Ella's Birthday Party!

On Friday, February 28th, we had a small party with Ella's girlfriends. All the friends that were coming over go to choir with Ella....well Anna & Addison usually go to choir, but they are taking this session off. Christina did drop them off at choir so they got to chat with their choir friends and then I came and picked up all the girls. We stopped at Costco first to get pizza for dinner and then we headed to our house. The girls enjoyed pizza and salad for dinner and then had mini chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

After the girls had been hanging out for a bit they wanted Ella to open her gifts. She got money from Owen with a birthday poem that Gemini helped him write and money from the Storer's. From Jack and Zeke she got a vest and a sweatshirt. Anna and Addison got her a make-up bag with an E on it, a hair clip, a turquoise bracelet, lip gloss, nail polish and chocolates. June got her lip mask, coloring book, sweatshirt and chocolates. I gave Ella an envelope with a birthday poem that ChatGPT helped me write! :) I was laughing so hard when Ella was reading Owen's poem because I knew that AI had to have helped him and then I laughed even more since I knew that I had AI help me. Anyways the poem that ChatGPT helped me write explained that since Ella's phone has seen better days she was getting a new to her phone. Michael and I decided to get new phones even though there is nothing wrong with them....they are paid off though. Michael's giving his phone to Owen since Owen's screen is all cracked and I'm giving my phone to Ella. She's also going to get to pick out a new case for my phone so she can make it her own. She's pretty excited and keeps asking when my new phone comes since she can't wait to get my old one.

These girls are so sweet and silly! 

Caitlynn was there too, but I didn't get a picture of her! :(

It was supposed to be a girls only party, but due to a medical situation the Storer boys came to our house instead of my boys going to their house. 

Ella wanted to have a sleepover and then have all the families come over the next day for a luncheon. June, Anna & Addison slept over. Caitlynn needs more sleep so she headed home with her brothers around 9pm after the girls finished watching High School Musical. 

 

Ella and I went shopping on Thursday afternoon to get all the food for her party. She wanted to have croissant sandwiches, chips and dip, veggies and fruit. For dessert I made a vanilla cake.  

June had to go home on Saturday morning and Caitlynn came back. Also Aidry joined the mix so we still had the same number of girls we started with. 

So happy to have Micah at the party he was in a bike accident on Thursday night and had just gotten released from the hospital the day before. He still has some medical concerns, but he's taking it easy and following doctors orders. 

My sweet man and I worked together that morning to get the food all ready. Normally we don't have parties at lunch time so I have all morning to do it myself, but since we were having lunch I needed another set of hands. It was nice working with my hubby! 

Ella put her hair in her new hairclip and it looked so cute especially with her curls sticking out. They didn't even curl her hair that's just from all her natural curls! 

Cute girl looked a little feisty to me in the above picture so I told her to smile better and now she looks a little less irritated with her mother! 

Time for the second round of presents! 

The OJEZ box made it's appearance! 

Since Pa wasn't giving Ella her birthday money until 2 weeks after her birthday he actually pro-rated the amount. So instead of it being $115 she actually got $115.60. He did round up a bit since it was actually supposed to be .57. We did ask him he was going to subtract that amount from her birthday money next year and his response was "Well...let's not worry about that" or something along those lines. She is Pa's princess after all! 

From Papa & Ruth she got this yummy smelling lotion that smells like lemon and coconut! 

I really enjoyed having a lunch party instead of a dinner party. It felt like people weren't in such a rush to get home and just wanted to stay and visit. It was so nice! 

In fact since I'm doing 75 Hard, Christina was all for helping me get my second workout done for the day so her and the girls and I drove over to the middle school track to get our workout done outside in the nice weather! 

Aidry had already gone home, but I was going to drop Ella off later at her house so they could have a sleepover, but once everyone left I could tell that Ella was spent. It was 5pm so she had been around friends for over 24 hours and the girls stayed up until 1:30am! Her voice was so tired from talking and she just needed some time to herself to be able to reset and rest so she ended up staying home instead! 

Thanksmas 2024!

We have been working towards remodeling our 17ft high "crawlspace" under our house into usable space since Sept 2021. There's been lots of things to overcome which I'm going blog about eventually. My hope was to be able to use the space for Thankmas 2025, but then God was like...nope I can actually make that happen this year. I love that He cares about the little things that make us happy! 

This is our old pantry under our stairs. We knew eventually this would be the stairs to the basement so in order for us to use this as stairs Michael had to build me a place to store all that food. 

So he built me these cabinets and they have been wonderful! We still used the under the stairs closet for storage because we are a family to 6 and you use all the storage you have when you have it. 

This is how the closet looked during the beginning of 2024 after the broken pipe. 

This is how it looked in November 2024. 

In all honestly I never thought this day would come...we have stairs inside our house that go to our basement! This was huge step...no pun intended...in the process. As you can see the stairs go down a bit and then turn to the right. 

Here's the rest of the staircase as it leads to the finished space below. There will be a door at the bottom of the stairs eventually. 

This year we really had no idea how we were going to have Thanksmas because our garage was a mess from all the constructions we've been doing. We actually contemplated getting heavy duty plastic and enclosing the covered deck space we have so we could set up tables out there. That didn't sound ideal though. Once I saw that we were actually getting close to have a semi-finished space I talked with our contractor and let me know that I would really appreciate it if we could utilize the space on November 30th for Thanksmas. He didn't give me a definitely yes, but he did seem open to shooting for that goal. He actually ended up coming over on Friday, November 29th in order to finish cleaning up the area so we could use it. 

The morning of November 30th, Ga-Ga & Pa came over early so Pa would have time to get all the tables set up. At first we thought we might do separate tables like we've done in the past...men, women and kids, but with this nice huge space we opted for just one long table and people could sit wherever they wanted.

The space is usable, but not completely finished. We have limited electricity down there and zero heat so I went online and rented an indoor propane heater from Home Depot. It was a little noisy, but it made it so everyone wasn't freezing! 

Our chiropractor was selling his practice and he asked if we wanted these cabinets for free. Yes please! We plan to make this basement space into a studio apartment so these will come in handy. We used them for the dessert and punch table. 

I didn't get around to taking any pictures of the food all set up, but here's food line. 

We ended up having 22 people present for dinner. Poor Christina wasn't feeling well so she stayed home. :( 

Since Papa comes over most Tuesday's for guitar lessons with Jack he'd actually already gotten to see the work that had been done. 

Later on Justine's family stopped by and we played a new game we learned called Tens. 

You're really supposed to play until someone has 200 points or something like that, but we were only able to play one hand. 

Look at this handsome guy! 

Cuties always wearing their matching shirts! 

While we were downstairs playing most of the adults were upstairs because it was warmer.

Ga-Ga is sitting with Linda Patrick here. Linda is such a gem and I'm so happy she was able to come to Thanksmas. She had just had surgery earlier in the week. 

The kids were horsing around upstairs for a bit. 

The bromance is strong! :) 

Gotta love this cute picture of me and my Dad with Owen cleaning gunk out of his eye in the background. Hahahaha! 

Caleb has gotten so tall! 

These girls are such beauties! 

Justine's Mom, Jhaycee and his little sister Micah...they were only able to stay for a little bit because they had already attended another party that day. 

Pa and Bill...such a wonderful, longstanding friendship. 

Thanksmas was awesome! It was such a treat to have so many people over and get to utilize the new space. I'm so excited to see how this space transforms even more this next year! 

4th of July 2024!

Happy 4th of July! 

Our annual 4th of July celebration kicked off this year with Miss Brenda giving Michael a foot massage. She even gave me one which was a nice treat! She was trying to teach me how to give Michael and foot massage, but I not touching anyone's feet thank you very much! 

Michael was supposed to be gone at a baseball game this year so Pa asked Bill to be the fill in Griller. Even though Michael ended up coming Bill still took over the job so Michael could just relax! 

Ga-Ga & Pa always invite tons of people from church and lots of them came. It's always such a good time visiting with everyone! 

Owen and Caleb just love to play strategy games with each other. Jack will join in too. You can see he has the Switch in his hands so sometimes he just hangs out with them and plays his own game. 

I think the girls were having fun with make up! 

Such beauties!! 

Zeke was hanging out playing on his Kindle. The kids actually came down on the 3rd of July and they stayed 2 nights at Ga-Ga & Pa's...that's why Zeke's pill container is sitting on the end table next to him.  

It was such a gorgeous day to be outside! 

In the background of this picture you can just make out Pa showing Terry the cool sandbox he built the kids years ago. Well it was time to dismantle it...basically because it was rotting away. Now in it's place is a nice elevated deck that Pa built. 

Here's a better picture of Pa & Terry! 

Before the food was ready people were just hanging out chatting in groups. 

At one point Jan decided to get up and go down the slide. She's hilarious! 

Time to eat! 

Good food and good folks! 

4th of July is always my favorite...I love the food, I love the sunshine, I love the festive clothing!

I love it all!

I also love leading Bingo! This time around Papa, Addison and Miss Brenda won!  

The Kuch's brought their badminton set so the boys had fun playing with that! 

Always so nice to catch up with friends! 

My favorite tradition! 

Ga-Ga & a few of her sugar bears! 

Such fun memories made with friends! 

Papa & Miss Ruth! 

Annual Photo Prop Pictures! 

So happy my man was able to spend the day with us. It would have been fine if he had been at the baseball game, but I loved having him there with us! I might be smiling in these picture, but my back was hurting me so badly this day...I was actually in a lot of pain. My mom thankfully has one of those ice packs that's like a sheet and can cover your whole back I used that and took ibuprofen and it made it somewhat bearable.  

Cute girlies! 

This year the fireworks kicked off again with the neighbors in the cul-de-sac setting off jumping jacks that went off for easily 5 - 6 minutes straight. They haven't done that in years...it was cool!  

Time for snacks! 

This year we bought the fireworks from Bill & Christina's church. It was a fundraiser for their upcoming mission trip. It was so fun to get to buy some really cool fireworks and also have it go towards a good cause. I really hope they do it again next year! 

Snakes! 

Boom! 

Will break for little smokies! 

This little light of mine! 

Another amazing year of celebrating in the books!