Happy Birthday John!!!

Today is John's birthday and we have spent the whole weekend celebrating him!! John's parents were going to be in Branson this weekend, so they invited us to come up and spend some time with them and they also offered to keep the girls on Saturday night, so we could go out for John's birthday. We drove up on Saturday morning because Emma had her first Art Show on Friday night that we did not want to miss (blog to come on that!) and came back home this afternoon.

We drove up in time to eat lunch at Fudruckers! It is our favorite burger place and we eat there almost every time now since the one in Fayetteville closed down. Then we went up the street to Dixie Stampede stables and looked at all the horses. Sadly, I did not take any pictures. John and his parents went out to College of the Ozarks to take pictures that afternoon and I took the girls swimming at the indoor pool. They were so excited and had a great time! Check out John's photoblog for his cool pictures from the weekend!

John wanted to go to Joe's Crab Shack for some dinner, so we went to Branson Landing. Sadly, all the stores closed around 8:00, so when we finished dinner we couldn't shop like we had planned. John wanted to go to "the funnel cake" place for dessert and when we got there, it was closed for the season. Sad :(. John chose Krispy Kreme instead, so we had a late night donut, then headed home to watch a movie.

John and his Dad got up early to go take more pictures this morning. When he got back, we ate GDad's famous cheesy eggs and headed back to the pool! Daddy came this time, which is always more fun! We packed up after that and headed home around 1:00. The girls were dying to give John his birthday present, so they took him outside while I got it ready. We surprised him with Rock Band 2 for the xbox and I'm pretty sure the girls were as excited as John was to get it. Kuddos to the girls because they knew about Rock Band and never let the surprise slip to John.

I got busy making John's birthday cake when we got home. His favorite cake is boxed yellow cake with chocolate icing. My friend, Elizabeth, introduced us to poked holes in the cake with the icing over the top many years ago and now John won't allow me to just spread the icing on anymore. The holes help the icing drizzle down into the cake. Yummy. The cake is not pretty and it does kind of kill me not to make him a pretty double decker cake for his birthday, but this is exactly what he wants every year! We are about to go end his special day by eating at Catfish Hole! The diet will resume tomorrow! :) Happy 33rd Birthday John!!! You have finally caught up with me.

My Valentines

I love Valentine's Day! Not sure why except that I love anything with a heart on it and my birthday is three days before, so it has always been a fun week for me with those two combined. This is the second year that John's parents have taken our girls and the three cousins for the weekend of Valentine's Day. It was such a treat!

We spent most of the weekend eating out and watching movies. John and I celebrated my birthday and Valentine's Day with Amy and Sam at Bonefish Grill on Friday night. YUMMO!!! I have been craving the Bang Bang Tacos that I got ever since! It is rare that we get to hang with Amy and Sam without all the kids, so that was a treat as well.
We spent Saturday working on some stuff around the house and running a few errands together. On Saturday night, we ate Italian food out at Noodles and saw Valentine's Day. It was a good flick and very funny!
John got up on Sunday morning to go take pictures at one of his favorite areas of Arkansas, which also happens to be near our spot to pick up the kiddos. He took care of all of that and I spent the morning getting ready for the week and going to the grocery store. I'm not going to lie. It was nice to have some quiet time at home alone on Sunday.

The kids had a great time! Nana and GDad took them to the park, cooked them yummy food and let them decorate Valentine cookies. Thank you so much Nana and GDad for loving our girls and giving us some time alone!
I thought this was a cute picture of all the cousins with GDad.









John and I had a great time together, but we were so ready to see these 2 little Valentine's on Sunday afternoon. They're the best and our house is not near as fun without them here. This picture of Brooklyn was taken before her Valentine party at school. It makes me smile!

Publish Post

More Winter Fun!

We were all bracing in NWA for what everyone thought might be another Ice Storm from 2009. Don't get me wrong, I love a good snow, but I REALLY did not want our electricity go out again. We lucked out this year and our electricity stayed around! We did get about 1/2-1" of ice and about 6-7" of snow. It was beautiful and amazing sledding weather! On Saturday, we hopped in John's jeep (4WD) and went sledding with some friends at a local school. Most of these pictures are courtesy of Brooke Robinson who sat at the bottom of the hill taking amazing photographs of our kids playing! My girls had a blast and so did I! John was with us too although he never made it in a picture. :)


Molly and Emma getting some air!





Despite my expression, I was having
a blast!






These 3 (Molly, Emma,
and Elle) are so fun
together!






My sweet baby girl
LOVES the snow!