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! 

Fall at Our House

This week, the fall decorations came down and Christmas started to take over. 

Since we will be gone all of Thanksgiving weekend (and bringing home a new puppy) we wanted to be able to enjoy the decorations for the whole month of December and focus on things other things during that time! So we decided we'd better get a head start!

Before the Christmas goes up, I wanted to document want our house looked like for fall this year. I still need to read how to take good pictures inside, so these will just have to do for now - and it's so fun to see how it changes from year to year regardless of the quality of the pictures.

This is my favorite part of the living room. These drawers came from my mom's newspaper office and I love having both sides of our family sitting in the same place so I can see them every time I walk into the room!

These pictures of our family room and kitchen also show our new paint color that we painted with the help of Trent's parents back in August. The color makes such a difference from what it was last year.

 Now all those pumpkins have gathered on the dining room table and by the end of the day they will make their way to the basement for another 10 months!

And now the tree is up and waiting to be decorated, by the end of the day, the outside lights will be up and waiting to be turned on after Thanksgiving, too!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Happy birthday in heaven to my Daddy!

 Always on my mind
Forever in my heart

Happy Birthday to my Mom!!

Today is the best mom in the world's birthday!!

I'm so glad that I get to spend her birthday with her again this year. Last year, we were working hard preparing for the big Birthday Bash, but this year there's a lot less work involved as we're headed north to see Garth in concert!!!

I am thankful for all of the fun times we've had over the years and all of the things I have been able to experience with her and because of her. I know that having her as my mom has made me one of the luckiest kids in the world. She works so hard every day and is such a blessing to everyone around her! She has done so much throughout in her life to make mine (and my siblings' lives) easier! 

She really is superwoman and I'm glad she got to spend the past week relaxing on vacation! 

In honor of us going to Garth tonight, this is a new song by Garth called "Mom" that I think is pretty great. Especially because my mom is pretty great! You can listen to it here. It's a pretty good one, and these are my favorite lyrics

And when she's talking to you make sure you listen close
She's gonna teach you everything you'll ever need to know
Like how to mind your manners, to love and laugh and dream
She'll put you on the path that bring you back to me

I love you, Mommy. 

Thank you for all you've done for us and for helping me become the person I am today!

Five on Friday {11.14.2014}

ONE.

I've been in Okoboji since Wednesday night on a little mini vacation. My ended up renting this week's use of my Great Aunt's time share from our CJD fundraiser auction last year, so her and some other members of my family have been up here on and off this week to spend some time relaxing with this nice view.

It has been just a tad cold, but that just made it even better for having an excuse to relax inside! We've watched back to back Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel the past two nights (I may or may not have stayed up until 3 in the morning last night watching them..) and I am really loving it! Yesterday we went out and got manicures and pedicures. It was Grandma's first time getting her nails done, so that was a lot of fun! She said she needs to be careful or she might get addicted to it!

More family is coming up late tonight and then we are taking of for Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon so we can go to the Garth Brooks concert tomorrow night!!! Ahh!!! I can't believe it's finally here! But more on that after it happens :)

TWO.

Yesterday I got to take advantage of being in the area and I visited with my friend Grace for a while in the afternoon. This was the first time I've seen her since the summer of 2011 and this was also the first time I met her son! (And I got to meet see her adorable baby bump) It took him a little while before he was okay with me being there, but after a while, I think he decided I was alright! It was so great to see Grace and get to talk to her for a bit - oh how I wish I could see her more often!!

Here's us (along with Lauren, of course) back from our college days! Such fun times!

THREE.

We now know what puppy will be coming home with us in TWO weeks!! The one with the red collar is our new family member!

This is her!

And here she is at 4 weeks old at 1:30 in this video.

I can't wait to meet her and love on her and snuggle her!!! I'm looking forward to get our little family all together and start working on our new normal!

(In case you were wondering - the puppy talk is just beginning!)

FOUR.
Since we painted our bedroom last weekend, I now need to get serious about hanging things up on our walls FINALLY! I have a few ideas including using what I hope will be a great family picture we will take after we pick up our new puppy and this quote below. I am also on the search for a few other things and hopefully it doesn't take me two and a half more years to get them up on the walls :)

FIVE.

And with it being cold... I think this is genius!!!