Celebration!

Over the last year, we certainly haven't been all smiles. It's been a tough road. Chemo. Hair Loss. Afraid. Death. Scared. Throwing up. Weakness. Uncertainty. Tired. BUT we are thankful that this time is behind my mom and we were certainly ALL SMILES last Friday when Connie threw my mom a cancer free party!

(We tried to convince her to go without her wig because she's BEAUTIFUL without it, but she just couldn't do it yet!)

It was an all girls party.....

We make quite the family. All unique in our own special way yet somehow fit together so perfectly.

I guess I should mention here that one special guy was invited to the party..... but he wasn't allowed inside the house. He was quite the bartender! Don't worry, we did feed him.

It was an all around nice evening. My mom's closet friends were in attendance and as I surveyed the room I was struck by the amount of love pouring from the room. Toasts were made.

And she made a special toast to everyone as well. Thanking us all for being her "ROCK" during this difficult time in her life.

Taylor and Kylee had fun looking through the basket of rocks my mom had made for each guest to take home.

My rock from my mom. (Thanks Pinterest for the idea!)

Her journey isn't over yet. Every 90 days she is in for blood work and her first few tests have come back looking absolutely fantastic! Cat Scans will occur every 6 months or so for awhile just to monitor everything. For now though we are all thankful. Relieved. Happy. Excited. Filled with Hope.

I love you mom!

Birthdays Galore!

The month of January kicks off lots of birthdays in our family and doesn't slow down until the end of March! We started off with mine.....the big 36!

My mom, Darci and her family all came to town for the weekend to celebrate. We did dinner, played banana grams and ate dessert! It meant the world to me to have them all here with me on my special day!

Trey was much to busy watching Thomas the Train on Taylor's Ipod Touch to stop and sing to his Auntie Heather :)

Without so much as a breath of fresh air, we began a week long celebration of Miss Maddie's 6th birthday! Every year, I try to figure out a way to celebrate on just one day but it just never works out that way. The girls love it, but I have to tell you that by the end of the week- I'm exhausted! It's worth it though to see their excitement and fun they have during the week.

We started with a family/friend dinner party!

And then turned around and had a birthday dinner of chicken wings and fettuccine with Grandma Kathy. She got a big hug after a very exciting gift was opened.

Who doesn't want a wheelchair for their birthday?

On her actual birthday, Maddie got a new American Girl Doll, Kanani. She, Julie and Kanani have been inseparable ever since.

We asked Maddie what she'd like to do for dinner on her birthday. We went to bed thinking we were going to Olive Garden but we were informed in the morning that she "Just wasn't feeling it" for Olive Garden and could she please have Subway for dinner?

That next weekend, we had her friends from school over for a Justin Bieber birthday party. It was fun to see who she's made a connection with at school and to watch her interact with them. I was impressed by her choices! The party was mellow and all the girls were really polite and nice to one another!

We started out by playing pin the lips on Justin Bieber. It was the one game Maddie REALLY wanted to play. I'm not sure how she's become so obsessed with this boy but she L.O.V.E.S. him!

We also played musical notes to one of Justin Biebers songs.

And then played keep your balloon moving to another one (I love that they love to play these easy, simple games over and over again!)

We did cookies, ice cream and gifts of course!

And because we had that beautiful stretch of weather we went on a scavenger hunt around the house to find our treasure of silly string! The kids had an absolute blast spraying one another!

And Maddie's other request? A Justin Bieber Pinata of course!

We even took a walk to the marina! What a beautiful February day!

Happy Birthday Madison Sue Myers! We love you!

Snow Storm!

All this snow seems like such a L.O.N.G. time ago! It's hard to believe it really even came- especially with the weather we've been having these last few days! But it did come. And it was big. We had to wait quite a few days longer for the snow to arrive here in Olympia but when it did finally show up, we were not to be disappointed! Here's a glimpse at our days in the snow.

You can see in the background that this was our first "dusting" of snow.

Maddie wore the snow out the first day it snowed! Thank goodness we got more a few days later.

Taylor discovered snowboarding.

We did a lot of sledding together!

(BTW...over the snow storm break I discovered the Instagram App on my phone, which the above pictures were taken on. If you want to see what we are doing on a daily basis, you can follow me on the app at hahe4457- I'm taking a ton of pictures these days through that!)

Here are the girls in the storm! They could hardly walk in the snow as it was SO deep. I think we ended up getting right around 15 or so inches!

As you can see, our favorite summer spot was completely transformed! Still beautiful!

And you've got to have a snowman right? We finally found his scarf this past weekend in the yard.

We really did have a great time in the snow but we (Dave and I) are hoping we don't getting any more as we don't want summer vacation to get bumped back any more than it already has!