Party of 8

This past weekend, we finally had my friend, Teresa's 35th birthday celebration. Her actual birthday was in February, and the first planned dinner party had to be postponed due to lack of babysitting, so here we are in June.....

Anyway, it was my turn to host and can I just say how fun it was to plan a dinner party???? It's been eons since Mark and I hosted a dinner party sans kids. It was fun to decorate and light candles without worrying about someone getting burned or setting the house on fire. We got out the good china and glassware, served fun cosmopolitans for the ladies, enjoyed cocktails and appetizers on the deck, followed by dinner and desert in the dining room. Heck, we even got to use [for the first time] those fancy wine glass charms we bought in Napa Valley almost 7 years ago!! Dinner was set for 7:30, but half of the party didn't arrive until 8:00 so appetizers didn't happen until 8:30 and we didn't sit down to dinner until close to 10 p.m.

MENU: Salad
Chicken Marsala over pasta

Lemon Herb seasoned green beans

Italian bread

Individual Lemon pudding cakes for dessert

A good [too good] time was had by all.

For some reason, I'm always giving Teresa recipes [not because I'm a good cook or anything] so I decided to make her a recipe box as her birthday gift. I had these great recipe card stamps from Stampin' Up that I had wanted to use for a while [read: over a year] and I love how the recipe cards turned out. The dividers were decorated up with ribbon and I made a "5 star yummy" tag on a paper clip for each section so she could mark her favorite recipes.

Life is Good

I admit....I have been a blog slacker these last two weeks.

Life has gotten in the way :) and sometimes you just can't bring yourself to blog about it.

BUT, yesterday, there was good news.

My mom FINALLY had her liver biopsy on the six spots found on her liver almost 7 weeks ago and everything came back clear ~ non-malignant, benign, no cancer, zip, zero, zilch ~

PRAISE GOD!

Now we go to the next round of dr. consults, incessant waiting, and testing to find out about the spot on her lung. Which, frankly, isn't something I'm overly worried about.

Yes, it's suspicious ~ but it's small.

Yes, it's in an awkward spot to get to ~ but God's in control.

Funny how something scary like this helps put things in perspective. I've been truly blessed these last few weeks by friends who have told me they are praying for me and my family.

On Monday, my MOPS mentor mom dropped in out of the blue with two beautiful bunches of tulips. They've brightened my kitchen all week long.

Yesterday, while I was waiting for the call from my dad that my mom came out of the biopsy okay, my friend, Andrea, brought over lunch and then straightened up my downstairs while I relayed messages between my dad, my sisters, and my brother.

And then, last night, Mark came home from Pittsburgh [work trip] with Life is Good t-shirts for me and the kids. Nathan got a cement mixer, Ryan got a monkey, and Evan got a soccer player. Daddy sure picked out the perfect shirts for his boys.

Life is good because God is good. :)

Just a Jot....

So, yesterday, I held a scrapbook crop at my house. It was my first attempt at a crop and since I've never really been to one hosted at someone's house, I think it turned out o.k.

My wonderful sister-in-law Saint Cindi came out and kept an eye on the kids. The only mishap was that neither one of us remembered to pick up Evan off the bus. Lucky for us, the school district didn't follow its own rule, and let a kindergartener jump off the bus without someone there to pick them up. A few tears, some Swedish fish, and the rest of Madagascar 2 later and my little guy was back to his normal self. Talk about feeling like the guilty mom!!

Anyway, it was great fun to meet ~ finally! :) ~ in real life, Emilie. She was just as nice in person as I'd imagined she'd be. And her little kiddos, Chicken and Fifi, were even cuter in person. Poor Emilie couldn't stop sneezing, though ~ hope she wasn't allergic to my house :) That didn't slow her down, though ~ you should have seen her pumping out the layouts in between all the "bless you's!"

It was also great to scrap with Cassie again. We've scrapped together a few times with other CKMBers in the last year. She was working on the cutest circle tree card. Might have to steal that idea - hee, hee. Her 8 year old daughter came along and she is quite the scrapper, too.

My dear friend, Karen, rounded out the group of four. Karen and I have tried to scrap together regularly but the "regularly" part has escaped us as of late. We definitely need to work on that, because it's just nice to have an excuse to spend time with a good friend.

Overall, it was a good scrapping day. I completed almost 4 layouts and have the makings of at least 2 more. Hopefully, I'll find time to finish those up, take some photos and post them here soon.

Thanks, ladies, for a wonderful time. Hope we can do it again soon!

Snow Day

This past Monday, we were hit with the Nor'Easter and it snowed all day. Evan had off school and I didn't have the kids I babysit, so we were free and clear to go sledding.

Our friends, Rob & Karen, have this awesome hill in their backyard that we've been dying to try for 3! years now. This was the first decent snowfall in that long of a time!

Evan, Ryan, and I headed over while Nathan was napping [don't worry, Mark was working from home...] We had an absolute blast!

Evan had NO fear.....after one time down with me, he was on his own. He LOVED it ~ and didn't complain once about climbing back up the hill. [And it was QUITE a climb ~ it's Wednesday, and I'm still sore - hahahaha!]

Ryan had NO fear either, but that hill was like a mountain to my 3 foot tall little man. He lasted about 3 trips and was content to play at the top of the hill with the other kids.

Once the kids were done, the BIG kids had fun, too. We had a bunch of runs where five of us flew down at the same time. I'm pretty sure that I had more fun than my kids did and I SO needed that!! :) I wish Mark & Nathan had been there to enjoy it, too...

Thanks, Rob & Karen, for a great time!

Birthdays & Cards

My three closest high school friends and I are all turning 35 [I know! Shut-UP! hahaha!] this year and we decided to celebrate with a dinner party for each birthday. Each one of us will host one of the birthday girls and all the spouses, too, at a REAL dinner party [read: NO KIDS] ~ that way we're guaranteed a celebration and we will SCHEDULE a couples only night 4 times in one year [unheard of!]

Saturday night was the kick-off with Valerie's birthday celebration dinner at Maureen's house. Maureen was the hostess with the mostest ~ even had champagne with raspberries!! We didn't sit down for dinner until almost 8:30 and then between the eight of us, we talked and talked, and laughed until I looked at my watch and almost had a heart attack because it was midnight already and we still had a 45 minute drive home!

It was so much fun and I can't wait to host Teresa's birthday sometime in the spring (her birthday is actually already passed, but we wanted to spread the dinners out - Maureen's is July and mine is October ~ yes, I'm the young'un of the group) It's going to be hard to top Maureen's lovely dinner, but I'm already thinking about a menu ~ SO fun!!

Anyway, in light of the economy, instead of buying Val a gift, I used my plethora of scrapbooking supplies and made her 10 notecards that she could use throughout the year. I was inspired by Jennifer McGuire's CK magazine column in which she makes the cutest tags. I had a lot of fun creating each unique card and want to do it again soon.

Here's a little sample of my favorites:

Five for Friday

1. I cannot believe that I didn't find time to blog this week. Well, I shouldn't really say that. I attempted 2 times earlier in the week and our internet was acting screwy. Actually, my husband swears it's me - that I have some kind of electrical thing going on that makes electronics act goofy. I must admit, sometimes I wonder if he's right. The internet won't work for me but as soon as I leave the room and he tries, it's fine. I reenter the room and it's wacky again. My cell phone drops calls ALL the time, but not my husband's - and we have the same service. Who knows? It's just very frustrating!

2. All Evan wanted for his birthday was a goldfish, so we went out and got him our very first pet on Tuesday. He was SO excited! When I asked him what he was going to name him, he said, "Goldfish" followed by "Buddy" followed by "I love you Buddy." He's so darn cute!

3. Said goldfish died last night. :(
"Look, Dad, the fish is sleeping on his side this morning."
"Yep, don't wake him up."
My wonderful hubby spent 1 1/2 hours and $5 in gas this morning hunting down 3 10 cent goldfish to replace our loss :)

4. I had 3 nights out this week - lucky me, huh? :) Monday, I had a dinner with my women's Bible study, Wednesday, I had a MOPS steering team meeting, and last night, I had dinner out with 3 of my best friends from high school. I was thinking today how blessed I am to have such wonderful friends. Even though each night was spent with different women, they were all full of laughter and sharing and understanding. I am so thankful for these relationships. And I am extremely blessed to have a hubby that loves me enough to allow me to nurture my friendships. :) :) :)

5. I registered my baby boy for kindergarten today :( I cannot believe that my little guy will be going to school every day in the fall. Time sure does fly...