Weekend Life

What won't Dan do for his girls? Awwwwwwwww.....



We finally bought a firepit this past weekend. Of course, we had to immediately use it! We decided to cook hot dogs on the firepit for dinner - the girls had a great time, in spite of the teary, smoke-filled eyes. :) It was great - almost like camping but without the sleeping outside. Or the dirt. Or bugs/small animals in your tent/sleeping bag. Or any of that wonderful stuff about camping that causes me to NOT like to camp. Sorry, I know so many of you enjoy it with your families but it is SO not my thing.


Yay, our new firepit!

I'm getting smoke in my eyes!

I am so happy about our new firepit!

Okay, now I'm the one getting smoke in my eyes.

Mmmmm, smores! Can we have s'more? ha ha ha

Love this quote
I don't know why, but this quote from a movie I watched this weekend really hit me. It's from Shall We Dance and I had to look it up online as I really liked it! The wife in the movie was asked why people get married and this was her response:

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness'."

It just struck me. It's just those important things that go beyond the "feeling" of loving someone, and moving on to actually loving them. If that makes any sense. Anyway, I just wanted to share it.

Happy Mother's Day!!!
Really, I think we should have Mother's Day once a month. :) It was a fun day - I got some perfume I requested (Delicious Night by DKNY - LOVE it!) and the girls made me some cute cards and were just sweet little things. I have to add what Hayley wrote in her card - this child amazes me with her writing abilities! I mean, I am envious of the fact that my 2nd grader has better writing skills than me. I always struggled with writing in school. They have been learning some skills that I don't remember being taught, which would have been helpful. Anyway, here's her cute card - she made it at school (typed verbatim):

Dear Mom, I adore you!

And by the way, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!

I imensly relish the things listed below:

-cookies -cake -+more!

Okay, where was I. YES!!

You sure as clever as coyote! Okay.

Now, you are the best Mom on the universe!

Sorry about yelling but it is true! Bye!

Sincerely, Hayley Guay

p.s. You'r sharp!

Oh, I love this card and the cute little pumpkin that wrote it!

The school-aged kids sang in church today, and they also had a video with interviews of the kids and were asked "why do you love your mom"....Hayley was one of them and she said "I love my mom because she cooks three meals for me everyday." Awwwwwwww. How perfect is that that my child mentioned food!?!?!? Such a proud mom!

After church we headed to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens but alas, it was raining so we headed over to Bellevue Square and did a little window shopping and had a little snack. Okay, actually the snack is worth mentioning (me being a foodie and all) - there is a little bakery in the mall called Specialty's Bakery ... OH YUM. Their cookies are soooooooo good. Dan and the girls had chocolate chip, I had a oatmeal wheat germ bran chocolate chip something cookie - THE BEST. Seriously, like enough to now give me cravings. And of course it's healthy, right?? Wow, it was so so so very good. So anyway. We ended up spending about an hour playing at a park as the gardens parking was full. Then had dinner at Salute, a grrrrrreat Italian restaurant in Bellevue. The food was fabulous and they had live entertainment - a pianist and opera singer who sang songs about moms and motherhood - very sweet. It was a lot of fun and the girls did really good. And I'm looking forward to my leftovers tomorrow....... :)

Here are some pics of our park time:

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Updates, updates....
Let's see, what have we been up to? I went on a girls weekend ('Bu Babes!!) to the beach - had a great time, it was just so fun and relaxing and definitely memorable.

Here's us with the "Flats" - Stel & Reb couldn't join us so we brought them anyway. :)

Dan and I got a weekend away in Seattle and stayed at the W. Very cool place! Had some great meals, shopped like crazy, watched a bunch of movies and just relaxed. It was nice to be away from computers and cell phones and calendars and to-do lists....and kids. They had a fun weekend with Grandma & Papa - did crafts and watched movies and played in the snow and went to the park and probably didn't hear the word "NO" all weekend.

Dan went on the Bethany Men's Golf retreat in Redmond, Oregon. Crazy men - they golfed at least 2 rounds per day for 4 days and enjoyed some nice male bonding time. Whew, must've been stinky.

The girls had been planning a "parade" for at least a week and scheduled it for Saturday morning. It really wasn't a parade as much as it was family movie time. We bought the movie Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (so cute!) and they made a display with a "now showing" sign, a sock monkey and a slinky (you have to watch the movie to understand the significance). They made movie tickets with assigned seating. And they planned a "welcome song" on the keyboard and played that before we started the movie. They put so much planning into it I helped out and made pancakes, etc. for our fun morning.

On Sunday, the girls and I went to a Mother's Day Tea with Grandma, Great-Grandma & Aunt Marianne. We had such a great time! We had some wonderful food and good girl time. We are still working on Ainsley's table manners and before we went, I talked to her about using her "ladylike" table manners. Well, she definitely tried really hard. Though hanging her spoon on her nose wasn't quite what I was hoping for...she also loudly said, "Mom, that lady put too much food in her mouth. That is NOT lady manners!" She has the right idea anyway. :)

Happy Cinco de Mayo!! What is it about people in this country that feel this is an important holiday to commemorate yet haven't a clue what it's all about? I think we pretty much all use it as an excuse to eat Mexican food and drink margaritas. Which is exactly what we did tonight. We had tostadas (yummmmm) and I made wanna-be margaritas (just blended frozen peaches, peach nectar and lime juice - they were quite tasty!!!) and then we had Mexican cookies for dessert. Okay, I'm sure the people in Mexico don't exactly eat these on a regular basis, but since it's a combination of tortillas, cinnamon & chocolate, they DO have that Mexican "flavor" It was just fun being silly and having some yummy food.