Pinterest time- 50 photo collage!!

My mom celebrated her 50th birthday earlier this year!! and all of us kids decided to throw her a surprise birthday party. I knew the minute we decided to have a party that I had to make this sign. My mom loves pictures (and so do I), so whats better than a giant birthday photo 50?!?!

I started by gathering photos and editing them all to be black and white, then I cropped them to be square, and then put them all in a 12x12 page. I simply printed and cut and then pasted to a giant 50!

It was so fun going through all the photos!! 

The first 0 was to short :( so I went back and made it longer!

and the finished project!! It turned out so good and it was an awesome conversation starter at the the party :)

Civil War Reenactment!!!

This Memorial Day one of my brother's dreams came true .... he got to participate in a Civil War Reenactment! Yes, my 13 year old brother is in love with the Civil War. He has been so excited about this day and I wasn't going to miss it. So I packed up bright and early, drove 45 minutes, and spent the day watching a bunch of history nerds act out a Civil War Battle. I have a ton of pictures of my kids playing that I will post later, but for now I wanted to share these with my mom :)

Valentine's Day

We kept the celebrations small this Valentine's day, just a quick trip to the zoo and cookies with friends :)

Happy Anniversary!!!

This January my parents celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary! It was the first year that we didn't have a large event going on, so my parents took this opportunity to renew their vows. They renewed their vows on a Thursday morning during 8:30am mass and it was beautiful! We didn't all make it to the mass, but we were all able to meet up for a lovely breakfast.

My parents have been a wonderful example of marriage! I'm not going to say they are perfect or that they never fight (because I would be lying) but I will say that after 32 years of marriage my dad still grabs my mom's rear-end (I didn't feel right saying butt) and my mom still blushes .... that is love!! 

2012 in review

I'm running really late, but I don't want to miss out on my yearly review :)

2012 was a crazy year, but when you think about it when do you ever say life was relaxing? On one hand I feel like I hardly accomplished anything and on the other hand I have no idea how we did so much in so little time!  

1. We started the year off with Chunky Monkey's baptism and a wonderful family party afterwards!

2. DH went on two awesome guy days!! The first was a monster truck rally with my dad and all the guys and the second was the annual Raider's game tailgate for my brothers birthday. It was hard having him gone for a whole day, but I know that he had a great time and he needed the guy bonding :)

3. Family zoo trip!!! We love the zoo, so much that we bought a year pass to the local petting zoo. We used it so often that I lost track of how many times we went. 

4. DH got to play indoor football with his brothers and bother-in-laws again!! This was such an awesome activity for DH to participate in. It was one game a week, usually in the evening, and all of us wives and kids would come cheer on our dads/husbands!

5. I hosted my very first holiday!! We had DH whole family over for Easter dinner and an Easter Egg hunt. I was a little nervous, but it was wonderful and we will definitely host again this year :)

6. Went to the beach a lot. This doesn't sound that hard, but this meant that I packed up, drove, and watched a 3 and almost 1 year old all day .... it was exhausting!! and a ton of fun.

7. Caught Whooping Cough :( this one was a bit scary, but we were diagnosed early and the boys recovered pretty quickly. Chunky Monkey had a rough time and got a secondary infection (bronchitis), as well as having a tendency to catch every single cold going around. We are all healthy now and praying we stay that way!

8. Discovered the Farmer's Market .. we are obsessed and go every week!

9. Got all dressed up for Peter's cousin's Wedding ... we were all dressed nice so this picture needs to be blogged!!!!

10. Said goodbye to our faithful 1976 Cadillac Coup De Ville, DH and Man Cub were out for a drive when it caught on fire :( it ended up with a very fun trip to the junk yard, but a sad fair well to a much loved car!

11. We went to DisneyLand!!!! I have been wanting to take the boys forever ... well since they were born :) Man Cub was the perfect age, he loved everything. It was wonderful to see how magical it was through his eyes! 

12. DH works every Christmas so we started the tradition of celebrating the 12 days of Christmas. This ended up being so much fun and really spread out the Christmas fun, especially since the boys spent the last half of December sick. They were much better at a bunch of small celebrations instead of one giant overwhelming celebration :)

And that ends our crazy year!!

Christmas Books

I know this is a little boring, but I am really enjoying looking back at our book list from the library :) So here are our Christmas books ...

The favorites were definitely Under the Star by Jane Yolen and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. Under the Star is an adorable counting book that Man Cub loved counting along with and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? ...well it has dinosaurs :) 

Chunky Monkey is One!!

I have been MIA lately!! Life truly got the better of me :) we have been keeping busy, but one of the most exciting things that happened while I was on a blog break was Chunky Monkey turned one. He has been such a wonderfully little guy! In his first year of life he had a series of colds, whooping cough, and bronchitis, but through it all he has stayed such a happy cheerful little guy. Here is a little round up of the last year ...

Pumpkins

In order to fully enjoy Halloween I wanted to do a bunch of Pumpkin activities. 

The first up was the Local Pumpkin  Patch :) They have an awesome set up with rides and play areas. We made a whole trip out of it with cousins and had an awesome day! 

Pumpkin #1 was decorated with thumbtacks. I had seen the idea on Pinterest, but simplified it a bit. Maybe we will try it again in a few years and see if Man Cub tries to be a bit more organized in the placement of the thumbtacks. 

 Pumpkin #2 was decorated with Mod Podge and tissue paper. I don't have a lot of good pictures because it took a bit of assistance :) Man Cub loved using the paint brush and the end result was super cute. 

 Pumpkin #3 was another pinterest idea :) Melted Crayons!! Man Cub wasn't to excited about the blow dryer, but once the crayons started melted he got into it.

 Pumpkin #4 was decorated with Glitter and Glue. Man Cub really loves glue :) and once again this pumpkin turned out super cute!

Pumpkin #5 was the last one pumpkin and this was supervised by DH. I am not into cleaning the guts out of a pumpkin :) so DH put it all together and helped Man Cub carve up the pumpkin. And as you can tell Man Cub had a great time!

4th of July

I got super brave and decided to host a party at our house!! Nothing huge just my family and DH family, it was so nice :) I had so much fun decorating; cute sign, streamers, and some sparkly stuff. I also set out fun stuff for all the little ones; butcher paper on the fence with stickers and markers, wading pool, sidewalk chalk, water guns, and a bubble blower. The biggest hit was the butcher paper, I had thought just the little guys would color, but at one point we had all the big kids out there decorating :) We ended with some fireworks in the street; all in all we had a great day!

And my favorite part of the day ..... matching Flag tees :) I loved dressing Man Cub and Chunky Monkey in matching shirts; ADORABLE!!!