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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

celebrations, fun & friends!

Daddy had a birthday last month.  And we always love an excuse to celebrate.  And have cake!
Craig is busy at work a lot of evenings and some weekends, so he is always happy to stay home.  I knew making him a meal and letting him just hang out and enjoy the kids would be his favorite way to spend his evening. (And that picture of Kerigan excited about hitting the ball is one of my new favorite pictures ever.  Ha!)
It turned out it was a beautiful day (it seems it's different every year- midwest in March!) but we were lucky to sit on the deck and open his cards and play out back.
While dinner was in the oven, Kerigan and I whipped up one of daddy's favorite cakes.  A jello poke cake.  And of course we did lime, because it was almost St. Patty's Day!  And this was about the extent of how much we did to celebrate that holiday!
The kids were so cute singing to him.  
Craig's faces just kill me.  Ha!

That weekend the kids were so excited for this movie to come out on DVD.  It's a favorite around our house!  We love Baymax!
Ok, so when we moved here and I was used to living in a much bigger city, had basically one friend in town and a serious lack of places to shop... let me just say, slowly but surely that is changing!  These are two of my best new friends and it just feels like we've known each other forever.  We were pretty excited because......
We were inside the new HOBBY LOBBY that opened literally 3 minutes from my house.  I am not kidding.  If you had told me I would ever live that close to a Hobby Lobby I wouldn't have believed it. To say we are excited is an understatement!  And we are getting a new Dunkin Donuts too!  Drive through donuts!  Woo hoo!  It really couldn't get much better!
And the best part is we are still not too far away from Ga Ga and Papa!  The kids love having sleepovers at their house, and daddy and I enjoy an evening alone once in a while!
Speaking of friends and how much I love our little town... our neighbor teaches at my school too and her daughter Olivia babysits the kids all the time.  Kerigan thinks she is a princess, seriously.  She adores her.  My neighbor hosted a baby shower for another teacher at our school and we all went over to celebrate!  The boys and guys played basketball in the driveway and hung out and Kerigan sat with Olivia and watched all the presents being opened.  Everything is a family event and everyone knows everyone and I am just loving it.  It was the most fun way to spend a Friday night I could think of.
So I said we didn't really celebrate St. Patrick's Day... but we did wear green!
And someone remembered last year when a leprechaun came and left a very extravagant scavenger hunt with clues all over the house, and presents at the pot of gold at the end.  Well, let me just admit here that I knew that wasn't happening again. 
 That was back when I could be a "Pinterest" mom and stay home to plan fun things for the kids.  Craig called it "having too much time on my hands."  Ha.  So that's taken care of now with me back at work full time.  Believe me, it was all I could do to just get green on them and rush home at lunch to mess up Andrew's 316 leprechaun traps he left all over the house.  I left them a bag of rainbow life savers and called it good.  To say Andrew was slightly disappointed would be an understatement.  I told him the leprechaun must have been in a hurry this year!  

So I took the kids to McDonalds for the first time in probably 6 months and Andrew says to me "Mom, can we play on that germy thing?!" LOL. I love how that's what he thinks the indoor playground is called because that's how I always refer to it! For those wondering, I did give in. But I definitely bathed them in bleach afterwards!
Just a regular Saturday playing dress up in her princess dress and mermaid mud boots!  But she actually went outside to play like this!  Ha!
So the high school kids at daddy's school were putting on a musical "Beauty and the Beast" and we had to take Kerigan!
Some before pictures with Belle the cat, and princess Belle!  Ha!
We met our good friends out for dinner before hand.  Our sweet little princesses Payton and Kerigan!
Andrew did NOT want to go.  He was so mad about having to watch a princess show, but he ended up loving it!  He usually always ends up coming around and enjoying himself!
My sweet girl
Two sweet girls
The kids did such a great job on the musical!  The costumes were impressive!  This was the "Be Our Guest" song and I loved the silverware and teapot, etc!
At intermission daddy took Andrew out and he came up to me with a rose.  They were selling them in the lobby.  My sweet boy!  Love him so much!
After the show the characters all came out.  Kerigan was so tired, it was very late but she woke up quickly and wanted to see Belle.  All the high school kids in the play were having a fit over her and walked her right up to see the Beast and Belle.  She was so thrilled!
The kids at daddy's school all love Kerigan and Andrew.  This girl did a wonderful job playing Belle, she had a beautiful voice!  Beast did too!
We went to visit Ashley (Kerigan's day care provider and our sweet friend!) because she had her adorable baby boy a couple weeks ago!  Baby Henry!  Kerigan was so excited to hold him.  Lily is so proud of her baby brother!
Here's the guys!  When we were leaving Andrew said he was going to play with Preston and Henry!  Boys only!  Ha!
Lately I have been letting the kids have sleepovers on the weekends when they don't have school in the morning.  They look so forward to this all week.  I love how they can fight all day long but at the end of the day, there is always love.  They have a precious bond, I just love watching them interact.
Just a Sunday night dinner at Okoboji Grill.  We had to return some movies in a nearby town so we ate somewhere new!
When we walked in, the menu said kids ate free on Sundays, and Craig and I literally high fived each other.  Ha!
We got our taxes done about 45 minutes away (near where we used to live- we have a good person who does them!) so my mom watched the kids and we made a date of it!  The tax appointment only took 20 minutes so we ate at Jethros and stopped at Target.  Then we grabbed ice cream on the way home!  Someone on Facebook commented that we must have gotten lots of money back based on how much fun it looked like we were having!  Ha!
We took the kids to see Home with Ga Ga the other night.  We all loved it!
Kerigan has been getting ready for her very first dance recital!  We got to have parent viewing night last week at her class and I always love going to watch her!  It takes me back to my dance days!  I can't wait to see this girl in her first recital!

I think that almost catches me up... a mini vacation and Easter coming up!