Forget Dancing with the Stars...

Check out these rad moves!
(Does anyone even say "rad" anymore?)
Anyways, the fact that he is not flopping around like a chicken with his head cut off or a cat with tape stuck to it's paws, is a firm testament that he didn't get his mad skills from me. You know Carson Kressley from Dancing with the Stars? Painful to watch, but totally hilarious right?
Yeah, I think that about sums up my dancing skills...or lack of them...
Thank goodness he got his dad's genes in this area that's all I'm sayin'.

And yes, what you are hearing is correct, they are raping to the song of "I Hope They Call Me On a Mission." But you know how the old saying goes, "corrupt them while...I mean...teach them while they're young" :)
I promise we do NOT listen to rap...unless it's church rap :/ There's something very disturbing about that justification isn't there?

How to Date a Seminary Teacher

The Do's and Dont's to DOing it right!

I was having a lousy week a while ago and couldn't figure out why. After thinking about it for several minutes I finally realized it was because it had been MONTHS since Michael and I had a date night. YIKES!!!

It's amazing how such a simple thing like a night out can really improve your marriage AND your attitude. Most of the time I try to come up with a creative thing for us to do at home when Collin falls asleep. Even though it's not exactly going out, at least we are still doing something together. But even that has fallen by the way side lately.

But I have a really good excuse! Michael is now an early morning seminary teacher (as in, he gets up before the sun to teach the Old Testament to teenagers!) He loves it and I have to admit that our family has been so blessed because of this calling. It might be harder to plan actual date nights now since his nights are usually spent studying, but through trial and error I am learning what works and what doesn't.

Here are a few things I've learned about dating a Seminary Teacher...

When planning a date night during the week DO NOT do a movie night! Comfortable seating and complete darkness will have your date falling asleep faster than you can say Genesis.

DO- play the games he has planned for game day in Seminary together. This will be quite entertaining and will allow him to work out any kinks.

DO NOT -allow your date to go past 9:30pm. Unless you want to be the only one awake ;)

DO- plan a cuddle date on their day off. This will be their FAVORITE date ever! Yes, because it involves sleep. (starting to see a pattern here?)

When watching your favorite sitcom at night DO use the commercials as little 3 min. dates. (aka smooching fest) Not that we've actually done this one of course ;)

DO NOT plan a crappy date. Not that you would purposefully plan a bad date, just be forewarned that if something goes wrong it could end up being used as an object lesson the next morning :)
(In all fairness Michael has not done this!...yet.)

That's all I got for now, but I expect to learn so much more as the year progresses.

Ice, Ice Baby!

This stuff is AMAZING!!! I'm allergic to milk so I can't have ice cream and
Jeremiah's Italian ICE has been my life savor! However there is one person who might love it more than me...in fact, he might be a bit obsessed :)

Click here to see all the Italian ice flavors and locations!

We look for any excuse we can find to have Jeremiah's and it just so happened that my cousin Angie just turned SWEET 16! Can't get a better excuse than that!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGIE!

And as if getting Jeremiah's wasn't a sweet enough treat, we got to spend the day with my Cousin Brittany and her boyfriend Josh from Tenn.!
They came to see the Florida vs. Tennessee game. Josh is a Tenn. fan and Brittany is a Florida Gators fan. GO GATORS! (Sorry Josh)

So after feeding Collin 3 cups full of Cookies and Cream Italian Ice he still wasn't satisfied! He was bumming off of everyone!

Josh
Grandma!

No one with a cup was safe :)

And when we finally put it all away, this is the face we got.
But why is the ice gone!? (insert Jack Sparrow's pirate voice)

We were so excited to see Brittany and Josh. Now we just gotta convince them to move to Florida!

Collin's giving grandma a hand

We also got dinner and a show!

My Aunt Patti got this Indian outfit for our upcoming Family Reunion next year. The theme is Cowboys and Indians!

Something Smells Fishy...

This post is a man's version of a "Guy's night out"...except it took place during the day... :)

Michael, his dad Bill, and our nephew Mikey went deep sea fishing!!!

The weather was nice, but the water was a little choppy. One member of our little expedition got a little queasy, but don't worry, he didn't have to visit the side of the boat :)

Big Mike and lil' Mike catching us some dinner!

Bill and Mikey both caught 12 fish each! Michael caught 7, giving our group the grand total of 31 fish!
Sadly, out of those 31 fish only 2 were big enough to keep :(

See that fish below!?...yeah, that's not one of the fish they caught.
But see the huge fish below that!?

Yeah, that's not one of them either ;)

Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing you. See the two fish below?
Those are ours! And they were cleaned and gutted by yours truly!
NOT!
Now that would be funny.

Even though they weren't able to keep more fish, I think they had a good time anyway.

You scream, I scream, we all scream for......BBQ Sauce???

Collin has 4 teeth now! I thought my poor baby would have to gum his food the rest of his life! He will pretty much eat anything as long as it is dipped in BBQ sauce or ketchup. In fact, he likes BBQ sauce sooooo much, that when he's done eating he licks his plate. I'm serious! This makes for one dirty face but it has saved us loads on dish washing let me tell ya ;)

It's probably not good table manners, but it cracks us up every time so we say,
"Happy licking Collin!"

We Bowl like a Couple of Animals!

I saw the cutest duck tape at JoAnn's the other day and knew I had to figure out some way to use it. For some reason I had saved some of Collin's snack containers thinking that I would be able to use them for something! And low and behold if they aren't the perfect shape for pint sized bowling pins!!!

All I used was 10 of the Gerber Puffs snack containers and two rolls of animal print duck tape.

Starting at the top of the container you wrap the duct tape in a spiral motion until you get to the bottom. The tape will have creases and bumps in it, but their wild and crazy so it doesn't matter! It adds character right!?

We did this as a Family Home Evening! We couldn't really convince Collin to use a ball, he insisted on body bowling. And he doesn't really get the point of waiting until they're ALL stacked back up before he hits them down again...I guess he's as wild and crazy as the pins are ;)