Middle of March Update

Many a sunrise has came and went since I last blogged.




Here's a little of what we've been up to...

Basketball
Jameson played on the Twin Rivers league and really had a great time

Connor is now one of the taller boys on his team

Snow

yes- that is up to the top of our grill

and more snow


puzzles





a puppy who has lived on the top step most of the winter b/c it was too cold for him to be in the garage


Connor's 12th birthday


(It's pretty cool to see both of my boys passing the sacrament each week.)

A fun date night to the play Little House on the Prairie where Melissa Gilbert played Ma. Bad picture taken from a moving vehicle while it was raining


Jr. High 80's dance


Valentine's Day
chairing Genna's class party at school

stack the sweethearts game

dinner at the Outback and then to the Stake dance with my sweetie

Our family dinner~
The table was set despite all of our cloth napkins and tableclothes being in storage


Fondue after our family dinner

I sure love these kids!!

Card Genna made

Connor's note

Jameson's made these



Put an offer in on this house- sniff, sniff, they wouldn't accept it with the contigency of selling our house


February Decorations

Couponing~

my system

after a shopping trip where I spent about $14


getting a stockpile

We watched Troy's sisters kids a few times and had a ball with Seth- he is such a cutie!

Currently reading: The Mitford series and the Percy Jackson series- on the last book of each of them


March "decorations" I think I am going to paint this table black

I can't tell you how happy these 2 little flowers made me when I discovered them today


that and some blue skies are doing wonders after a long gray winter


Thanks for reading this whole post- and sorry about the lack of big pictures

Last Christmas post

Ok, this will be my last Chrismtas post for the year. I was just dreading it being over with and now that it is all said and done, I'm actually feeling good about moving on. I think all of our snow melting yesterday had a lot of do with it. Today's agenda is laundry and undecorating the house.

Last night however, Troy and I got to go out with Tony & Amber. We had such a nice time.

We went to Mahoney State Park and had dinner at the lodge then went to a play there called Every Story Ever Told, which was a mishmash of all the Christmas stories and songs. We had such a fun time talking at dinner that we got to the theater and there were no seats left so we could sit together. Troy and I were up front which we thought was nice until we realized they were pulling people from the front few rows to be part of the play. Thankfully we dodged that bullet! But it was cute play and definitely entertaining. It was a nice way to close out our Christmas festivities. The only drawback to the night was that we didn't get to visit more!

Here's Gustav the Green Nosed Raingoat balloon in the Macy's Day parade.

And the 3 talented guys who performed the play!

Thanks guys for being such great friends and for a wonderful evening!

This morning

Started out beautifully...

and it got even better. Troy had to run up to Lincoln and asked me to go a long for the ride.

he even bought me breakfast, lol! That is his brother Shane's mini Book of Mormon sitting there, isn't it cute?

We made sure and voted.

It was so nice to have long lines to wait in.


I also noticed the leaves on our tree turned yellow this year- most years they just turn brown and fall off.


Hope you had a wonderful morning too! Don't forget to vote!

Good Stuff

We finished up our popcorn sales on Friday. Woohoo- no more popcorn in our trunk, ever- it was our last year of selling. Thanks to all our family who bought from our kids over the past several years.

We got to go out to dinner two times this past weekend-

once to Famous Dave's with my parents and my brother Dave and his wife Melinda, who came up from St. Louis. It was so good to see them and get some pictures of their cute kids!



Then Saturday night, Troy and I went out to the yummiest buffet up at the Horseshoe Casino up in Council Bluff's with Troy's parents, brother Shane and his girlfriend JJ. We had a great time eating and laughing!


Connor had a soccer game on Saturday. He was able to score a goal and had some great assists.

Jameson is having to just practice with the soccer team this year, since he is a month too old to meet the age requirements. He has been a good sport- even though it's been hard to watch all your friends play when he would love to be out there with them.


I went Lincoln this morning with my SIL Michelle and since it was raining, Troy was home for a while and he did 3 loads while I was gone. I had a mountain of laundry and he was so sweet to get it down to bunny slope status for me.

And I won a fun prize on Melissa's blog- 320 Sycamore. You'll have to check out the amazing transformation they have made with their house.

All my mums are blooming and they look so pretty. Last year I had a bunch die out on me and so I am excited they are filling in again.



And last but not least I was excited to figure out how to have large sized pictures on my blog without all the work of sizing them and uploading them to photobucket. All you do is find the HTML code where it says s200 or s400 and change it to s800 for a large photo. Note you might see two sizes one that says s1600 and s200 or s400. Only change the small number. You might have to do some rearranging with your layout- because it doesn't work on inbetween sizes like s600. Don't ask me why.

Example code:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwQbWzm9ihY4npMoe0_78AcpJGhFbav7fZe_pIb-GuJEVTlXEKDsaCIQx88Q-fqvgR7eU4amNhG4r0M6kpnJ3FQYRr-oJSIIHmuDGL1KVDLQtO58YSFtqIYYl-CZl0aNG5Q8d5WQ/
s800/100_9766-1.JPG

Weekend in Review

We had a great weekend, despite it's rainy start.

Friday night Troy and I were able to go out on a date since soccer was cancelled. We ate at Famous Dave's and then went to see Mamma Mia. I just heard that they released a sing along theater version of the movie. I would totally have loved that- I had a hard time keeping my toes from tapping during all the songs I knew.

Saturday was another game day. We started out at Valentino's buffet for lunch- yummy! The kids were all excited because there was a clown doing face painting and balloon animals.






It is always so nice to be together.







Lorilee and I went on a little adventure trying to find supplies to make this project that we found here. You'll have to scroll down a ways to see her cute version that we totally copied!

Back at my Mom's house, Tracy, Lor and I managed to get our crafting completed despite the 5 little helpers we had. I'll post a better picture once I put up my fall decorations.



While we sanded and painted, the guys and the older kids went to the football game. The boys were thrilled that they got to go get autographs from some of the players. In fact, one of the players gave Connor a piece of his sweaty towel and he thinks that is the greatest thing ever!

Sunday after church, we had dinner with the Baier's and the missionaries- Elder Thacker & Elder DiVecha. The food and company were both great! We got to check up on their cute little baby chicks we'd seen a few weeks earlier. Genna and her friend Emily got to pet one of the broilers. We picked & ate some sugar pears from their tree. One of the boys upon finishing his pear threw the core over to the cow who was grazing nearby, she promptly gobbled it up. Then it was a game to chuck the fallen pears beneath the tree at that poor cow. She was a good sport and ate most that came her way.





Grrr...I have been wasting so much time editing and sizing pictures and not getting anything else done. Sorry about the different sizes, I am too tired to fix it again.