Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Blogercial

So my previous post was a total "blogercial". A blogercial is a commercial in a blog. So you may ask, what was in it for me??? 50 free shutterfly cards...now I just have to get a decent family picture to use. That will be the hard part.

In other news:

We had an enjoyable Veteran's day. The girls had the day off of school so we did some fun activities to make the most of the time off. My recent new interest has become "secret shopping". I have always wanted to do something like that, but until recently had not been linked up with the right companies. A friend finally gave me some good referrals and I have been doing a couple a jobs a week. Most of them are easy and are catered around my schedule. Sometimes it backfires though and I am stressed trying to get a last minute job done. Some of the fun shops I've gotten to do include Quiznos, Five Guys and Fries, abercrombie, Gymboree, Sonic, Aldis, just to name a few. For Veteran's Day I was offered a shop to stay at a local Hampton Inn. I decided it would make for a fun evening for me and the kids, so I decided to give it a try. Since it is something we would never usually do, I didn't tell the kids and wanted to surprise them completely. So that evening I told them we were going to go out for dessert at the Cheesecake Factory, which was an extra special treat in and of itself. They were excited, but when they got there I told them it looked pretty crowded so maybe we could order our cheesecake to go and find somewhere a little more quiet and less crazy to eat it. I totally floored them when I said well why don't we go to a hotel close by. You should have seen their faces....it was definitely a is she serious look...I hope she is because that would be awesome. In the end it was a great surprise and we had a great time.

The following day we attended the largest Veteran's Day parade in the U.S. It was a perfect weather day and the kids had a lot of fun watching.




Today I was able to accompany Kendal on her field trip to the American Village. The field trip was a lot of fun as they got to re-enact the Pilgrims who came here on the Mayflower. She is such a funny girl. She so wants we to come and then she practically ignores me. If I didn't see her stealing glances to make sure I was there, I might feel offended.


Adison is growing up way too fast. In the last couple of weeks her personality has definitely evolved. She went from being completely attached to me and pretty much only me, to just about going to anyone at anytime except when she is tired. I think she figured out that she could see and do new things by hanging out with other people besides me. She recently took her first couple of steps, but definitely isn't a walker yet. I AM NOT in any hurry to have her running around here.






Finally, we made a quick trip to Georgia a couple of weeks ago. We had a fun-filled weekend with Grandma and Grandpa "G". As usual they had lots for us to do and we had a great time.

We are all excited about going to Indiana for Thanksgiving. It will be fun to hang out with Jeff's side of the family and spend time with them. The drive doesn't sound so fun, but fortunately we have pretty good travellers.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Holiday Cards

Christmas is just around the corner and in order to try to make my December a bit less chaotic, I have begun thinking about what type of Christmas Card I am going to send this year. I love getting other people's cards with recent pictures of their family! It is always fun to see how their families have grown over the year. I don't know about you, but I am always looking for a simple solution to getting my Christmas cards done. The last couple of years I have used Shutterfly to order my cards. I can personalize the picture and greeting and be done in no time flat. Here is where I will be looking this year for my cards:
Christmas Cards

Holiday Cards

My in-laws love the picture calendars. Here is one of my favorite sites to be able to customize great photo calendars.
Photo Calendars

Monday, November 1, 2010

Boo Day!

So this picture wasn't taken on Halloween, but it pretty much shows what they looked like on the actual day except for Kendal who was a witch not a bee.
Jeff even got into the festivities this year! He had a work event that was a Halloween bash so he was kind of forced into the action. The kids LOVED it!


Halloween festivities seem to span the entire month of October. My kiddos love Halloween. They love dressing up, they LOVE candy and they love all the parties and fun stuff. We had another enjoyable Halloween season. The kids had a great time carving pumpkins this year...each of them got their own pumpkin and were able to pick the design. Bayley carved her pumpkin pretty much on her own this year, which was a little scary at times since she was holding a sharp instrument.


Bayley with her cat pumpkin carving.

Trey showing off his mouse!

Kendal with her skull flag carving!

They loved taking out the guts!

This could be Halloween, but it was just her sister's make-up job!

It is not unusual to see Adison sticking out her tongue in pictures. Last week I attempted to have Adison's one year picture taken...yeah right! She cried the entire time. The above picture is the result of 35 minutes of torture and the closest thing we got to a smile. What a funny girl! Her personality continues to show itself more and more everyday. She loves animals and is absolutely thrilled whenever she sees one. She is getting more and more friendly with people, however, I believe she is friendly for selfish reasons and usually is using people to get what she wants.



Trey-4 years old

Kendal-6 years old
In other news, soccer season ended this last Saturday. Both Kendal and Trey had an enjoyable season and learned a lot. It was fun watching them play, but it will be nice to have our Saturday mornings back for a little while.