Happy Birthday, Kalyn!

I feel sometimes like my closest friends and I are more like a collection of puzzle pieces that happen to be settled all over... everywhere. From Illinois to Pennsylvania, South Carolina to Michigan, New York, California... seriously.  I love and hate how spread out we are, but that just means we're all pursuing what our hearts are telling us to do, and finding happiness that way. Plus, it just makes the reunions - sporadic as they may be - just that much better.

Today's Kalyn's birthday. This girl's one of those scattered pieces that comprises my core circle. We definitely don't see each other nearly as often as we should, but when it happens, it's like no time has lapsed at all. Happy birthday, lady... love you to the mountain and back, ya weirdo!

happy biiiiirthday! 

And for the sake of nostalgia, some of my other favorite memories that didn't fit into a pre-sized photo collage: 

antics in phoenix, az

the day we wore the same shorts and went the grand canyon

the time we thought the camera was way lower than it was.
there were probably 3 feet of dead space that i cropped off the top of this.. haha

kalyn's mom's wedding.. we sang that time, too.. haha

Kalyn, thanks for being a stone-cold odd bird; if you were any different, I just don't know how we'd swing being friends.. haha. Seriously, love you dear friend, and I am so thankful for all the times you were there and the memories that were made. Cheers to the next year of adventures! 

And cheers to the rest of ya'll - have a beautiful week! 

xo | cmd

2015 : Day 1.

We had something of a delayed start today, as we slept in until about 10am before packing up and leaving the hotel. We made a beeline back to Dillon's house, where we all gladly embraced the opportunity to do absolutely nothing for a couple of hours.

When the time rolled around for bodies to start moving from hibernation, Dillon & Rob took off with Dillon's nephew for some bowling, and I headed the opposite direction to rendezvous with Ali and Damanji.

these two! :D 

We did dinner & a super quick stop by the mall [fun fact: it closes at 6pm on New Years Day] before parting ways for this time around. I hopped back in the car and traced my steps back past Dillon's to the bowling alley, where the boys were still working hard on the lanes.

random. ♥

By the time we left the lanes a few hours later, we were ready for a night in on the couch, checking out new & re-run episodes of Gas Monkey Garage. Pajamas is a perfectly-good look for us tonight, contrasting the black tie get-ups we sported about 24 hours ago. I'm completely fine with this arrangement :).

I hope each of you had a terrific start to the New Year, as well!

xo | cmd

Best Friend | Sunsets | Bowling

Ali and I missed out yesterday on getting together, but we were determined to make it happen before I left town. Sooooo, we met up this morning at Crackerbarrel for breakfast. It was pretty awesome, but duhhh, of course it is whenever I get to see her!

love you, ali!!!

After breakfast, we ran some quick errands before she had to head in to work, and I found myself back at Rob's for a continued run at some more packing and cleaning up around his house. If you're tuning in for the first time, the update as of now is that he's moving to Ohio and we've been ransacking his house in preparation for the big haul. Fun stuff, right there... :|

.. taking a break ;)

The evening started to creep in, so Rob and I headed off on an errand run, which wound up taking us out to Horseshoe Lake; I was mad at this point that I'd left my camera at the house, but my cell phone did what it could to capture the sunset across the way..

horseshoe lake..

Anyway, it came time for dinner with some other friends, which happened to be at Sushi Tatsu in Fairview.

... For the second night in a row, Rob and I ordered the exact same things from the exact same place. I'm not mad about it, because I love sushi, but it is kind of funny that I just remembered this place yesterday and now we've been twice. Oh well; the second time with friends was way better anway!

Finally, we were off to bowling in O'Fallon; with this bunch, it's never a dull moment!

my love, the pool shark

his & hers ♥

holdin' down the fort for the girls
fil. haley. anna. cori. jesse......... & bobert, haha (:

And of course, we picked the bowling alley with an arcade, so naturally the boys took to it like teenagers... which was just as fun to watch I'm sure as it was for them to do it.

boys will be boys!

yes.. yes, they will. haha

We're in the fiiiiinal countdown to Christmas. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and thennnnn... Christmas! (:

For now, good night, blogbots!

xo | cmd

Birthday. Bowling. Backdated... ;)

Rob left early for work today, before I was fully coherent, so when I finally woke up, it was to these two...

gahhhh... love these meatballs to pieces! | #stellapittie & #sashapittie

^ How could you possibly be mad about that?
... well, when Sasha is on the bed, in your face, eating your hair... haha ;)
..... but seriously, I love it.. and I miss these two.

Oh, and some shameless selfies... experimenting with BW vs. Color qualities from my phone .. because I had that much time to myself this morning & because my cousin just hooked it up on Sephora gear that I still have no idea how to use... haha. 

#shamelessselfies | #sephoranewbie | #workinprogress

I spent the morning tidying up a bit, and started putting some final touches on the little art projets I'm doing. No pictures for you blogbots just yet; a couple of these are surprises for a few people and I'd hate to give spoilers! ;) I'll show & tell once all's said and done.

Anywhoooo... Rob got off work and came back to the house.. we spent the better part of the early afternoon just relaxing, which we both welcomed after long weeks.. him especially after working a busy Saturday morning. Good thing, too, because after that we were off to Kyle's for Dalten's 7th birthday party [HBD, Dalten!!]

Rob & I of course made it a point to act our age and then some, too...

reasons i ♥ him, continued....

Once the birthday festivities were over, it was back to the house to spend some time with the dogs and sneak in a nap, because let's face it.. it's Saturday.. and well, we can. (: No shame there! Again, probably the best thing we did with the early evening, because by 9:00, we were out with some of Rob's friends for bowling in Fairview & what turned out to be a driveway lounge until about 3ish? in the morning. The boys were boys, for sure, while Taryn, Paris & I decided we're way too old to be awake at that hour, and all but fell asleep before we all headed our separate ways. It was definitely a late night, but super low key and most definitely not one that I minded. I of course managed to meet some great new faces tonight, which made for great company and fun conversation.

No complaints here (:
Tomorrow = boating... & ??
G'Nite!

xo | cmd

Bowling, Bring IT

Sometimes I like to pretend I'm halfway decent at bowling.

@the bottom..

I think I'm going to take up bowling as a winter endeavor [when the slopes are unavailable]. It's a good way to unwind, and easy to manage during inclement weather. Everyone wins. Except me, after the first game. I dunno what it is about bowling, but I get progressively worse the more I bowl.. not better. Go figure.

That was the scoreboard after an outing with Mo, Jimmy & Becky. Regardless of scores, it was a good time and much-needed at that.

I need to get out more. (:

xo | cmd

Better Be a Baller to Bowl in Phoenix...



tennis :)

We got off to something of a late start today, but it was all good once we did get moving. We started off the day with a hike up from the apartment to the resort on the neighboring mountain. Being everything except conditioned to traversing inclines of any type right now [IL is essentially like treading across a sheet of paper], it was admittedly a winded experience, but absolutely worth it.
Once we'd done that, we headed to the apartment to meet up with and trek over to the resort. We got into some good tennis there before making our way to the resort pool. The guys insisted on doing a few runs down the waterslide before we recruited a random vacationing couple to even out the numbers for a fervent game of pool volleyball scored on a scale of "good one" or "that's gotta be out!". Needless to say, it was sheerly recreational with no final score.


we make our own fun :)

 Back at the apartment, it was a quick shower [and some quick refreshments!] before the four of us headed out to the bowling alley. P.S.: Bowling in Phoenix is crazy expensive! I definitely took for granted the $1 games, $1 shoe rentals, and $1 food and beverage items at the base bowling alley. Here, it was nearly $15 each, which tastes just as icky recalling it now as it did while we were standing at the registers tonight. Oh well. We made it through two sorta serious games before the third game rolled around and we were getting sick of bowling altogether. That usually leads to goofball bowling, which is exactly what happened. We got some of that glory on tape :)

See exhibits below.

Love them.

Kalyn's gotta work in the morning; Sam, Joe & I are going to church and then meeting up with her later. Time for some ZzZz's..........

xo | cmd

Oh To Be.. In OH-IO :)

I feel like I've been awake for a very long time.

That could have something to do with the fact that I have been awake for a while, didn't get to bed until late last night, and then topped with a 6 hour drive back to Ohio. Just sayin'.

Sydni and I pulled out of the driveway at 5am this morning and rolled into our final destination just after 11am EST.  We met Joe there and spent some time catching up as a trio before heading out to Mason to visit Joe's mom at work.


mini admin

As it turns out, Sydni seems to have the blood of an office administrator; she wasted no time in settling in to Sandy's desk, taking the whole process very seriously. We let her finish up her pretend phone calls to everyone she knows [Nana, Pappy, Mamaw, Dawne, LandonBabot, Bootsie, Joe, and myself - they were very short conversations, ha] before toting her off to grab some lunch and head to the park.

the dills ♥

It was hardly crowded at Miami Meadows, which I thought unusual for a Saturday until I remembered it's a holiday weekend. The only real mass of people outlined the soccer fields, where elementary-aged kids swarmed around in a group after the ball. I remember that. So does Joe, and it all gave me a new excitement for when Sydni gets to that point. We took a long walk, stopping every 10 feet or so for Sydni to pluck and splatter blow all the seeds off of those white puffy dandelions. Sorry for the gross repopulation of those things, pretty park; I'm pretty sure they'll quadruple in number from Sydni's efforts alone today.

We decided to head back home, which led to Sydni begging us to ceding point to sit and watch Tangled with her. We've only seen that movie a grand total of abouuuut 74982378048320750217 times now, but I'm pretty certain anyone with small children knows exactly how this feels; if you've got little girls right now, then you also know all the lines and lyrics to this movie, just like we do.

Joe's mom made it home mid-afternoon, and volunteered to watch Sydni so we could meet with Justin and his family for an expedition to the bowling alley. JB & his mom are apparently on the same bowling league, through her work; I would later make the conclusion that everyone who works for this local Toyota dealership is apparently just hairs shy of pro-bowler status. I've never seen so many consecutive strikes in my life, not in person anyway. We were there for 3 games, plenty of time for us to catch up with JB, Dez, and the rest of the Boesherz family, but not before Joe was pulled over for speeding, on the 2 mile stretch between our place and the bowling alley.

are you kidding me?!

Let me just say that I find it a stark injustice at how easily Joe can wiggle out of traffic tickets. For the last two years, he's been pulled over a small handful of times, each one resulting in a WARNING. Seriously? I very clearly recall being right around the 8month mark of my pregnancy and getting a speeding ticket while taking Kalyn home. I remember propping the clipboard up on my quite obvious bump and angrily signing my name away. Not even 10 miles over the speed limit, either, and here my husband has slid right through the grasps of at least 4 speeding tickets in the last year or so, maybe including this one. I'm not really allll that suprised, what with his cunning ability to sell people onto his brainwave; in hindsight now I'm actually more surprised that these officers haven't been paying him to continue on his way when it's all said and done.

Anyway, tomorrow is church with my family and Easter with Joe's family; the annual easter egg hunt is going to be in full effect, and we'll finally get to see Nicki, Joe's sister, who is newly pregnant with their 3rd child. We've got a neice or nephew on the way!

Time to get rested....

xo | cmd

Walkin' to Church

So yesterday after we finished our first tour of some of St. Louis’ favorite attractions, we took a short stroll around the grounds of our townhome community. We discovered a grassy field out back that led straight into the Towerview parking lot. Today we opted to walk to church instead of drive the ¾ mile to get there.

After church, we met up again with Kyle, Lorne, and also Tyler at the base bowling alley for $1 day – the games, food, and most beverages are all $1/ea on Sundays. We played two games each, and I was quickly reminded that I should probably bowl more frequently than once every three months. Oh, well.

The rest of the afternoon was exactly what should be expected out of a Sunday: absolutely nothing fancy, just more Wii and relaxing. Joe got a call around 9:30 that he doesn’t have to report to work tomorrow because the obs floor still isn’t finished [remodeling], so that means all of us can make the trip to the airport in the morning to drop Eric off.

The boys are head to head on an NES baseball tournament, so I’ll leave that monster to run its course and head to bed ;)

xo | cmd

Happy 25th Birthday, Kalyn!



Kalyn | 25!



My best friend turned 25 yesterday!

What's the best way to celebrate a 25th birthday?

Don 80's gear on a Friday night to a Mexican restaurant in the middle of Cincinnati, and then to a bowling alley.

-- Duh. :)

Yeah, that's exactly what happened yesterday, and it was phenomenal.

[[ However, it became apparent that in the event I deck out in high-intensity eye makeup and crimped hair again, I will need a copy of everything from my birth certificate to my tax return.

Yes, the servers at the restaurant thought I was underage.

No, my ID wasn't enough.

Yes, they asked my best friend's mother to assume "liability" for me.

-- Nah, it's cool. I'm only 26. :) I'll take that as a compliment. ]]

********************************
Anyway, here's the abridged version of the neon debachle that was last night.

Enjoy!



Brittany | Kalyn | Cori
*aka* Charlie's Angels.. as we've been commonly renamed.

 

Linda | Kalyn | Cori | Brittany | Kara




:: Love ::



Best Friend :)





 





  



 

   



     



Neon Visors? Check.



  




Headbands? Check.




Gold Jackets? Check.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:: Needless to Say, I have some downright amazing people in my life, and I consider myself blessed to be able to say it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

xo,

.: CMD