Recent happenings

Well, April has proven to be an exceptionally busy month, filled with visits from out-of-town family & friends.  We had Mike's mom in town for a couple of weeks & then Mike's brother & his best friend came down for almost a week.  On top of that, we had my parents up with our niece for a night to see Cameron's baseball game; talk about a full house!

Speaking of baseball, here's a picture of my little slugger for this season... he's so darn cute!!

On the subject of things being cute, I don't think it gets much cuter than this little gal pal!  I took this on my Wednesday off last week.  I cherish my day a week off with this little love, just as I cherished it when it was spent with Cam before he started kindergarten.  It's hard to believe that he'll be finished with K in a little over a month!  We've done a lot of debating about summer care between his current school vs. his previous school where Reese still goes.  There's a very big price difference in his previous school being a lot more expensive, but it would be so much more convenient for Cameron to go where Reese is & save us an hour of driving between myself & Mike.  They would also provide lunch, so it would be saving me a step in the evening.  Those two factors aren't worth the price difference, but the fact that his previous school will continue education during the summer was our selling factor.  I don't want Cam's brain to turn to mush during the summer & I really want him to stay ahead of the game & be prepared for first grade.  He'll be starting first grade at a different, newly rebuilt school which just so happens to be about a half mile from our house vs. the thirty minute round trip drive Mike makes every morning with drop off.  Yay for extra time!

During my blogging hiatus this month, we celebrated both Mike's 36th birthday & the kitty's golden, 13th birthday on the 13th.

These brothers got wild & crazy with some catnip on their birthday, woo hoo!

I also took the time this month to spruce up our drab, dirty, depressing garage door!

It's so much more cheerful to come home to this bright turquoise door & it was a project that cost under $20 & took less than two hours.

I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to paint the inside of the door as well.  Since I didn't tell Mike I was doing this little project, I wasn't sure how he'd react to a door in our house being turquoise, but he was just fine with it.  It's a good thing too because I wasn't going to repaint it anyway! ;o)  I love painting because it's relatively inexpensive & easy though makes such a difference.  I'm huge on aesthetics; if something looks ugly, it drives me bonkers!

I've otherwise been consumed with finishing my 75 continuing education hours for my five year dietitian registration which is up at the end of May.  Nothing like leaving it for the last minute!  I've banged out a ton of hours today, so I'm pretty much good to go with a month to spare... not too terrible.  

So that's what's going on around here these days.  Too much to do with too little time, story of everyone's life!!

Easter 2015

The fact that Easter is already behind us is mind boggling because I feel like we just celebrated Thanksgiving & Christmas.  This year is going by in a big hurry.

We were excited to head down to Sarasota after work on Good Friday since we hadn't seen Maddy & Mikayla (or my brother & sis-in-law) since Christmas.  We normally make it a point to get together more regularly but we've all just been so busy.

We colored Easter eggs Saturday evening & otherwise just hung out & cooked the rest of the weekend.



Anticipation for the day pulled the kids out of bed bright & early!  Look at those sleep filled faces with their baskets!

The kiddos were really excited to go on their egg hunt, so excited that my parent's screen door got ripped in the stampede of them going out!  The Easter bunny must have hid the eggs at night because the dang racoons had plenty of time to go nuts on opening them & snagging the candy.  Little jerks!

 Reese was very proud of her "princess basket" & all the eggs she managed to collect.

 

My babes!

Mikayla is such a pretty girl & she's getting to be so grown up!  I love how this picture captures Reese bolting by for more eggs.

Speaking of Reese, last week we headed out on a wedding dress shopping spree with my BFF Lauren since she's getting married this summer.  Reese saw this dress in a shop & decided this was the one for her.  Lets just hope & pray that her tastes change as she gets older... yeee.

We headed to PF Chang's for lunch after dress shopping & Reese went to town on her noodles as Lauren & I sipped our amazingly delicious margaritas!  And today we're awaiting Grammy's arrival from Chicago.  The poor thing was supposed to land at 11am, but her flight was over four hours delayed.  I've been using the extra time to be an organizing fool.  I'm hosting Mike's 36th birthday party this weekend so I'm trying to declutter some of the unused toys & stuffed animals.

I find with our bin storage, the kids buzz around the house, going from room to room, dumping bin after bin.  By the end of the night, the house looks like a complete war zone & barely any of the toys that are strewn about were even played with.  I hate that.  So, I've purged & purged, especially the stupid stuffed animals.  I freaking loathe stuffed animals.  They take up so much space & the kids barely touch them.  Buh-bye two garbage bags full!!  Ahh, organizing & purging of stuff is like therapy for me; it makes me calm & content!