Mini Vacation, Day 1

Having your own business can be tough. Tony has been having a lot of out of town jobs. However, it has it's perks, too. Recently he was in TN and I flew out to drive back with him. It was a fun mini vacation, free to us thanks to the business, love that!

I flew into Kingsport, TN and we headed straight to the job site for me to see:

 

This is the plant Tony and the boys disassembled in KS and reassembled in TN.

We stayed the night in Jonesborough, TN. It is a super cute town, and we stayed right in the heart of it's historic district:

 This is the view from our room, a little one room school house, so cute!

And we ate dinner here, a cheesy little Mexican restaurant the boys ate at almost every night. Michael was amused by the sign with the American and Mexican hands, so I had to get a picture.

That's all for day one, more to come...

Pinterest Sundays

My girls and I have had such a great time finding fun things to do on Pinterest, I have decided to make it a {semi}regular blog feature, Pinterest Sundays.

Without further ado, this week's Pinterest Sunday theme is......drum roll..........more cupcakes.

But not just any cupcakes, we went with a theme, COCKTAIL CUPCAKES! I can't take credit for this idea, I was inspired by my friend Toni and her post about Guinness Cupcakes she had in DC and then later made herself. We kicked it up a notch and made Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream ganache filling and Bailey's butter cream frosting. When I told our house-guest about them he said "car bomb cupcakes? Sounds awesome". OK, so I didn't know about the drink known as a car bomb- 

"Pour half a pint of chilled Guinness into a beer mug and let it settle. Take a shot glass filled with 1/2 oz. of Irish whiskey on the bottom and 1/2 oz. of Irish cream on top. Drop the shot glass into the Guinness and chug."

The ganache was supposed to contain the whiskey, but we used more Bailey's instead:

 Guinness car bomb cupcakes

I know what you are thinking, "you let your girls make/eat those?" 

No way! We had a non alcoholic version for them, Shirley Temple cupcakes! These beauties are made with 7-up, grenadine, and maraschino cherry juice butter cream on top:

 

Shirley Temple cupcakes

Cheers!

Remembering 9/11/2001

I am sure everyone remembers where they were when they first heard about the events on 9/11/2001. It was the first time in my lifetime that I was aware of not being at peace in the world.

I was a 28 year old, stay at home mom. Michael was 10 and in 5th grade. Alexa was 7 and in the 2nd grade. Celeste was almost 4 and I was expecting our fourth child {one that I lost a little over a month later}.

It was like any other school day morning, in that we never turn the TV on before school. Our little neighbor, Patrick, came to the door for a ride to school and said "someone just bombed the Pentagon". I thought he must have heard wrong. An attack on our country? On our soil? That just did not seem possible.

I took the kids to school as usual and immediately turned on the TV. I don't remember eating all day. I don't remember taking care of Celeste. I only remember those horrifying, life changing images. I was hysterical, sad, scared, traumatized, and I didn't even personally know anyone there. I have a hard time putting into words how it affected me. How scared I was to be bringing a child into the world that now would be at war.

I am now watching on TV, playback of the live coverage of that morning. It is bringing it all right back.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost someone that day.

My heart, and gratitude, goes out to those on flight 93 who sacrificed themselves to save others.

I think about how different our world is now. How my Sophie was not even born yet, and her entire lifetime our country has been at war.

I am remembering how that day forever changed us as Americans.

``If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate,'' said Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl. 

 

Sunday-Our day of {Pinte}Rest

I know what you are thinking, "another post about Pinterest", but Sundays around here are quickly becoming our day of Pinterest. We always do our weekly laundry and grocery shopping on Sunday, but...

Since discovering Pinterest, we have added some fun to our day! We loved our Mountain Dew cupcakes, so this past Sunday I assigned Celeste the job of finding another cupcake recipe to try. She chose "Nutella" cupcakes. And let me tell you, they made it impossible for me to stick with my no sugar plan! There was Nutella in the batter, then injected into the warm cupcakes, and also in the buttercreme frosting (the best part). They were AMAZING!

 Sophie wanted to do a special project for her teacher, so we found a tutorial for this fun and cute project:

 

And I had a yard of jersey knit fabric from SAS that I got for $1.99 that needed to be a comfy skirt:

It's not so easy to photograph yourself, let me tell you!

 Extreme close up! Now, if you see what looks like lint specs, it's not. This brown, creme, and mustard jersey fabric is GLITTERED! Hello $1.99 skirt!

If you want to know where I got all these great projects, recipes, ideas, etc...just click on my "Pinterest" link Here  or on my sidebar where it says "follow me on Pinterest".

 

Pie In The Sky

If you have been reading my blog you know that I HATE traditional school photos. I mean, I think my kids are cute, but maybe not too photogenic, and these photos were always HORRIBLE. The past few years I have been doing them myself, but this year I had the fabulous Amanda of Pie in the Sky photography take them. The girls had a blast with Amanda, she is so fun and creative. They enjoyed putting fun outfits together and doing interesting posses. I can not wait to see them, and share them on here. Here is a little behind the scenes:

Amanda sure knows how to get down, I think she'd do whatever it takes to get the shot!

 And later, I took a few of my own:

 Stay tuned, t-minus two weeks till we get the real thing from Amanda. Can't wait!

Pinterest=Crack

My name is Lisa, and I am addicted to Pinterest.

 

Don't plan an intervention, I don't want any help :-)

If you haven't checked it out, it is amazing. So many ideas, inspiration, and beauty in one place. I love it.

Here is a recap of my Sunday:

Sophie: What are you doing?

Me: Pinning on Pinterest.

Sophie: What's that?

Me: The site I got the "sock bun curls" idea from

Sophie's sock bun curls

Sophie: Ooooh what's that?

Me: Melted crayon art.

Sophie: Can we make one?

Me: I guess.

Celeste: What are those?

Me: Mountain Dew cupcakes.

Celeste: Can we make them?

Me: I guess.

I guess it's not so bad. We had a pretty fun Sunday thanks to Pinterest. And now Sophie and Celeste are addicted too!

20 Reunion/Trip to NE/Epic blogger-scrapper FAIL EDIT

Tony and I had a whirlwind mini-vacation to NE for my 20 year high school reunion. It was a lot of fun, and we fit a ton into a few days. My biggest upset though, is I did not get many pictures with my HS friends. I forgot my camera and am so bummed!

We flew into Omaha and were able to meet my dad and brother for lunch on Friday:

Here I am with Todd with his new Prius. It had been 8 and a half YEARS since I had seen him! I know, I suck!

Then it was on to Lincoln where I met some friends from junior high/HS for dinner. Here is a picture of us in 8th grade:

Robyn, Melissa, Melanie, Me, Christie, Kristi

Melissa, Laura, Robyn (Melissa and Robyn are in the 8th grade picture above)

The first 4 of us in the picture made it to dinner, and did any of us get a picture? NOPE!

Friday night we went to the reunion social where I caught up with a ton of people. It was so neat to see everyone and catch up. (No Pictures-booo)

Saturday morning was a tour of my High School, to see how much a 25 million dollar remodel can change a place. It was really weird to be in those halls again. Our tour was given by a class mate of mine, who has taught math there for 14 years now:

Senior hall

The "planters" which are now enclosed trophy cases.

Me in front of the new front entrance.

After the tour we met Tony's niece, Sarina, and her husband and son, for lunch.

Saturday night was the big reunion event at the Rococo Theater. There was live music, dinner, then a hypnotist. I had never seen one before and it was soooo good. He was hilarious and it totally worked. He had my classmates and their spouses doing some funny stuff.

One shot of me and Tony from that night

Professional shot of me and Tony

Me and the gals before fishbowls! Erika, Laura, Dawn, Me

After the official reunion we went to Duffy's bar for a fishbowl, bomb pop flavored.

 Pictured from bottom left: Laura, Melissa, Laura, Me, Robin, Dawn.

Laura and Laura!

Sunday was all about Tony's family.

Tony, his mom, and her clones! Aunt Mary, Tony's mom, Tony, Aunt Carmen, Aunt Alice.

Tony and nephew Tino, lots of family resemblance there!

Nephew Miko, Tony, Nephew Joey (who we last saw at age 13, 15 years ago!)

Tony and his sister Sandy.

Me, Tino, Tony, Family friend Evelyn.

But the best part of my trip, the part that almost did not happen, was meeting up with my LLL lady friends, Monday morning before our flight:

Amber, Susan, Me.

I have known these ladies almost as long as my HS friends. I met them when Michael was a baby, 20 years ago. It was so nice to catch up, and I agree with Susan, that we picked up just like no time had passed. I really miss these gals, they are amazingly wonderful people and were a huge part of my life before moving to AZ.