mirth & mint: January 2016

mema's birthday!

Friday, January 29, 2016

We just can't get enough of Mema. Meghan tries to make it easy on her and therefore goes to her house alot, so we get reeeally excited when she comes over to our house. Especially on her birthday! Richard made steak AND crab (!) with mashies, peas and green-beans, ending on Meghan's custom Black Forest cake - YUM. All this while Mema and I drank our red wine together and went through old family pictures. Pretty stellar way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :)

a three-day/mlk jr. weekend

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Oh, Three-Day Weekend! How much I appreciate you! After a couple of weeks of recovering from the 2015 Holidaze, I've never been so happy for a third consecutive day of rest in my life. We had the littles this particular weekend and did our best to take it easy. Going to the park, trips for frozen yogurt and ice cream, watching a ton of movies (Flashdance! Mad Max! ... The Minions Movie!) - and we even got to see Bob! It was just wonderful.

I took the littles to the park on Sunday and after a good 20 minutes I realized they were kinda over this particular location. (We've been going there for a year, they've kinda done everything you can do there!) Sadie was off playing with her new insta-friends, so Emily and Richard and I went for a little walk. Richard III was so bored, we found an empty trash-can and he got in for me to roll him around in it. ;P It blew 4 whole minutes! When we were walking back to get Sadie, R3 just said, "Nope! I'm tired of walking." and patiently waited for us to get back into the car and pick him back up (before I snapped a picture, of course).

We drove around the neighborhood a little bit and wound up at Monster Yogurt (while Meghan wasn't there! The horror!). There's a playground there, and I'm just trying so hard to get them away from screens for at least a couple of hours - whatever I gotta do!

Simple, quiet high-fives. ;)

This beautiful, moody teenager.

On Monday I took the littles to a different park to give it a whirl, and thank goodness they were impressed! Begging-me-not-to-leave impressed! Even though Richard had to work on Monday during the day and Meghan had to work at night, we managed to end the day on a high note with seeing BOB. Dinner out with burgers & fries and MORE frozen desserts from Braum's!

I can't ever thank you enough, Three Day Weekend! I can't wait to see you again in February!!

2015 clean-up :)

Friday, January 15, 2016

I'd be lying if I said the end of 2015 wasn't hard. People quitting at work, the general stress of the holidays, Grandpa Jim... it was alot. I was buggin' pretty badly.

I love recapping the year on the blog, answering cute little questionnaires and the like in December... I like being a perfect internet person! But I had to forgive myself this time around because I was just so preoccupied on being exhausted and trying to care for myself and my family. Not really fun stuff to blog about!!

I was able to catch-up on alot of blogging the past few weeks (just old stuff from October, November and December) and I am finally sitting down with the rest of it. After watching a great many HILARIOUS family videos over the holidays, I had the fire/guilt/obsession in me more than ever to build this site as a place for the kiddos to look at in years to come. I've been doing it since 2012, it's kinda my legacy - don't want to have a wimpy legacy!

So, without further ado - the remainder of 2015... with a few bits of 2016 already mixed in!

Lunch with my favorite Sandra!

This is the epitome of the season, from Christmas Eve to Christmas to a few days later. My family and I kept saying "Merry Weird Christmas!"

And then huge storms, tornados - the lights went out at dinner! Merry Weird Christmas!

Baby Judy. :)

Baby Meghan!

Tonya and I trying on sentimental shirts, and R gave me pencil shoes for Christmas!

Sadie, who became a texting fiend after getting an iPad for Christmas. (We were going to Sprouts - no shoes for her at that store ;P).

And Scooterin' Sadie!