Addie turns 4

It's hard to believe Addison Grace is four!  I'll update more later with info on Addie's personality, what she is into these days and her stats.  We had a fun time celebrating her birthday.  Her birthday was on a Saturday so we celebrated her birthday at daycare on Friday.  I walked into the room and could tell in her eyes that she just didn't look like she was feeling too well. One of her teachers said she had been real low-key most of the day (more to come soon...but she is NOT low-key) and she wasn't bouncing off of the walls when all of the attention was on her for her birthday.   After singing and then brownies I took her temperature and she ended up having a fever.  Poor thing! We took her home and rented "Puss in Boots".  The next morning she woke up without a fever, but still wasn't 100% all weekend.  She didn't have much of an appetite and broke out in hives a few times throughout the day.  She was a trooper and rallied by the time we had family over for a get-together/party.


Putting on a good face despite not feeling well...

Getting ready to sing.  I can tell here that she isn't feeling too well.

Still managed to act silly.

Saturday morning, her birthday, she got to unwrap her present from us...a small dollhouse. 

Getting ready for weekly ballet.

Layton called to sing "Happy Birthday"

Showing off that she is 4

I attempted cake pops for dessert at her party.  They were a lot of work, but they tasted good (red velvet cake with chocolate coating).  I tried sticking them in this Styrofoam, but it ended up looking like a tornado had come through them because they were top-heavy and wouldn't stand up straight.  Oh well, I tried.

A pillow fight in Addie's bedroom...

Birthday girl in a tiara that Honey bought

Cousins playing...had to snap this picture of Layton at the vanity putting on lip gloss.  Ha!

Showing off a new Tangled doll

Addie decorated her cake. :)

She looks so big here!

Dessert time!

Abigail eating her cake pop.

More to come (well I hope sooner rather than later)...

Hey, Hey, DG...ain't it great to be! :)

For 6 months now we have been looking forward to a weekend in Indy with some of my sorority sisters along with their spouses. We were excited when the time had come. Friends from Texas, Chicago, North Carolina, New England, and Evansville (and us from KY and the locals in Indy) all got together for a great reunion weekend. I love these beautiful women and am so happy to still have them in my life! They are all such wonderful people and I wish I could see them more often. 

We stayed with Brad and Tara.  Brady was very excited to see Kate.  He loves babies and played with her all weekend long.  I love this photo.

On Saturday afternoon the kiddos stayed at the house while we went to a Butler basketball game, walked around campus, visited the bookstore, toured the DG house and went to dinner in Broad Ripple.  It was an awesome day!

Although Butler didn't make the tournament I am still so proud to be a Butler Bulldog!  It was great to see Hinkle sold out.  It has changed a lot since I went to BU.

Wrong setting, but cute pic...

Great photo of two lovely ladies...Erin and Ann Marie. (Ann Marie was the one who came up with the idea last fall and helped plan it all.  Thanks, Ann!)

The crew at the end of the game...

Kristine and I in front of the bulldog outside of Atherton Union...

Ashley and Hannah...

The Delta Gamma house had a major renovation and remodel recently.  It was great to see all of the changes to the house.  Before this most all of the guys headed to Baxbeaux's Pizza to "save tables" aka avoid the DG reminiscing. Ha! 

Dinner at Bazbeaux's Pizza.  I miss that place!  Ann Marie and Tara (she was such a trooper that weekend even though she was 9 months pregnant...she's have a baby on Friday!!!)

I told the guys to pose for a picture and this is what I got!  Ha!  The newest guy to the group, Bryan (Ann Marie's husband), was the only one that cooperated.  :)

They joke with us all the time about being sorority sisters, but they wouldn't be such great friends if it wasn't for us! :)

Brad (hey Brad, how about them ISU trees?!), Bryan C. and Brandon

Bryan, Jeremy and Chris

On Sunday Tara hosted a brunch at her house...homemade cinnamon rolls and all!  Jeremy requested them because they are amazing!  And yes, as a reminder, she did this all very pregnant!

Brady and Addie licking icing...

I FINALLY got to meet Brooke and Brandon's little guy, Asher.  I love his grin!

Ashley and Erin Riley...Riley couldn't join us on Saturday, but came on Sunday.  She's getting married in April!

Asher and Kate meeting each other.  They are about 2 months apart.

Ha! 

Our annual kid photo, but with way more kids in the picture this time.  They are such cute, sweet kids!

The two little ones playing...

Garrett and Brady playing with an ipad...

I know Erin HATED this moment!  :)  Instead of me putting Kate down for a nap Erin just let her sleep on her chest.  So sweet.

Thanks again to Tara and Brad for letting us invade their house.  I almost cried when I got home that weekend because I love these girls so much and I hate that we don't see each other often.  It just makes it that much better when we do get together.  It was a great weekend!  When is the next one? :)

French Lick family weekend

In early February we had a wonderful family weekend with my parents and my brother's family in French Lick, IN. My mom has wanted to take us there for a while and we finally found a Friday night that worked for all of us.  We stayed at the Big Splash Waterpark hotel.  We headed up on Friday evening (of course Addie got car sick on the way up...we're hoping she'll out grow this one day) and arrived around 7:00. We got to play for a couple of hours and then put the kids to bed.  We shared a suite with David, Carrie and the boys.  Kate had a fever that day and evening, but did pretty well despite not feeling the best.  My mom stayed with the kids so David, Carrie, Jeremy and I could go out that evening.  We went to the West Baden hotel for a drink and it was gorgeous!  It would be the perfect weekend getaway place.  We then headed over to the French Lick casino.  Jeremy and I aren't big casino people, but it was worth seeing for a bit.  On Saturday we spent the morning and afternoon in the water park.  It was a blast!  Jeremy and I had fun on the big slides and had fun playing in the water with the family.  It was hard to take a lot of pictures because I didn't want my camera to get wet.  Thanks to my mom and dad for a wonderful family get-together!


Kate really liked the baby pool.  I didn't have a bathing suit for her, but I don't think she minded much. :)

Addie before she jumped in the pool about 50 times. :)  I was happy to see that they had life jackets there.  Addie does pretty well in water, but having the life jacket on made me a lot more relaxed with her around the water.

Dawson and Carrie going down a slide.

Dylan LOVED this slide!

Grammy and Kate...sorry, mom, I can take the picture down if you want, but I like it. :)  Kate is a little baby, but you can tell she still has rolls to her.  Ha!

Grandpa and Kate

Kate playing in the baby pool.

Dippin' Dots with Grandpa

We had a busy February so I have a lot I hope to update on here soon since it is now the girls' babybook, scrapbook, etc. I want to try to keep up with it for them/our family.  On a different note, I am sure you have heard about the storms and tornadoes that the Midwest and South on Friday.  It was a very scary day for all of us.  It is so sad to hear of people losing their lives, their houses, their belongings and more.  It breaks my heart.  Please join me in praying for the families of the victims, the town of Henryville, IN (Randy's son-in-law has family there), the town of West Liberty, KY (I was only about 20 minutes away from that town the evening of the tornadoes) and everyone else affected by the storms.  May they find God's peace during this difficult time.

Bunco cruise!

It's hard to believe one month ago I was getting off of a cruise boat!  I want to go back!  I went on a 4 night, 3 day cruise with 9 women from Jeremy's dad's side of the family. 

A little background...Jeremy's grandmother passed away a couple of years ago.  She LOVED playing games, cards and bunco.  A year later most of the women in the family decided to start a bunco group in her honor.  It has been a lot of fun getting the group together monthly.  Jeremy's great aunt Sharon loves to cruise.  She has been on almost 60 cruises!  She was planning a retirement cruise (although she hasn't completely retired yet) and wanted the bunco ladies to join her.  Before we knew it 10 of us were headed on a cruise to the Bahamas the first week of February!  Several of us had never been on a cruise before.  It was a blast!  If you know these women you know that we did A LOT of laughing!  I didn't take my nice camera because I didn't want to keep up with it on a busy ship.  Enjoy the pics and updates.

Here are the 10 of us at the airport...spray tans and all!  Ha!  (Me, Jeremy's stepmom, sister-in-law, 3 cousins, 3 aunts and great aunt)

 

We flew to Miami on Sunday and boarded the ship on Monday.  Nothing like getting on a cruise ship, grabbing a fruity drink in the sun and hearing a live band all on a Monday afternoon in February!  Here I am with Jenny and Annette at the pool deck.  I still was in awe most of the week over the fact that such a big ship could float.  And then there is Jeremy, "Come on, Laura, it's simple physics.  It's called buoyancy."  Doesn't it baffle some of you?  Please say it does.  :)

Setting sail from Miami.  Clearly it was windy.  Actually it was pretty windy for most of the trip.

 After the muster drill (yes, everyone took it very seriously as you can imagine) a few of us headed down to the fitness center and spa because they were doing giveaways and you have to be present to win.  We walked in when they started calling names and guess whose name got drawn?  ME!!!  I won a $125 gift certificate to the spa.  I had to dance after my name was called.  And if you know me, that was not a problem!  I was stoked and cut a rug to some "Walk this Way"!  I had a hot stone massage the next morning and it was heaven.  After dinner, kareoke and dancing that night we headed to bed and woke up in Nassau, Bahamas.  We did some shopping in the Bahamas and headed to Senor Frogs for some food and fun.  Not all pictures will be posted on this here blog.  I don't think some people would be happy.  Ha! :)

One of my favorite things at Senor Frogs...Guacomole Boy!  Fresh guac made right at the table.

 

 Vicki, Jenny and I posing with the frog and cracking up!

That night was formal night.  It is true what you hear about cruises...all you do is eat!  The food was very good.  Here I am with Jen and Jenny (or also called "the J and J show" Ha!), 2 out of 3 of my roommates. Can you imagine 4 girls getting ready in a room the size of a closet?  Kinda reminded me of my DG days, but worse.  It was quite comical.

Jen, Jamie, Jenny and Me

The next day we were at CocoCay, Bahamas.  It is Royal Caribbean's private island.  It was my favorite day of the trip because the weather was beautiful and it was a very low-key day.  Cruise vacations are very busy and this day was a chance to just layout on the beach.  That morning I did yoga on the beach too.  Talk about a way to start a day!

The three sisters (Jeremy's aunts) were posing in the ocean and Ashley and Jamie tried to push them down in the water.  I got a good action shot.  Ha!

A picture of the ship from the island.

The final full day of the cruise was in Key West, Florida.  I LOVED the city!  It made me want to go back for a longer visit.  The gardens/flowers were gorgeous, the weather was beautiful, the people were very friendly and the city was so quaint.  A lot of us took a ghosts and legends tour.  It was pretty cool, although our tour guide was very long winded.  After the tours we went to "Sloppy Joe's Bar" for lunch, home of the original Sloppy Joe and where Hemingway hung out a lot.  We then did some shopping and ate lots of Key Lime Pie. 

Pretty cool sign!

This bar is owned by Kelly McGillis,the girl from Top Gun

And here is Jimmy Buffet's first home...Ashley & Bryan, this pic is for you!

And apparently Kenny Chesney owns this home.

We didn't make it to the southern most point of Florida (we had to get back to the ship), but we did take a picture of mile marker 0 of A1A. With Kathy and Jamie...

It was a great trip, busy, but great!  After going on my first cruise there are some things I would do differently. It was a wonderful break from home/work life and something I definitely needed.  I couldn't have gone on this trip without Jeremy's support.  He took care of the girls all week while I was hopping from island to island.  He is such a great husband and father!  Hopefully this isn't our last trip together as a group because we had lots of fun.