As of this afternoon, we are officially on Thanksgiving break!  Woo hoo!  Somehow we got lucky with practices being cancelled tonight so we decided to make a trip to Bass Pro Shop to talk with Santa and mail our lists. These fools managed to forget to tell Santa what they wanted!  Not one of them even uttered a word to him!  Thank goodness we mailed those lists to the North Pole or it’s going to be one sad Christmas morning.  Hope they get there!  In their defense, Santa never really asked them what they wanted.  He must have been one of Santa’s 2nd string helpers. 😉

Check out these masterpieces…

Santa has his work cut out for him on these lists!

The line was fairly long, so the girls waited in the line and we let the boys go play for a bit.  We didn’t expect them to roam the entire store!  We ended up having many  families jump ahead of us because we couldn’t find them!  This trip to see Santa was going downhill fast!

We made these adorable little felt snowflake bags!

The boys much preferred playing in the kinetic sand that looked like dirt.  Arts and crafts are not their favorite but they participated to make mom happy 🙂

Before we made it out the door, Jake spent his gift cards he received for his birthday.  Wouldn’t you know it…he bought another fishing bag!  He’s already gotten every pocket filled and organized  We think he’s going to look pretty cool riding his bike down to the lake with that on his back.

It’s a tradition for us to grab dinner and decorate our downstairs ‘kids’ tree after visiting Santa.  Nice job guys!It’s become so overloaded with ornaments it could literally tip if you sneeze near it.  You move one ornament, and five more fall off.  I’m pretty sure when I wake up tomorrow morning the entire thing will be crashed to the ground.P.S. I didn’t even tell them to do ‘silly faces.’  This is just the way they are!!  Goofballs.

Happy Christmas Season!

The Panthers played in another basketball tournament this weekend and came home with championship trophies!  Woo hoo!

Here are a few fun facts the coach shared with us:

Keep up the great work Panthers!!  You are so fun to watch!!

This weekend Reece participated in the KGDC Compulsory Inter Squad.  I really have no idea what that even means…I just paid my money and showed up at her gym.  Apparently it is a chance for everyone to get a sneak peek at the girls in “live” competition before the meet season starts.  I was impressed with these little girls!  The level 3 gymnasts spend 7.5 hours in the gym each week learning the skills necessary to  perform these routines.

Our little Reece has some sort of sports practice every night of the week and she handles it like a champ.  Gymnastics seems to be her favorite at the moment.  She got to carry her new backpack for the first time and we made her a bag tag so she was thrilled!She even filled out her ‘meet checklist’.  I love that she made a note to herself!

Her first event was balance beam which scares the heck out of me.  I thought she did great!  She scored an 8.2.  Here is her performance:

2nd Event was Floor.  She received an 8.8 What a cutie pie!

And the video clip…

She got 2nd place in vault with a 9.3.

The final event was uneven bars, which is the hardest and usually her strongest/favorite event.  Except not her favorite today!  She got a 6.9.  She would like to have a do-over on that one!

When the meet was over and all the athletes and families were hanging around talking and congratulating, Reece was suited up and bee-lining to the door.  Once we were safely in the car, she started sobbing like I’ve never seen in my life.  This very driven little second grader was so disappointed that she messed up her bars routine.  I tried my very best to snap her out of it with ice cream and some extra hugs but it took awhile!  She finally got better but later in the day she played the videos for Brian and it brought back too many memories and the water works started up again.  Poor baby!!

She decided spending a little time at her friend, Capri’s, house would cheer her up.  So what did she do…she practiced on the bar in Capri’s basement!  This girl is NOT giving up!

I don’t know how she has any energy left at this point but I’ll take the laughter and the smiles over that sobbing any day!

This is just the start, Reecie Cups, you are bound and determined to be the best and we are so proud of you no matter what place you take!  You are working so hard and we can see you improving every day!  You go girl!Overall, she took 9th place out of 16.  That’s a job very well done!!

In one month, you’ll be competing in your first official level 3 meet!  It will be here before we know it!

My favorite thing that happened this weekend was Reece putting this sticky note on my back…I will be keeping this FOREVER!  Reece, you are totally my BFF!!

XOXO, Mommy

My sweet little neighbor girls are 16 now!  They have a car!  Ugh…how is this happening!?  And in two years, I’ll be saying the same thing about Morgan.  It’s too much to handle.  Look at how cute they were!!

Morgan..Jack.Brooke.Ava 2009

I could look at flashback photos all day…so I’m stopping myself before I lose track of time and forget to pick up my kids from school!!

And now they’re all grown up!

Happy birthday girls…love you to pieces!!  Couldn’t imagine the ‘hood’ without you!!

This is a long overdue post!  Many months ago, Morgan and her bestie, Emma, spent the entire day creating a power point presentation to inspire us to ‘say yes’ to traveling to Denver, CO to see a Justin Bieber concert.  They did a fabulous job which left us all wondering why they don’t put that amount of effort into everyday tasks, such as cleaning their rooms, putting their shoes away, and getting A’s on every test.  Nevertheless, we did say yes and these sweet girls spent  every moment excited for this trip.  They made t-shirts and signs and went shopping for new outfits.

 

This was a daddy daughter trip so they made these shirts for the dads…the “sassy dad squad” as they are called.  It’s a long story, but Brian and Chris were called “sassy” by Morgan & Emma’s science teacher one time, so they will forever be called the “sassy dads.”  Glitter and all, these dads were prepared to wear these shirts proudly as they sat in the rafters and the girls secured better seats.

Here’s where the story takes a turn.  As our family was cruising the Caribbean and enjoying being out in the middle of the ocean with little to no access to cell service, we became aware that JB had gone off the deep-end (no pun intended) and cancelled the remainder of the tour.  We tried to shield this information from Morgan so as to not ruin her mood and the rest of her vacay, but the word managed to get to her anyway.  NOOOOO!!  Are you kidding me!?  These girls had worked so hard and they were so excited, it literally took over their entire summer!  This was to be their 14th birthday celebration!  Stupid JB.  Pull it together, will you!?  He only had a few dates left to perform and Denver, CO was one of them.

Fast forward to August 10th, and these cute girls decided to make the best of it.  They boarded a plane to Denver with their sassy dads, null & void concert tickets, posters left in KC, and JB t-shirts in the pajama drawer.Before you feel too badly for them, just wait until you see what they did instead!  They had the most amazing trip ever!  They used that ticket refund money to go zip-lining and white water rafting in the Royal Gorge.  Let’s just say the dads totally scored on JB’s mental breakdown!

 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t there, so I cannot recount all of the fun stories or provide much commentary but I can share the pictures I have!

One thing I know for sure is this is the perfect group to go on an adventurous weekend in Colorado!Morgan is fearless! MoMo, I love your sense of adventure and your willingness to try new things.  You rock!

And then there’s the dads…acting sassy of course!

Are you kidding!?  They jumped down from this!?

This crew really loved the rafting.  They had a good group and an amazing guide that let them do a few extras that other guides didn’t.  He must have sensed they were ready for adventure!Doesn’t that look super fun!?  You will never catch me on a zip line but maybe I would do the rafting 😉  Thank goodness the mom’s weren’t in charge!

A visit to the acquarium

Hat shopping??And hotel room facials & cards…love it!

Then they got dressed up to go out to eat on their final night.  The dads got them a penny cab to save their feet.  Aren’t they beautiful!?

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and although I think Colorado suits you really well, it’s time to head back to KC!

 

This is a video the girls put together.  It’s so great!!  Check it out!

Aren’t these two amazing!?  Way cooler than I was at 14 😉  I love that you embraced the adventure and created awesome memories.  boom…take THAT JB!

If you would like to view all the pictures, use this link on Shutterfly…

pix.sfly.com/pz99xNJ6

We are honoring our veterans!  Jake wore red, white, & blue and proudly displayed a sticker all day at school today for his grandpa Frank, a Vietnam vet.

and at Manchester Park, Reece and Drew, decorated stars for my grandfathers who both served in WWII.Doesn’t this wall at Manchester Park Elementary look great!?This is my Papa Michie.  He passed away when I was in elementary school so I don’t have a lot of vivid memories or pictures.  I had my mom scrounging around today looking for some for me…thanks mom!  What I do remember about him is he was fun, happy, funny, and I think he used a lot of cuss words 🙂

This is a photo of my other Papa, Papa Delmez, on my wedding day, June 3, 2000.  Isn’t he handsome!?  He was the most caring person, extraordinarily smart, and a talented woodworking craftsman.  Without a doubt, they loved all of their grandkids to bits and we adored them!

This is wonderful patriotic 4th grade art by Drew!

Reece made this wonderful drawing and commentary about our American Flag at school in her 2nd grade class…

Reece Conley’s 2nd grade flag

Translation:  The flag means freedom.  It means liberty and justice.  It means fairness and love to me.  It means we can go to schools to learn and be smart.  It means we can vote for our leaders and not be bossed around.   It means I can go and pick my church to know about God.

What a great job, Reecie!!

And to round out the evening, Jake’s soccer teammates chose to wear a red, white, and blue uniform combination for their tournament game.  They won!  Way to go boys!

Thank you Veterans!

 

This semester Jake chose to enroll in 6th grade choir for one of his elective classes.  I think he might be regretting it at this point, but I’m thrilled he did it!  Especially because he gets to look adorable in his concert tux and it’s a guaranteed A on the report card!

They took professional photos at school one morning and Jake was teaching his classmates “the smolder.”  This is just too funny!  Where did you learn this, Jake!?  For some reason the photographer was going for a serious look in the photos…  I would’ve preferred a cute smile, but maybe this a choir thing!?

Clearly, he’s having a little trouble here trying to keep his smile from coming out…I pulled this one off facebook…the smiles are so much better!  These 6th graders look handsome!

 

Last night the entire Prairie Trail choir performed on the stage at Olathe Northwest High School.  Jake was throwing a fit that he had to miss soccer practice, wear a tux, and dress shoes that were too big.  You better believe I reminded him that I changed our trip to Mexico so I could be at this concert!  I’ve been excited for this since August and there was nothing that would keep me from snagging a front row seat!

He has a fresh new haircut which I’m not a giant fan of…is this a soccer player hair do or what!?  But he loves it, so we’re embracing it.

Look at the kid to his left…he’s really getting into the song!!

We aren’t exactly sure if he was actually singing (or many of them for that matter)!  I choose to think he was for at least 90% of it.  He seemed to know all the words at least.

The choir is quite talented and it was very well organized by Mrs. Stewart.  He seemed to be particularly annoyed with the kid standing next to him a majority of the concert.You’ll have to take my word for it that Jake really has a beautiful voice!  But I guess he feels there isn’t time to add this talent into his life.  He’d rather be kicking a soccer ball or swinging a club.  This will likely be the last time you see him in this setting.  boo!

Jake, we are proud of you regardless!

and p.s. you’re so handsome!

Here are a few more photos his teacher has posted on FB from his 2nd hour class so far this semester…

I don’t know why he says this class is boring because this looks super fun to me!!

Keep up the great work Jakers!

 

 

I almost titled this one…”Where’s Jake!?”

I’ll get to that later!  After a painstaking process to decide on a trip to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary, we landed on an Eastern Caribbean cruise.  It’s really hard for 4 families to find a time that is ideal, a location that everyone finds desirable, and fits within budgets!  This actually happened at the end of July, so I’m going back in time a bit!  My parents are experienced ‘cruisers’ but this would be a first for our kiddos and my brother’s kids.  We were packed and ready for this adventure!

As we were checking in, we came to the realization that I was not actually booked on the flight and there were no seats left.  HOLY CRAP!  Meanwhile, my sister and hubby had already bypassed us in line and were sitting at the gate rapid fire texting me…’where are you!?”  I got booked on the next flight out which was hours later.  As we reunited with our group at the gate, we were all trying to figure out what the heck went wrong and making sure I had everything I needed for a long day in the airport by myself!!  I could see panic in the kids eyes and I was so sad as I watched all of them boarding the plane without me after all this planning!  Then, over the loud speaker, I heard my name and I threw my hands up in the air in celebration.  Thank you to whoever didn’t show up for that flight!!

In Orlando, we checked into our hotels, grabbed a bite to eat, and completely took over the lobby!  We had scrapbooking going on, a massive card game, and many free drinks flowing.  Vacation is on!

The next morning we boarded our ship…the Carnival Magic.Once on board, my dad instructed us to start eating right away…that’s what we paid for right!?  However, it was a torrential downpour!!Well crap, the stinkin’ ship is flooding and we’ve only been on here 45 min!!  No worries, we started making a dent on our drink packages and our cabins were great!!  The Conley crew had an adjoining balcony with my parents, Shauna and Scott were one room down and Greg’s crew was close by in the interior.  It worked out perfectly!

Look at my mom in the background putting on the life vest…isn’t she cute!?

Our first stop was in Nassau, Bahamas where we found ourselves on a secluded public beach.  Greg and Brian hitched a ride with a stranger to get beer and KFC!?  What were they thinking!?  My parents took a tour they had arranged and all of us had a blast!

Our second stop was Amber Cove Dominican Republic and it’s beautiful!  We spent the day at the water park/shopping.  Some of the kids got to zipline over the park and of course Greg and Brandy ran into Elvis…this is totally normal right!?

Our last stop was in Grand Turk, an island in Turks & Caicos.  My sister spent lots of time researching our stops and making the best plans for us!  She arranged for a private boat tour where we snorkeled several places, spent time on a private beach, and dove for conch shells!  It was a amazing!  We were so impressed with the kids’ diving skills…unfortunately we could not get back on the ship with the shells.  Except my sister, who managed to get hers smuggled through!  The boat ride was crazy rough but I managed to make it without losing my breakfast overboard!  What a gorgeous place…we are so lucky to have spent time here!

Jake’s conch shell

My dad is notorious for striking up conversations with the locals!!  They split open our shells and made fresh conch salad.

We love you Grand Turk!!

In between our stops, we had one day at sea and lot’s of fun times on the ship.  This is where it comes back to….’Where’s Jake!?”   That seemed to be the theme of the week for me.  Even using the ship app to find my crew, I always found myself looking for Jake!  He was apparently enjoying his freedom…playing basketball, golf, winning contests, hours upon hours on the water slides, and eating cheeseburgers and ice cream.  At one point I was wandering the ship in a disoriented panic searching for him and two steps from having his name called over the intercom system before he was found.  He was on the water slides.  The kids really liked to roam around, make friends, and stay up LATE..ugh…I was not prepared for that!  Morgan even ran into someone she met on the ship on the soccer field in Omaha!  What a small world!  We had Alyssa looking for us late one night and look at cute Collin hanging out with the little kids in our room and having a candy party…

I promise, there’s never a dull moment with this group!  Without a doubt, my favorite part of this cruise, were the family dinners.  They were a teensy bit early…I felt like I was getting ready and eating in the middle of the afternoon!  But we had amazing food, service, and so much fun.  I loved watching the kids (and Greg…he’s kind of a kid) dance, and Reece being mesmerized by magic tricks!

Since everyone had the drink package except my parents (my dad is ultra cheap, remember!), we were getting them drinks as often as we could on our cards.  I think Greg and Brandy might have maxed their cards out one night.  Way to get your money’s worth guys…job well done!

The balloon drop on our final night was AWESOME!!

So much ice cream was consumed on this trip that I am still laughing about it!  My sister and I managed to avoid it the entire trip.  Finally, as we were waiting to disembark the ship, we decided to give that ice cream machine a try at the very last minute.  We didn’t even know how to work it!!  Dorks!  Everyone else on the ship was so experienced with it, they just wanted us to get our ice cream and get out of the way!

I adore these memories and all of these people.  Happy Anniversary mom and dad!  You are LOVED!

Cheers to 50 years!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween is fun, easy, and not a lot of stress.  I love this holiday!  In years past we have dressed up as a group but lately I’m just letting the kids do what they want.  Sometimes boys just don’t have a lot of ideas, so I try to help.  I like to have costumes buttoned up well beforehand but this is Jake the night before Halloween trying to come up with a costume…What the heck is this!?  He’s a patient with multiple broken bones in a blue morph suit!?  Thank goodness he wasn’t happy with this and went with a bad boy criminal instead…

I hope this is not foreshadowing to Jake’s future years!  Drew was Dr. Ew (get it…DREW…aren’t we clever!?) the mad scientist.  He was taking it very literally with a ‘mad’ face!

We’ve been growing his hair out for weeks to come up with this awesome mad scientist hair do!!  He refused to wear a wig, so we did what we had to do and made this costume perfect!  The very next day we had a shiny new haircut.  All of that hair was driving him (and all of us really) nuts!Luckily we were light on sports practices this week so we had time to carve/decorate our pumpkins.  The kids came up with their own designs and did most of the cutting themselves.  Probably not the most wise idea, but we came out with no injuries!

Morgan always tries to take a more creative approach and melted crayons on hers…she’s calling it an ‘instagram fail’ but we thought it was still pretty cute!

The others were quite proud of their creations!

Jake did two designs on his.  The mouth is a “W” for winner (if you needed a little help figuring that out) and on the side….a star.Drew’s had the most giant mouth ever!Job well done guys!!Morgan’s school actually let the kids dress up in costumes for the whole school day…she and her friends were tourists…aren’t they cute!?and of course the famous elementary school parade of costumes.  It goes so fast that if you blink your eyes or get distracted for 2 seconds, you’ll miss your child.  Which is pretty much what happened to us with Drew…oops!Reece really wanted to be a unicorn but I am not a fan of just buying a costume off the rack so I pieced this together.  She was trying to look similar to ‘Star Lily’…remember her from Christmas 2 years ago!?  It was a ‘must have’ that Santa graciously fulfilled.

Here’s our real life Star Lily in the parade…

pretty good, right!?

Following the parade, I managed to scurry in between two class parties.  Drew thought his party was quite boring and wanted to come with me back to Reece’s 2nd grade classroom!  Oh no, is he already at the age where he’s too cool for classroom parties!?  I hope not!

After we made our way out of the school…It’s absolute madness trying to get out of that school with all the kids in costumes and parents running every which way.  The fact that we made it out of there in one piece is amazing.  I’m generally parked in the bus lane and the office is calling over the loud speaker to get the illegally parked cars moved immediately.  I’m certain the school is on to me by now.  I need to start showing up in a disguised vehicle!

When we get home we make our final preparations for our annual family Halloween party!!  It’s the best night!!

It’s a tradition to do a Halloween-themed food contest and I’m thrilled my kids love to participate.  This year I had a meeting with them in advance to explain that we do this for fun and if you don’t win a prize…it’s OK!  No pouting allowed on Halloween!  Is it sad that my kids are so stinkin’ competitive that I have to have a pre-party meeting!!??  I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember and I think I’ve only won once!  This is Reece’s first year to participate and she made these cute vampire donuts…

 

Here are the rest of our entries…they are so awesome!!

My dad is always complaining about the scoring system so he came up with three categories…most creative, best tasting, and most spooky.  Morgan was afraid he was trying to take over her job of the director of the contest but she and her friends still got to count the votes and I assured her that her director position was still hers!

and the winners were….

Emma (first time contestant) for best tasting

Edie & Scott for most creative

And Reece for most spooky

I’m throwing Jake in here for honorable mention because he worked so hard on this and look how great his cookie monster came out!!  All the cookies were gone in a flash by the way!

This year we were thrilled that Collin got to be with us all night…he’s the other unicorn.  What is it with unicorns this year!?  A popular costume choice!  Morgan changed out of her tourist outfit and was a ‘night unicorn’ named by Reece.  It didn’t come out quite as she had envisioned.  Somehow the glue for her blue fake eyelashes was causing her a lot of issues so she lost the lashes and went with the blue lipstick and facial stickers.Trick or treating was very cold!  We made it around our street and my hands were completely numb.  The little kiddos are mesmerized by the houses that have decorations outside and particularly fancy, spooky lights.  They will even bypass a house just to get to the lights!

The older kiddos made it through the neighborhood behind us and came in with pounds of candy.  Morgan handled handing out candy at our house and as usual we wished for more trick or treaters!  Apparently I need some of those fancy spooky lights to try to lure more in!

The kids are pretty good about sharing their candy with the adults.  My dad was doing a good job of protecting his stash.  Morgan hoped her siblings would share with her because she decided it was too cold to go out and get her own.  No worries MoMo, there is plenty to go around!  We had several bags leftover which we gave to Emma to take home to play candy poker with her family.  Sounds interesting doesn’t it!?  We might need to get that on the agenda for next year!  

And perfectly fitting that Reece would lose her 8th tooth on Halloween night!  She is definitely sporting that hillbilly grin just like Drew blessed us with the last few years.

Now I’m left with this disturbing amount of Halloween garb to put away….I swear it’s multiplying by the minute.  I have no idea how I get this shoved in two bins.  It doesn’t seem possible.  Perhaps I have a problem!?  Already Jake is mentioning that it’s sad that all the decorations are down, especially the lights.  I agree, Jakers, it’s sad.  Before we know it, we’ll be stringing Christmas lights and stressing about buying the perfect gifts for everyone.  Oh my, I better get my wine stash stocked up for that!

 

Happy Halloween!

While most people already have sugar plums dancing in their heads and Christmas shopping started, I’m dreaming of costumes, pretty Fall leaves, and the pumpkin patch!  I love going to the patch.  Last year I think we may have skipped that activity because we went on a family trip to Turks & Caicos.  Ok, I guess that was totally worth the skip!!

This year we took a Friday morning trip to the patch because we were out of school for conferences.  We had Emma with us of course!  She’s with us quite a bit so we joke that she is our foreign exchange student 😉

She truly has an amazing family but they are in the process of building a house and logistics are complicated, so we get to have her from time to time, and we love it!  Morgan and Emma remind me of myself and my BFF, Lisa, we were literally inseparable from Kindergarten all the way through graduation.  And she’s still my bestie for life!  I might have been at the Catalina house more than I was at my own.  Look at us!!Can you even get over our hair!!  It’s so awesome!  Kids, before you completely freak out and make fun of me for the rest of eternity, just realize that EVERYBODY looked like this…it was the style back then and the entire high school wandered around looking this way!  I’d like to think we have really improved upon our looks over the years!

We were with my string bean twin brother, Greg, constantly and the other guy is Steve Davis who lived close by.  Who knows what we were doing but it sure looks like we were having fun!  Notice my Benetton sweatshirt which was very popular then.  I don’t even know if that brand exists anymore and Lee is wearing some awesome coral pants…what are those!?

Ok I’m totally digressing!  I’m supposed to be talking about the pumpkin patch!  Morgan and Emma were trying to take some Fall pictures to post on Instagram.  We cracked up  because clearly we are not pros at this!!Brian was jumping in and doing his best social media look…you know the tongue out and chop off half your face look…

Ok so maybe we did get a few cute ones!We had a blast rolling BIG pumpkins and even brought a ball to play catch in the patch.  Maybe the owners wouldn’t be too happy about either of those things…We picked out a few of our favorite pumpkins and headed back home.  Thank you kiddos for completely making my day!!  XOXO

 

 

 

Here is a Shutterfly link to all of our pumpkin patch photos….

pix.sfly.com/Z3RZtVUN