Happy Birthday Mom!!

Today would have been my moms 60th Birthday. We couldn't let the day pass without doing something for her. So a bunch of us (Kari, Linda, Shelley, Kristy, my Dad, and I) got together and went over to the place that sells headstones. My Dad had gone there about a month ago and looked at a design he liked. He had brought home a paper with the design and we all liked it. So the plan was to go order it today. Well interestingly enough we all walked in and were drawn to a different headstone they had on display. It is a mountain scene with trees and a river running thru it. We all decided it was the one we wanted. So we ordered it and put a down payment on it. We also are going to have them add a couple deer into the scene. It will be pretty when it is done. They said they can have it done by the end of February. It will be nice to finally get a headstone for her grave.

We were then going to go to the cemetery but we ran out of time before people had to start picking up kids from school. So Kari and Kristy went their separate ways. After Linda got her kids picked up those of us remaining headed to Zurchers and bought some birthday balloons. We then went to the cemetery and sent them to mom. It was nice doing that. I am glad we did something nice for her. I got some pictures while we were there also, so here it goes...

Happy Birthday Molly!!

Molly turned 6 yrs old today. We threw her a little birthday party. I made a cake for the humans as well as one for the dogs. The cake I made for the dogs smelled horrible! It had chicken baby food as well as chunks of chicken in it. I then used Yogurt mixed with Peanut Butter as icing... and sprinkled crumbled Beggin Strips on top. The dogs seemed to like it.

Human Cake (nothing exciting... just a quickly made cake)

I made some cupcakes and then put the rest of the batter and cooked as a cake. Each of the dogs started with a cupcake and then they all shared the cake.

Molly got lots of presents. She ended up with like three different types of dog treats, dog bones, and a toy. She was really funny opening the presents.

It was a lot of fun. Linda even made my favorite meal for dinner. I also spent some time playing Mario Bros on the Wii with my nieces and nephews. It was a blast! I love that you can have four players at once.. Its chaotic but oh so fun! That is now a game I would like to get.

Last night Mike and I were up till the wee hours of the morning cleaning and arranging our game room. We decided we are now going to turn it into an exercise room. Mikes boss gave him a stair climbing machine which is now in there. Jenny also said I can have her treadmill... so it will be nice once we have everything all hooked up and going. Now I just have to drag myself in there to exercise a few times a week. It will be interesting to see how that all works out.

Snow Tubing

Yesterday Linda called me up and asked if I wanted to go snow tubing with them. It turned out to be a ton of fun. It was Linda, Dave and their kids, Shelley and her kids, Jenny and her kids. It was so much fun. Sadly I didn't take my camera so I didn't get many pictures. I was kinda sore after tubing though. Part of it was also from doing a long work out earlier that morning on Wii Fit Plus. After tubing we went to Chilis. Mike and I split an appetizer. We were on a bit of a budget.

Today we managed to get all of the Christmas stuff taken down. It is nice to have the house back to normal and to have the vents in the living room open again so it wont be so cold in there. After that I called around to a few places looking for snow tubes or sleds. Nobody seemed to have any.

We met up with the family and did some more tubing. This time I thought to bring some garbage bags. We found that the normal sized ones don't work so well...but the big black industrial bags we were using to bag leaves work great! It was actually a lot faster going down on the bag then it was to go on the tubes. It was a bit more painful though. It was a blast!

I brought my camera and got a few pictures but I was more focused on tubing than taking pictures. There were some funny moments like when Kristin ran into Parker. Parker ended up riding on Kristin's back the rest of the way down the hill. Mike tried to go on the garbage bag standing up. He ended up on his side. There was also a moment that Mike snuck up behind me with a tube. He pulled me down on the tube and pushed me down the hill. I was probably halfway down the hill before I knew what was happening. it was fun.

We also had some not so good things. Jenny and Ben collided and Ben hit his head pretty hard. Alex ended up with a big scratch on the back of his neck from Hannah's tube. There was even the time Jenny and I were racing each other down the hill and trying to push each other over. It was a blast! Next time we will bring more industrial garbage bags. Who would have thought they could be so fun! Now for the pictures....