Party at Trista's!

One of my BFFs from high school, Trista, had a BBQ at her house in Denver, IA this past weekend so the family and I loaded up and headed that way for a great time!

Dayne had a blast playing with all the kids and spending time with her cousin, T.J. They played hide-n-seek, swung on the hammock, jumped on the trampoline and watched Disney Channel! Then stayed up 'til 3am (waiting for the big kids to get home!).

Here are some pictures of the party and of us "out":

Gretchen and I at Trista's house.

Me and Jen-Fer at Trista's!

Kids jumpin' on the trampoline! Jen joined them for a while! She still has tons of energy!

Me and Trista Faye!

Me dancin' out at the big bar in Denver!
Brendan woke up crying while the girls were out. Graden was sweet enough to comfort the little fella and snuggle him back to sleep! I was so proud when we came home to see this! : )
Chris (Graden's BFF) and Jen (my BFF). They started dating about a month ago. They met on their own! We didn't introduce them ... fate landed them together!
The girls! Jen, Gretchen, Me, Trista, Laura and Kim.
The boys playing some sort of back yard game. Might be an Iowa thing ...
The girlies chatting

First day of school

The kids returned to school today!

They were none too excited about getting up early again, but they survived the day! Hunter started 8th grade and Dayne started 3rd grade. My how fast time flies ...

Here is Hunter's school - Summit Lakes Middle School

Here is Dayne's school - Hawthorn Hill Elementary School

Hunter has football practice every day after school from 2:50 - 4:50. He smells pretty bad when he gets home! When he gets home he usually heads for one of the neighborhood kids' yards to get even sweatier and play football or baseball.

I am excited to see how the school year continues ... I will be sure to post school pictures when I get them back!

A day in pictures

Today was pretty uneventful. We puttered around the house and cleaned up a bit then headed to the mall for new shoes for school. The kids had been hounding me for weeks to get them shoes, so today I was able to quiet that!

On the way home from the mall we saw one of the prettiest, fullest rainbows I have ever seen. One that made me just feel in awe of nature.

Right as I settled down and thought about going to bed Hunter asked me if I would take him and his friend, Zach, to Blockbuster to get a movie. While there they spotted an interesting find ... grillz.

Girls Day Out!

Donna, my woonnnnnnnnderful mother in law, is here for the week! She arrived on Wednesday night and will be with us until next Friday, when we go back "home" for Trista's house party.

Today Donna, I and Dayne went to get a pedicure and do some grocery shopping. Sounds silly but one of the things I miss the most is going to the grocery store with Donna and having her around all th the time. I just adore her and spending time with her! Plus, she kind of likes me too ... : )

Here are some pics of our pedi-time today! Dayne has been hounding me for weeks to take her to get a pedicure so we went this afternoon. Donna and I got a spa pedi and Dayne got her toe nails painted and a flower painted on her toe nails!

After our pedi's we went to the grocery store and then headed home for dinner and a movie!

Dinner Guests

I was inspired to recreate the appetizer we had on Saturday night at Longhorn Steakhouse, so I invited Lauren's (Dayne's BFF) family over for dinner. They served as my guinea pigs, I guess.

I wrapped shrimp with chicken, then wrapped that with a piece of bacon. I then mariniated it in teriyaki sauce for a while. I grilled the concoction for about 15 minutes and served it with Teriyaki Chicken skewers, biscuits and corn. It was pretty good! My dinner guests said they'd serve as my guinea pigs again, so they must not have been too bad!

Graden is still in Florida and won't be back until Sunday evening. He went to Epcott Center today for "work." This is his third trip in less than a year. Rough life, I guess.

Not much blogging for tonight .... going to head to bed soon.

Hugs to all.

Tiffany

Creativity has it's price, I learned.

On Saturday I thought I'd be creative and color my hair. As many of you know, I frequently dye the underneath of my hair a different color - usually some shade of red.

Well, I thought I'd be creative and do some "chunks" of red throughout the rest of my hair. Hindsight: baaaaaaaaaaaaad idea. When I took the towel off my head, Dayne's reaction summed it up pretty well. She told me, "Mom, you look evil." It was a shade of red that would be best described as gothic.

After heavy consideration of wearing Dayne's new Hannah Montana wig, I went to work and was quick to make an appointment to have my hair corrected. I felt like I needed to wear a sign around my neck, "Yes, I know my hair is messed up. I do not think it's cool." Funny how many people were nice about my hair ... "Oh, it looks cute!" "Why don't you like it?" ... I learned who my real, honest friends were today!!

It took four hours to correct my hair. When I walked into the salon many heads turned. It took 30 minutes to make a decison on how to correct it. I was a little bit embarassed, truthfully.

All in all, I am happy with the end result. Blonde with brown highlights and dark brown / auburn underneath color. Interesting, but I like it. : )

The kids and I went Miniature golfing this afternoon. It was 100 degrees, so we may have been slightly out of our minds to do it, but it was good for us to get out of the house! We endured the sweat dripping down our backs, off our heads and every other spot on our body. I bet we smelled grrrrrrrrrreat!

After golfing we went to Wal-Mart to make a donation to the Sam Walton estate. Like they need it. Just doing my part to keep the economy going, I guess.

The final score (with 54 being par) was: Dayne - 100, Hunter - 72 and Mom - 71. Who knew I had such golfing talent!??!

What we did this weekend

Graden has a fishing tournament at Table Rock next weekend so he is gone for the weekend. The kids and I had planned on joining him, but decided against it since it is so freakin' hot right now! So, Graden is there all by his lonesome. He's leaving from (nearby) Springfield for a week long business trip to Florida so he won't be home until the 19th. : ( This will be his first tournament at Table Rock, so let's hope he does good! He isn't used to deep water, so we'll see ...

The kids and I spent most of the day doing a whole lot of nothing. Finally around 3:00 we managed to get enough ambition to leave the house and went shopping for school supplies. We worked up a hunger so we went out for a nice dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. We had a great dinner! The kids ate an amazing amount of food! We ordered desert and they inhaled it - like they hadn't just enjoyed a steak dinner! I was certain we'd need a to-go box for the desert (it was huge!). The kids and I often watch the show "Honey, We're Killing the Kids!" and I told the kids I bet the nutritionist would say I was killing them! They were quick to point out they get plenty of exercise and we don't keep much junk food in the house. I guess they're right ...

Tomorrow the kids and I are going to clean the house uber good and then celebrate by going miniature Golfing at Paradise Park (an indoor / outdoor family entertainment center). I'll be sure to take pictures so I can post them tomorrow!

Now Hunter and I are watching a show on the Discovery Channel on Sharks and Dayne (sporting her new Hannah Montana wig) is upstairs putting on a Hannah Montana concert for Oz. Ah .... poor Oz. : )

Will post more tomorrow ... Hugs to all.

Happy Birthday to me!

For my 31st birthday my family took me out to dinner to a really nice place in Lee's Summit on Lake Latawana. Graden and I had steak and Hunter had jumbo shrimp (Dayne was a "bottom feeder"). It was a very nice meal and a very nice ambiance! My hubby has such great taste!

Dayne made me a very special card, telling me that no one loves me as much as she does!

What a great birthday and family!

Hugs to all,
Tiffany

Dayne's Surprise Birthday Party!

Okay, so Dayne's 8th birthday was a month ago ... like usual, I am late! I wanted to make up for her party being a month late (for the record, we were busy in the weeks proceeding her birthday - FL visit, then she went to IA for a week). A few weeks ago I got this crazy idea to plan a surprise spa-themed birthday party for her! In anticipation of "someday" having a birthday party, Dayne had already created a list of friends to invite, so I was set!

The girls started arriving about 1:00 on Saturday. Dayne went to spend the week with Zoe in Joplin so we coordinated our timing to have her arrive home about 2:00. The girls were so anxious while waiting for Dayne to arrive! We went through several scenarios of how to shout 'SURPRISE' when she arrived and agreed to have me yell to her as she came through the door to "come see Mamma!" and on my queue of waving to her, the girls jumped out and yelled "SURPRISE!!" It went off without a hitch! Dayne was very, very surprised. Actually, clueless might be a better word. She seemed to have no idea why all her friends were at her house!

After Dayne got a grip on what was happening, I told them all the fun things I had planned for them that day, night and next morning! They didn't understand the value of it, but I even had a matrix of planned events down to the time! It proved to be a wise investment of my time - we didn't have ANY fights or whine fests!

Our first planned event was a trip to the pool! We spent about 2 hours at the pool ... the girls had the pool to themselves fo the first half hour or so, but then only 4 other kids came - it was perfect 'cause then I didn't have to worry about hogging the whole pool!

The girls played chicken, styled their hair like "George Washington's wife" (that's Olivia) and ... made boobs. How do 8 year old girls make boobs? Well, I learned they blow air into their swimsuits and they make boobs. Who knew?

After the pool we had dinner - tacos! The girls ate amazingly good - not the finicky little prissy girls I expected!

Next we went on a neighborhood Scavenger Hunt. We broke up into two groups and each group headed seperate ways to find houses that would be interested in helping the girls collect common household items. Some of the more unique things on the list we were able to collect: a used sock, an old toothbrush and a baby diaper (clean!). The girls - and the neighbors - had a great time on the hunt. All the girls were winners so they were all given a prize of a purse filled with spa themed goodies! Lots of squeels ensued when they saw their goodie handbag!

After the Scavenger Hunt we had cake and ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries - Dayne's favorite! Following cake an ice cream Dayne opened her birthday presents from her friends! She got lots of make up, a High School Musical singing Barbie, Hannah Montana make up and lots of other exciting things!

Next, we headed upstairs to my bathroom and had a foot spa treatment! Each girl had their own foot bath (okay, really it was just a large popcorn bowl!) complete with a bath fizzy and foot mask! Then I walked them through each of the steps for a pedicure - filing nails, filing any rough spots
(they pretended to have some!), trimming their nails and finally, painting their nails! They had nail jewels in their spa-purse so they dazzled their nails with jewels, too!

Following the excitement of spa therapy the girls started to settle down (although they didn't actually go to sleep 'til about 3am!). They watched the video I made of them surprising Dayne, swimming, and all the other events of the day. Then they watched "Firehouse Dog" while they snacked on popcorn and candy! Some time later, they actually fell asleep.

I woke the girls about 8:30 Sunday morning and made them smily face pancakes for breakfast. After breakfast they went back downstairs to watch the new episode of Hannah Montana, then came back up to decorate picture frames to capture their memories from the party!

When they finished their frames they got dressed, brushed their hair and teeth and got ready to have their individual picture taken with Dayne - to put in their new picture frame!

They looooved playing with Oz! And Oz was in heaven - 16 adoring hands petting him!

Dayne and Shay

Dayne and Lauren

Dayne and Olivia

Dayne and Aubrey

Dayne and Jeannine

Dayne and Amanda

Dayne and Parker

The girls plotting out their next activity . . .

After photo time was over, they got their swim suits on and played in the sprinkler (and made boobs!).

The party came to a close around 1:00 when Moms and Grandmas came to pick up their girls! It was a great party and I am glad Dayne has such good friends! They did so well that I told them we might be able to do this again sometime! Most of the girls are going to the new school this year, so this was a nice one-last hoorah for them!

Thank you to Olivia, Aubrey, Parker, Zoe, Amanda, Lauren, Jeannine and Shay for coming to the party! I hope you all had a blast!