Weekly Recap 2/18/12

We had a busy week this week. It started off with Jackson's pinewood derby:

He did manage to make it to the second round of the derby, but couldn't advance to the finals. His car is in the right lane in the following video:

Here is a picture of his car winning one of the races:

After the derby it was construction time! JJ will finally be moving from a toddler bed into a real bed!!

Jackson and JJ are super excited about this new bunk bed in their room. Our next move will be to move William out of the crib (gasp!) and into a toddler bed.  He is my last baby.....the very last one to sleep in the crib:(

My four sweet valentines! Jackson had to make treats for his class.  We dipped some marshmallows in chocolate and sprinkles. I made a Lego valentine box for JJ to take to his party. At least this will be a box that can be used a few times! 

And we also celebrated William's SECOND birthday! I chose to make him a baseball cake:

  

I enjoy decorating cakes, but not so much the cleanup:

I don't know if William quite understood his birthday, but he loved his balloons!

And his cake:

And he understood enough to blow out the candles!

Can't wait to eat his cake!

Birthday family photo:

This was also the week of Bart, Mike, and Jackson's skiing adventure. They went to Copper Mountain in Colorado.

Here are a couple of videos of Jackson skiing:

I have to say I am pretty impressed.  He improved from last year!

He was pretty exhausted by the end of the day:

The boys made it back home late Saturday night! I think it will become an annual trip. And every couple of years, Mike will have to add another boy to go along with them! By the time William is 5 or 6, maybe Abby and I will tag along too:)

Weekly Recap 2/11/12

Upon my arrival back home - this was Bartley's setup:

Unfortunately the picture doesn't show the Vick's vapor mist floating around him:)

It was also Mike's birthday this week. He chose to eat at the Coop in Grand Island:

Then we went back home for some cake - angel food - of course!

Birthday family photo:

I somehow came across Jessica Alba's new company - The Honest Company. I decided to sign up for free samples of the diapers, wipes, laundry detergent and lotions. Some of the diapers had cute designs. I couldn't believe this design though:

Yep - those are SKULLS!  I just don't get the skulls on everything these days. The only reason I used the diaper is because it was free!

Friday night was Daddy/Daughter date night through the City of Hastings:

Daddy and Abby attended last year as well.  Abby has come home both years all giggly and talking non-stop. I know those will be memories Abby will treasure forever:)

Weekly Recap 2/4/12

I am going to switch it up and not do a daily post anymore.  The picture a day was a fun project for 2011, but it is hard to remember to take a daily picture! I still enjoy taking pictures - just ask any member of my family or my close friends - and I will still blog, but I will blog on a weekly basis. So, here is my first weekly recap from the first few days of February. My goal is to blog every Saturday or Sunday about the previous week's happenings! Here goes:

I took off Thursday morning for a trip back to Indiana.  Thankfully I have wonderful friends who helped take care of my kids while Mike was at work! My first stop was in Des Moines to pick up my sister. We stopped for lunch at the World's Largest Truck Stop near the Quad Cities:

And no, Mindy did NOT want to pose for that picture:)

We made it to our mom's house in time for supper which was some Pizza King pizza! Yummy! Then we got this crazy idea that we should go downtown to check out all the Superbowl stuff. We waited until after the concert was over - so we didn't get downtown until around 11:30PM. Anyone who knows me knows that this is WAY past my normal bedtime! But it was a great time to be down there.

It was almost empty in front of the Roman Numerals.

This was on the front of the Marriott hotel:

I think we finally made it back home around 1:30AM. I got kind of scared after we saw a bouncer push some drunk guy to the ground right in front of us. Downtown Indy is just a little scarier than downtown Hastings:) Especially at that time of the night.

On Friday we did some shopping at Clay Terrace Mall.  We spent quite a bit of time at this store Charming Charlie:

So much jewelry! We all had fun trying on funky rings and Mindy did end up buying a few rings.

We said goodbye to mom and met up with Dad and Karen for an early supper. Then we went downtown again for the evening:

Every building welcomed the Superbowl!

Here is the crazy ice guy carving his ice sculpture for the night:

This picture doesn't even begin to show what the crowd was like.  It was crazy nuts and definitely not my cup of tea! I am very glad we went down there to experience it, but I don't think I would ever have to do it again.

Here is another picture of the Roman Numerals - and you can see how crowded it was tonight compared to last night!

We didn't really do much downtown - just walked around and looked at everything and bought our souvenirs and then went back to Dad and Karen's!

My whole reason for this trip was to be there for my grandma's surprise 80th birthday party! So on Saturday morning we had to get to the church to help decorate.

My grandma was SO surprised.  She had no clue! I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

We had an excellent turnout. We think we had almost 75 people show up! 

After the party dad have vacuum duty:

We ended the night with a few games of Marbles! (while watching IU beat up on Purdue:))

January 31st

So, did they mean to misspell it?

Of course after seeing signs with misspellings in public, it always makes me second guess the correct spelling of the word!

January 30th

My Betsy Ross and David:

To kick off 'Catholic Schools Week' they kids were given the option to dress as a historical or biblical figure for the day. These costume days always turn into bigger projects than what I think.

January 29th

Teaching Jack how to use the Dremel tool:

William self soothing himself while he plays the fishy game:

January 28th

Had the scariest night of my night last night. William has been coughing the past couple of days. After I put him  to bed, he continued to cough on and off. He would wake me up every so often. Finally around 1AM I went over to check on him because he kept making this weird noise. When I walked into the room, I freaked out because it sounded like he couldn't breathe! I snatched him out of the crib - scaring him to death I imagine - and took him to the bathroom and tried to shove a drink down his throat. I am sure that freaked him out even more. So, he started screaming crying and I am really freaking out. I frantically get dressed and wake up Abby to let her know I am taking him to the ER. Luckily Bartley was in the basement in case something happened while I was gone. 

Now, keep in mind that Mike was supposed to be coming home last night - but his flight to Omaha was delayed 1 1/2 hours, so he ended up spending the night at a hotel in Omaha. So, I rushed William to the ER where they gave him a steroid right away to deal with the inflammation and help him breathe better. Then they gave him a breathing treatment - which he HATED and SCREAMED the entire time - and diagnosed him with croup! With four kids this was my first encounter with croup! And it was a scary one. After we got back home, I was scared to let him go to sleep! And after reading the paperwork they gave me, one of the things you are NOT supposed to do if you child is having problems breathing with croup is try to give him some water! It also said to hold him close and rub his back and stay calm! Which is the opposite of what I did! So, it was an interesting night for me and William!

The good news is Mike finally made it home and brought us some Belgium chocolates: 

He also brought the kids home some Euros and brought me a card with some homemade lace - which is very popular in that town. It is wonderful to have him back home with us!!