Surprise Birthday Party

A little late but to end my husbands 30th Birthday weekend, I threw him a surprise Birthday at the United Center for a Blackhawks vs Predators game. Awesome right?!?

I booked the 40 person super suite at the Madhouse (which was freakin sweet BTW) and was able to get 40 of Landon's friends and relatives to travel to Chicago to join us on the hub's very special day. At first I was surprised about how much interest there was in coming out for Landons Birthday, but let's be honest, I have a pretty great husband so I wasn't that surprised.

our view from the suite, this taken post game, check out all the banners

the Birthday boy with all the girls in his life

the birthday boy with all the girls he wants in his life, go ice crew?

Happy Birthday lover!

Happy Birthday Z

Today my big sister is celebrating her Golden Birthday!

Since her last Birthday a lot has changed. She's become a proud momma

She's graduated from nursing school with some great new friends.

She's passed her boards and become a Real Nurse.

And by the time this blog gets published, she should have accepted her first job working in a hospital as an RN.

Cheers to the greatest big sis ever.

Amber Waves of Grain

Some people may find driving through the midwest flat and boring but when you see sights like this, how can you not be in awe. Check out the amber waves of grain and what about the wind generators? Together it's amazing how so much power and energy comes from these fields.

This was just some of our sights on our drive to visit Purdue University. Stop one on our college tour this past weekend.

College Visits

This weekend the hubs and I are taking this little one on some college visits. We should have some great photos come next week.

I can't believe she is already a junior in high school! Time really flies.

PS I think the hubs is more excited about tailgating then the actual college visits. Although, he looks for any excuse to visit his Alma Mater - Purdue.  

Are you doing any thing fun this weekend?

Sister Night With Al

Yesterday was a great day with my baby sister, who as it turns out isn't so baby anymore. Just about a month ago we celebrated her 16th Birthday and I hadn't seen her since our family dinner. Before my crazy busy work schedule starts back up and she starts school again i really wanted to try to get a sister sleep over on the schedule. So we did just that yesterday.

I picked Al up and we went to a local farmers market to pick out some yummies for dinner. We made our way home and started to prep dinner. We baked the potatoes for the twice baked potatoess. Neither of us had ever made them so it sounded like a fun thing to try together. (They came out delish but we may have over stuffed the skin because the potato stuffing ran all over the baking pan, oops. They were still good though).

After we had the baked potatoes prepped we decided we had better make the log cake (also known as a chocolate icebox) if we were going to try to eat it since it takes 4 hours to set. Our goal was to make it look as much like a log as possible. I think we did pretty good. What do you think?

After most of the dinner prep was done. The hubs took us girls to the driving range. In the past the hubs and I have played a lot of golf in the summer but this summer has flown bye. He has a work golf outing coming up so we figured it was time to hit some balls and why not teach my little sister how to.

She was nervous but the hubs helped her out. She took instruction from him and she learned a lot. She had quite the stance and stroke on her first try! She was also the first person i had ever hit balls with that preferred the high number clubs opposed to the big ones. 

Most of her balls went to write about here....

Post golf. We went home and prepped the veggies for the grill while the hubs worked on the chicken. We had a great dinner and we followed it up by a round of Kings Corner (my favorite card game of all time). We also spent some time looking into a weekend to take her on an Indiana College visit.We finished the night with some log cake. It was perfect!

Happy Birthday Al

4th Birthday

This little girl turns 16 today!

At our wedding late spring '09

Happy Birthday to my youngest sister!  Wow I feel old, but hey at least we have another DD, right?

The Hubs and Al at our favorite "private" pool, summer of '06

Al and I after a wet game of flag football fall of '08

Happy Birthday Sami & Big Lar!

Happy Flag Day everyone! Today is a particularly special day for the hubs and I as we celebrate Flag Day with 2 very special Birthdays!

First up is my very beautiful sister Sami! Happy 2-3rd! Blow out the candles and make a big wish!

And a very special big 50 to my wonderful father-in-law, Big Lar, who also shares the Flag Day Birthday. Today is sure to be a great day!

Final Four, 1st Stop BU!

The hubs, Minne and I drove back down to Indiana Thursday post work. I say back because we were just there the weekend before, I spoke about it here.

We woke up early Friday and the hubs, my big sis (in law) and I headed to Indy to meet my girlfriend and her new beau! I just realized I didn't get any photo of this occurrence which instantly made me super sad ::sigh::

After some yummy coffee at Starbucks, the hubs, his sister and I made our way to Butler University. I should add, my hubs went to Purdue and his sister to Indiana University, so we are Team Indiana School all the way. Our first stop once we arrived on campus was to visit the Butler Bookstore. Licencing for Butler gear is strict so finding items to suit our needs could only be done here. We did quite a bit of shopping as you can see here (you would be amazed at how many items can fit into each of those big bags):



Outside of the Bookstore was an awesome good luck banner for the Bulldogs, I had to sign it:


Right after we saw the banner we notice a boy setting up a table with lots of Bulldogs "decorated" and some plain. I asked what they were doing and he said that they were in a business class working on a business project. I looked at the hubs and said, can we buy one? His response was that we just spent lots of money in the bookstore so did we really need a stuffed animal. I obviously said yes, so we ended up with BlueGirl:


The last time the big sis was on campus, she recalled the star fountain, so we made a quick stop there. To our surprise we saw that all the fountains were filled with blue water! It was fun till the wind kicked in and the hubs and I got sprayed, hence the super goofy photo. When we brought Minne girl down, all she cared about was the food she could smell from Atherton, hahaha:



The next stop at Butler was a "Butler Have To Do" we made our way to the bulldog statue in front of Atherton to get some photos. Minne girl didn't make the trip down with us Thursday, but over the course of the weekend she got her photo op too:



From here, we crossed the street over to the Kappa house, since my sis in law was a Kappa at IU, it was only fitting to check out the Butler chapter. She immediately fell in love with the Kappa Bulldog outside the house:


While we were at Butler with Minne, we went to try to get a photo with one of the custom bricks that Butler sold when they did the construction on the new rec center.My awesome parents got me one as part of my graduation gift, cool right? Unfortunately, it started pouring so we didn't get the brick photo and Minne didn't have many photo ops on campus. However, she loved looking out the window as we drove into campus, especially at the TKE house. It must have been those loud boys hahah

Run & Help?!

As the weather warms up, our mailbox starts to fill up with letters and emails about helping various nonprofit organizations. For a young couple who doesn't have a lot of money to spare, there is a great way to help raise money while maintaining health and wellness.

I have told myself for a long time that I wanted to get into shape and run in a race, any sort of race. I have watched my husband sign up the week of his first 5K and he dominated the race. He was encouraged by my little sister who was running a race for Jack (you can read more by clicking here).



He makes it look so easy, and how pretty do all the leaves look?

Months later my hubs decided to run a 10k on a spure of a moment with one of my besties and his best man. The cause? To save the animals! My hubs ran with my bestie while his best man ran with his wife. They all did so great and watching them through out the race is nothing but inspiring. Watching friends and family run has really encouraged me.



So, as the weather warms up and charities start sending more race info I've decided that I better get to training. I found this 15 week course by Jeff Galloway and I think I am going to give it a shot. I have made one minor adjustment, on Wednesdays I will be doing yoga instead of walking or crosstraining. After the first few weeks I am bump it up to yoga and walking or cross training but I figured something is better than nothing for now. So here's my plan:



After my first training workout tomorrow, I will offically be signing up for my first race in June, this one for the local animals! Wish me luck. Oh and if you have any tips, please share with me!

Valentine's Day Weekend

This year Valentine's weekend came and went so fast. The hubs had to work on his truck, so he made another trek to Indiana, leaving me and the doggie all alone in Chicago. It was sad not to spend the entire weekend with him, but don't worry Minne and I made do. There were plenty of Valentine's day cards to go around.

Cards from Aunt Em and Uncle Ryan

With everything Minne likes, she ate them

We started the weekend out by watching the 2010 Winter Olympic Opening Ceremonies with my middle sister. They were awesome. I think we all got a little geography lesson and we really enjoyed the special effects. Especially, the when they made it look like whales were swimming around in the middle of the arena. SO cool.

Saturday was an adventure. After working our, I met with my old badminton coach (go ahead and laugh, yes I played badmitton in high school) to catch up on everything. We talked about friends, family and careers. She is now working with a law firm and she is doing some relestate so it was a great way to kick off house hunt 2010. Yup, the hubs and I may be interested in starting the house hunting process. We don't anticpiate it happening this year but we should probably start looking at some point.

After lunch I was able to get some much needed errands done and then started family time. I was able to go to my HS almamater to watch a HS basketball game and, more importantly, my little sister cheer! I hadn't made it to one basketball game all year and was pleased I was able to make it to one. It was a shame the team got slaughtered, but my sister nailed all her stunts:


Sorry my phone camera did not work well with the lights in the gym

I was then talked into a girls night with my sister and her best friend from forever ago for her friend's Birthday. Let's just say the night looked a little something like this:



The next day, I got up super early to work out and go to work. Luckily work went fast and I was able to get out at a decent time because I had gotten great news, the hubs was back just in time for my cousins dual Birthday celebration! We ended our big "Valentine's Day weekend" with Portillos so neither of us had to cook, oh and the best part? My husband let me wear sweats!