Merry Christmas Day

Happy birthday Jesus!!!

Here is a recap of the past few days with my sister and her family hanging out with my parents for Christmas!

A few days before Christmas me and my mom went to visit my aunt Kathy at her home. She is now staying in a memory home because she has what appears to be the beginning of Alzheimer’s. She still knows who we are so that is a big blessing! We went to visit and I got cute picture my mom, my Aunt Kathy and myself. My Aunt Kathy’s in the middle. My aunt Kathy is amazing! She’s one of my Aunts that stayed single my whole life so she would come on vacation with our family every year when we were kids. I absolutely love her to death.

Christmas Eve night we played this really fun game with a bottle of saran wrap. They giant ball that you try to unwrap with oven mitts on. The person in front of you keeps trying to roll doubles, your turn it over as soon as they get doubles. The goal is to unwrap as much cellophane as you can and you get any goods that fall out of the ball. It was filled with lottery tickets, gift cards, gum, hi-chews, baby Nutella‘s… You get the idea! The picture below is two of my nieces…

More fun…that’s my Dad to the right and niece and nephew…


And there’s Mom… my sister, Mom and myself decided we would all share our loot there in the middle… Lol! The children were not sharing their loot… Ha ha


Then we played another game I saw on TickTock called reindeer ears. The first team to fill their pantyhose with five balloons and put the hose on their head one. We were the losing team but our ears look awful cute - this picture is my Mom and niece.


After we played a few games we decided to drive around the lake and look at everybody’s lights. This is the house that won the award for the best decorated. They actually have an outhouse with Santa sitting in it… The kids were quite amused!


Christmas day we were all entertained, even the dog, by my nieces guitar playing. She’s taking lessons and loves it… She’s getting really good! I can’t wait till summer comes around again and we can do sing-along‘s at the campfire


My sisters family had to leave to go to her husband side of the family later in the evening on Christmas day. It was just my Mom, Dad and myself for the rest of Christmas Day so we just kind of hung out, talked, and did some puzzles.


Here’s the picture we got before we left for church… This is in front of my parents tree.


And this is the picture we got in church… Everybody looks really bright! I think the birth of baby Jesus was shining through!


I will leave you with one final picture…

My nieces and nephew got a picture of mini years ago with who they thought was Santa. It really was my dad dressed up like Santa. My niece Kyleigh was four and the twins, Aly and Ryan were three. Aly hated Santa! She was terrified and cried the entire time… She had no idea it was my father. We asked the kids to re-create the picture this year and this is what they came up with…

Seriously!?? Melt my heart!!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays!!! No matter what or how you celebrate…I hope your heart is full and you show others love today!!

Hugs everyone!!!

Thanksgiving recap

Hey yinz!!

I hope everyone had a phenomenal Thanksgiving. 

This post just shows you how behind the times I am that my Thanksgiving post is at least two weeks late… Lol! But I guess it is massive progress that I’m posting at least monthly now. Ha!

I just finished ALL my finals for this semester of nursing school! I finished this semester with 2 A’s and a B.  One more year left and then I am a nurse!!

Here is the picture of my clinical group on our last day of Hospital Clinical. Our instructor is on the end on the right and I am three from the right! I scribbled our badges and school identifiers so apologies for that. I got so lucky - it was such an amazing group of women and we all jumped in and helped each other soo much!!

Thanksgiving was spent the traditional way for my family… Good food, laughter and a wonderful time spent together. We did our usual cookie baking fiasco and as usual it was great! Here are a bunch of photos from the long weekend.

Below is my my brother in laws mom and step-father, my parents, my brother in law and sister and their children and grandchild (minus her older daughter who was working this day). The little tot in the picture is my first great-niece, Leighton! We all love her soo much!!

This is my sister and brother in law with their first grandchild. Soo adorable, right??


This is an impromptu pic of the beginning of cookie baking. Those are both of my sisters and my dad.


This is our side of the family. We do two dinners and this was the second one. This is my sister and brother-in-law their children, grandchild, and one of the kids girlfriend. Also, my other sister and brother in law and their kids. The kids are all so grown up! If you have followed my blog for a while you will probably be amazed… Three of the children in this picture are those three little tiny kids that I played in the lake with for so many years. They’re all grown up now.

Many evenings we have game time. It’s a great time for everyone to just laugh and decompress. I can’t even tell you the numbers of different games we played this year.


More candid baking photos…


The kids and I fought over who got to hang out with this little cutie. She was definitely the hit of the weekend. She’s so much fun to be around and all the kids took turns watching her while we baked.


Sugar cookies…


Candy cane rolling…the worst cookie job that excreting hates-ha!!


A little relaxation - football and screen time!!


Snuggles between batches!!!


My adorable niece entertained us all with her guitar playing throughout the weekend!! Love listening to her play!


My sister started selling Beauty Counter products so of course we all had to mask up and rejuvenate Our skin in the evenings.  If you need a product hookup, let me know. I’ll get you her information!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope everyone is happy, safe and well!!!

Thank you all of you for all your words of support!

Love you guys - so many hugs to everyone!! 

Christmas 2019

Christmas was a whirl!!

I had returned from my "end of the year" vacation with my Mother on December 21st and began Christmas prep.

We all drive to Ohio to stay at my parents house to be together for the holidays and luckily everyone was able to come this year with the exception of my oldest niece Jordan.  She has just taken a new nursing job so she is at the bottom of the pack when it comes to holidays off because, as we all know, nurses work EVERYDAY. But she is happy in her life and we all definitely missed her so very much!

So here are a few pictures to share with you. We exchange gifts and chill out together a lot. We also play a lot of fun games and eat a lot! I did not get that many pictures this year as I concentrated on enjoying the time with my family. 

So here we go...

My parents have a hot tub in their basement so the kids all enjoyed hanging out in there every night...here is their silly face picture...

And normal face...LOVE those faces!!!

Here are all my nieces and nephews together at the tree...minus Jordan though.

And then we added my parents to the shot. I wish we had gotten one with everyone but next year I will be sure to bring my tripod!

Here is the ring toss game we played off and on the whole holiday! HA HA!

My sister showed us this game...you compete to use a balloon to shoot cups off the table to winner played the other winners until one person got their choice of a gift card. Needless to say, it got REALLY competitive and more than a few tears we shed...I think it was the gift cards - everyone saw money! HA! This is Poppy (my Dad) and Matthew (my nephew)

Competition continued...Kyleigh (my niece) and Dan (My brother in law)

Susan and Kerry (both my sisters)

And Memaw (My Mom) and Poppy (my Dad)...

It was a fantastic Christmas holiday and it was so wonderful to spend time together as a family! I love them all more than I can ever say! 

PS - AGAIN - we missed you JoJo! 

How was your Christmas?? Do you play games? Do you spend multiple days together or just drop by houses and head home? Hugs to you all - thanks for stopping by and caring!

New Years Eve 2018 Recap

Happy Monday!!!!! I know I am a week late with this post but it contains a lot of pictures and explainations!! HA!

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy New Years Eve and New Years Day!!!

Here's hoping 2019 is a great year for all us!!!!

Here is a recap of my New Years Eve shenanigans! Just about every year I head to Columbus, Ohio to spend New Years Eve with my sister and nieces and nephews! This year my parents decided to come along too!

Even though I was not going out; I got inspired by these nails on pinterest and decided to recreate them!

Here's my version! I loved how they turned out!!!

Here are my little nieces and nephews (except Kyleigh)!!!

What my sister does every year is come up with a craft or event for every hour. It helps keep the kids awake until midnight since they cannot wait for the next event! She writes the events on paper and puts them in balloons. Then writes the time on each balloon. Every hour a different kid pops the balloon for the hour and we do the craft or event.

Here is the first craft! Making fireworks painting with used toilet paper rolls, paint and glitter!

Here are their finished works of art drying in the garage...

Next balloon....make your own pizza! The kids each get a crust and they put whatever toppings they want on their pizza. My oldest niece wanted a calzone so we added that this year too! Yummy!

Another shot of make your own pizza...

Games happened when there was a lull in the fun - we did not account for the time to bake the pizzas - HA!

Another balloon event was "List your favorite things you did from 2018" and "Bucket list for 2019". I have to say; we are definitely making memories when "Time spent at the lake" was on everyone's favorite list!

The next balloon was make you won bracelet or necklace! I got stretchy clear string and letter beads and the kids made up all kinds of different bracelets. The boys did a lot of "go Steelers" and "go pens" and the girls did "kindness matters", etc. and their names.

Next balloon was dessert time!!! We had about six different things to choose from this year! YUMMY!!! My niece Aly loves to cook and she made delicious hot cocoa cupcakes - they were my favorite!!!

Next balloon was candle making! Each kid got a jar and wick and we melted soy chips for each of their candles. They got to choose their scent!!

Close up of the oils for the scents!

Next balloon was a photo booth!!!! The kids had fun with this and I think Poppy liked it too as you will see in the next few pictures - HA!

Too funny....the girls staged this but how funny!!! That's my dad!

More serious one with my Mom, Dad and the kids!

Another...

Soooo cute...

My little sister and her hubby...

My sister in law and the kids...HA!

The next balloon was the game Telestrations, the New Years good luck pretzel and the non-alcoholic sparkling wine. Here is the game...

After I gave the kids their non-alcoholic wine, I finished the bottle - HA!!

The kids doing "Cheers to 2018 and bring on 2019"...

Here is the adults room and their "Cheers" - they have the real thing!!! HA!!

And finally it was the 11:55PM Balloon! It is always the same thing!!!! Everyone gets a pot or pan and a wooden spoon to bang on the front porch and silly string to spray outside once midnight hits!!!! The kids did great this year and made it midnight with no problem - the adults, on the other hand, struggled but we made it! HA!

New years day was spent running to a few stores with the girls and the boys stayed home and worked on my brothers Pergo floor (My project inspired him to do it himself) and watched football!

We stopped at Starbucks to fill my mug that my oldest sister gave me for Christmas! It is a free refill mug! You get free coffee or tea refills the entire month of January!!! The barista wanted to be in the picture too! She was adorable!

Then off to the mall to spend the girls gift cards and check out the sales!!! How cute, hugh?!?! They grow up too fast!

I love my sweet little nieces and all my sweet little nephews!!! Family is everything!!

Happy 2019 to you all!

I wish you all luck, love and happiness the entire year!!

How was your New Years? Did you stay in or go out? What traditions do you have, if any?