girls trip....

This past weekend, I went on a girls trip to NYC with my sweet friends Dawn, Anne, and Ashley. I've been so excited about this trip because, well it's no secret NYC is my favorite city! I have to say, this trip was different because it was the first trip to NYC that I've ever been sick! I don't know if it was sinuses or a cold, but I looked like rudolf the whole trip and sneezed and blew my nose more times than I could count. Regardless of being sick, we had a blast! 

Friday, we started our trip with lunch at John's Pizza[my favorite pizza in NYC]. We did a little shopping on 5th ave and had our make up done at Henri Bendel's. We went back and got ready for dinner and ate dinner at Fig and Olive at 9pm and ended the night at the rooftop of the Empire Hotel. It was such a gorgeous view. We stayed out late Friday night, so we slept in saturday morning which was SO NICE!

Saturday, we shopped and ate! We had brunch at Bubby's, shopped in Soho and the east village. We went on a cupcake tour that was a total bust, so we skipped out after the 3rd bakery and instead bought gelato and crepes:) If we weren't full enough from all the food we'd had that day, we finished the night off with dinner at Dos Caminos! 

Sunday, we walked the high line, walked through Chelsea Market, shopped a little in Time Square and ended our trip where we started, with lunch at John's Pizza:)

It was a great trip! We shopped and ATE the whole time:)

 we got photo-bombed by minnie mouse;/

 This was the size of our cupcakes...

a love book for him...

Lately, I have been cleaning out and trying to organize things that have never been organized before. The one thing that always got me, and I really never knew what to do with was all the notes/cards from Kaz and my parents[see Mom and Dad, I didn't only read them, I kept them:)]. I've always kept them in a REALLY large folder but it has always driven me crazy because it was chaotic and in order to find something, I had to go through every letter or card. My friend Carissa swears by SMASH books, so I decided to give it a try and make a love book of all of our notes/letters so that we will always have it, be able to look at it whenever we want, and hopefully one day allow our kids to see how our relationship struggled and grew over the years. I worked on this book for about 5-6 hours and gave it to Kaz yesterday...He loved it. He loved it so much he woke me up this morning at 5am to tell me he read some of the letters this morning[I was pretty grumpy..I'm not a morning person:)]. I love how it turned out and it really was so neat to go back and read through all the notes we gave to each other...I even found the letter Kaz first told me loved me in:) I included some other things in the book as well such as honeymoon plane tickets, a program from when we visited President Ford when he passed away, college football tickets, etc. The best part is we can keep adding to it...pretty soon, we will need to start a new book! 

I am now a fan of SMASH books and have BIG plans to use them for some other projects.

 his first I love you:)

a pig and bat, the zoo, and a pet dragon....

I recently got to spend a few days with my good friends Liz and Todd. It was probably the craziest time we've had together...You would think we were both crazy if you saw us! I got to there house around 430pm. We had planned to take family pictures but had to take them quickly before the sun went down. I told Liz we needed to take them at the latest 615pm. So I get there at 430pm, Liz was trying to get ready, Charlie needed to be dressed, and Todd wasn't home yet. So I started getting Charlie ready, put Annie Rice in the pack n play with some toys, and took Charlie outside to take some individual shots while Todd and Liz got ready. Once everyone was ready, we got in the car to go to the spot where we were taking the pictures. Everyone's in the car but the keys are no where to be found...It's now 530pm. Todd looks, Liz looks, I look....550pm we finally found them in Liz's purse where she had already looked:) We get 5 minutes down the road and I ask if she has Charlie's jean jacket[he was going to wear it in the pictures]. We couldn't find it, so we turned around only to find it under my seat:) Oops....We barely get the pictures but they are GREAT:) Then the hard part comes...trying to decide where to eat dinner. I'm not a decision marker, neither is Liz....We finally decide on Zaxby's. The food comes out, and Todd realizes he didn't order for Charlie...so Charlie and Annie Rice split meals which was completely fine because she never eats even half of her meal. Leave Zaxby's, go home to get the kiddos to bed. I'm upstairs trying to get our monitor working...It wouldn't pick up the camera so I called Kaz who tried helping me for 30 minutes. He was googling what to do and then I suddenly realized that the power outlet wasn't working! I moved the plugin...Problem solved! CRAZY NIGHT from all of us! That's just to name a few:) After the kids went to bed, we watched How to tame your dragon. Very cute movie!

The next day, we met up with our friend Holly, who adopted sweet Ella Ray, and went to the zoo. It was so much fun! Annie Rice doesn't care much for the animals yet but she loved seeing the monkeys because they made so much noise! Liz talked me into feeding the birds, which I had already said I'm not even a bird liker....There was about 15 birds all over me. Climbing up my arm, my head, poor Annie Rice was shaking her head no because they were scaring her. Not a fan of birds!

It was a really really fun day:) 

After we got home, we put the kids in there halloween costumes for a few pictures...This first picture sums up our luck at that! Annie Rice is picking her nose while Charlie plays a dead bat! It's my favorite;)  It was definitely a challenge...We put a pumpkin behind them and it scared Annie Rice so bad she cried pretty much the whole time even when we took it away! BUT we did manage to get a few shots:) 

Even though we have crazy times together, I love every minute I get to spend with my special friend! Maybe I'll share soon how we became friends...It's a God thing for sure!