Nose Picker

Friday night I went over to visit my friend Amy and her daughter Juliana. We had a fun girl’s night. We ordered pizza, played with toys and watched some kid’s videos. It was really good to see Amy again and spend some time together. It’s been a long time! Her daughter is getting so big, I can’t even believe it and she looks so much like Amy. She’s a ham too, couldn’t get enough of our attention, every time she would get in trouble she’d just break out that adorable smile.
Jon and Erin also came up on Friday night so Phil could have someone to hang out with and so Erin could study while the boys watched sports and played ping pong.

After my visit with Amy, I went home to join the party.

Here is Amy, Juliana and Me.


Juliana trying on mom's gloves.


The cutest smile in the world.


The end of the night.


Saturday we went to Phil’s dad’s house to cut down our Christmas tree. Then I met my sisters, my Aunt Sharon and of course Grandma to go to the annual Wings Stadium craft show. That place was crazy; there were so many people there. Overall, we did some good shopping, made a little dent in the Christmas list and had a great time.

Here we are with our Christmas tree.


Aunt Sharon, Jennifer, Grandma & Annie outside the craft show.


Saturday night, Phil and I went to my work Christmas party that was hosted at one of my co-workers houses… which is gorgeous by the way! He has a nice “man cave” in the basement, complete with a giant (wall size) TV, pin ball, air hockey, foosball and of course a bar. We played some games, exchanged white elephant gifts and ate a lot of food.

Phil and I at the party.





Tina, Stacey, Me and Holly.



Phil, Tina and Holly - trouble makers.




The man cave.





Phil and Stacey's husband playing foosball.




This is their dog... yes she is wearing a diaper (she's in heat.. i know gross)... but she did everything she could to get that puppy off.



Some of Phil’s girls from his soccer team are playing on an indoor team this winter and they had a game on Sunday, so Phil and I went to watch that. They also convinced him to coach their indoor team for the next session (it didn’t take much convincing… I think he misses them… or at least most of them). So I think that will probably start in January that should keep him busy anyways. After that we had dinner with Phil’s dad and then finally went home to relax. Whew! It was a busy weekend!

B - I - N - G - O and BINGO was his name-O

Thursday night Phil, Phil’s dad and I went to play BINGO with Aunt Merriell at a church in Kalamazoo. She goes every Thursday night when the weather is decent and asked if we would like to join her. So we all ventured out in the freezing cold.

This was my first experience with BINGO and let me say it was pretty fun. Some of those people are a little too into it if you ask me… perhaps addicted. They all have lucky charms and fun things they bring with them every time. Some people were even playing 30 cards at once!!! I couldn’t keep up with that.

We had fun and the night was a pretty big success. Aunt Merriell won $75 and Phil won the final game of the night for $250 (it would have been $500 but another lady got BINGO at the same time so they had to split the pot). Either way, that is a lot of money!! So we went away happy.

To celebrate our victory we went to Aunt Merriell’s for some sloppy joes and coconut crème pie.

Phil, Aunt Merriell & Rob pre-BINGO

Phil & his dad concentrating hard.

Phil with his winning cards & his winnings!

Weekend Update

Ok, sorry for the delay in my updates.

Here is a quick recap of what has happened. Two weekends ago Erin came up to go to a "girls night" party with me at my friend Tina's house. There were jello shots, pampered chef, body shop, stampin up and much more. It was a great time!

After a short week at work, we finally made it to Thanksgiving!!! We traveled to Detroit for Thanksgiving. We spent the day at my Aunt & Uncle's house along with the rest of my family and a few friends. Phil and I spent the night so that we could get up before the sun and go shopping on Friday. My aunt Laurie, cousin Staci and I got up at 3:15am to go shopping on Friday. We made the rounds to Kohls, Macy's, Sears, the mall and of course we couldn't pass up IKEA. All in all we got some pretty good deals and really didn't have to wait in line too long. We definitely did not wait outside in the freezing cold... nothing was that good of a deal for me to do that. My two big exciting purchases were a Kitchen Aid mixer from Kohl's and a new digital camera. I am very excited about both. I've already made two batches of cookies!!

After our long day of shopping, we helped my sister Jennifer and brother-in-law Nate move in to their new house in Ann Arbor. The moving actually went pretty quickly because we had a lot of help. Grandma even came over to Christen the house. We were totally exhausted by the end of the day. We finally made it home about 8pm, had a quick visit with Jon & Erin and then passed out. Saturday and Sunday were pretty calm, did some cleaning, cooking, studying and stamping.

All in all it was a great weekend with the family!

Here are some pictures to document the fun (or chaos as some might see it).


Here is Holly, Tina and Stacey at the "girl's night out" party.



Here Erin & I are enjoying our jello shots at the "girls night out" party.



I forgot to mention we also celebrated Aunt Sharon's birthday along with Thanksgiving.



Our Thanksgiving day dessert compliments of Grandma & my mom.



I'm not sure what is going on here....family bonding maybe?


Here is Aunt Laurie taking a break with all of our packages.



Gual and my dad replacing the locks at Jenni & Nate's new house.



Here we are taking a break for lunch after our long day of moving.



Here is Tula picking out our Christmas tree. She even dressed up in the Christmas spirit as a Reindeer.

I'm a regular Annie Oakley ... Kimmy Oakley if you will

This weekend we spent Saturday at my parents house in Vicksburg (after we watched MSU win in college football of course). My sister and brother in law came into town so we had dinner with Grandma and had some good family bonding time.

Sunday, we went up to Ludington with Phil's dad to visit Grandma Amsterburg. Phil's dad brought up his guns so that he could practice shooting. I got to shoot most of the guns as well. I think I have a bruise on my arm from the shotgun... that thing is powerful! We also tromped around in the woods with Tula baiting deer and checking out Rob's deer blind. Before we could sit down to a wonderful mix between Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner, Phil and his dad had to cut down a tree that was falling over and bring it back up to the house.



Rob decided that he wanted to take do a little tree surfing. I caught him at the end when he was about to fall off, but he rode the tree all the way from the back of the (I think 16 acre) property to the house. They are crazy... and lucky they didn't break anything.

Anyways, we had a great time and a wonderful dinner!

Rob, Grandma and I (the Beverly Hill Billies)


Phil aiming his shot.


Here are the guns we were shooting.


Tula and I in our hunter's orange.. oh yeah I was collecting pine cones on out trip too.


Here is Rob at the end of his tree surfing.

MSU Tailgate - They lose AGAIN

This weekend was a lot more relaxing that weekends past. Friday night Phil and I watched a movie while we waited for my friend Jess to get there from Detroit. She dropped off her dog for us to doggie sit for the weekend.

Saturday we got up relatively early and went up to East Lansing for the MSU vs. UofM tailgate. Phil and I sold our tickets but we still wanted to tailgate anyways. There was a large family turnout, as usual at the Maltby tailgates. We celebrated Jennifer's birthday and had a great time. Erin and I killed Jon and Phil in the bean bag toss game (Jon, don't pretend like you're good or anything).

Jon & Phil getting their butts kicked in bean bag toss. (I refuse to call it by it's name... Corn Hole)


Jon & Erin (yes Phil took this picture upside down).


Jon... later in the day wearing the chip & dip helmet on his head.


Saturday night Jess came to pick up her dog and we forced her to stay the night (she was way to tired to drive all the way back to Detroit). Mainly because I wanted to see baby Jayda... which was awesome, I can't believe how big she is getting... she even smiled at me!

Sunday I finally got to clean my house! Who knew I'd be excited to clean, but it needed it and I haven't had time to really clean it in quite a while... with going to school and working and all. I also did homework and we went to Phil's dad's house for dinner with him and Aunt Merriell. That pretty much rounded out a nice weekend where I felt like I actually got something accomplished.