Cute Aprons - GIVEAWAY!!

My cousin is a very talented girl. She has come up with a darling pattern for aprons. They are not just plain aprons. They are VERY fashionable and cute. I am a huge fan of aprons. I have an apron on more than not but mine is a solid boring black. I would LOVE to have one of these. Anyway, she has a business and is doing a free giveaway.
Be sure to check out her blog and enter to win a free apron or apron kit.
Go to http://epicureanstyle.typepad.com/my_weblog/

A shout out to Lisa!!

Here's a shout out to my good friend and running partner - Lisa!! She is the only reason I find myself waking up at 6am to go running in 30 degree weather!! Today I started out with LOTS of layers including a scarf, hat, and gloves. Maybe it's time to dust off the treadmill but then again, when would I ever get my chat time in with Lisa?!??!

No chocolate this year!!?!?!?!

So, if you really know me you would know I have a hard time staying away from candy at halloween time. OK, really anytime! Halloween is really bad though and I usually have to have Andy hide it from me. (Yes, I have NO will power!!) However, you would be very surprised to hear that this year I have had probably about 5 pieces of candy total!! I have actually wanted NOTHING to do with it. Shocker huh? Why you may ask? Well, there could really only be one reason.....I am pregnant and this baby apparently only wants fruits and vegetables! (It definitely isn't from my side of the family!!) Anyway, here is a picture of our cute family below and yes, we will be adding one more in June! I am almost 3 months along and still feeling tired and nauseous (sp?) - but no complaints. We are excited and Lucy is hoping for a girl!

Our trip to Mackinac Island

This fall we took a WONDERFUL trip to Mackinac Island. It was one of the best trips we've done. It was so beautiful and peaceful(we didn't go during the busy tourist season). We ate good food, plenty of fudge, and of course - ice cream. The kids had a blast and so did we. I would do this a trip again but would never do it during the busy tourist season

Exploring the island

We had so much fun on the island. We took a ferry across and then we rented bikes to get around. The GREATEST thing about the island is the fact that there are NO CARS!!! You can only get around the island on bike, foot, or horse. We went at a great time of the year. There weren't very many tourists. We enjoyed stopping whenever we wanted to look around, eat, throw rocks in the water etc.


This was a great bike. It's called a tag-a-long. Ethan was connected to Andy and could help peddle when he wanted or just hang out and rest. He LOVED this bike and felt like such a big boy!!

Lucy and Lucas were pulled by me. The tag-a-long bike made Lucy a bit nervous (no surprise there) so she was more than happy to ride most of the island in the trailer.

We enjoyed eating our lunch on the rocks right by the water.

This is one of our many stops to explore and climb around some rocks.

Check out the water. It looks like we're on some troipical island but believe it or not it is actually Michigan!!!
We all had fun throwing rocks in the water. There were obviously plenty to choose from.

Lucas also loved it!

And then of course, Ethan had to think of something a little crazy to do.....like hang upside down in the water!!!He is so funny.

And of course Lucas always has to do everything his brother does!

This was a cool cut out in the rock that we had fun exploring.

We finally wore Lucas out and he fell asleep toward the end of our Bike ride.

Crossing the bridge

On our last day we drove across Mackinac bridge. We didn't do much on the other side but we figured you can't be there and not drive over the bridge! The sky was doing cool things on our way back so I snapped a few pictures and of course we all managed to throw a few more rocks in the water before heading home!





I left Andy with the kids at an indoor hotel water park while I went for a quick run along the water. I ran by this. It was so pretty.

I thought these soda vending machines were funny.

Butterfly House

While on the island we went to a Butterfly house. It was incredible. Butterflies were flying everywhere. As it turns out we were the only people in there for most of the time. So, we were able to really enjoy our time in there and discover lots of BEAUTIFUL butterflies. We all loved it.





This butterfly was the most fascinating to me. Look how it appears to be a dull rather boring brown butterfly. However look at the next picture ........

It's the same butterfly!!!! And it is a beautiful blue. Hard to believe it's the same butterfly!

Carving Pumpkins

Our friend, Tiago, from Brazil happened to be in town so we invited him over for dinner and pumpkin carving. He's never carved pumpkins. It was fun to teach him and so great to see him again.

Trick or Treat?

Lucas insisted on wearing the sunglasses for the picture. Kind of random but he's still cute!!



We went trick or treating with some friends from the ward.

You may think it is a trick that we went trick or treating tonight but it's no trick. Our town changed our trick or treating to tonight due to a high school football game. It's a little silly to me but whatever. Our kids don't care what night they go as long as they get their candy. We had great weather, the kids had fun, and there is way too much candy in our house!!

Lucy lost her tooth!

Yay!!! Lucy lost her first tooth. It's been loose for a week or so. It finally got to the point she was having a hard time eating. "Will it hurt when it comes out?" she would keep asking. I didn't think so but couldn't really remember. Well, good news.....it didn't hurt. She just wandered into the room holding up her tooth.. She had wiggled it with her tongue and out it came!!! We told her to put it under her pillow so the tooth fairy could come. She woke up to find no money and said, "You forgot to take my tooth and give me money." Yeah, she's too smart for that whole tooth fairy thing!! ha!

Look how tiny her tooth is!!!

Crazy Diaper Heads

So, the other day I asked Lucas to go get me a diaper and he came back with a swim diaper. I said, "Not that one silly. That's a swim diaper. Now what am I going to do with this?" So I put it on my head and of course the kids thought it was so funny so before long everyone was a crazy diaper head!

One more gas update

There really are better things to be posting about but I need to pull my pictures off my camera and it hasn't happened for several weeks and I can guarantee it won't be happening tonight. So one more gas update. Today gas is at $2.28!!!! Can you believe it? This is very happy news!

Gas Prices

Wow - I never thought I'd be so excited about paying $2.98 for gas but that is what I paid today and I was feeling pretty happy about that!

Funny Story

Andy took his young men to a High School Football game tonight for mutual to watch someone in their class play. So, a girl came up and started talking to one of the young men.
She said to the boy something like "Aren't you at Lakeshore High School?"

Then she looked at Andy, "Which school are you at?"

Ahhh I thought it was funny. I guess as we get older we don't mind looking younger than we are.
Andy told me he felt like saying "Well, one of my 3 children is over at the Elementary School"
That would have been funny!

Happy Birthday Lucy

We already celebrated Lucy's birthday but today is her actual birthday. It's amazing she is already 6 years old!! She is growing way too fast. We love Lucy and couldn't ask for a better child. She is so helpful, happy, kind, thoughtful of others, loves to laugh, smart, cute....I could go on and on. Happy Birthday Lucy we love you and are blessed to have you in our family!!

Busy Week

The following posts are from last week.It was a very busy but fun week. We had a friend from the ward over on Monday night for dinner and FHE (yeah Natalie you know we love you!), on Tuesday night we had other friends come to visit for a night and then on Thursday we had our neighbors exchange student from Cazachastan (sp?) staying with us for the rest of the weekend. And, we had a family party Friday night for Lucy and a birthday party Saturday. Our house is trashed right now and could use a good cleaning. In fact, I should be doing that instead of blogging but I'm too tired. We'll do house cleaning tomorrow. Besides if I clean it tonight it'll be a mess by 7am anyway - right?!?!?!

Visit from our friends

Our friend's from U of M (Spencer and Jenny) came to visit. They just stayed the night but it was so good to see them. It's been a LONG time and now they have the cutest little twin boys! They were good sports to pack up the twins and head to the soccer fields with us so we could watch Lucy's game. Thanks Spencer and Jenny for stopping in to see us!

Party Time

We had a really fun day on Saturday as we threw a party for Lucy's 6th birthday. Her birthday isn't until later this week but we will be heading out of town so celebrated it early. She had 16 kids at the party and it was lots of fun. My friend has a side business setting up this moon walk for parties. I tutored her daughter this summer so we got a good deal on the moon walk and snow cone machine. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and we had TONS of fun! I think all the kids at Lucy's party slept very well Saturday night. After everyone left Andy and I even enjoyed getting in it and jumping with the kids. And, once again Andy was wonderful getting ready for this party. He helped plan all the games and actually took care of all of that during the party. I just had to monitor the kids in the moon walk. Thanks Andy!!

Cake Time! Thanks to my sister - in- law we had a great idea for a cake. It's a doggy dish. Lucy wanted to do all animal games at her party so this went perfect and was the easiest cake I've ever had to make. (Thanks Rachelle!)

Wow this was better than Christmas for Lucy! She loved all of her presents and her friends gave her some really nice gifts. Her room has been a wreck since Saturday . She moves from one gift to the next and Ethan has enjoyed playing with all of her new stuff too.
Here she is with a few of her presents. She got a new doll house for her birthday which she has LOVED and she just got this doll from her grandma and grandpa.
The snow cones were a huge hit!

Lucas couldn't get enough of the snow cones and had 3!!

This picture is so funny to me! Everyone was long gone and here he still sits chomping away at his snow cone! (That's him in the blue chair!)