Easter

Happy Easter! We spent Easter with our family this year and had a great time! Ben got to spend lots of quality time with all of his grandparents, including great-grandparents and he loved every minute of it! Sadly, as I was looking through the pictures on our camera, we didn't get any good ones of Ben with the grandparents, so we will have to make sure to get some next time.

We spent the evening with Grandma Julie and Great-grandma Ann and Great-grandpa John on Saturdy to celebrate my Mom's birthday and Easter. We had delicious food and lots of fun! On Sunday, we celebrated Easter and had dinner at Brenda and Cary's and my Mom, Grandma Pat, and Jason were there as well. Melissa, Clayton and Marshall came to visit in the evening and we really enjoyed ourselves! Marshall is the cutest and sweetest baby!

Ben is a very loved boy and got several Easter baskets this year. He got a Toy Story themed one from the Easter Bunny, Cars themed one from Grandma Julie, Spiderman themed one from Mema and Papa, one from Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Chris and some candy and bubbles from Great-grandma Pat. Ben had so much fun looking for Easter eggs in the yard on Sunday after his nap. What amazing weather for Easter! We are definitely blessed!

New Job

Wow! It has been forever since I posted anything on here! I have been super busy with work and home stuff for the past few months. I have been so busy that I decided to change positions at work. My job was becoming overwhelming and I felt like I was neglecting my family and house and falling short of expectations due to high caseloads and working 50 or more hours each week plus on call responsbilities, so it was definitely time for a change. It is really hard for me to admit when I cannot handle something or balance things, so it was really hard for me to change jobs, however, I am so grateful I made this decision. Already, I am working regular hours and feel far less stressed out. I get to spend more time with Nate and Ben and have been keeping up (a little better) with housework. I have a reduced caseload and most of my time is spent completing mental health assessments for another program at work. I really enjoy what I am doing and feel like I have way more of a balance now. I can tell that Ben is happier now that I am home in time for his bedtime routine most nights and I get to spend more time with him. Nate has more responsbility and stress at work right now, so it is great that I have less. I still have to work kind of late some nights but I go in later now to balance my time at work and I wasn't able to do that before because I had too much to do. Life is good! I am beyond blessed and thank the Lord every single day for everything that I have in my life!

Christmas 2011

We had a wonderful Christmas this year, celebrating from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day. Nate and I off were both off of work and we had company during our vacation which was awesome! Brenda, Cary and our friend Jimmy (who went to college with Nate) came to visit for the entire time we were off of work. With the amazing and generous help from Brenda, Cary and Jimmy, we painted Nate's garage (the inside) and hung signs to give it more of a finished look. It turned out awesome! Then, my Mom, her boyfriend Steve, our friends Doug, Amanda and Elyse and Joe, Kate and Zoe came to celebrate the New Year with us. We had a lot of fun! I will post pictures from my Mom's visit and New Year's later. Merry Christmas!

Stoney Creek Inn

We stayed at Stoney Creek Inn with Mema and Papa (aka Brenda and Cary) and Ben had lots of fun as always! We had a rough night in terms of sleep and had family photos the next day with my amazingly talented best friend Mandy of Mandy Marie Photography! Ben was not very cooperative due to lack of sleep so we will likely be doing another session for family photos sometime this spring or summer. Here are some photos from the hotel and pool:

Grandma Pat's Birthday

We traveled to Iowa to celebrate Grandma Pat's birthday! We had a lot of fun and enjoyed seeing family! Ben had tons of fun playing with the other kiddos!

Anniversary Weekend Photos

"Look, I'm stuck in the castle"

I wonder where he gets that expression from?

Anniversary Weekend

Cary and Brenda came over to help us out again! I'm starting to see a theme in our posts and that we really owe them big time! LOL Anyway, our 4 year anniversary was on August 18 and we still have never had a vacation since we got married; we didn't even have a honeymoon. So, we originally were planning a weekend trip to Chicago, but in an effort to save money (we are putting a ton of money into our home) and due to the uncertainty of whether we were going to have our mini vacation this weekend, we decided to just get a hotel room in Peoria for Friday and Saturday nights. Even though we didn't do much and didn't go very far away, I think that Nate and I got the R&R we were needing. Really, just a long weekend from work was what we were both needing.

We took Thursday and Friday off of work. On Thursday, we cleaned the house all day. Cary and Brenda got to our house on Thursday afternoon. We enjoyed time with them on Thursday evening and most of Friday. I think we checked into the hotel around 3:30pm. After we checked into the hotel, we took a nap (which neither of us had really done in forever), had a drink at the complimentary happy hour at the hotel, then went out to dinner at Jonah's, which is a nice seafood restaurant in Peoria, then we went out for a couple of drinks at a nearby bar after dinner. The bar was just across the river, so we walked over and back and it was really nice. Dinner was so, so yummy!!! I had marlin and Nate had a fried seafood platter. On Saturday, we went to the movies for the first time in 3 years and saw the final Harry Potter movie at 10:30am, which we both enjoyed. After the movie, we had lunch a Tequila's, a Mexican restaurant in Washington, which was super yummy. Then we had another nap (kinda pathetic, we know). We had dinner at Granite City Saturday evening, watched a movie in our room (The Switch-pretty funny) and called it an early night. We got up Sunday morning, enjoyed their excellent breakfast at the hotel and headed home. We were so excited to see Ben and we missed him so much, even though we were only gone for 2 days. He was pretty excited to see us too and in all, it was a great weekend!!!