Such. A. Sweet Little Sunday! ♥

Happy Sunday, Guys & Gals!

Hey listen, first things first: if you didn't make it to church this morning, or even if you did and just want a small, extra boost for today, here's THIS from our Pastor Jeff's message this morning. This is fantastic, so naturally I wanted to share it with you!


Thank you, Pastor Jeff & the worship team at SonRise! What an awesome morning!

With some sort of weird, collective sense of enthusiasm, we set out after church to do some more Christmas shopping. I know, I know - the Christmas spirit has me doing some things this year that are far outside my norms. Accept it and move on, mmkay? ;)

Just kidding. We had a blast. We found ourselves for the bulk of our mini outing right back at Meijer, where we originally found our little Christmas lights. We were short a few strands yesterday, so today we snagged some more, and a few stockings for the mantle to go along with.

And, because it's mandatory whenever we find ourselves near mechanically-activated anythings [horses, rocket ships, teacups... whatever...], there's this:

love my little cowgirl ♥

We made a stop by GameStop in search of BioShock [FOUND IT!!], and ended up heading home with a Wii system as well, for one heck of a steal. [It's Christmas, c'mon!]

gamestop .. ohhhh, the fun ;)  

We were home in no time and spent the next hour or so battling each other on MarioKart. I hate to admit it, but Syd's not half bad at this, and while she was up jumping all over the room to play, she somehow managed to hang in there and have a blast!

.... Don't worry, Mom, we didn't spend all night in front of the TV [or in this case, thanks to Rob the resident enginner, the projector on the wall....]; after about an hour of Wii play, we dug out the ponies and played the old fashioned way:

♥♥♥♥♥

I am one seriously lucky mama in this house. This has been another incredible day with loved ones, awesome message this morning at church and a day to enjoy each other.♥ Not a bad way to start the week!

Goooood night!

xo | cmd 

Dills, Page & Babot : A Dinner Story

One of the greatest social benefits of joining a new church is the fellowship that seems to just naturally evolve between its members. We've already met a lot of great Christian advisors and peers here at Towerview; tonight we were invited to dinner with two of these great couples: Adam & Cathie Page, and Alex & Lara Babot. 

feast!



Plus, no biggie, but we're Baptists, so that means we're usually eating. :) No qualms there, especially when the cooks are well-seasoned and quite talented [Cathie, and the evening's grillmaster, Adam!]

Our menu:
Corn on the cob
Veggies [zucchini, peppers, onions, delicious]
Seasoned potatoes
Grilled chicken [or pterodactyl, these things = massive]
Cake ["birthday cake!" ~Landon] by Lara

We ate, we laughed, and we watched little kids try to feed themselves. It was mostly Sydni, because Landon still cooperates when his mama tries to help him; Sydni on the other hand is miss independent, and refuses to let anyone come anywhere near her dinner plate. The two Page girls are well old enough to feed themselves in a tidy manner, but watching the little ones was cute.

wii pong

And then there was Wii. We won't mention names, but some fellows got their pride handed to them on a digital plate when they challenged the eldest Page daughter at Wii Ping Pong. I hate to say it, but it was a fairly entertaining sight.


girls :)



By the end of the night, Sydni was completely tuckered out and ready to go.

Amen for these wonderful people. :)

See you tomorrow, Illinois.

xo | cmd

Veggie Tales

Sydni got her first taste of Veggie Tales today, and I was reminded of why, even though they represent great Christian messages, I can still only handle those animated little characters in moderation.

Today we sat through The Wonderful Wizard of Ha’s, which is the Veggie Tales adaptation of The Wizard of Oz [if for some reason you didn’t make that connection]. While I find the appropriate re-designing of little details to create kid-friendly comprehension [ex.:

Yellow Brick Road

= Yellow McToad].

Once Joe was done with work, he and Kyle came back to the house for dinner and some Wii. Kyle and Amy earned spots on the Mii board, so in the event we ever decide to invest into two more controllers, we’re all set.

Miss Sydni was more than excited to spend the evening showing off her baby to our guest. She’s such a good little mommy, that is, if catapulting babydoll out of the play stroller before using it to smack the dog in the behind is considered good mommy’ing. So we’ve still got a little work to do… We’ll get there.

TG[T]IF! [tomorrow]

xo | cmd

Edwardsville, Express, Edwards

I’m glad that I scoped out the Express office in Glen Carbon/Edwardsville prior to the meeting I had scheduled there today; I am almost positive I would’ve gotten lost if not. I met there this morning for a meeting with the owners, a married couple whom I immediately liked. There were scripture verses posted in their office and their first rule of thumb is God first. If anything else, I’d say there’s no other place I’d rather start. After two hours sitting in with the owners, I would say I left feeling rather optimistic about the entire thing.

Following that meeting, I GPS’d my way back homeward and posted up at a Starbuck’s for a few hours to update our blog [this guy!] before heading back to the Dills Digs.

Joe had met Eric at the St. Louis airport and the two of them drove back here for a weekend stay. Of course the first order of business for those two when they get together is intense Wii & NES battling:

remember this one?

*Sigh. It’s a beautiful thing, watching that. Haha. What's even more beautiful is this little frozen custard joing we found driving around, too.



"mango dango"
custard | fresh mango | walnuts



We didn’t do a whole lot other than dinner and relaxing for his first night in. Tomorrow’s Friday and from what I hear, a pretty busy day is ahead of us!

xo | cmd

Exploring Edwardsville

We woke up today to find that Joe’s wound hadn’t really started healing yet, so he resigned himself to an earned day of R&R here at the house. I would dare anyone after today to challenge him at Wii cornhole [because we don’t play enough of that in real life] or any of the games on the original Wii Sports. He invested himself in going pro at all of them today.

wii sports :)  

I decided to run some errands and then do some exploring. I dropped off yet another bin of random stuff at the Salvation Army and then headed north a bit towards Edwardsville, IL. I have a meeting later this week with the owners of that Express office; I wanted to be sure I could manage finding it via GPS. I was successful on the first attempt, which was reassuring, so I headed back towards home.

scoping out this familiar dig, Edwardsville location...



stinkin' ice cube trays!



One more stop and I was done. Or so I thought. What I hadn’t counted on is that apparently either nobody uses standard ice cube trays anymore, or I and the 6 combined sales associates I asked are all blind, because it took 4 different stops before I could track them down. It’s funny how we found ourselves with about 9 of these things at our old house, and now hunting like fools for just 2.

Mission accomplished. I headed back home to find Joe perfecting his form at Wii Cornhole and joined in for a few rounds.

Tomorrow = Joe getting his last two wisdom teeth removed.

Let’s pray hard for no dry sockets!

xo | cmd