Meet Alaina!

I've been babysitting for Jack's cousin Becky for a few weeks now. I wasn't sure how having a four month old around would go but it has been fantastic. Actually today her daddy got rained out from work and I was kind of bummed because she went home early. She is such a great baby and has been so fun for Emma and Jackson to have around. We get to have lots of fun with her during the day then she goes home at night. It's great!!

Spring Break 2009

Well, most of you already know about this but for my own records I'm gonna blog about it anyway. The Wednesday before spring break I looked at my calendar and noticed a miracle; I actually had a full week and a half with basically no commitments. That is completely unheard of for me. I was talking with my friend Dave who is a minister out in Colorado and we started joking about me taking that time to go out there to visit. Ha, ha, ha..... ha, hey, I could actually do it!! SO.... I talked with Jack when he got home that night, he took a day to think about it and then all of a sudden I was packing and on the road Friday morning.

I packed a cooler with tons of PB&J, pop & juice and a whole bag of snacks (thanks to Grandma Mary!!). I'm actually very surprised at how organized I was for this trip with the little amount of thought I actually put into the planning. Each kid had their own gallon ziplock bag with their name on it and each bag had the exact same thing in it, even down to the flavor of the dumdum suckers! I learned quickly into the trip that I needed a plan for the snacks. Jackson had seen the "bag-o-fun" that Grandma had brought over and so every few minutes he would say "um, Grandma DID pack snacks for me. Where are they, why can't I have them." So, we made a snack/activity schedule to minimize questions. I had popped a few bags of microwave popcorn before I left so I would open a bag at the beginning of a movie for them and it would last them most of the way through it. While they watched a movie with head phones, I listened to a book on CD by one of my favorite authors, Karen Kingsbury. When the movie would get over we would pop in a kids CD and dance to fun songs like "Old Sock Stew" and "I Took a Bath in a Washing Machine, " they'd get to sing loud and get their wiggles out for about a half hour and then we'd have another snack at the start of the next movie. Jackson did GREAT napping in the car in the middle of the day and while he did that Emma would listen to her Barbie CD player (she's SOO cool you know!). She got some great Cd's for Christmas this year and we also have the VBS Cd's from the last three years so she was kept very occupied.Jack has a cousin who lives in Kansas City, MO and they were nice enough to let us stay with them overnight on the way out and back so it really made it a very affordable trip. It was also so nice to get to visit with them after a day full of driving with kids :) Mike & Leah have three kids and their oldest two are very close in age with mine so they were also grateful to have their fun cousins to run around with for a few hours to stretch their legs. Emma doesn't nap a whole lot any more but after staying up WAAAY too late giggling with Maddie this is how she looked :)

We made it to Denver Saturday evening and got their just in time to go to a church with Dave and Jenni. They were staying in Denver for the weekend while Dave was on sabbatical. His time off work was another reason why this trip worked out so great. After church we went out to Red Robin and Erin was excited to give hugs and the kids were very excited that Dave and Jenni had got a us a room at a beautiful hotel with a pool! Sunday we visited the Denver Zoo. It was lots of fun! Sunday evening we got back in the car and drove the two hours to Canon City where Dave & Jenni live. Jenni was so nice, she decided I had enough driving and she took my van with the kids and drove them while I rode with Dave in their car!

Emma and Jackson were very excited to get to go to the park with their friend Erin. While we were there. We were very excited just to hang out with them and of course we had to drive up "the mountain" while we were in Canon. Makes for great pictures and it's fun to be able to see their house right now at the bottom of it.

When we traveled out there last, Jackson was about eighteen months old and every time we would go down a big hill he would say "dan dup" (hands up) like you're on a roller coaster. They were very excited to be able to teach it to Erin this time :)

Another reason that made the timing of this trip so neat was that it was my friend Jenni's birthday while I was there. The kids helped me make her carmel brownies and we blew up balloons and made her a big poster which everyone (including Erin) got to draw on. It was so fun getting hugs and sharing laughs :) and fun visiting lots of states. and most of all fun having friends :)

Play Group

I had been talking for about six months about starting a play group at our house. Well, a few weeks ago I finally did it! Jackson really needed something to do during the day while Emma was at school and I'm trying to get him prepared for preschool next year.

Our play group is made up of mom's from our church that have children that are either home schooled or have young children still at home. We have met twice so far and it is going great. We are meeting every other Friday morning and we have story time, a craft, play time and then snack. We take turns with each responsibility so it's not a financial burden for any of us. I do host it at our house each week just because it's the easiest for us and we've been blessed with the large space in our basement for it.

We made rainbows for our craft the first week

Here was our second craft.

And yummy snacksAnd here's just a random picture that makes me laugh :0)

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? :)