It's a Beautiful Life

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

A Wet Memorial Day

What a WET Memorial Day this year (although it shouldn't have been much a surprise since most Memorial Days are)!

We had lots planned for our Memorial Day...and even with all the rain, we didn't let the rain stop our fun!!!!

On Saturday we met my parents and sister Kate at the race track! We had a GREAT table under the roof, so even the rain couldn't damper our fun! Although we didn't have any big winners (I think I won the most with a $36 win off a $2 bet), we had a great afternoon!!!! (Sorry Kate, I didn't get any pics of you)

Caitlin and her grandpa

Abigail and her grandma

On Sunday we were supposed to meet the Douglas and O'Connor families at the zoo, but the lightning started while we were driving there, so we detoured to have some lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise to ride out the storm. Well....that never happened and we had to cancel our trip to the zoo, but we had a great lunch together!!!

When we got home, we decided to FINISH (yeah!!!!) our winter projects! We had done the screen door and backsplash already. All we had to do was finish a chair rail in the family room/kitchen! We worked hard to get it done and take advantage of our rainy day! It looks great and we are very happy!

The nail gun was very loud...so the girls sat under this table while we worked....don't know why but it was cute!

Daddy working very HARD! :)

This is obviously before...I didn't take an after yet!

Monday we woke up to a BEAUTIFUL morning and we couldn't wait to get started. Literally by 7:30 am we had the pool filled and were ready to start our day!

First thing we did was head to downtown Wheaton. We walked around the town for a while, stopped for coffee, watched the Memorial Day parade, and ended with our favorite frozen yogurt!!!! It was a perfect morning!

Daddy and Abigail at the parade (not a great pic of Abigail.....but daddy looks good! :) )

Mommy and Caitlin at the parade

Watching the parade

Frozen yogurt

Playing in the fountain

After our morning, we headed home for lots and lots of swimming! Our neighbors were outside too so it was a great time!

It was a really great weekend full of family time!!!!!!

Also, I found a few pics on my camera from last weekend's trip to Just Play in our town. It's a local fest full of things for the kids to do. Rob and I got the great idea to WALK there and back...it was a long, hot, windy walk both ways, but well worth it!

Abigail on the big slide

Abigail and Caitlin practicing their gymnastics skills

Waiting in line for obstacle course

Best Friends. Sisters!

Hope everyone stayed dry this weekend...and enjoyed their Memorial Day as much as we did!

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Babies Growing Up

I guess I can't call them babies anymore...but babies they will always be to me!

This week was Abigail's last day of her 1st year of preschool! I would say it was a great success. She has really come out of her shell and found her voice! She learned to make friends, play in groups and independently, color, cut, glue, and most of all love school! She had great, sweet teachers who we will miss...until we see them again with Caitlin!

Here are some pics from the first day of school to the last day of school.

If you were at my "photo shoot" this is what you would have heard:

"Abigail, Smile. No, a real smile. ABIGAIL, a real smile! Stop smelling that leaf. That ladybug won't hurt you. Look here! Caitlin, stop running away. Abigail, sit back down! No Caitlin, not now! Abigail, are you looking at me? Okay Caitlin sit next to Abigail. Abigail, look at me. Caitlin look at me. Abigail, look at me. Caitlin look at me! NEVERMIND! Someone just say "Last Day of School!"

Here are my "babies":

1st day of school

Last day of school

"Last day of school!!!!!"

Last day of school

Some obvious changes:

*My "baby" isn't a baby anymore. We went from carrying Caitlin in her carrier to her walking in herself to school and hugging all the teachers!

*Abigail used to let me pick her out clothes....not so much anymore! Same with doing her hair. That girl has definitely gained an "opinion" on everything! ;)

*They sure have grown....A LOT! And while in one way it's sort of sad to see how fast they grow, in another way we are having more and more fun every day! We are always on new adventures and having so much fun together! Its fun to be able to talk and plan and play with them as they grow bigger!!!! We are looking forward to taking a family vacation this summer and enjoying them at this age!

Hope your day is as sweet as my babies!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Surprise!

This weekend we had a surprise birthday party for Rob's grandma up at Bass Lake!!!!!

I would say she was shocked!!!! Everyone stayed by the Wennerstrom cabin until the surprise, so the party started early for us! :)

It was a great weekend with the family! Everyone made special shirts to wear to the party, which added a special touch to the party!

Here's a look at some of the fun...which went well WELL into the night! (I stopped taking pictures around 5pm for the safety of all involved! ha ha!)

Walking in...SURPRISE!!!!!

The whole family!

Miss Caitlin sporting her yellow Wennerstrom shirt!

Abigail with the birthday girl

Cousins with their gram...fighting over who's the favorite I'm sure!

Gram and her 5 "babies"

The out-laws (in-laws)

The Wennerstroms....you can see us from a mile away!

We all had shirts of pics with Gram. (Mine was my favorite cause it was Rasta Gram)

Who doesn't need a little "tequilla rose" on her 80th???

Happy Birthday!

Papa and his look-alike

Our hostess and our bug! Thank you so much Georgeanne for the great party!

All the grandkids (and one grandkid-in-law) and great-grandkids there!

Happy Happy Birthday to Gram and Great-Nani!

We hope it was a special special special day, because you deserve it!!!!!!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Oh What a Night!!!!!

I should be posting about Caitlin's 18 month birthday or the fact that my grandma got released from the hospital and is at a nursing home getting rehab right now...but I have to post about last night.

Last night was what my mom called "the highlight of my life" (after her wedding, birth of 3 kids and 3 grandkids, trips to Italy and all over the US, etc I'm sure).

By what we first considered luck, but after last night now think it was my persistance, my mom and I got to go to the Oprah Surprise Spectacular!!!!! And we weren't just there...we were THERE!!!!

I think it starts with the fact that I have loved Oprah forever!!! I loved her in high school. I really loved her in college...in fact, one of the best things about going to Valpo was that we got both Chicago and Indianapolis television stations....so I got to watch Oprah at 9am on Chicago stations and then again at 3pm on Indianapolis stations!!! And I really LOVED her once I became a stay-at-home mom! So I would say in the past 15 years, I have rarely missed a show! When she's not on, I have my DVD's to entertain me!

I know it sounds cheesy, but she has been a constant in my life for 15 years....she made me a better wife, a better teacher, and a better mom!!!!

I have tried and tried and tried and tried for tickets for years! I wrote in for myself, for my students, for my friends, for my family. I entered contests. I called the hotline. I emailed, and facebooked, and emailed some more. In fact, when Abigial was in the NICU, I decided I was going to get the nurses tickets because they are amazing, so I wrote for weeks and weeks about the nurses in the CDH NICU. I once had tickets when Madonna was on Oprah, but it was right after my wedding and I didn't want to miss a day of work. I always regretted it (full circle moment last night...more to come)...and I got to finally see her earlier this year, but it wasn't a tv show, just a webcast show.

When she offered tickets for this surprise spectacular, my mom, sisters, and myself entered to win. And we all got rejected. But then, a few days later, I got an email saying I now had tickets. Seemed too good to be true, but it wasn't! Comes to find out, they gave tickets to their "ultimate" fans, and while I'm probably not one of those, I don't think it was a coincidence that I won tickets!

I was excited to get tickets...but much more excited that I could take my mom to Oprah! It's something we watched together growing up....and it was something I really wanted in my life was to take my mom to an Oprah show...and what a show to take her to!!!!!!!

So last night my mom and I headed to the show at United Center. The crowd was insane and the energy was like nothing I've ever seen before!!!! After a long wait to get it, we finally got in. Within 5 seconds of walking in, we saw Suze Orman and knew it was going to be a great night!!!!

We went to our seats, sure that we were behind the stage or out of sight and wished we had our binoculars. But when we walked to our seats, we were shocked. We were on the side of the stage, 4 rows from the floor!!!! Somehow we got in the section with the Harpo employee families!!!!

(My camera has terrible zoom..this is literally not even how good our view was...it doesn't do justice to how close we were to the stage).

While sitting there, we saw tons of famous people walk by: Carson Presley, Eric from Eric and Cathy....there were more, I'm just blank! Also, if anyone watches Oprah Behind the Scenes on OWN, we saw all the producers (Sheri, Jenna, Brian, etc) which was more of a highlight for me! The crowd was full of amazing people (Mayor Daley, Tyler Perry, Dr. Phil, etc).

And then the show started...and it didn't stop!!!!

I'm not going to post about all the famous people, because I want you to be able to watch the shows on Monday and Tuesday and have a little bit of the surprise we had at the show! After it airs, I will post my second half of this post about the actual show. But let me just say, it was amazing! We knew there would be a few big people there, but they just kept coming and coming and coming! I know the details of the show are out there (Oprah was tweeting throughout the whole show herself) but I'll post later! But it was amazing!!!!!

I'll leave you with a few pics, but details to come later!!!!! They did say NO cameras (no flash) and if you took a picture, they would escort you out of there...but after the beginning, everyone was taking pics and I figured there was no way we'd all get kicked out, so we started taking some too (no flash of course).

I'm just so happy my mom got to experience this...she was so excited (and believe me, I was freaking out excited..and of course they had kleenex at every seat because it wouldn't be an oprah show without touching stories).

And for those who watch the first show, we are in one "stunt". We hold one of the "screens"...we are the third picture back to the right of the stage from stage view...we are 4 rows from the bottom...you won't see us but you can see where we "are"....