Nema.
Lily with her teacher, Mrs. Perrott.
We had a great weekend. It was Grandparent's Day at the elementary school Friday so my mom came up for it. She left Saturday afternoon. We took the kids to see Bee Movie Saturday night. It was SOO cute. I recommend it. The kids loved it.

TRICK-OR-TREAT

Jason from Friday the 13th and a witch.

I love this picture. The wind was blowing and it looks like she's flying.
Lily, Savannah and Emma.
Wyatt and Trevor.

OPRAH & FALL BREAK

Our hotel room. It was gorgeous!
Charlene and I after we got back from the show. We had already changed into our jeans. Since you can't take cameras to Oprah, we didn't get any pics before the show.

A couple of pics of the ultra hip lounge.
The lobby. That's the check in desk with all of the crystal in the glass case. It was so unique.

The kids at our neighbor's pumpkin carving party. They ALL piled into one wagon. Good thing Little Tikes is made so well!
Carving their pumpkins.

We made Halloween cookies over break. I let them go to town and BOY were they interesting cookies!
Wyatt's "mouth" cookie he made by cutting the ends off candy corn. Pretty creative, I thought.
Jeff was gone all last week and the kids were so excited he was coming home, they made him welcome banners, a great dinner and homemade chocolate chip cookies.
We took an impromptu trip up to Frankenmuth, MI to see the new Ralph Lauren children's store that Jeff spent all last week opening. It was gorgeous! I got the kids' Christmas outfits there. Perfect timing, since Lily is just now out of their 6x size and this store has up to 14.
A big hay bale creature in Frankenmuth.

The weekend before Fall Break, Lily did the show choir clinic. Look how many kids participated. It was great--we'll definitely do it again next year. We're so lucky that our schools have all of these great opportunities for the kids!
The t-shirts are so cute with the High School Musical logo.
Last soccer game. Lily really came a long way and held her own against many much larger girls!
I took the kids to Russell Farms to get pumpkins. There was a ton to do there for $4. We got lost in the 5 acre corn maze for a while.
On the hayride. Don't they look like they love each other? A rare moment!

Well, we had a great Fall Break. It went so fast. We didn't do a ton, but just enough to stay busy but still have lots of down time, which the kids and I both enjoyed. Jeff came home Friday night and Saturday morning we took off to Frankenmuth for the night. Got home Sunday and went to our neighbors pumpkin carving party.

OK, some details on Oprah. It will be on tomorrow. Here's the show. We walked away with about $300 worth of goodies. Cindy Crawford's complete skin care line, $50 gift card to CVS(somehow I got 2 in my bag-don't think I was supposed to), Kissable Couture lipgloss, and, ironically, Ralph Lauren's huge 15 pound book, which Jeff had just gotten from work a week before. We had a great time and I think my favorite part was just relaxing at meals with adult conversation( we had some GREAT food!) and walking around the city. Tune in tomorrow and maybe you'll get a glimpse of us in the audience!

Oprah was AWESOME!!! Cindy Crawford, Ivanka Trump, lots of give-aways. We had a blast! The show will air October 30. More details later!
Looking SOOO forward to a few days with NO PLANS!!! YAY!!
Can't wait to just hang out with the kids and not be in a rush to get anywhere or do anything!
SO much to be said for "down time"!!!

Lily had a blast at her show choir clinic yesterday---she got to perform "Bop to the Top", so she was in heaven. She also had her last soccer game and it was a a nail biter! They managed to squeak out the win in the last minute of the game which gives them only one loss for the season!! I'll post pics later. No time now---need to do some last minute cleaning and shopping before the in-laws arrive and then it's off to Chicago in the morning!!
Oh, Jeff painted the upstairs guest/kids bathroom yesterday, too. It looks great-I'll post pics of that later, too.
Countdown to Oprah----2 days;-)

Lily did a dance clinic last Saturday put on by the high school dance team. It was great---for $20, they learned 3 dances, got a t-shirt, a CD of all their music and lunch. She had a blast! I was amazed at what they had learned in one day. This pic is of the big girls showing one of their routines. I videoed Lily's. Tomorrow she's doing a show choir clinic put on by the high school choir. They are doing High School Musical so she's really excited. They will also have a performance at 2:30.
Lily with some of her class friends at her Fall party today.
Pumpkin bowling.
My new haircut-terrible picture! Lily took a couple with the flash and I kept closing my eyes, so this was without the flash and it's blurry. I took a pic in and this ended up a bit shorter than the pic, but I like it. I got so many looks and comments from the kids at school today. I'm thinking it won't take nearly as long to blow dry-so that's a good thing. I was beginning to dread washing my hair because it took so long to dry.

Countdown to Oprah---4 days!!

Here's where Charlene's sister is putting us up in Chicago when we go to the Oprah show. It looks so nice.
http://hotelsaxchicago.com/rooms.html
Hmmm-what to wear, what to wear?!?!

LONG TIME, NO BLOG

Well, there hasn't really been much to blog about lately.
Wyatt had his piano recital at school last week and did really well. I took my camera and got a little video, but forgot to put the memory card in and wasn't able to get all of it. He did very well and wants piano lessons now. We'll see.
The only real news I have is my friend Charlene got 2 tickets to the Oprah show for a gift and asked me to go with her! It's in a couple of weeks and on pretty much our busiest day of the whole month! I was determined to figure out a way to go, though, and my mother-in-law is coming to stay with the kids. She's also putting us up in a nice hotel so all I will have to pay for are meals and gas. Should be fun.
Well, off to get ready for work!