Fall Break...

well as you can tell I'm a little late in posting this, but man oh man we have been SO busy...

Emily had such a great Fall Break...and to be honest Steve and I had an awesome break from parenthood. Emily & Elaina spent a couple of days with his parents and a couple of days with my parents, so it was like we were child free all week. We missed them something terrible, but man it was a nice break.

Not only did Emily & Elaina go to my parents, so did my niece & nephew. So, they did lots of fun things for Fall Break.

They started their time together with going to an incredible breakfast at the Loveless Cafe. It's a little eating place that's pretty famous around Nashville. They apparently all loved it.

Emily has alsways told me she wants to be an ice skater when she grows up, and Franklin has an ice skating rink that has open skating. So, they all went to check it out. They had a BLAST! And Emily is asking me when she can go back.

Did you notice how wet the bottom of her jeans are!?! That cracked me up!

As you can tell, Elaina had a blast too!

The next day they wanted to do something outside, so they drove out to Montgomery State Park & saw some of the fall landscape.

Then once they got home they decided to go by an apple orchad and get fresh apples to make apple butter with. When we were kids we made apple butter every year, and it's always been one of my favorites, so I was so glad Emily was able to make some.

And the best part of this is that we already have our teacher Christmas gifts! They made some in smaller jars for us to give to Emily's teacher!

As you can tell, they all had a blast!

Pumpkin Time...

Last weekend we all went to the pumpkin patch in Franklin. Well, I guess I should say some of us went, it was SO cold, and we didn't think it would be a good idea for Elaina to be out in the cold. We had so much fun! But did I mention it was cold!?!?! They had tons of baby animals for us to look at. And a fun tire swing. We took 100 pictures in under 3 hours, so I'm just going to let the pictures show how much fun we had.

Surprise...

so, I've been slacking on the blogging lately, but really do have a great excuse! This past week Steve turned the big 3 - 0!!! And I was planning a big surprise for him, so blogging was put on the back burner while I was working on planning a surprise party at night. I never realized how hard it is to keep a secret from someone you live with. Especially when you are trying to figure out decorations & doing lots of the making of the decorations.

But Steve was very surprised!!! He knew we were doing something on Friday night, he just didn't know what. Since we had so much fun in Vegas this summer, I automatically wanted to do something with a "Vegas/Casino" theme. So, it all kind of came together once I came up with the theme.

I have to say, the next party I plan on this scale, I will hire someone to cater the food! The food COMPLETELY stressed me out. In fact, if it wasn't for Holly, I never would have gotten it all finished. Holly & my sister Candy really helped me out! I was running behind the whole day and they stepped in and really helped me get it all put together!

Everyone said they had fun, so the party must have been a success! The picture above is of the awesome cake! Kenya has really out done herself with all her cakes lately! I just told her the theme and the colors I was using and this is what she came up with! She's INCREDIBLE!!!!!Here's lots of other pictures!

This is him as we came in the door. He was so surprised & felt so blessed to have so many friends willing to come hang out with us to celebrate his birthday!

Pictures of more of our friends:

This is the candy bar I set up. It was supposed to be party favors, but we all dug in during the party & then no one wanted to take any home. So, now we have SO much candy at the house! If anybody wants some, let me know!!!

To go along with the theme, I had a friend who knows about card games put together a Texas Hold'em Tournament. Everybody had a lot of fun playing! Some of us didn't really know anything about playing cards, so we sat out. But lots of people really had fun playing. Lots of laughing, moaning, and cheering came from the card tables. Look at that concentration on Mike's face!

And the winner of the tournament....

Now all the decorations & party stuff:

Only one more thing to say - Steve, I love you more than you could ever imagine! I can't wait to celebrate 30 more birthdays with you!