8th Annual Jons Family Girls' Weekend!

The first weekend in February, the Jons girls all gathered in Des Moines for the 8th Annual Jons Family Girls' Weekend!

To get the weekend started, we all met up at a nail salon for some manicures and pedicures. The excitement started right away because my mom got to come in wearing a shirt that said "Great Mom's Get Promoted to Grandma's" to announce that Trent and I are having a baby to Aunt Barb and my three cousins. Molly spotted the shirt within a few seconds of my mom taking off her coat, so it was just a matter of telling them all who it was that was making my mom a Grandma at that point. It was a fun way to start the day.

After we got our nails done, we had a little time before supper to go to the mall and do a little shopping. We made a stop at Bath and Body Works so my mom could use some coupons she had and then my mom and sister were kind enough to sacrifice their shopping for mine and accompany me to look for some maternity clothes. I'm so glad they did because it wouldn't have been nearly as successful without them! Kellsey helped me to locate some LONG maternity pants which are AMAZING along with a few sale dresses. Given the time crunch we were in, I couldn't have done it without her! :)

After our quick shopping trip, we all headed over to Bravo for supper. We each had a nice Italian dinner and we even got them to bring Doreen a treat for her birthday and we sang to her :) She loved it!! haha

After supper, we went back to the hotel for some fun. The first thing we did was take our obligatory "Reading it Everywhere" photo.

Kellsey, Meghan, Molly and I then left to go down to the pool for a little while before coming back to the room to hang out. While we were gone, Doreen took on the task of cleaning all of our rings and make them all shiny and pretty.

To round out the evening, we each got to do a little face mask courtesy of Molly's beauty stash and then we told some jokes and played some Tenzi before heading to bed. The four of us youngins talked the adults into letting us sleep in the beds so we could confine all the snorers to one location and I'm quite happy with the way that worked out!

 On Sunday, Meghan and Molly were kind enough to go get some Casey's pizza and donuts for us all for breakfast before we headed to church. After the service, we stopped by Kirkland's for a little shopping, had some lunch at the food court at the mall, and then all went our separate ways. 

The weekend went way too fast! We were able to squeeze a lot of fun into that short time, of course, but I'm looking forward to next year already. (I keep reminding myself that I'm going to have a real live baby next year when it's time to do this again!! How awesome is that!?!? EEE!!)

Here's the pictures we took showing off my mom's special Grandma shirt that she got to wear to announce the upcoming baby!!! Doreen and Kellsey had a fun time with this...

Just for fun: 

7th Annual Girls' Weekend - 2014

6th Annual Girls' Weekend - 2013

5th Annual Girls' Weekend - 2012

Okoboji and Garth Brooks!!!

Oh I have so much fun stuff to catch up on!!! I'd love to skip right to the cute puppy pictures, but in an effort to keep things in chronological order, I'm going to start back a little over three weeks ago to our last night in Okoboji and the Garth Brooks concert!

I had been up in Okoboji with my mom and Grandma for a few days and then Dan and "the kids" joined us on Friday night so we could all take off on Saturday morning for the Garth concert. When they got there, my mom and Grandma had food ready for them (of course) and then we played a few games. We played our new dice game, Tenzi, and then wrapped up the night with a game of Dominos. 

The best part of the night was when Dan ran out to the car to get the Garth CD for us to listen to, and we just happened to place all of the doubles right next to him so he would pick them. He fell right into our trap! He realized what happened on about the fifth domino. Alex caught it on camera and you can watch it here:

We all woke up on Saturday morning to a few inches of snow outside, which made our drive north a little more interesting.

Luckily we had a lot of extra time to make our way up to Minneapolis. There was an accident somewhere along the line and we ended up at pretty much a stand still for an hour and a half. That left a lot of extra time for games in the car!

We played Heads Up for a while during the traffic jam. When it was Dani's turn, she was doing the category where she just had to try to get us to guess the words by just making whatever sound that item makes. We were mean to her and we all were just not guessing anything, so she would be making noises and we just sat there staring at her and laughing. By the end, she figured out what we were doing and thought we were pretty annoying I think, but it made for a good laugh!

You can watch the video here:

Eventually we did arrive at our hotel with plenty of time to shower and some of us even had time to nap for a while since we knew it would be a late night! Jared and Kenzie joined us and then all eight of us headed out for a quick bite to eat and then to the concert!!

The birthday girl! It was nice of Garth to come to the area on her birthday! :)

We arrived downtown around 10:00 and got into line outside of the Target Center. I want to say it took about twenty or thirty minutes to get inside. It was cold outside, but thankfully not too bad! It definitely could have been worse!

We got to our seats by about 10:30 (when the concert was supposed to start) and then just waited for the rest of the thousands of people to join us!

Garth came out on stage promptly at 11:30 and played for about two and a half hours non-stop (except for the few songs that Trisha Yearwood sang alone). He was pretty amazing! Our seats weren't the best, and it was still amazing! I can't even imagine what it would have been like had our seats been just like 5 rows down. A.MAZING!

We sang along to every one of his songs along with the 20,000 other people in the building! It is just such a cool thing to experience! Garth is just crazy and all over the place. He sounded great and had  a great energy and he really didn't make it feel like it was 2 in the morning when he was getting towards the end of the show! :)

I have quite a few videos from the night, but not many that I'm willing to share! My voice is overwhelming in most of them and it is NOT pretty!! Here's the few that I am willing to share though! :)

Here's all eight of us that went! It was such a blast from the time we all met up to the time we got home! I love spending time with family and I'm so happy that we can have such fun and make memories together!

.Rumor has it that Garth is coming to Omaha at some point (he'd better not be lying) and I think we're all ready to do it again!!

Sunday morning we went out for breakfast before we headed out of town and my mom got to experience one of the perks of being 55 just one day into her 55th year! The SENIOR DISCOUNT!! A great ending to our time in Minnesota! 

Hocus Pocus Halloween Party

Back on the weekend before Halloween, my mom and sister, my aunts, and my girl cousins all came over to our house for a Hocus Pocus Halloween Party! It was a beautiful fall day and a perfect day for a party!

After everyone arrived, we got right to work carving pumpkins around the dining room table. Everyone got creative making different faces, animals, letters or designs in their pumpkins.

A few weeks before the party, I came across this blog post on Facebook titled "How to Carve a Pumpkin in 15 Minutes" and she was giving away a Rockwell Sonicrafter F30.

I immediately sent the post to my family and said we needed some power tools for our party! I then entered the giveaway and kind of forgot about it. Lo and behold, a week or so later, I got an email from the author of the blog saying I should check out who won and it was MEEEEE!!! I was probably way more excited than I should have been when I saw - jumping around all giddy at work because of it! It showed up at our house the day before the party. It was fate! :)

I didn't use it to carve my whole pumpkin, but I did use it to make mine and Kenzie's openings so we could scoop out all the guts. It was pretty crazy and definitely added some excitement to the evening!

When it was all said and done, here's what everyone's pumpkins looked like. It's a pretty good looking bunch if I do say so myself!

After the pumpkin carving, we all ate some Chicken Tortilla soup and sandwiches and Jocelyn also made some "Mummy Halloweenies" to get everyone in a festive mood!

When we were done eating, we all gathered in the family room to watch Hocus Pocus to finish up the night! I don't think that movie will ever get old! It was the perfect ending to a successfully fun day!!

Sisters!

My mother and I