No more Christmas whale

When we moved into our house, my mom gifted a lot of Christmas decorations to me to get us started. One of those was the treasured advent calendar that my mother had made when we were little.

The calendar has been an essential part of our Christmas decor for the last three years. This year, we stored it in our closet under the stairs on the floor leaning up against the wall. When I pulled it out to hang it up, I noticed some of the ornaments looked funny. Our little mice friends had decided to eat the "low hanging" ornaments and take what they couldn't eat as makings for their nests. So they stole all the fur from the stockings & Santa hat, ate the Christmas bulbs and I'm so sorry to say, completely destroyed the Christmas Whale. (why a whale ornament on a Christmas calendar you ask. well my mother states that there are only so many things you can make out of grey felt. so of course why not a whale!)

If you are observant, you may notice that our friends did not touch the mouse ornament.

Don't worry I was able to make more ornaments and even made stockings for Phil, Tula & Natalie to hang on it as well. The advent calendar lives on!

Hockey Fun!

A few weeks ago Phil randomly called into the local radio station on his way home from work and won 4 tickets to the K-Wings hockey game. So we invited our friends Randy & Liza to go with us to the game.

We took Natalie with us to the game and she had a great time. She cheered, played, puked all over Randy and then slept. She even slept through the multiple goals scored, after which they play every single noise they have in their computer to celebrate.

Afterwards we went to dinner with Phil's dad. Although the K-Wings lost, it was still a lot of fun!

My favorite part about this picture is the look on Randy's face and the puke on his hand, Priceless!

Finally a good family picture!

Play Dates

So I know A LOT of people who had babies right around when Natalie was born. Recently we've been trying to be better about making time to get the kiddies together for play dates (now that they are big enough to interact and start making friends).

We had lunch with my long lost friend from high school, Dawn, who actually lives just down the road from us and has a little girl (Lydia) who is about 3 months old. It was super fun to catch up and nice to meet Miss Lydia. Although they are 3 months apart in age, the girls were about the same size.

By the time we got around to taking pictures, Natalie was pretty tuckered out.

Next, we had dinner with my college roommate/friend, Amy and her daughter Juliana. Ju is 3 (almost 4, I can't believe it!) and was in love with Natalie, well everything except for the puking part. Ju was a lot of help changing diapers & clothes, but when we were getting ready to leave, this was our conversation:

Me: Ju, can I have a hug before we go?
Ju: But you have throw up on your shirt
Me: .... (*pause*) Oh.... well maybe a side hug?

Then to top off our string of fun, we had my other college roommate/friend, Kelly and her daughters Tessa (2) and Taylor (6 mo) over for a visit. Taylor was the queen of rolling over (which Natalie had not done yet) and Natalie was little miss sitter upper (which Taylor was still working on).

We spent most of the time trying to get the girls to learn from each other... and that they did! Only a few days after their meeting, Natalie was rolling over like it was her job and I've heard rumors Miss Taylor is now quite the sitter. Although now that she is rolling, I'm wondering why I wanted her to do that in the first place... life was much simpler when she stayed put.

Here are all the girls together (trust me, this was the best picture we got!)

Now comes the string of our attempt at a picture of the two little ones... which sort of looks like some baby UFC. (don't worry mom, no babies were harmed) They were, to say the least, not very cooperative.

What? No Monster Mash?!?

Halloween festivities started early this year. We celebrated with our annual pumpkin carving party at Nona’s (Phil’s mom). She went all out and had a scary hand punch, Frankenstein cake, pumpkin pizza and even hotdog mummies. We picked out our pumpkins at Gene the Pumpkin Man (who only owns things that are bright orange, including his car). Then we spent the afternoon eating and carving to our hearts content. They all turned out great. Phil even carved Natalie her own pumpkin, which she was really into.

At work, my team dressed as hillbillies (although I think my costume looked more like a cross between a trucker and a train conductor!). No matter what we were, we looked great and were about the only ones with any Halloween spirit.

Halloween day, we convinced Jon and Erin to go to the Zoo Boo at Binder Park Zoo with us. All the workers dress up in their costumes and the entire place is decorated in scary décor (not too scary as it is geared towards children). We had a great time. We trick or treated at different booths throughout the park, saw some cool animals and even went on a hay ride.

After the zoo fun, we went back to our house where we were joined by our friends Randy and Liza and some other stragglers throughout the night. We ate a lot, played some games, watched a movie and of course football. Before the night was over, we all had too much sugar and too much food.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Sisters/Cousin Weekend to "the island"

This past weekend, my sisters, our favorite cousin, Natalie and I all made a road trip up north to visit Mackinac Island (pronounces Mackinaw for those of you not from around here). It is about a 5 hour drive, but it's beautiful and has many fun things like: fudge, no cars, lots of horses, fudge, the Grand Hotel (which someone told me is in a movie with Keanu Reeves), tandum bikes, oh yeah and FUDGE!



Of course the road trip is part of the fun, so we got up early Saturday morning and made our way up the state. It's always amazing to me that you can drive for 5 hours and still be in Michigan. The colors were very pretty and the traffic was light so we made good time. We took the ferry (which was basically a giant speed boat run by a rather cute young man that we attempted to hook up with my single cousin) over to the island where we headed straight for the bikes. We rented 2 tandum bikes and a Burley (which is a little cart that pulls behind the bikes) for Natalie. The men at the bike rental place were just a little worried about our sanity because as we were getting onto our bikes, the heavens opened up and a hurricane (or at least it felt like a hurricane) struck us. The winds were whipping the rain in our face and making it very difficult to bike. Somehow we survived the 8.3 mile trip around the island without crashing. Natalie had a nice nap in her Burley where she was snug & warm and completely oblivious to the weather outside.

After assuring the bike men that we were still alive and their bikes were in tact, we headed to our hotel to get some dry clothes and warm up a little. We ventured out later that night to have dinner downtown at a little restaurant. Annie & Staci were in awe of the "islanders" so it was just our luck that our waitress was a native to the island and still lived there year round. They had many questions for her about the island. So much so in fact that she even gave us a little book that a group of the "islanders" had written answering these types of questions. We of course purchased several copies and got many autographs to go with them!

Sunday morning the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. So we decided to take a little adventure around the island to see the Grand Hotel and the village where our new friend Melissa (the waitress) lives. We stopped at St. Ann's cemetary for a photo op and just enjoyed the beautiful views. Next was breakfast at the Chuckwagon (a very narrow restaurant) and then wandering around the town to do some shopping and stock up on fudge.

We caught the afternoon ferry back to the mainland (that is what us islanders call Mackinac City), where we attempted once again to make a love connection for my cousin with the same ferry coordinator. Then we made our way back down the state, stopping in Lansing for some Linner and making it home rather late Sunday night. Although it was a quick trip, it was full of great memories and I can't wait until the next sisters/cousin weekend!

Annie, Natalie & Staci waiting for the ferry

Our tandum biking... this was just before the rain & gale force winds.

Baby in her Burley, doesn't she look comfy?

St. Ann's Cemetary

The Grand Hotel