Hooray for warmer weather!

My mom and dad got the kids a trampoline for Christmas. We set it up on Sunday and they have been jumping their little hearts out! They love when I push them down.... works for me :)

Monkey bars.... not so much.

So, Emma came home so excited earlier this week because she said that at recess she learned how to do the monkey bars. Wednesday we went early so that she could show me.
Check it out.

Not so much, but at least she tried I guess :)

Birthday Weekend

Friday was Jack's birthday and yesterday was mine. It's actually really fun having our birthdays so close together because it usually ends up being kind of a three day celebration!! I'm just going to narrate through the pictures for this post.

For my birthday I asked my sister to get me a haircut. Fun huh!! Jack likes my hair better short so I decided cheap way to get him a birthday present would be to surprise him with cutting my hair (super cheap since my sister paid!!). So here are the pictures from that.

BeforeDuring (I was able to donate to locks of love but my hair is too thick to cut it off in one pony tail so she did it in two)AfterFriday night we had our final volleyball game of the season. We only won 1 out of 3 but it was still a great time and we were able to play our church's other team which was fun and amusing. Everyone came over to our house afterward to hang out. Lots of fun!

Saturday my mom and dad wanted to take us out for our birthdays for lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Before we left my mom gave me my present........ a new camera!!! I absolutely LOVE it! I barely have to edit any of my pictures and it has a setting for pretty much any situation. I took a picture of Jackson in the dark and it came out perfect! So, since I had my new camera when we went to lunch I played around and took some pictures.
When we got home from lunch I went to visit my friend Vicky who was in town with her new baby Lukas.
The girls hanging out again.Then Jill and Jaylyn stopped by to wish us a happy birthday. I was so excited that she was smiling at me!Then Saturday night we went to Red Robin to get our free birthday burgers. The coupon says that we could only get one free burger per table but they gave them both to us!! Woohoo! THEN, we stopped by JC Penney because I had a few good coupons for there. WELL, I found a few clearance items and matched them with my coupons and got two heavy sweaters and two cotton shirts for 88 cents!!!

Jackson and daddy playing at the restaurant. Pick a hand pick!Sunday morning was church. I got to have fun teaching my Sunday school class and play with water and figure out what things float and how in the world Jesus and Peter walked on water! I had a nice surprise of candy from my friend Dawn (which by the way was the only present I received on my actual birthday, everything else came throughout the weekend!!). After church the kids went to my mom and dad's for a sleepover and Jack and I headed to Bolingbrook to go to my favorite restaurant. AND, they too let us both use our birthday coupons so all we had to pay for was our drinks!

BD's Mongolian!!For those that don't know, you pick everything out and then they grill on this thing here. Sooo good!We had to go to IL anyway to pick Jack's parents up from the airport late last night so it worked out really well because Jack found the restaurant and it was only about 30 mintues from the airport. We got to go to dinner and a movie (which was on discount as well) and of course some coupon shopping at Walgreens. It was a great weekend and absolutely no cooking for me :)

Swimming in Winter

Last weekend we took a little adventure to Lafayette. We were going down on Sunday for Kevin's birthday so Jack and I decided it would be a great opportunity to use the $50 my grandma gave us for Christmas to get a hotel with the kids. My friend Jenni has me kind of hooked on bidding for my stuff on priceline.com so we ended up getting a really nice hotel with a pool for our bid of $50. Pretty cool! We also had a few gift cards left for restaurants so the trip was pretty much free. The hotel didn't offer breakfast so we ran to Target and grabbed a few things (including a ten pack of juice boxes for .69, seriously you all have to start reading blogs for deals!!) so even breakfast Sunday morning only cost a little over $4!

We started out Saturday morning and stopped at the Dairy Farm to the let the kids play a bit. We also have season passes there (thanks Grandma Mary!) so that didn't cost anything either. It was really windy outside and cold so they couldn't play with the outdoor stuff but they had fun playing inside, watching the birth of a calf and watching the fun 4D movie they have.

With the time difference and the stop at the Dairy we got to the hotel just early enough that we had to wait a few extra minutes and then got an early check in. The kids wanted as much time as possible to swim. It was so great to be able to do this cheap overnight event and see how excited that they were. I don't look forward to the days when I have to spend a lot to do something fun for them. Maybe they will just stay little forever :)

The pool was nice and warm.

Of Course, Emma jumped right in. CANON BALL!

I love the cheesy grin and the boy who looks like he's pushing out his false teeth!

On Sunday, Grandma Mary, Papa Tom, Aunt Jill, Uncle D & Jaylyn all came down to Lafayette after church and we all went to Pizza King for lunch to celebrate with Kevin.

Happy Birthday Uncle Kevin!

The funnest part about this Pizza King is the pizza!! (Well OK, that's my favorite because I love their pizza!!) Actually the kids favorite part was the fact that they have a train that brings you your drinks. It was a total hit with them!

Fun times and great family. Who could ask for more? :)

Valentines Field Trip

I know I've mentioned a lot that we love living where the kids can spend time with their grandparents and great-grandparents..... well, here I go again :)

Emma had a field trip for school on Feb 13th and they got to go to the nursing home. I know some of you that don't know Oak Grove think that is probably a weird and awkward field trip for kindergarteners because you are probably picturing a place that looks like a hospital with sick people hanging out, drooling on themselves in the hallways. Well, that's not it at all. Oak Grove is such a blessing. Grandma Hamstra lives there and I would not wish to have her any other place. It is such a great thing for her because there is always something fun and exciting going on for the residents and she has a network of people that she love and support her. She has the gals that she always eats with, the card groups, wii bowling, crafts, exercise class and several other things that keep her so busy that I can't even usually catch her on the phone! It is a beautiful place to live. My kids are truly convinced that Grandma Hamstra lives in a castle. The place literally looks like a hotel inside.

So anyway, Emma's class got to go and decorate Valentines cookies with some of the residents and they had a wonderful time. Grandma was so proud to have her granddaughter there and Emma was excited that she got to be the only one in her class that had a grand parent there. I was so proud of all of the kids in her class and the way that they helped out the residents with the decorations.
What a wonderful memory Emma will have with her much loved great-grandma.

Squirt

Two blogs in one week.... shocking!!

I just had to share this funny little story. I had bunco at my house Monday night and my friend Trish brought the pop. She ended up bringing a 2-liter of Squirt which my kids have never had before. They saw it and asked what it was. I don't think they really believed that was the real name of it so I convinced them that when you take a drink it would actually squirt into their mouth. I pretended that it was doing it to me. They totally bought it and it took me about 10 minutes to get Jackson to actually take a drink of it. He was so funny, he would go to take a drink and then he would squint his eyes like something was gonna get him and then he would start laughing and say "I just can't!" They finally did both try it and figured out it is just normal pop. It was a good time while it lasted :)

GG's 70!!

On the 4th my Gram turned 70!! A lot of people look at me and can't believe I have a Grandma who is so young. Well, not everyone's parents wait to have kids. She didn't and then neither did my mom and then neither did I. I guess that's how my kids got to lucky to still have so many great-grandparents. I love it! Anyway, I thought I would dedicate this blog today to writing about the amazing person that it my grandma.

Without a doubt Grandma Hixson is the one I have always been the closest to out of all of my grandparents. She is an amazing woman. When I was three my grandpa died of a heart attack at a very young age. I can't imagine what that must have been like for her. From what I'm told he was one of the funnest guy to be around. I, of course, was one of his favorites because my mom gave me the fun initials AMF which my grandpa apparently thought was hilarious and called me his little bowling ball (AMF is a bowling brand). Anyway, I can't imagine the pain and heart ache my grandma went through with that whole experience. She's still single to this day and that was almost 23 years ago.

Since Gram was a widow she stayed on her own for a while but then moved in with my Aunt Lois (Hi Aunt Lois!) because of course like my Gram, Aunt Lois is another AMAZING lady who loves and would do anything for anyone. I remember being little and always going to visit and stay over night with them. My Gram would also come and stay with us quite often and since I was the youngest she would get to sleep in my bed with me. I loved when she came to visit. She probably got so sick of me because everytime I would ask her to tell me the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I have no idea how that ever started but I remember hearing it over and over and over again. I would say that is probably the reason why even a little white lie makes my stomach turn even today.

Gram is the one who makes up stories and comes up with the funnest games to play. I remember all the crazy songs she used to sing to me and now does with my kids. My kids absolutely adore her. I've always so much admired the way all the kids listen to her and always obey and respect her and she barely ever yells. They just know that GG means business and she's too fun to make mad.

She stayed in Portage for many years eventually moving in with her other sister Millie. After several years she retired and moved down by us into a house that my parents rent out. I love having here right here where we can annoy her any time we want. The picture from above is from the local restaurant in Wheatfield (yep, they have a restaurant!!!) on Gram's 70th birthday. April and I decided to take her out for a burger. I went home with my stomach hurting from laughing so much. Some conversations you might never have with your grandma are definitely fair game with mine :) She's one the greatest woman I've ever met and I'm so extremely blessed to have her in my life.