Mandrew's birthday

Yes, you read correctly: Andrew's nickname (well at least what Bryan calls him) is "Mandrew." Mandrew just celebrated his third birthday this weekend. Time flies, and this little man is definitely no baby anymore! He is making great strides in potty training, doing very well staying in his big boy bed, and constantly amazes us with the things he says and does. We didn't do a "kid" birthday party for him (a bit overwhelming, I think) but we did our traditional family + friends birthday dinner at Red Robin. Andrew was SO excited to eat his ice cream! He also had a little celebration with his friends in his class at school. Here are some pictures!

Birthday treat: cupcake pops...my new favorite thing to make! Check out this book and this website for more info.

The finished product...cute and delicious! They were strawberry flavored, inside.

Andrew's party at school; his class painted the banner behind him!

Getting ready to sing, light and blow out the candles

Red Robin birthday sundae!

My valentines

These three are my valentines, the most important three people in my life.

This goofy little guy brightens my day with his sweet spirit and frequent hugs. He always makes us laugh!

This girl is super-smart, loves her some hot chocolate, and is always eager to help out. I'm so proud of her!

This handsome fellow (with his loving wife) is a fantastic dad, the best friend in the world, and I love him more every day.

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm thankful for you three, and thankful for you, my friendly readers!

New Year, New Phase

Happy New(ish) year! I hope all of you had a great holiday season and are back in the full swing of things. As much as I love the holidays, it is indeed nice to get back in to a regular routine! We got our Christmas decor put away amazingly early and quickly this year, and putting everything away (in addition to finding places for all our new, acquired gifts) really put me in the mood to go through everything, re-organize, and purge! We donated lots of old toys and clothes, recycled a T.V., threw away lots of trash, re-hung clothes in our closets on nice, slimline matching hangers (thanks to Abby for the gift!), and--put away the crib!

Andrew is now sleeping in a big boy (toddler) bed. I had been dreading the move to the toddler bed for a while, as I knew it'd be a whole transition process and my sleep might suffer. However, in order to seriously focus on potty training Andrew (who turns three next month), we had to first get him in to a bed that he could get out of, should he need to go! So, after all the company left, we took the crib down. Here is a picture of the kids saying "bye" to their old bed, and one of Andrew in the new bed!
I'm happy to say that after two full weeks in his bed, he's napping very well during the day. At night, he often wakes up once, comes in to our room, we take him right back, and he goes back to sleep. He's waking up pretty early (6:30 or 7 usually), but I'm pleased with how relatively smoothly it's going. Since we're getting this routine down now, I'm going to start tackling the potty training here in the next couple weeks. Wish me luck!!

Amelia also had a major event this week: she lost her first tooth! She was SO excited to show everyone her wiggly tooth (it was loose for a good 2-3 weeks), and even more excited when it came out. Now she tells everyone her mouth looks like a jack-o-lantern. I'll let you decide...


Amelia's still doing really well in school. Today her teacher told me she thinks Amelia's reading on about a 4th grade level! She's also the top of her (K-1) class in math. We are so proud of her, although we're going to have to decide what to do to keep her challenged and interested next year!

Not much else to report here. Like I said, we're just getting back in the swing of things and enjoying our life together! Here's one last picture from this week...lots of snow to play in. Have a great weekend!

Merry Christmas!

We hope you had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. We did! Love and Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

The Big Chill

This past Saturday Bryan and I participated in a historic event! We were spectators at the Big Chill, an outdoor hockey game between Michigan and Michigan State. What made it historic was the venue and attendance: the hockey game was at the Big House (Michigan's football stadium) and the crowd was 113,411, making it the largest crowd ever to watch a hockey game anywhere in the world. The Guinness Book of World Records was there to present a certificate and everything. Pretty cool...literally! It was COOOOOLD. We wore lots of layers and were well-prepared (well, except for my toes; I should've worn multiple pairs of socks!), but brrrr! Even though we're not big hockey fans, it was a really fun experience. Here are some pictures!

On the way to the game

Here we are!

Good seats!

Players take the ice

the record-setting crowd

Blowout win for Michigan!

An ice sculpture at the stadium of the Big Chill logo

Six years old!

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!!!
We have been busy bees around here celebrating Amelia's 6th birthday! Her birthday was Monday but we had birthday activities on three consecutive days (lucky girl). Here's what we did.

Sunday: Party with Amelia's friends at Jungle Java (an indoor playplace). She had 6 friends and their siblings there, plus the four of us, and all the kids' parents, which made for a full room! The kids had a great time playing, which meant I got to visit with the parents. Fun! For her cake, Amelia requested chocolate with strawberry frosting, which turned out to be very tasty. I found a recipe for strawberry buttercream on Martha Stewart's site which was divine! Amelia is really in to dogs and puppies these days, so that was the theme of her cake. We had Fletcher (our beagle) on top, Rosie (her build-a-bear dog, which looks like a bear) in the middle, and Beautiful (one of her Webkinz) on the bottom. I had a battle with the fondant and it ended up looking pretty horrendous, so I decided to put pawprints all over the cake to hide the mistakes. Thankfully, it worked! Here are a few pictures from the party.
We didn't open presents at the party (too much craziness!), so we packed them up and got in the car. By the time the party was over, it was 5:30, and our church Life Group had started at 5. Bryan said, "well I guess we're not going to Life Group, right? " I said, "I'd kind of like to go..." and Bryan replied, "Me too." Then Amelia piped up from the back seat: "I want to go to Life Group. I want to see my friends!" Bryan and I were both shocked and so happy that she would leave a big box full of un-opened presents in favor of spending time with her church friends! YAY!! Of course then Andrew (the little parrot) said "I go to small groot!!!" :-) After Life Group we went home, opened presents quickly and went to bed. Bryan had a conference to attend the next day, so he left for the airport late Sunday night.

Monday: Amelia's birthday! She got ready for school and was allowed to play with one toy when she was done, before we had to leave for the bus. She picked a Littlest Pet Shop toy, and walked around with it all morning saying things like "Mom. This is SO adorable. I didn't even see it had binoculars (it's a safari set)." and "Mom. This is SO adorable. I almost cried when I saw it, I was so happy. Like, I had tears in my eyes." Dramatic much, are we??? :-)

Anyway, Amelia went to school and I took Andrew to school, where he got to stay all day (he did really well)! Then I got a treat ready to take to school for Amelia's class: Cake balls (aka cake bites or cake truffles). If you've not heard of them, you MUST try them. Go to this link (Bakerella) and check out the cake bites and cake pops. They are delicious and so cute! Anyway, I worked on those with the help of a friend whose daughter is in Amelia's class and shares her birthday. The cake bites turned out really good and the kids loved them! After the school snack I took Amelia to the doctor for her yearly checkup (she's healthy and doing great). Then we picked up the things for her birthday dinner (she requested fish sticks, rice and peas, ha!) and picked up Andrew from school. It was a good birthday! Here is Amelia enjoying her birthday dinner and the present we gave her (a big box of Legos).
Tuesday: Pretty much a normal day! We had our last leg of birthday celebrating that night (since Bryan was out of town Monday and wouldn't be back until Tues. afternoon). We did our traditional birthday dinner at Red Robin with our close friends...16 of us in all! We had a great time eating, visiting, and eating more cake bites that I brought. They were a big hit again! In fact, we gave some to our waiters and they were spell-bound! So much so that we gave some to other staff at the restaurant and they were all coming over asking about them. It was hilarious to see what an effect those things had! We all got a good laugh over that. Here are some pictures from dinner.
So, as you can see, we've had a full last few days. Now, on to Thanksgiving! Have a happy week!

These shoes.

I love these shoes. Let me tell you how I came to own them...it is a great tale of shopping triumph!
I was in Houston with Abby last month, and while we were killing time waiting to go to an event, we stopped in to Kohl's. I was wearing some black wedge sandals that I'd had for 5+ years and it was high time for them to be retired (they were pretty nasty)! I had $10 in Kohl's cash to spend (it's a great thing...if you don't know about it, check out kohls.com!), so I thought it'd be worth seeing if there were any cute, black wedge sandals I could get to replace the nasty ones...after all, they'd be at least $10 cheaper!

I saw these adorable ones, from Vera Wang's "Simply Vera" line (only at Kohl's) on a mannequin and thought I'd look for them in the shoe department so I could try them on. Well, I looked and looked, but couldn't find the sandals anywhere in the shoe department. Disappointed, I went back to the mannequin to admire the sandals again. Abby said, "why don't you see if those happen to be your size?" So I figured, why not? And....indeed, they were my size. Amazing! The price tag said $69.50, which is way more than I'd pay for these, but since everything is always on sale at Kohl's, and since I had my $10 off, I figured I'd take them up to the register and just see what the real price was. Well, I put the shoes up on the counter, told the sales lady that there wasn't a box because the only pair I could find was on display, and she rang them up...at...

$7.

Yes, you read that correctly, folks. $7. That's a 90% discount! Needless to say, I was speechless. My jaw dropped! I never find deals THAT great! The sales lady was cracking up at me; she said "I've never seen a reaction like that in the whole time I've worked here...and it was worth the wait!" I could not believe my luck, so I promptly paid in cash (kept the Kohl's cash for later!), and got out of there before there was a chance for it to all be a big, mean joke. YAY for bargains!
And yay for these shoes. :-)