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

& A Few [More] of My Favorite People (:

Today was definitely an improvement from yesterday (;

1 | Breakfast with two great friends from here [Ali & DeShawn] at Crackerbarrel. We met them mid-morning for a table full of food like we usually do, and some little gifts for Ali since she's switching jobs here within the next couple of weeks:


except for the wooden carved turtle, this was our gift...
... sydni did most of the picking.. pretty good job! ;)

Oh, and DeShawn [Damanji] got a small taste of Sydni's favorite pasttime... and no, it's not checkers. It's the "I WIN" game, and today she granted herself 12 trophies and Damanji got... a sticker. Womp womp womp...

"i win!" - sydni

We finished breakfast and decided that with all of the rain and storming from late yesterday, we'd bypass the zoo. Instead, we headed off to the Magic House in St. Louis, a place where Sydni has always had fun, and definitely did again today. It was a little chilly when we arrived, but it worked out to be a beautiful day by the time we were back outside to play in the sand pit.

Something funny Rob pointed out:


this is true. this is so true.

Some other documentation for the day...


fun @ the magic house! | st. louis, mo

& of course, she just had to have Mr. Rob help her with everything. Well, correction, she insisted on helping him... with everything.


who's helping who? who knows...

Oh, and sand sculptor Dan Belcher was here, too! Check it out...

amazing!

We had a great time. Sydni played herself out so thoroughly that she was out before we even left the parking lot. Before she did that though, she found a piece of 3M tape and was toying with that. I didn't notice until she'd gone quiet that she'd taped it over her face and then passed out [not because of the tape... haha]. It was pretty funny though.


hahahahahaha. she'll love seeing this one day....

Hilarious. She's somethin' else.

From there, we headed to Shiloh again to meet up with Dawne and pass off a very groggy Sydni. I'd promised Dawne she would get to see her some while we were visiting; I'm not sure who was more excited about it: Sydni or Dawne. Either way, we dropped her off, then made our way back to Granite to go to Rob's parents' for a minute. We took the meatballs, aka Stella & Sasha with us, which may have been more of an adventure than we'd thought... they did well, all things considered. Haha.

Once we were wrapped up with some things at his parents, we opted for some sushi and (shhhhh,) a date over in St. Louis at the Drunken Fish [Rob's decision - gooood call!]. Neither of us had been, but heard it was great so we tried it out. Delicious.


suuuuuushiiiiiiiiiii. win.

You can rarely go wrong with good sushi. Add the perfect company and you've just built the perfect night. All around, today was a great day and I'm left again feeling that overwhelming sense of gratitude for these people in my life.

Amen? Amen.
G'Nite (:

xo | cmd

Churchin' ... & Chompin' ... & Couchin' [Sunday]

I'm not ready for this weekend to end. It's been one of the best so far. If Sydni were here, I can almost guarantee this would've been as close to perfect as we could've been. No worries, though, we'll get plenty caught up with the munchkin in no time. 

Anyway, today started off with Rob and I making a trip over to Cornerstone to meet up with Ali and Joey for the late service. I went last week with just Ali; they started a new series this week, detailing the scandalous beliefs and accusations of those surrounding the crucifixion. Interesting stuff. 

Post church meant a trip to Crackerbarrel. DeShawn met us there and we had some good old country breakfast fun. 

macgyver mode to replace a missing tee
ali's first attempt to re-define "genius" ;) 

By fun, I mean eating a copious amount of food and making the best out of a missing-peg-situation with that triangle peg game. None of us were able to get it all the way down to 1, but 2 wasn't all that shabby, and it was well worth it for the food & company. 

only four of us... haha.. 

... and by food, I did mean food. Haha. We had some still left on the plates when we finished, that's for sure... but it was delicious.... and coma-inducing....

.... = midday nap.... (: 

= WIN. 

We're back up now, and completely fine with resigning ourselves to an evening of couched-up nerd mode: Rob on COD, me on blog.. and tattoo designing [to be shared oh-so-soon....], and Stella to whatever pup dream she's having right now... haha. 

Let's see if this week can be a little nicer than last week. Hoping for some Monday - Friday work week MANNERS... heh.

Happy Sunday, blogbots! 

xo | cmd

Snips of a Saturday

I've not yet become gutsy enough to go through with as drastic a change as I did a couple years back. the last time I donated my hair, I gave 14 inches of my mane and was left with the expected short hair - only problem was that I wasn' t thrilled in the least with the execution by the stylist versus what I'd requested. It was a cute bob look, but certainly not my style. I was going to be much more conservative this time around, if nothing else than to at least test out the stylist.

I had the recommendation from Cathie for her current stylist, and while Cathie keeps her hair much shorter than mine, it always looks great, especially right after a visit to the salon. I thought I'd give it a whirl. 

6 inches.. see ya later :)

hunger games!

I love it, so far, even though it is exactly as conservative as I thought it would be. I'm still conflicted a bit on whether or not I really even want short hair at this point, so this for the time being at least gives me the liberty of options while dropping those dead split ends. Pretty silly when the stylist holds up a measured 6-inch chunk of hair she's just snipped, when in looking at it now, it still seems long. Haha. I'm satisfied, and I will definitely be making a trip back to see the gal who did this when I'm due up for a snip again. Not a bad way to start the day! 

my doodlebug ♥

I made a stop off at Target after the 8:30AM hair appointment to grab some groceries, and ended up also walking out with a copy of The Hunger Games. Don't judge me, haha. I am completely excited for Mo coming by to watch this with me. 

Back home, it didn't take long for us to decide we would head right back out the door for some breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Sydni loves this place especially for its artistic provisions; I don't know why it is, but she spends more time coloring and doodling when we're here than any other restaurant it seems. Today she even bragged about her left-handedness. Great. haha. 

Back at home, Sydni and I went down for a short snooze while the boys took off for a run; Eric's got an Ironman coming up next weekend, for which he's been training since about this time last year. Pretty impressive, I'd say. It's too bad we won't be able to go and watch him race, but there's no doubt he'll do an awesome job and have some good stories from it all.

The boys headed off to drop Eric at the airport a few minutes ago; I hear Sydni starting to wake up in her room, so I .. am.. outta here :)

xo | cmd

Eating... All Day.



pegs.

Raise your hand if you've ever done one of those.
Now raise your hand if you've scrambled to start over before you finished, because you knew you would have at least 2 or 3 left over, when the goal is 1.
I may be the only one with two hands up right now, because I'll be the first to admit that, unlike my husband, I am a moron when it comes to these things.
This one was at Crackerbarrel this morning when we stopped in for breakfast. Sydni has about as much fun trying to color with the colored pegs as we did chasing them down after she got frustrated that they were, "broke, " as she called them.

Today was absolutely a good day. It was spent vegging out - I titled this one appropriately, because looking back at today, I feel rather gluttonous. It was all in good fun though; we had breakfast as a family, then spent the day together and headed out again at dinner time to Lotawata Creek for a group dinner with Meagan, Rob, and a handful of Joe's Air Force coworkers.

Now, about Lotawata Creek: There aren't any of these joints in Cincinnati, so this was a new experience for me. Apparently one of their famous trademarks is their portion size. In a comical spirit, I say that this is definitely an American favorite, because the plates here are well over what any single human being would ever need to eat on his/her own.

Examples:



sandwich hiding behind fries

club. club crazy.



attempts to conquer....

We. Are. FULL.
We made it home, got Sydni to bed, and hung out with Meagan and Rob for a short bit before calling it a night. It's church in the AM! :)

xo | cmd