family party.

This was our year for just family birthday parities. (I seriously think doing friend parties every other year is one of the best parenting decisions I ever made. Some years I just can't handle the stress of one more thing. This would have been one of those years. Amazing how God always works it out that way.) 

Grandma and Grandpa, Grandma Jones and Uncle Casey were all here to help us celebrate our favorite 10 year old. 

He started reading "The Hunger Games" series earlier this month. Sophie pitched in for one book and my parents got him the whole series. (And I might have been in favor of it to make it easy for me to read them again.) =)

Lawson made a poster for everyone to sign in when the arrived. Grandpa's was my favorite. =)

Although Gretchen's card was pretty fabulous, too. He is a good pig broter. =)

This gift was by far the favorite... (he's reading the return address here...)

That's a Powercat on the card...

And the words "Kansas State University..."

Doesn't get much cooler than a birthday card and personal note from Bill Snyder himself. (The head football coach for K-State, for those of you not from around here.) Hugely popular, highly respected and just an all around class act. I don't think I've ever heard one negative word about Coach Snyder.

{I've challenged Lawson to memorize all of these.}

So much fun to spend the evening celebrating YOU, Lawson!

ten.

Happy Birthday, Lawson! 

Ten. Double digits.
That's a big deal.
You're still one of the funniest kids I know.
We've had three different people that help with church youth group comment on how your personality is really starting to come out now. They only thought we raised quiet, shy kids. =)

Everyone at school still thinks you're awesome. Just a good all-around kid.
With awesome hair. (that has gotten a tiny bit out of control at times this year! We need to schedule haircuts more often!)

This has probably been my hardest year with you, though.
Nothing has been easy between us, it seems.
No direction is given without an argument or talking back or half a dozen questions of "Why?"
It's getting old.

Love you to pieces, but you're giving me gray hair this year, buddy. (More gray hair than I already have!)

Gray hair and frazzledness aside... you're still my favorite little man.
You're my basketball, football, baseball loving...
TV, laptop, technology crazy...
outdoor, messy, dirty finger nailed...
great student, awesome reader, science loving...
ornery, button-pushing, even more ornery...
favorite red-head kid.

Here's hoping the next 8 years are a little less crazy, though. =)

girls weekend.

{End of February...}

This is probably the best weekend I have had in a long, long time. 

These girls. They are all so, so special to me. We've been friends for years. Like 25-30 years. 

We have been talking about planning a weekend away for so long. Literally, years.

And we threw this one together in a month, maybe? Sometimes spontaneous is best! 

Meagan, Patti and I all live in the same town, (well, they live in town...) but we really don't see each other all that often. Melissa lives in the KC area and although the two of us text almost daily, we don't see each other near as often as we would like! We were all so excited planning our trip, counting down the days and sending each other hundreds of group Facebook messages before the actual trip! Excited may be a bit of an understatement. =) 

{If you are FB friends with me, you may have already seen a lot of these pictures. Believe it or not, we didn't post them all! We did document it well, though. =)}

We're on our way, Melissa!  

Three of us were a little amazed/disgusted at the size of Meagan's luggage. She even had snow boots in here! (She's also traveled through Europe numerous times, though... so she's got this packing thing figured out.)

Girls weekend has officially started!  

We had reservations that night at a fancy fondue place! (The kind of place we'd probably never go with our husbands and kids.) It was perfect for us though, and oh-so-yummy! 

Can't go wrong with a pot of melted cheese. ‪#‎betterthancheezwhizinabag‬

See? Everything was very well documented. AirDrop became our favorite handy feature that weekend! =)

The Flaming Turtle ‪#‎chocolatefondue‬

After all that yummy cheese and bread and chocolate, we headed back to the hotel, but we were on a mission to find a yummy wine first. (We're pretty big partiers, you can tell. Back to the hotel with 1 bottle of wine to share.) We knew what we wanted, but we had a little trouble finding it. We had to visit a couple different places. And oh my goodness, did we laugh on the journey.

Most of our laughs were because of this guy. Alex. Best hotel shuttle driver ever. Definitely the funniest.

He didn't believe that the liquor store didn't carry the wine we wanted. He thought maybe they were just hiding it in the back and weren't scared of some sweet little white girls. So he went in to check for us. =)

We found what we were looking for at a local grocery store! Along with some fancy $1 champagne flutes.

Pajamas and wine. Good times. =) (And so many laughs trying to get the wine bottle open! Melissa and I had to ask for help from the front desk. In our pajamas. I'm pretty sure there were tears of laughter involved in that little trip.)

We woke up to this outside our hotel room window. They were predicting all kinds of bad weather for the weekend. The kind of weather that made us question (briefly) whether or not we should cancel. We didn't think about that for long, though. We all know that the weather in Kansas doesn't always do what they say it will! This is pretty much as bad as it got.

Saturday morning we got to sleep late, eat a yummy hotel breakfast and then head to IKEA! Melissa's first time!

IKEA! ‪#‎kcweekend‬

We tried to talk Meagan into getting this picture for their dining room. (She is scared of fish.) We're good friends like that. =)

So happy! ‪#‎ilovecolor

Happy cart! ‪#‎ilovecolor‬ ‪#‎itsnotallmine‬

Melissa and I were happy backseat car buddies. Even with a rug stuck between our heads part of the time. =)

Getting our paint on. ‪#‎ilovecolor‬ ‪#‎andpolkadots‬

Because you can never have too many polka dot mugs. ‪#‎ilovecolor‬ ‪#‎andpolkadots‬

We had a fancy dinner out here...

and then some shopping at Target. (I love stripes, too!) Unfortunately Target did not carry our yummy Cupcake wine that we like so much. Boo. 

The coolest snowflakes I've ever seen...

Meagan had bought a corkscrew at IKEA, just in case we decided on another bottle of wine that evening. But Target failed us. So we settled for Mikes Hard Lemonade, instead. And Reese's PB eggs. In our pajamas. #classy

The creamer was fully stocked... until we had our morning coffee.‪#‎ilikealittlecoffeewithmycreamer‬

Melissa and I believe in dressing a little more casually for the hotel breakfast buffet. =) #classy

Meagan took her drinks to go. In her snow boots. (The one on the left is actually a tea/lemonade. Ronald Palmer? Arnold Palmer? One of those.) =)

The packing dilemma. Fitting all of this in an already full car.‪#‎firstworldproblems‬

Success! ‪#‎welcometoourcrazy‬ ‪#‎igetmypackingskillsfrommydaddy‬

A little more shopping that day...

Although space in the car was getting seriously tight! =)

And here I thought Olive Garden breadsticks couldn't get any better... Thank you, Patti for introducing me to the Alfredo dipping sauce! ‪#‎weekendofcheese‬

We made our final stop at Starbucks (with this lovely lady to welcome us to our parking spot!)

I think there is a lot of truth to this statement. So lucky to get some of both these things this weekend! 

Saying goodbye in the Starbucks parking lot. Fabulous weekend spent with some of my favorite people! ‪#‎nowbacktoour12kids‬ ‪#‎and4awesomehusbands‬

So, so thankful for these girls and the blessing they are in my life.
So many fun and happy memories.
And so many more to come.
Love you girls! =)