Category: Friends (Page 4 of 6)

Fun in the sun!

April 7, 2014 / Erica / 2 Comments

The Chlison’s came over for a visit yesterday and it was B.E.A.-UTIFUL! outside. The kids played in the yard for most of the afternoon. It will be even better when the yard in the back of the house isn’t so squishy and when all the dog poop has been thoroughly rinsed away. And, um, those two things don’t actually go together. Gross. To clarify the ground is just squishy from the partially frozen/thawed ground. Eeeew… what a mental image I’ve conjured up now!

Anyway–we all had a great time! I love that our kids play so well together! And Bailey is really starting to play along too–she’s been a bit shy up until now, but yesterday she was joining right in. See, I even caught a picture of my kids trying to convince her to pull them in the wagon.

Chloe is trying to convince Bailey to pull them…

We enjoyed soaking up the sunshine… ah. The kids even decided to eat their snack in the shade of the truck since it was getting (dare I say it?) WARM!

Curly Apples!

Fun in the wagon!

Party Success(es)!

February 24, 2014 / Erica / 5 Comments

Well, I’m happy to report that everything went just smashingly well this weekend. Fun was had all around and I even have delightful pictures to show for it!

Note: the pictures were not taken by me–again I’ve taken them from my friends at church. Hehe! In this case I think Tara took most of the pictures on Brittany’s camera who then edited them (if they needed editing which I have no idea if they did…) So, I want the credit to go where credit is due! But, hey, it is my house in the background, so I’ll take credit for that! Haha!

Red Velvet Brownies and Spritz cookies

The food counter. Isn’t it beautiful!?!

Gift Table

Yummy yogurt and fruit “parfaits”!

Playing pin the mustache on the groom!

Goofing off with our mustaches! (In case you’re wondering the Bride is next to me)

Another view of the gift table

Cucumber & Feta cheese Bruschetta

Mini Quiche

Donut holes with my fun cake toppers

French toast kabobs

As you can clearly see, we had a lot of delicious food–so my diet went right out the window this weekend, but BOY WAS IT TASTY! 😉

Too busy to stick around long

February 21, 2014 / Erica / 3 Comments

I’ve been running around like crazy today getting ready for tomorrow–I have the Baker’s coming for piano lessons in the morning, then I’m hosting a Bridal Shower here for a friend at church at 1:00 then I’m also co-hosting a ladies-nite-out event at Church at 6:30. Of course both of those events require tasty treats and a clean house… and decorations… and ice breaker games/questions… gah! So much to do! But here’s a taste of what I’ve been up to today…

Little Decorations to poke into some of the dainty food--the theme of the party is French/Eiffle Tower

Little Decorations I made to poke into some of the dainty food–the theme of the party is French/Eiffle Tower

Lemon Spritz Cookies

Red Velvet Brownies

Some of the decorations I’ve been working on… those poofs are fun to make!

Superbowl 2014

February 3, 2014 / Erica / 1 Comment

We had some friends over to “watch” the Superbowl yesterday. It’s actually pretty funny because I actually didn’t care about the game much this year, but I did want to see the commercials. But then after everyone got here and I started gabbing and eating I totally forgot about the game or commercials… then when we did finally turn it on upstairs (the guys were downstairs watching) then I was actually worried about what they might show on the commercials in front of all the kids… so we ended up turning away anyway. No worries, though, because I watched them all this morning online so I really got the best of both worlds!

Food and Friends!!!

Did I mention yummy food? This was Jalapeno Popper Dip and it was DELICIOUS!

Little Drew stuck in the playpen… hehe!

All of the kids watching Wreck It Ralph upstairs since we didn’t trust the commercials!

January has been busy and full of depressing weather.

January 27, 2014 / Erica / 2 Comments

Yup, is COLD again today.

Sigh.

I think I saw a real temp of -17 and a wind chill of -47. But I admit I’ve stopped actually looking. Or trying to look ahead. It’s just so ridiculously cold! So, since it bums me out, I’ve just started to pretend it’s not so bad. Almost all the schools are cancelled again today, but Shakopee already had today scheduled off for the quarter break, so we didn’t have to worry about it. There have been rumors that tomorrow will be cancelled as well, so we’ll see. I don’t mind winter, and I don’t mind cold, and I don’t mind snow, but I HATE WIND and I DISLIKE it THIS COLD. So the combination of the two is quite depressing.

But onto happier things… In other news, January has been busy for me. Somehow I get to the end of the week and I wonder where it has gone! I started working out again, which was a big step for me. No monumental achievements yet other than not being really really sore every day. I finally feel good enough to trot up and down stairs again with ease. I know if I stick with it I’ll make progress in the right direction.

Also, we had Piano Preliminaries this past weekend (which I already wrote about) which I am hopeful many of my students did well at. That has filled up most of the lessons for the past month working on the details and memorization of their contest songs. I will get the results tomorrow or Wednesday in the mail. I’m excited to see how they all did.

My teaching schedule is VERY full. I was full before, but I now have 2 High School girls who have jumped in as “on-call” students, since I didn’t have any regular slots open for them. So if I get a cancellation I can quick contact them and see if they want to come and they can get a lesson in here and there. That has filled up any of my gaps throughout my week.

We’re also enjoying being social again. We finally have the space to invite friends over more often, which has been wonderful. It was one of the things we talked long and hard about when we were searching for a larger house–needing to be willing to use our space to cultivate more relationships. I admit I was a bit nervous about it, since I am a very “planned” person. I don’t do well, just inviting people over on a whim… but I’m happy to say that the longer we are here the better is has become. And we’ve only been living here for 3 months! And I didn’t realize how much I was missing being social… my only issue I’m still working through is trying to be social without eating an excessive amount of food at each gathering. I’m still working through it… 🙂

A little Christmas baking!

December 23, 2013 / Erica / 2 Comments

Yesterday I spent the afternoon baking goodies with my two friends from church. We had the idea to make a bunch of things and then split up the goodies so you end up taking home way more variety than you actually make. We had a lot of fun chatting, snacking, laughing at our mistakes and of course baking. One of the gals is a photographer, and I know she took some fun pictures of the food, but she hasn’t had time to post them yet, so I’ll post my pictures of the goodies as well as a picture I stole from the other gal. 🙂

Oh, and Tim volunteered to have the kids and husbands over to our house as we baked at a different house–it was great! No kids running underfoot and a little girl time too boot!

This is the picture the other gal took–it doesn’t have EVERYTHING we made showing, but I thought it was such a pretty picture I had to post it. 🙂

These are the treats we made:

1. Rocky Road Fudge

2. Pecan Rolo Pretzels

3. Dark Chocolate Peppermint Fudge

4. Candy Cane Cookies

5. Christmas Light bulbs

6. Ginger Cookies

7. Peanut Butter Cookies

8. Homemade Egg Nog

9. Oreo Truffles

Yes, that is a half eaten peanut butter cookie… I realized I only had one after I started eating it but I wanted it in the picture. hehe!

Homemade Eggnog–it was DELICIOUS and creamy (probably because of all the vanilla ice cream added… yummmmmmm….)

Weekend Pictures: Pumpkin Patch

October 18, 2013 / Erica / 0 Comments

This past Sunday Chloe and I drove down to Owatonna to visit Stacy and their new puppy, Vinny. We had a blast. The puppy is just sooooo adorable and super sweet–the perfect puppy for them. And Chloe had such a great time playing with the puppy and with Stacy’s husband, Bryan. 🙂 He was a really good sport and entertained Chloe for quite some time.

We chatted for a while and then all 4 of us drove out to a nearby pumpkin patch. It was an absolutely perfect day. We walked all around the field looking for perfect pumpkins then watched the pumpkin launcher and looked at all of the activities they had available (none of which we actually did since they all cost extra $). All in all a fun outing!

Now for pictures!

Here’s the collection of pumpkins we took home!

Sign–I like the giant pumpkin

pretty landscaping

pretty girl by the pretty landscaping

The pumpkin launcher! We watched it twice

There was an adorable measure chart that you could take yearly pictures by–it was a wee bit sunny!

How tall am I?

and what about Stacy? (Isn’t she cute and fall looking? ;))

And let’s see how tall Bryan is too! Even though it doesn’t look like it–he was having fun, I promise!

Searching for the perfect pumpkin

Stacy contemplating her pumpkin picks… she was deep in thought

Part of the kids playground area

Look! We’re corn in disguise!

It’s a posing stalk of corn!

We were having fun making shadow puppets on the pumpkins!

And here’s their new puppy Vinny!

Chloe had a blast playing with Him–especially throwing the ball and running around!

WICKED!!!

October 4, 2013 / Erica / 0 Comments

Tim and I and Alisa went to see Wicked last month–and it was Ah-mazing! We decided to take Alisa (our Nanny who has become part of our family) as a joint Birthday/Christmas gift as well as part of my Birthday gift since we all really wanted to go. Tim and I had seen it once before, when it came to town a few years ago, so I was worried I might not like it quite as much, but I was wrong! It was just as fantastic the second time. The music is so catchy and the characters have such personality–I find it quite entertaining. I continued to replay the music and scenes in my head for days.

Amusingly, we ended up sitting RIGHT next to our church friends–funny huh? We knew they were going to the same show (because Tim had mentioned it on Facebook and they quickly asked how they could order tickets too) so I hoped we would run into them… and we certainly did! It was their first time seeing it, as well as Alisa’s first time, so it was delightful to talk with all of them about their thoughts and impressions of the show.

Alisa, Me & Brittany @ the Orpheum!

Since we went to the matinee we had time to stop afterwards for supper on our way home. We went to this cute Italian restaurant in Eden Prairie called Biaggi’s. They served bread before the meal–which is one of my favorite things, if a restaurant does that they definitely make the top of my list!–and then I ordered the Butternut Squash Ravioli and it was seriously SCRUMPTIOUS! We enjoyed laughing and talking about the show and eating out delicious food. We’re sure going to miss Alisa next year when she goes off to College…

I would say, all in all, it was a fantastic outing!