Happy Birthday!

Just popping by the blog to wish my very amazing husband a very happy birthday!

Stephen, thank you so much for everything you do for our family. You are an incredible husband and I thank God for you every single day. I know that you will be an outstanding Dad too, and you already are an outstanding daddy-to-be. You are the best and we (me, Louie, and baby) love you so much!

Have a great day, hun!

Weekend Wrap-Up & Hadley's Birthday!

Happy Monday, folks! I am here with lots and I really do mean LOTS of pictures! Consider yourself warned! :) Not only do I have pictures from this weekend, but I also have a few from last weekend since I did not post last week. So, let's get started!

Last weekend (March 3rd) we did some shopping in Fort Wayne and ran some errands too. My favorite purchase was the hat I am wearing in the below picture. I just love winter hats, love them! This one was SO cheap at American Eagle, too. How could I pass it up?

It is starting to feel a little like Spring in Indiana and I don't think anyone is complaining about it. We have a great 10 day forecast right now, with some days this week reaching into the 70s. Hallelujah! Granted, we have had a pretty mild winter anyways. If you look at our flower beds that much is evident. In the past 2 weeks or so our plants have shot up and even budded. If you look closely you can see the green stalks of our tulips and daffodils. I am so excited for them to bloom...I only hope it isn't while we are in Florida next week!

Last Thursday was a fun mail day at our house! Not only did the antique map we ordered arrive, but also our new Canon Rebel camera. Oh, let me tell you...we LOVE it. Of course I still love my point and shoot Canon too! I may or may not have subjected Louie to endless photo shoots while learning the features of the new camera. I also may or may not have spend evenings last week photographing anything and everything in our house! :) See below:

The above 3 pictures were before his grooming appointment last week.

This may be my favorite Louie picture. I love how he is looking right at the camera and his eyes are such a pretty brown.

The above 3 pictures are after his grooming appointment. Doesn't he look handsome and ready for a trip to Florida?

Sleeping puppy, does it get any cuter? Well, maybe a sleeping baby...but still this is pretty cute!

This weekend we had flowers bloom in our yard! We saw the buds on these last week but we were not sure what flowers or plant they were (we didn't plant them, they were there before). In conversations last week we discovered that they are Crocus' and that they bloom early in the late Winter/early Spring. Totally okay in my book. Thanks for adding some bright color to our otherwise dreary landscaping Crocus'!

This Saturday we stayed home most of the day and it was so nice to get caught up on some things around the house! I will say that we had a productive day! We baked the cupcakes for Hadley's party, vacuumed and steamed the floors in the house, did several loads of laundry, cleaned out the inside of the car and spent some time outside in the sunshine. Louie especially loved being outside!

He helped us get the car ready for the trip to Florida and almost jumped in himself. I'd say that's a pretty good sign he is ready!

Sunday we went to church as usual but volunteered in the nursery instead of sitting in service. It's always fun to spend an hour or two playing with the little kids! The weather was nice on Sunday...in fact, we didn't even wear jackets to church! After church it was time to decorate the cupcakes for Hadley's birthday. Last year's cake was flowers and ladybugs, but this year was themed to her favorite movie-Despicable Me. Seriously, every time she comes to our house she wants to watch this movie. Once, we watched it twice in one day. Minion cupcakes were the obvious and easy choice for her cake this year!

I loved how the Minions turned out and I think Hadley did too!

At her birthday we all had a great time. Melissa had made lasagna for dinner and it was delicious. Not much is better than homemade lasagna y'all! After eating dinner it was time for Hadley to open presents and she was ready! She got the cutest outfits and a great bike helmet, too. The rest of the evening was spent playing with her new toys, eating cupcakes & blueberry cheesecake and the girls having a modeling show/fashion shoot in the living room. The pictures are hilarious and most of them speak for themselves!

Pretty funny pictures, right? We just love these girls!

Well, that just about wraps-up our weekend, minus a few details and basketball games. We hope that you all had a great weekend too and are enjoying the nice weather in your area. 

 This week will be a busy one for us since we are leaving for Florida dark and early on Saturday morning...please pray that we have safe travels and not set backs with Louie. I'm getting excited and anxious to get on the road already...and it's only Monday!

Weekend Wrap-Up :) (& Stephen's birthday)

Our weekend was great! How was yours?

We had plans Friday night, but decided we were both exhausted so we stayed home. We even had left over chicken and rice from Thursday night so I did not even have to cook! We ended up getting our pjs on and watching Life As We Know it on DVD. (Thanks, Mom for that movie!)

Saturday morning started out much earlier than I usually like for my days off to start, BUT we had things to do. I had a hair appointment at 8:30 and before I left for that I needed to help Stephen with a home health test that he has to do for insurance purposes. I thought the home health test would not take long at all, but apparently it is much harder to get blood out of his fingers than it is mine. I guess mine are used to it after 14 years of daily finger pricks. (Thank you Type 1 Diabetes...) It took us several attempts to get the amount of blood needed, but we did it! We had no plans for Saturday during the day until my hairdresser told me about a tomato festival that a couple towns over was having. Umm, yum! We LOVE tomatoes, so pretty instantly I knew this would be fun for us!

Before we could do anything this weekend, I had to make banana bread. I had to because the bananas were the perfect rottyness (yes, I just made that word up) and starting to stink up our kitchen. I used a new recipe and made these beautiful banana muffins:

I plan on posting the recipe for these later this week! :)

We left for the festival around lunchtime with hopes of eating something delicious there. Boy did we! The festival was rather large for the small community where it was. There were several vendors set up and lots and lots of different kinds of tomatoes. Take a look:

We had pork sandwiches and fried green tomatoes that were SO good!

Yummyness, look that that perfection!

They had this table set up in the old train depot with several different varieties of tomatoes. I bet there were probably 75 different varieties. Who knew there were zebra tomatoes!?

We bought these pretty sunflowers from German Baptist families. They were so pretty!

We also bought old fashioned kettle corn that was cooked right in front of our eyes and a pretty fall wreath from a craft vendor. I cannot wait to put out our fall decor!

Flowers are so pretty!

I love the sunflowers on our mantle, don't you think I should have a fresh arrangement on the mantle always? I tried to convince Stephen of that...I am not sure I was convincing enough!

I love the details...even the leaves are pretty!

After the tomato festival we came home to relax and I might have fallen asleep for several hours. I did wake up in time to head to Stephen's parents house for our birthday dinners. We had a great time with his  parents and siblings and ate WAY too much food. We left feeling very full and with a cantaloupe and several tomatoes from his garden to eat this week!

Sunday, August 21st was Stephen's birthday. I had planned on cooking a hash brown breakfast casserole in the morning, but I wanted to get it together the night before so I we had to do on Sunday was pop it in the oven. Well, we got home late so it was after midnight when I finished cooking the sausage and getting everything together. It worked out perfectly though because I got to tell him "Happy Birthday!" right at midnight, and I think that is cool! We promptly crashed in bed and did not wake up until 9:30am the next morning!

The birthday boys casserole...

He is smiling but really he is thinking, "hurry up and take the picture woman, and let me eat!" haha

Birthday picture...our new tradition. Stephen 32nd birthday!

After church we started snapping green beans for his birthday dinner. He requested, BBQ pulled pork, fresh green beans and baked mac-n-cheese. It all turned out delicious!

Here they are in all their snapped goodness!

We spent the afternoon doing yard work and mowing the grass. Can you see the pattern in the grass?! I did that section! :)

This is our next project outside...these plants have to go. We plan on planting our tulip bulbs here so we need to get the area ready for fall planting!

Same with this area by the dining room windows...next Spring there should be tulips there!

Pretty sweet pea flowers. These flowers are pretty and they smell great too, but the plants have not been cared for in a long time. They are growing out of control to the point I am not sure we could revive them. It might be in our best interest to start from scratch here.

I mowed about half the yard before Stephen took over. I was quite proud of myself! :)

We ended the evening with a delicious dinner specifically requested by the birthday boy himself! This was my first attempt at baked mac-n-cheese and I'd say it was a success! I plan on posting the super easy recipe later this week too!

Yummy, yummy mac-n-cheese!

Now that is a pulled pork sandwich!

We hope that your weekend was a great as ours and that you survived Monday, too! See ya later!