Friends

Hot Dog, I missed a day! And I was doing so good. Argh!!!

I wish I had a really great excuse for you, 

but the truth is I just didn't pick my camera up once all day yesterday.

Oh, well...

Anyway, today was a VERY busy day.

It was all about spending time with friends.

Celebrating a new friend's birthday

And dinner and drinks with old friends who will soon be relocating

This is a photo from our beach vacation last year, since apparently my brain is mush and I forgot to take my camera with me tonight.

Seriously!

We love the Tolls dearly and will miss them like crazy!

But since I still have another month with them, 

I refuse to talk about any of it right now.

Nope! 

Not gonna do it!

And here I thought they liked us

I would like to thank our dear neighbors and friends 

(or at least I thought they were our friends)
Jason, Christie & Jan for:

(a) putting him on the motorcycle

and (b) telling him how he really needs to ask Santa for one of these for Christmas.

Yeah, about that...
Thanks!

You guys are AWESOME.

Like really really super duper AWESOME!

Sigh!

Wordless Wednesday - Cruising Buddies

Oh, who am I kidding? As if I could actually post without words. HA! 

I'll just keep it nice and short! M'kay?
Alrighty then!

So, we spent some time with our dear friends the Tolls this weekend. 

LOVE them! 

They are good people, let me tell ya!

And I love how even though these two haven't spent as much time 

together since school started, they are still the best of friends.

And always manage to have such a great time together. 

His mom and I laugh about all the fun photos we'll have of the 

two of them together for their rehearsal dinner.

Who knows,...

Old Friends, Good Times

Remember my dear friend Celimar? I first introduced her to you on this post. Well, so much has happened since our fun visit back in 2008.

For starters, she just graduated with her master's degree from the University of Arizona. She is such a smarty pants, lemme tell ya! In addition, she is now a married woman. GASP! I know, I know. Our little girl is seriously ALL grown up. Her husband, who we shall call Luis, because well,... that is his name, is in the ARMY and proudly serving our country in the Middle East, but in the process of coming home soon. Hopefully by the end of this month. Which means, that Celi is now an Army Wife/dependant/sponsored (lol, I do this just to bug her, since she's SO independent).

Anyway, Celi recruited her little brother Cesar to help her move from Arizona to North Carolina. I guess all Cesar heard was ROAD TRIP, so he eagerly signed up for the adventure. He flew in from Puerto Rico and got right to work. They mapped out their route, added some awesome sight seeing along the way, and included a stop in Memphis to see us. Needless to say, we were thrilled to have them come by for a visit. After long hours of driving, they welcomed a nice little break.

On a trolley ride ~ downtown Memphis.

It was so much fun catching up with these two kids young adults, whom I had babysat for years, beginning with their infant days. The last time I saw Cesar was at our wedding, over 8 years ago, and now he's a college junior. Geez! Time flies, let me tell you!

Our kids especially loved having them here,... two more people in the house to cater to their every whim and desire. There were a lot of "will you play with me?" requests made during their stay. We had a great time doing a little sight seeing and a whole lot of talking, eating and relaxing.

 

A photo before they left, taken by Isabella.

Thanks for including us in your cross country journey, guys. 

It was awesome seeing you and spending some quality time together.

We love you!!!

Miller Time!

OK, so I'm a little embarrassed to blog about this after it's been so long. I mean, it has almost been a month, but I have to. I have to because it's about the Millers. And they drove a LONG way to come see us. And we LOVE them. Unconditionally. And they complete us. (I think I might have buttered Rachel enough now to go on with my post, so moving on,...)

The Millers are quite the traveling family. They think nothing of getting in their car and just going. And they spent a big part of this summer on the road visiting friends and family. Lucky for us, we were on their "road trip" list, and we were thrilled to have them come visit for a few days. 

If you follow this blog, then you're no stranger to the Millers and my love affair with this family. In fact, we love them SO much, that we visited them in Iowa last December. Right smack in the middle of winter. With -11°F temperatures. And four feet of snow on the ground. Awesome!

So being that we love them so, we decided to return the favor and ordered up nice scorching temps in the 98°-100°F+ during their visit. In the month of July. In Memphis. With LOTS of humidity. Yeah, that's the kind of love we've got!

And yes, we are currently trying to figure out how we can reverse our visits so as to reduce the amount of frostbite/dehydration we all experienced this past year.

However, hot temperatures have not prevented us from having ourselves a big ol' time in the past. And this visit was no exception. We decided to go to Mud Island and have the kids do the River Walk. For those of you who are not familiar with what I am referring to, the River Walk is an exact scale model of the Lower Mississippi River flowing from Illinois, 954 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico.

The best part of our fun adventure however, was actually riding the monorail over to Mud Island. The kids were in total awe!

 

 

Don't get me wrong, the kids had a great time walking along "the Mississippi". You gotta love how something as "inconsequential" as the sweltering heat does so little to slow them down.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for us adults. It was HOT. And we were definitely feeling it.

While they were here, we were able to secure Miss Jessica, babysitter extraordinaire, to keep our children for a while so that we could get away for a nice fun adult-only dinner. Scott and I wanted to take them to a quaint little restaurant called Le Chardonnay, which we stumbled across a few years ago. It had the most magnificent wine list you could ever imagine. But when we got there, we found a sign on the door stating that they had moved to a new location a block or so away. So off we go to find our quaint little Le Chardonnay restaurant, and its amazing wine list. 

Apparently, what they neglected to state on the sign, is that not only did they move, but they also changed their name. So after spending oh I don't know, ten minutes looking for a restaurant that no longer exists, I finally stopped and asked someone. She kindly pointed next door to The Villa Restaurant.

Needless to day, it was not the same restaurant, menu, or atmosphere that we remember from Le Chardonnay. AT ALL! But we stuck with it and had a great time regardless.

One of the highlights of the evening for me was when I said I wanted to order a Caprese Salad before my meal. After telling Rob what all is in the salad (fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced tomatoes, basil, and salt), he decided he wanted to order one for his entree. 

That is, until they brought mine out and he actually saw it:

Yep, that's it! 
His reaction was priceless!

Go ahead, you can laugh.

I sure did!

I laughed so hard my cheeks actually hurt.

And that, my dear friends, is why we love this family so much. Because whenever we are together, you can put your money on the fact that there will be some serious laughter. Uncontrollable, side-splitting, tear-inducing, cheeks-hurting type laughter. And a whole lot of it. And how can you NOT love people who bring such joy into your life.

Until next time, Millers!

(BTW ~ you can read Rachel's post about their Memphis visit here.)

Our Summer's Last Hurrah

A few weeks ago, while at a play date, my friend Danyelle and I started "talking" about maybe going away to the beach for a few days. You know, since with the oil spill Gulf Shores is like a ghost town and all. And since her mother in law's condo was available and all. And since the kids would all be starting school in a few weeks and all. And since all of our kids have been begging to go to the beach and all. And since both of our husbands work such long hours and all.

So we looked at our calendars, agreed on some dates, called our husbands, and booked it. SOLD! So off to Gulf Shores we embarked, her and I and our four children. This could have gone either way: either a very, very fun trip or a very, very bad disaster. Lucky for us (and the children), it was the former. We had a great time! Isabella and Hudson had a ball spending SO much time together and Sam took to Addisyn like fish takes to water. Addy is one of his most favorite people in the whole world.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

We tried going to the beach. But it wasn't long before Danyelle and I decided to cut our losses and hit the condo's pool instead. You could see the oil in the water and the smell was pretty bad. So so sad! We did however capture a few shots of the kids while we were there:

 

Luckily, the kids didn't necessarily want to play in the water, they mostly wanted to play with sand. So we took care of that not once, but twice, by visiting some fun local family restaurants:

 

Call me crazy, but I think she likes him. Maybe,.. just a little?

Is there a better combination than sand AND suds?

They think not!

We also went to Lulu's, which is Jimmy Buffet's sister's restaurant...

where Sam was once again able to fulfill his sand+water obsession.

Putting this one in the car was a fun challenge!

Every morning the boys woke up looking like this:

 

Ha Ha! Look at those handsome boys and their crazy hair!

We went out for ice cream:

We visited the shark store and got some fun souvenirs:

We even went to the outlet mall, where I spent entirely too much money on Crocs for the kids.

But I especially would like to thank Danyelle, who apparently taught the kids how to make silly faces for the camera while I was at the store, for these here gems. This is what I got whenever I asked Sam to look at the camera:

 Yeah,... Every. Single. Time!

Nice!

Thanks, Danyelle for inviting us on such an awesome adventure. I had a great time and I know the kids LOVED it. You guys are great travel buddies and I hope we can do it again!

And remember, we'll always have New Orleans ;)

This weekend

This weekend we spent a whole lot of time at Lowe's
enjoying the fabulous weather, smelling eating the pretty flowers,
and shopping for lots and lots of these here beauties:
And once we had two flat carts full of colorful lovelies, we spent a lot of time working on our yard. My mom came over and helped us clean up the flower/vegetable beds and plant all of our goodies.
In addition to delighting in our beautiful flowers, this year we hope to enjoy lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, garlic, potatoes, peppers, sugar snap peas, onions, scallions, carrots, strawberries, blueberries, pears, plums and grapes ~ all from the comfort of our own backyard! Not to mention the herbs we're growing inside. Talk about locally-grown and fresh. We can't wait!

Not pictured are three Weeping Cherry Trees we got for our backyard ~ two white, one pink. They are STUNNING! I'll make sure to share some pictures as soon as they're in the ground.

**********

This weekend we were able to spend a few hours with our dear friends, the Prosperos, who were here for a soccer tournament. Although we weren't able to spend as much time together as we would have liked, it sure was fun catching up after almost 4 years without seeing each other.

And to say I was shocked to see how big their boys are is a HUGE understatement. This family is so unbelievably special to me. I first met them back in 1995 immediately after graduating from college and upon starting my first real job. We quickly became great friends. Gabe, their oldest, was about Sam's age at the time. The younger two weren't even born yet. I babysat these boys all the time. And now they are all big young men and It. Kills. Me!

**********

This weekend Scott and I finally carved out some time and managed to get caught up with some of our DVR shows and this one was incredibly inspiring:

Scott has been a big fan of Jamie Oliver for a while now. Me not so much. I can honestly say that I am much more so after watching two episodes of his new show. His main goals are to make people healthier, make people cook their own food, and make people spend time together during the process. What's not to love?

**********

This weekend I finished reading this book:
which is officially one of the best books I have ever read. Oh my goodness, it is absolutely amazing! It is a beautiful young adult novel with a heartbreaking subject matter narrated in a very unexpected, yet extremely poetic, way. I definitely recommend it to everyone.

And started this one:
I've only read the first couple chapters, but so far, so good. I'll keep you posted.

This weekend was a really fun weekend!

Iowa Visit-Part Deux: New Year's Eve/Day

So upon the arrival of our dear friends, the Rieds, to the Miller Plantation (as we so lovingly call it now), it was catch up time, for adults and kids alike. I remember way back when these gathering consisted of only adults. Then there were a few babies here and there. Now there are as many children as there are adults. Crazy, isn't it? The handsome Miller boys, the beautiful Ried girls and my two played so well together, they made it easy for the adults to do what we do best,... eat, drink and talk!

On New Year's Eve, shortly after Sam threw up a bunch of grapes he had eaten and they all landed on yours truly, we managed to put the kids to bed and get the party started. Our New Year's Eve was definitely a celebration of friends, food, beverages, games, and a whole lot of laughter.

First order of business: the party supplies~hats, tiaras, beads and leis:
No, you do not have to adjust your monitor. Our party supplies do indeed say Happy 2000 on them. So that, my friends, is how we welcomed the new year. So what if our supplies were an entire decade behind, we partied like it was 1999 and we loved every minute of it.
We played the game Battle of the Sexes and laughed so hard, some of us even cried:
But then again, he might have been laughing at this:
When Rachel brought out her 1999 video recorder we laughed until it literally hurt. And I know for a fact that it brought many of us to tears.
One of my favorite moments of the night was when we served the champagne and we all gathered in front of the TV with the anticipation of watching the ball drop in Times Square only to miss when the clock struck midnight because we were entirely too confused on what channel was televising the ball drop. Ladies and gentlemen: the ball is in NYC and had dropped an entire hour earlier when the East Coast's clock struck midnight. Seriously, I'm still laughing at our faces when the realization finally hit. Yeah,... good times!

Anyway, we re-celebrated the arrival of the New Year with the kids on New Year's Day. Out came the 2000 hats and tiaras and confetti poppers. We actually counted down with them and they were thrilled:
Other than that, New Year's Day was exactly as I had envisioned it ~ laid back and relaxing! We spent a lot of time in front of the TV lounging and talking and napping:

I mean seriously, what more can you ask for?

We are so blessed to have these people in our lives. People that I have known since 1995 and have had the honor of celebrating so many of our life changes together. People that I know will be there for us in the next 10, 20, 30 years. I love you guy, and I can't wait until the next time!

Oh and BTW, Rachel has started her own blog about life on the Miller plantation (don't you just love how that sounds?!) to keep their friends and family updated. So stop by sometime to check it out and tell her I say hi. Here's the link: Life on the Miller Plantation.