Birthdays

My wonderful husband shares a birthday with my sweet friend Nikki. We had our second annual birthday party for them this year. Last year I planned ahead of time and this year I sent out a text message Friday morning just before school started. We have wonderful friends, because they all were quick to reply with a "Yes, we'll be there!" Our friends Greg and Amy even offered to host so I didn't have to rush home after school and get things ready since Greg had the day off. We have the best friends!

Here's some pictures I took that night...

Snacking and chatting

The birthday boy

Nikki (the birthday girl), Naomi and Abby

Greg and Kyle hanging out around the fire pit while the kids roasted marshmallows. 

Did I mention how much I LOVE Texas in December??

The sweet newlyweds

I love this sweet baby!

Friends!

This poor sweetie wanted outside with the bigger girls. 

I am officially on vacation!  I'm so excited!  Friday we leave for Michigan to spend a week with my family.  I can't wait.  Barry is hoping for a big snowstorm while we're there.  I'm not!  I'm hoping for just a nice amount of snow so we can still get out an see all our friends and family we need to visit. 

Anniversary, Thanksgiving Pics and Other Stuff

An update seems desperately needed. We've been busy! I had last week off and it was wonderful! There were so many things I needed to catch up on, errands I needed to do and just stuff that needed to be completed.

We've been in desperate need of new living room furniture! We have been putting it off for a while. We decided that it would make a good anniversary gift to ourselves. Barry officiates football and we've been saving all of that extra money for this and some other things we need. We started looking a couple weeks ago, but nothing really stood out. The day of our anniversary, we decided to head to Dallas and were determined to find something.

We went to one of the big stores down there. It was a bit overwhelming. They had so many choices. I felt like Goldilocks trying out all those sofas and love seats. We finally stumbled upon a set we thought was leather. It certainly looked like it. But, when we sat down on it, it was so warm...and also very soft. We were hesitant to buy leather because of Sam. Even though we don't allow him on the furniture, I'm sure he breaks the rules sometimes when we aren't home. The salesman came over and told us it wasn't actually leather, but a special kind of microfiber. Which is just what I wanted! We loved the look of it and worked out a deal with him.

Did you know you could haggle over furniture?? I sure didn't until my friend Naomi told me that she had watched a segment on a morning show about making deals when you are furniture shopping. So that's just what we did! Big time bummer when he checked about delivery...it wasn't in stock. So we are waiting 3-4 weeks for it to come in. So right now we are without a sofa because we donated our old one to some people who needed one.

Here's what we are waiting on

 

(Courtesty Lane Home Furnishings)



(Courtesy Lane Home Furnishings)

The day before Thanksgiving we packed up our vehicle and headed to Oklahoma.  We spent Thanksgiving with Barry's family.  We actually stayed until Saturday.  What a wonderful visit!  Barry's mom and I even got up on Black Friday and did some shopping.  My brother-in-law and his family joined us on Friday and we had a nice day with them.  They had spent Thanksgiving day with my sister-in-laws family.  It's great that we are all so close that we can get together over that weekend even if we miss the actual holiday.  I didn't take many pics, but here are a few:


Barry and his grandpa



Me with my mother-in-law



No wonder I can't keep him out of the kitchen.  He gets lots of love and attention!



Feeling sad because I made him leave the kitchen and lay down.

 

My sweetie and me



In the midst of all my packing on Wednesday, I was also trying to get my laundry finished.  Of course what should happen?  Our dryer finally died.  We knew it was not long for this world, so it came as no surprise.  Since we were out of town, we didn't hit any sales in our town on Black Friday, but I did some research over the weekend.  On Monday, I checked out all the cyber deals and then we hit several stores after school.  We checked out the washers and dryers in the stores that were on sale online.  Does that make sense?  Of course, nothing we wanted was in stock...story of our lives lately.  So we ordered our washer and dryer and it will be here somewhere between the 4th-12th of December.  They will let us know soon.  So for now I am hang drying items.  That is until these beauties come in!



(Courtesy Best Buy)



(Courtesy Best Buy)

 I know this is a little long...sorry about that.  I just wanted to get it all down. I need to do an post soon about babysitting Sunday.  We had our friend's sweet 5 month old daughter for the day.  It was heavenly!

Have a great week!

Project Day

I'm officially on Thanksgiving Vacation, but I'm not really laying low. I have a list of things I need to get done so today I tackled one I've been wanting to do for a long time. I bought this old student desk for $15 at a consignment/antique store in town over a year ago. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it, but I knew I needed to sand it and repaint it. I had some red paint I got in the mail from Glidden last year when you could get a free sample of their paint.  I didn't have a project small enough for this little can until I started thinking about the desk.  AH ha!

Painting it all red seemed a little much red to me though. It wasn't in great shape and had several layers of paint. So I could either sand the desk part down to wood and stain it or paint it another color. I had some extra chalkboard paint in my paint cupboard and decided that would be a fun idea.

I got up this morning and decided since it was such a beautiful day (76 degrees and sunny) I would work on the little desk today. It might rain later in the week and I can do my indoor projects then. I'd already started sanding when I remembered to take a before picture. So this picture has the top layer of paint already off.

BEFORE

AFTER

 Sam can't miss out on the action! 

You can also see part of my baby dresser that I sanded and painted white during the summer.

 As you can probably see, I need to do some touch up on the inside legs,

but I need to turn the desk upside down to do that and want to wait a couple days. 

Also, what do you think I should do to the inside?

Here's the chalkboard top.  I'm so excited about this little project.

It took four coats of paint and this was the result.  It's not perfect, but I wasn't going for perfection.  ha!  I'm also wondering if maybe I should add a poly top coat to it all.  That might prevent scratching and peeling.  Anyone have any advice about that? 

Thanks to all of you for your sweet comments on my last post.  The talk went well.  Everyone was really sweet and encouraging.  I did show the video at the end.  Lots of tears were shed.  I'll try and share some of what I said another time.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Update:  I linked up to Creations by Kara for her Look What I Made day.

In All Circumstances

This Wednesday I'm going to share my struggle with infertility and where that has lead us with our ladies class at church. When I was asked to do this, I was asked to share how we have been thankful and faithful through our struggles.

I don't want to come across as being perfect in that sense or having all the answers, because I don't! I've questioned why this has happened to us more times than I can count. But, even during all of this, I've trusted God...even though I don't understand the why of it. I know His plans far better than anything I can imagine.

I'm nervous and trying to prepare and could really use some good thoughts and prayers!

I'm also considering showing this video. I'm sure most of you have seen it by now. I'm just not sure I will be able to speak after watching it through all the tears.  I think it gives women a glimpse into the struggles we face and feelings we have.  What do you think?

Thought for Thursday

"Every experience God gives us,

every person He puts into our lives,

is the perfect preparation for a future only He can see."

~Corrie ten Boom

I took this on our camping trip.  It has nothing to do with the quote above. 

I just like the pic.  The girls were playing in the water/mud and had so much fun!

Halloween Camping

We had a wonderful Halloween weekend camping with some of our greatest friends. We got out to our campsites Friday after school and set up our tents. By the time we got everything set up and everyone finally arrived, it was time for a campfire.  There's nothing like sitting around a campfire and chatting with friends. After the kids all went to bed, that's just what we did.

Saturday, we got up and made breakfast and then went for a hike. We spent the day hanging out and I even had to run home for a bit. Did I mention the campground is super close to home?! When I came back some more friends that weren't able to spend the night came out for the evening and we had a pumpkin carving contest. It was so much fun!

I won't write about everything we did, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Once again, I have to say, I am blessed to have amazing friends. We love our little group!!

Our campsite...that's our orange tent in the background.

Our home for the weekend.

 Hanging out around the campfire Saturday morning.

 I love these girls!

 Wes is amazing!

 Ready with a worm.

 Using that new Barbie fishing pole

 Avery scooping out the pumpkin guts.

 Barry getting started on our pumpkin.

 This is serious business!

 I love this picture!



 "Please daddy, will you carve the puppy face?"

Abby's giving me some advice on how to carve my pumpkin.

 Nothing better than playing with dirt and rocks when you're camping.

 Cara made donuts and they were yummy!

 Enjoying a donut

 Sam wants his ball!

He likes to drink water from the faucet.

Here are a couple I touched up of the girls. I've got plenty more to work on.

I know there are a lot of pictures in this post, but I want to do a better job of adding pictures of our life.  I take hundreds of pictures all the time and then I don't ever load them on here.  I'm going to do a better job of adding them so I can look back in years and know what I was doing during this time in my life.