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! 

Five on Friday {10.02.2014}

ONE.

Nap time for Kenzie and Mattie!

Jared and Kenzie came to our house last weekend. They came to bring us some furniture and things and left with the couch from our basement, but it wasn't all business while they were here. We went out to eat at Oscar's and watched some football on Saturday night after they got here and then had breakfast and watched some more football on Sunday (football and eating is what we did, I guess). It was nice to spend some time with them!

Below is one of the items that they brought me from my mom's office. I'm not sure where its home is going to be inside our house yet, but for now it's hanging out in our dining room. It doesn't quite look like I thought it was going to (I thought it had legs) but I think we'll get along just fine! :)

 TWO.

My DietBet that I mentioned I was going to do at the beginning of September ended on the 23rd. I beat my goal of losing 4% of my weight by one tenth of a pound! But I still won, so I got to split the $27,225 pot with all the other winners (well, really just a little over $20,000 after the DietBet people took their share for administering the game. haha). I won $41.59! Woo hoo! So really it was $16.59 after getting my initial $25 back. I'll take it though. That's definitely the most money I've ever received for losing weight ;)

THREE.

This morning I will be purchasing tickets to see Garth Brooks in concert in November! I'm so looking forward to going on a little trip to Minneapolis with some family to experience Garth in person! Yay!
I hate how nervous I get in the few hours before it's ticket buying time!! So much pressure!!!

FOUR.

Fall is here! Which means it's time for warm clothes, Fear Fest on AMC, and Hocus Pocus!!! (I may have already watched it a time or two!) This year, I am having a little get together with my female aunts and cousins (and my mom and sister obviously) for Halloween. It's a Hocus Pocus party where we'll carve pumpkins, eat yummy food, spend time together, and, of course, watch Hocus Pocus!!

FIVE.

Something to think about!

Happy Friday, everyone!

Linked up with Five on Friday here.

Back Road Bash 2 and Grandma Kock's Birthday

The first weekend of September was a busy one filled with a day of country music at the Back Road Bash in Vail, celebrating a high school classmates wedding, and celebrating Grandma Kock's 78th birthday!

Trent and I arrived at the Bash with some birthday balloons for Grandma and stayed to help sell pizza for the majority of the afternoon. It was a perfect day for a country music concert!!

Later on in the afternoon, we left for a while to go celebrate a classmate of mine's wedding. I grew up doing a lot of things with Jenica. We went to school and church together and it was great to see her so happy and beautiful on her wedding day.

After celebrating for a while, we headed back to the Bash to round out the night. It was a very fun (but chilly) evening!

On Sunday, we all gathered at Grandma Kock's to celebrate her birthday. We took that opportunity to spoil her, so we didn't let her cook or get us anything or clean up after us or anything!

She even got to go first in line and actually sit down and eat her food first. I don't think we've ever seen her go through the line first OR actually sit down at the table to eat at the same time as everyone else!

Grandma has always been the one to make us cakes for our birthdays, so I took this opportunity to make her a cake for once! It wasn't anything fancy and I only destroyed a couple layers of cake in the process, but we did have cake to eat in the end! And Grandma thought it tasted pretty good, so that's all that really matters, right?!?! I guess I just need a few more lessons before I stand any chance at becoming the new cake baker!

We took the opportunity of all of us being there at the same time to take some family photos, too

And being the strange ducklings that we are, we took some group senior picture-ish photos using the props at Grandma and Grandpa's. Yes, we are cool! :)

We were so caught up in taking creative pictures, that we forgot to consider the safety of the one of us that is currently active in sports... whoops. Luckily no one was injured during our photo shoot!

The whole day (and weekend) was just a blast. We all just had fun hanging out together and celebrating Grandma's birthday. She has done SO MUCH for us all for our whole lives and she deserves so much more that we will ever be able to give her! She is one special special lady and I love her sooo much!!! I can't wait to celebrate many many more birthdays with her!!