It's the little things

They say it's the little things in life that make you happy.

I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that's true...at least for me.

We spent an absolutely wonderful few days visiting the in-laws in Kentucky. Everything was excellent, 'cept the night I spent throwing up my guts. Not sure what happened-- one minute I was fine, the next I was in the restroom hugging the toilet and asking Craig to bring me a ponytail holder.

Other than that minor 12-hour inconvenience, the trip was lovely.

Craig's Aunt Barb came down from Northern KY to visit and when we spent time together on Friday, she gave us this:

I am ecstatic over this. I'm not kidding.

Barb works for a candy-decorating/wrapping company that packages treats. She gets to design the wrappings, containers, holder, etc for all kinds of stores (Target, Wal-Mart, Williams-Sonoma). This also means that just about anytime she visits, we get to enjoy the fruits (and sweets) of her labor.

When she handed me this most fantastic box of sprinkles, I literally jumped out of my chair in excitement. It may be because I was wanting Christmas sprinkles (to use with an upcoming Elf on the Shelf venture) and I refused to pay money for something I don't eat (I don't eat sprinkles, sorry Barb) OR because I know that once I've used all of the sprinkles, I'm going to have a fabulous tackle-like box to reuse as I see fit.

Seriously, as I'm typing this, I still have a huge smile on my face.

I'm also very happy, and thankful, for the PJs that the in-laws gave RJ. One tradition we're hoping to start is to give RJ a pair of winter/Christmas PJs on Nov 30th of each year so that on Dec 1st, when we're celebrating our North Pole breakfast, he'll look snazzy for the million pictures I'll inevitably take. Cute, huh??

While in KY, we had a wonderful "Friendsgiving" dinner with three of our favorite college couples, Aimee and Johan, and Tim and Emily, and Seth and Erin. Even though Em is NINE months pregnant, she still graciously invited us (and, collectively, our 4 kids- plus their singleton) into their home for a full course meal. Thankful doesn't begin to describe how I feel about having such special friends in our lives. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera and I'm terrible at carrying my phone with me, so I didn't snap ANY pics of the gathering.

The grateful spirit of the holidays, the anticipation of the upcoming magic of the season, and the gathering of family and friends makes for some of my favorite days of the year.

Oh, and Connie sent us our holiday bucket list. More to come on that.....it's fabulous.

This is my life

This picture makes me happy. It represents my usual Saturday or Sunday morning.

I've overtaken the kitchen table.

This morning is particularly happy for me for several reason:

1) My Starbucks Christmas tumbler made it's first appearance of the season
2) We accidentally got TWO coupon books in the Sunday paper
3) My iPad spontaneously started playing Garth Brooks' Beyond the Season Christmas Album

I'm working on my menu planning and grocery lists. I normally meal plan 2 weeks at a time, but I've decided to tackle the rest of Nov and all of December. Having meals planned ahead of time definitely helps me enjoy life a little more than usual.

Planning ahead also ensures I try new recipes every once in a while, like the French Toast Muffins I'm making for our North Pole breakfast on Sat, Dec 1st. I'm not spilling too many details about the big breakfast, but just you wait, it's going to be AWESOME!

I'm back :)

My last blog post is dated May 2012.

I quit Facebook back in June 2012.

Basically, I fell off the Internet Earth. Well, maybe not fell...more like bungee jumped because I'm back :)

A few updates:

I LOVE being a stay-at-home mom. It's even better than I imagined. You can read all about how much I love it here.

RJ turned TWO. I can't even believe it. Isn't he adorable?

Back in September he started going to school one day a week. Not surprisingly, he loves it. 

I'm still in love with Peyton Manning, even though he plays for Denver now. I also still follow the Colts. Have since the late 90's....no reason to stop now. 

I joined our local MOPS group (Mothers of Preschoolers). By the 3rd meeting, I found myself responsible for the monthly newsletter. 

My life right now consists of planning the first edition of Elf on the Shelf. And I'm so freaking excited. Elf on the Shelf is one of the main reasons I wanted to have children right up my alley. The creativity and constant planning suit my Type-A personality well. I've promised several people that I'll blog about our Elf adventures. And I will. Pinky Promise ;)

Christmas planning is also in fully swing. I'm not someone who gets upset when the stores bust out the Holiday decorations in October. I start planning in August, so I'm excited when stores play along and let me get stuff done early.

This year, Connie and I are doing a Christmas Bucket list exchange. We're each coming up with five things for the other one to do this Holiday Season. I can't wait to get our list. I'm sure it'll be blog-worthy.  

That's it for now. Come back, though, I may have another post and you won't have to wait 6 months for it :)

Geocache Finds #54-58

Spent Saturday morning out geocaching with Jill & Denny. It was a beautiful day and we cached up in Edwardsville. Picked up finds #54-58. I'm thinking my updated New Years Resolution will be to find 100 :) That was my original goal, but Hubs talked me into a more "realistic" one. Looks like 100 wasn't that unrealistic after all!

#54

TB Lay-Over

Hidden: 11/8/2011

Found: 5/26/2012

I totally forgot to bring the travel bug (TB) I have (Globetrotter), but this was a nice, easy, quick cache nonetheless.

The cache was a large cooler hidden under the rock pile.

#55

Bridge over Troubled Cache

Hidden: 3/14/08

Found: 5/26/2012

This was took us a few minutes to find, but luckily Craig came through for us (again).  It was a small bison tube tied to a screw inside of the fence rail on a bike trail overpass. 

Can you see the bison tube hanging on the string?

#56

Slices of Quince

Hidden: 4/7/2001

Found: 5/26/2012

Although this was a pretty tricky find, it was cool for two reasons: It's been hidden since 4/7/2001 (11 years ago), but it was also my first letterbox find (well, letterbox/geocache hybrid). And truth be told, I didn't find it. Neither did Jill. Craig had to get out of the car and point it out to us after we looked like very suspicious people snooping around someone's yard. It didn't help that our GPS had us off by more than 40 feet on this one.

Can you see it hidden under the flowers?

It's a hidden mailbox!

 It contained both a letterbox and a geocache.

#57

Drost Park's Trail Head

Hidden: 3/14/2008 

Found: 5/26/2012

This cache was pretty lame. It was just a piece of paper inside a plastic sleeve attached to the map at the park. Dumb. But, we signed the log so we could pick up another point.

#58 

Water Pipe

Hidden: 8/25/2010

Found: 5/26/2012

This was a really cool cache. The instructions told us to bring a gallon of water with us and to "pour fast" once we found the GPS coordinates. The cache was a metal pipe affixed to a fence. You never know if what you've found is actually the cache until you locate the log. In this case, we took a leap of faith and just started pouring the water into the pipe. Luckily within a few seconds, a clear tub floated up to the top. We grabbed the tube, signed the log, and added another smiley (find) to our list. 

 After caching for a few hours out in the heat, we were spent. We headed off to Peel (wood fired pizza-- YUMMO) and then home for the day.

All in all, it was a great day. The weather was beautiful (even though it was hot) and we had great company! We were able to find some cool caches and hike to burn off a few calories.

Summer bucket list

Connie recently created her summer bucket list. As a Connie-wannabe, I also now need a summer bucket list.

Hopefully at the end of the summer I'll be able to say "I did it!"

• Make homemade ice cream
• See the beach
• Geocache in St. Louis
• Make a water balloon pinata
• Nature Scavenger Hunt
• Watch Fireworks
• Release sky lanterns
• Go to the Zoo
• Start a vacation journal for Ryan
• Fly a kite
• Make a video collage of the summer
• Make a handmade card and mail it to (great) Grandma & Grandpa L
• Go Fishing
• Play The Big Bang Drinking Game
• Make homemade Mac'n'cheese

I'm gunna slap the list onto a poster board so we can keep track of our summer fun. Pics to follow!

Geocache Finds #51 - #53

Thanks to Hubs suggestion, we went geocaching outside of our hometown. As a result, we found some really great new places to hang out!

We tried finding some at the park, but there was a summer camp going on so we had to reevaluate. Luckily our little detour ended up getting us some really cool grabs.

#51

"Got Digits?"

Hidden: 7/9/2011

Found: 5/19/2012

This cache was in a very populated (high muggle) area so after two brief tries at finding it, I sent in the Hubs instead. Of course he found it immediately. Punk.  It was a magnetic box attached to a very old payphone (hence the name "Got Digits"). It was a quick, relatively easy grab. I totally forgot to snap a pic.

#52

"Got Bread?"

Hidden: 7/9/2011

Found: 5/19/2012

This cache was part of a series of caches in town. I think we found all 3 of them with "Got Bread" being the final find. We really liked this cache because it was located near a lake we didn't know existed. It's a cool place, a little off the beaten path, and we can fish there! There were several cement lions in a rock garden that RJ wasn't particularly fond of :) The cache was located under a fake rock pile. 

"Got Bread" geocache

Can you see the terror in his face? He wasn't fond of the lion :)

After finding the cache, we walked around the lake, which ended up being quite a hike. I'm excited to have found a good fishing hole. We'll definitely be back.

There was another cache on this bridge, but we couldn't find it and, according to the GPS, it hasn't been found since Dec 2011 (which means it probably doesn't exist anymore). It's a cool place to place a cache, though! Maybe we'll place one there someday. 

#53

"Roxastonzen" 

Hidden: 5/1/2011

Found: 5/19/2012

And finally, our FAVORITE find of the day! This was definitely off the beaten path and it took us quite a while to figure out how to even get to the coordinates. First we started walking towards a field, but then realized there was a huge ditch we had to cross and we certainly couldn't do that with the kid in tow. Then we figured out that we had to back track and go vertical. We had to climb up a steep hillside onto an old platform that used to be an active railroad track. We hiked down the trail and finally found a clearing in the trees. 

After about 25 minutes of hiking and backtracking, we Craig finally found it.

Can you find it? I circled it in the pic above...

It had a pulley system which we used to lower it so we could sign the log. This was definitely our favorite cache of the day, therefore earning the much coveted Favorite Award on the geocaching website.

 RJ did awesome throughout the morning. It was HOT and we got quite the workout, but he handled it like a champ. Just as he always does :)

RJ is the main reason we started geocaching in the first place. We wanted something to do outside with him once he was old enough. Now we have this fun and physical activity and it definitely gets us outside experiencing all that Mother Nature has to offer. 

Until next time!

Geocache Find #50!

I did it!

My New Year's Resolution for 2012 was to reach 50 geocaches found. Well today, we did it!

It is absolutely beautiful outside today and hubby asked if I wanted to go geocaching. Of course I do :) We loaded up on caches and for the first time, we exclusively geocached outside of our hometown (in a town about 10 miles away). 

#50

"Got Horsepower"

Hidden: 7/9/2011

Found: 5/19/2012

While I forgot to snap a pic of the actual cache, I did get a few of us near the statue for which the cache was named:

"A Horseeeee!"

We picked up several more caches today, including one that earned a much coveted "Favorite" award!