thanksgiving in peoria {part one}

We had SO much fun at Lauren's house for Thanksgiving. 

We drove down on Wednesday morning and only encountered one minor blizzard.
We love it at Auntie Lauren & Uncle Carl's house.

My mom brought a giant bottle of "3 Girls" wine.  We drank a lot of it. 

Little Miss Crabbypants after her nap on Thanksgiving.  She woke up right before we were going to eat and she was SO crabby.   I told her to sit on the stairs until she could be happy.  She sat there for most of dinner.  Darling child.....

She got over it though.  Grandma sweet talked her into sitting by her.

We went to the park to try and walk off some of the turkey. 

"I'm on top of the mountain!!"

Holy moly she's cute.

We had to go home when Pacey started shaking uncontrolably.  Poor buddy. 

I love her so much.

We went swimming at my mom & dad's hotel one morning too.  
I could just eat her up.

She had so much fun swimming with Grandpa.

Friday we went to UFS and had lots of free samples of wine.  And beer.  And vodka.  We all left a lot sillier than we arrived.    We went bowling and saw Frozen in the theater.   I've got a few more pictures from my phone I'll post later.  We had so much fun!

 

Thank you Lauren and Carl for letting our special kind of crazy invade your house for three days.  Love you guys and see you at CHRISTMAS!

tidbits.

My mom just sent me an email telling me to update the blog or people will think something is wrong. 

Nothing is wrong.  Everything is amazing.  Really.  We're really loving life these days.  We put up some Christmas decorations.  I did the mantle.  My mom did the stairs, the lights, the mirrors, added some bling to a wreath...I mostly just cleaned up behind her and made sure Elise had something to do.  We were covered in glitter for days.

These pants are getting too short to wear in the winter...so sad.  So we took them on a last hurrah to meijer and panera with Grandma & Auntie Aubrey.

This girl had a busy weekend.  She was pretty spacey on the way home from lunch on monday.   She told me she wanted to go to bed. 

Elise prettied up the whiteboard while I made dinner tonight. 

I drew a tree and she "decorated it with or-ma-nents". 

Other tidbits:

• We're leaving for Lauren's tomorrow for Thanksgiving.  The girls are driving down in the morning and the boys are coming after work.  I've spent the last hour trying to get Finding Nemo to sync to my ipad.  It's still not working.  
• I made Pioneer Woman's sweet potato recipe.  Except I didn't have the whole milk she called for so I used half & half. 
• I probably won't be counting calories for the next five days.  Probably.  I haven't been trying that hard lately anyways.  I need to get serious.  After Thanksgiving.  
• I'll get my real camera out for some Thanksgiving fun.  Promise. 

phone dump

It's been awhile.  Lauren was here for the entire week so we were busy. 

But I do have a few pictures from my phone this week. 

Elise STILL loves the Meijer pony.   

Lauren even slept over for two nights.  She also helped me tile our entire backsplash.  It.looks.awesome. 

Lauren has pretty hair.

After we were done tiling each night we would drink wine.  Or maybe a little while we were tiling. 

This precious girl took a little "handy mandy" break while playing at Grandma's this week. 

Last night my dad took his girls to dinner and to see West Side Story.  Such a fun night. 

After the show we went to Reserve - the fancy wine bar downtown. 

AND we saw our cousin's wine on the menu.  We were, of course, to cheap to buy the bottle.  But we did take a picture and put it on instagram. 

This video is from last week - but Elise will pray before every meal.

Today she was acting super silly and talking funny.  Enjoy.

phone pics and some videos

I've been kind of slacker-ish on the blog lately.  Are blogs still cool?

Elise will scarf an entire panera pumpkin cookie.  If we ask for a bite she will break off the tiniest possible piece with no frosting and sacrifice that.

She needed all her friends and blankets downstairs on this morning. 

She cozied up and watched some Mickey Mouse.

Elise and her Grandmas last Sunday.

We watched Dumbo the other day. 

This was her face on the baby elephant part at the beginning. 

I don't really like Dumbo.

When did she start looking so old??

Some new videos from dance class:

We picked up Lyza last week for dance class - we were a little early. 

Here's Elise telling Lyza to "dance like a ballerina".  Lyza was unimpressed. 

She did her dance on the "stage" for Nick when he got home from work. 

Lauren also did this song when she was little - we're going to have to figure out how to get that off the VHS tape so we can watch it once the recital comes around.