Girls Night Shopping

On Friday night Emmaline and I had a girls night out shopping with Evan's friend Jaidyn, and her mom Joanna. If you remember, Jaidyn is Evan's friend who we say is his "girlfriend." He's got a little crush on her. She and Em have become friends too. The two of them each got the same American Girl doll, McKenna over spring break. They both have been wanting more clothes for their dolls. So Joanna and I thought it would be fun for the girls to go shopping together. While we don't have an American Girl store around here, I've seen some stuff at Target that is similar to American Girl, but they call it Generation Doll. Kohl's also has a limited amount of girls pajamas that have matching doll pj's with them. So we met up at Kohl's first to see what we could find. Both girls were ready to shop with their McKenna dolls in tow.

Both girls ended up picking out the same nighties for themselves with the same matching jammies for their dolls. We then headed over to Target and the girls must have shopped so much at Kohl's that they decided they needed a drink when we got to Target. How cute are they together enjoying their Sprite?

They both ended up getting the same dolls clothes at Target too. :) Em was excited because one of the pieces is a ballet outfit. She said McKenna will look like her when she goes to ballet. It was a fun evening and the girls can't wait to get together and play with their dolls. They really can't wait to get more clothes too! Here's Em when we got home and got ready for bed. She absolutely loves having the same clothes as her doll!

Kindergarten Roundup

On Friday we had Kindergarten Roundup for Emmaline. Yes, that's right I said Emmaline. I know, how can that be? My baby girl is going to be in Kindergarten in the fall. Doesn't seem possible. We never did kindergarten roundup with Evan because at the time we didn't know where he'd be going to school. Since we know Em will go to Evan's school we got her signed up to attend kindergarten roundup. All that week she was super excited that she got to go to brother's school on Friday. It's all she talked about.

That morning I got some clothes out for Emmaline, and she told me she was picking out her outfit. She left the room and came back with one of her new dresses. This is what she picked out for her afternoon at kindergarten roundup.

She did well I think. Doesn't she look adorable? She got lots of raves about how cute she looked in her dress. At roundup she did a hearing and vision screening. Then the kids gathered in the library and the librarian read them a story. After that the kids and parents got to take a bus ride around Haslett. Em really loved this part. She thought that was cool. Once we got back to the school they divided up the kids and parents. The kids got to go in a room with some of the kindergarten teachers and do a few activities, while the parents got to go to another room and do paperwork. I think we got the raw end of the deal. Then we all met back up at the end.

Em had no hesitation about being separated from us and loved hanging with the kindergarten teachers. Evan's teacher, Mrs. Mills, from kindergarten was there, and we got to talk to her for a little bit. We also talked to the principal and told her we felt strongly about Em being in Mrs. Mills class so hopefully that will happen. It's one of the reasons we're returning to Haslett. It was a great afternoon for Em and she tells us she's really excited about going to kindergarten!

The Right Place At The Right Time

Love, love, love my Spartans!!! Yes, you already know that by now. It's true though, I'm almost convinced my blood really is green. Haha! This happened awhile ago, but it's the background to tonight's story. A few weeks ago we went to Champps for dinner. We were almost done eating and I happened to look around and noticed Kirk Cousins a few tables over with his family. I said something to Evan and he was immediately ecstatic. First words out of his mouth, "I want to go meet him and say "hi." Ever since I got his football signed back in January when the team came back from the Outback Bowl, Evan's wanted to really meet him more than ever (Remember he was in school back then and couldn't go to the welcome back). Anyhow, I told Evan if he wanted to quickly walk by on our way out and say "hi" that we could do that. They didn't have their dinner yet so we weren't interrupting their meal. Greg didn't want anything to do with it, he thought I was nuts (what's new, LOL). So we walked over to his table, and Evan was such a big boy and said, "Hi Kirk, I just wanted to wish you luck in the NFL Draft." Kirk was so generous and started talking to Evan. Asked Evan what his name is, how old he was, and a number of other things. His parents and brother started talking to us too. I've got to say, what a very very nice family. They all thought Evan was pretty cool, and thanked him for stopping by. As we were about to leave Kirk's mom said, "If you leave me your address, I'll send Evan some pics of Kirk." Wow, really? So we did, and of course for days Evan kept asking when we would get those pics. I don't remember now how long it was, but probably about a week and a half to two weeks and finally the pics came in the mail. Here they are! Way cool. Perfect for Evan's Spartan room!


Since there was a return address on the envelope I told Evan he needed to write Mrs. Cousins and Kirk a thank you card. He made the most adorable Spartan thank you card, and I'm kicking myself now that I didn't take a pic of it. He even drew a picture of him and Kirk in football uniforms. Too cute! A week or so ago he mentioned the card and wondered if they got it. Of course I didn't know for sure, but I told him I bet they did. So now to tonight's story...

Wednesday night is ballet night, and we usually go to dinner with Greg's mom after. We were trying to decide where to go and ended up deciding on Hannah's (place I've mentioned before that we usually go to for breakfast) which is right by dance. So we walked across the parking lot, and I saw these two really big guys get out of a car. I had this instinct they were football players, and next thing I know, I see Kirk Cousins walking from in between a couple cars. Guess who got excited? Well yes me, (that's a given) but Evan was all giddy. He didn't see us, but I politely said, "Excuse me Kirk, (he turned around) do you remember Evan from Champps?" He said, "Of course I do," and immediately said, "Thanks Evan for that really awesome thank you card. I really liked it." Let's just say it made the kid's day! Kirk then asked us if we were going to dinner, and Evan said, "We're going to Hannah's, where are you going?" Kirk told us Pizza House (which is right next door), and said, "The team is eating there tonight, you should come over. You can meet some of the guys." While we like Hannah's, Evan quickly decided that it wasn't happening tonight and we were eating at Pizza House. I was cool with that. :)

We headed in, Kirk held the door for us. What a gentleman! We asked to sit over by the football players, and when we say down we saw a huge buffet of food set up. There were a few guys there already, and more trickled in little by little (or should I say big by big). These guys are huge! We placed our order and then Evan was eager to go say hi. I took him over by Kirk and as we walk up, Kirk says, "Hi Evan. Guys, this is Evan. He's a big Spartan fan! Loves football." Ahhh yes, my boy getting all the attention from Kirk and the boyzzzz! Lovin' every minute of it. Of course I was too! It was also amazing to see what these guys eat. The amount of food on their plates (most had more than one plate) was incredible. I can't even imagine what that bill was for the athletic department. We sat back down and a few minutes later some more players came in, and then more, and more. You get the point. Some of my boyzzzz that I follow on Twitter had come in, and Evan really wanted to get a picture with them. They were packing to-go boxes so when they got done and were heading out, Evan went up to them and asked for a picture. They graciously said yes so here they are!

Evan and LeVeon Bell

Evan with Darqueze Dennard, Kurtis Drummond, & Johnny Adams

It was all about being in the right place at the right time tonight. Such a fun night out for dinner. Definitely have a happy boy tonight. When I got home tonight, I tweeted the boyzzzz Evan took a picture with. So far two have tweeted me back and both retweeted my tweet to all their followers. Awesome! It's moments like this that I love living in East Lansing. Being so close to campus has allowed us to experience some things that many kids dream of. It's also part of the reason why I love my Spartans so much. They really love Spartan Nation and are so warm and welcoming to fans. Thanks guys for making my kid's night. Seeing the joy on Evan's face tonight warmed my heart. I'm pretty sure that kid has green blood too!

It's All About The House Lately

It seems like a lot of my time lately has been taken up doing things that have to do with the house. Whether it's outside the house, inside the house, or going places to find stuff for the house. A few weeks ago when the weather was warmer, we did some work outside the house. We cleaned up around the yard. We got most of the bushes/plants trimmed up from the winter, mowed the lawn, pulled the patio furniture out, etc. We got a lot accomplished on a Sunday afternoon. However then the weather turned chilly again off and on, and I mowed the lawn again, but still have a few bushes in the back that need to be trimmed. Come on Mother Nature, work with me and stay warm so I can finish! We'd like to do some more landscaping around the deck this spring/summer so it would be nice if the warm weather would stick around instead of this back and forth stuff!

Now for inside the house. I've been wanting some new furniture for the house. Specifically a new chair, end tables & coffee table for the living room. I've also been wanting some kind of cabinet/buffet for the dining room. So a few weeks ago we went out shopping for furniture. Many stores later, we ended up finding a cabinet for the dining room at World Market. It's basically for the wine & booze, as well as some serving pieces and wine glasses. On our shopping adventure we also had stopped into Art Van because we were having problems with our couch and the leather cracking. It ended up that Art Van had to come pick up our couch to service it. Well to make a long story short, after some poor customer service with the delivery guys and the service department, I finally got a manager from the store to help me. They ended up swapping out our couch and giving us a whole new one. They also said they'd give us a discount on the matching chair so we ended up purchasing the chair for the living room. With that said, getting new furniture leads to rearranging the old furniture, cleaning, and in this case filling the new cabinet with stuff. I love the new furniture, and it's nice to have extra seating in the living room. I haven't found any tables yet, but I think that part is going to be put on the back burner for now.

Once we were done with that part of the house, we finally decided to get the basement family room painted. It's been a project that just kept getting pushed aside for the past four years. Neither one of us really wanted to paint the basement because it's a rather large room. Basically it was just a time consuming project that we agreed was worth hiring a painter for if we could get it done for a good price. So that's what we did, and during spring break I had a painter come and paint the whole basement. It was well worth the price to get it done in half a day versus it taking a few days between the two of us. It's such a relief to have it done. It's amazing what a coat of paint does to a room! What a difference it makes down there. It feels a little more "homey" downstairs. Once we get it completely done with accessories, furniture, getting rid of more toys, etc. it will really feel "homey" and not like a basement. I need to have a garage sale first though to get rid of some of the bigger items down there that are all crammed to one corner. We did make some more progress though over the weekend with a trip to IKEA. We got some new shelves & t.v. stand which makes a huge difference already. Now I just need to find the perfect storage bins for the shelves so I can reorganize all the kids crap, I mean toys. Haha!

So that's been a lot of my time lately in between dance, school stuff, etc. I'm also on another yearly spring cleaning bandwagon and am hoping to have this place in tip top shape by the end of April so I can figure out when in May I can have a garage sale! I want this stuff outta here! I'm sure you all want to see pictures of the basement and I will try to get them posted soon once I get the basement back together and furniture arranged. Hopefully by this weekend.

Easter Recap

Well the week is about over already, and I haven't even had a chance to post about Easter. Before I do that though, I noticed my previous post from a couple weeks ago was still in my drafts. I never published it, ooops. So while it's way old news now I figured I'd still post it because I love the pic of my Evan! :)

Now onto something more recent, Easter. Both kids had the first week of April off for Spring Break. Emmaline actually had two weeks off and was off the last week of March as well. We stayed around home for spring break, and I got a few projects done (that post is coming, I promise). Easter happened to fall on the second weekend of Spring Break. We ended up heading down to my sisters & dad's for Easter weekend since we were at my mom's last year. My dad and step-mom had Easter dinner. I was hoping for good weather on Easter because the kids really wanted to look for Easter eggs outside and grandma and grandpa's. Although it rained Saturday night, it cleared up enough Sunday morning for the Easter egg hunt. It was sunny out, but pretty windy so it was a little chilly. At least it wasn't raining though.

I was proud of myself that I got all the eggs filled before the night before Easter. A whole four days before people! That's a record for me. We planned to do the egg hunt before lunch at my dad's on Sunday. However, come to find out when we were at my dad's on Saturday, he filled a bunch of eggs for the kids as well. So we did a few at my sister's Easter morning along with the kids Easter baskets. All together the kids ended up with a ton of eggs to open, and they loved all their Easter basket stuff from the Easter bunny. We had a nice Easter lunch and then headed home. We ended up going to a late dinner with Greg's mom when we got back. Here's a few pictures of the kids from Easter.

Besides the Easter egg hunt, the kids colored eggs with cousin Kaite on Saturday night.

Checking out the eggs they found and the goodies from the Easter bunny!

Lookin' for eggs at Grandma & Grandpa's. The eggs were everywhere!

They liked the eggs they found at Grandma & Grandpa's better. Lots of money (change) in those eggs!

Happy Easter from my two little bunnies!