sweet friends

This morning was a nice morning for playing at the park. Meredith, Matty and Andrew met us there.

How sweet are these little ones (they did this all by themselves...)

Kylah was enjoying being the oldest this morning. :)

The wedding shower

 The weekend continues!

Saturday morning Jeff and Courtney met us here at our house and rode the rest of the way to Kansas with us for Courtney's shower.  It was just me and Joey and Kylah for this trip. Since Norah has proven herself to not be the easiest traveller in the world, we opted for her to stay home and have a daddy weekend (especially since we were gone just a day and a half!)

Jeff and Courtney are getting married in October, and we're so excited to have Courtney as a part of this (crazy) Manthe family!

 She fits right in with us. :)

Val did a great job with the decorations! Since the wedding colors are orange and light blue, she went with a fall theme, and it looked great. I loved her idea of putting pictures on the pumpkins!

We didn't think we would fill up the whole table, but indeed we did! There was a great spread of tortilla soup, cucumber sandwiches, jalapeno popper dip, fruit kabobs, chocolate chip cream cheese dip, cake balls, and blue and orange punch. This makes me want to go eat all this again! :)

 We had to play a few shower games. Grammy really got into the couples matching game, especially since there were a few classic movie star couples that only she knew! :)

Great Grandma (GiGi) and Great Aunt Trish had fun figuring out the answers together too.

These ladies (yes, that is including Joe's mom!) totally cracked us up. They all grew up together, and all still live in the same area, so it's fun to see them together. During the game I'm pretty sure there was quite a bit of cheating going on, but as long as they were having fun! :)

We played a trivia game about Jeff and Courtney. I think of the 25 questions, Courtney only got about 4 wrong! Not too bad!

Courtney got some wonderful gifts.

The 6 sister-in-laws. Joe's dad really wanted a picture of all us girls together. Luckily he loves having daughters-in-laws around to boss around all those boys of his! :) 

I really am blessed to be a part of this family. And I love that I have so many fun sister-in-laws!

(In case you were wondering who goes with whom...L to R: Val (Josh), Katie (Jake), Courtney (Jeff), me (Joe), Heidi (Jason), Brianna (James).

The other great thing about going to Kansas this weekend was getting to meet my two precious nieces, Sarah and Leah.  Sarah was 18 days old, and Leah was 4 days old. 

Kylah was enamored with the babies.

And I loved getting to cuddle both little newborns, especially at the same time! They were so sweet, and their mommas were such troopers to come hang out all night with us!

Even though we were only there for about 24 hours, Joey and Kylah made the most of their time with their cousins. Uncle Meat (Jeff) bounced them on the trampoline. Kylah was the only smart one and got off when Uncle Jeff started bouncing!

 Brianna was so sweet to play LIFE with all the kiddos. She was very patient with them, and they loved it. Joey still has his little crush on Brianna. When I put him to bed on Saturday night, he asked me if Brianna was going to church with us the next morning. When I said yes, he asked, "is she going to look so pretty, mommy, and have curls in her hair?" So sweet.  :)

This little sweetie is one of the most relaxed babies I have ever met (although I am a little biased since my sweet Norah is not a relaxed little baby...)  :)  He just crawls around, climbs into drawers, hangs out in his high chair, and smiles. 

We had such a fun trip to Kansas. I can't wait until the wedding in October when we are all together!

Charity Challenge Dinner

 Friday night was the annual Charity Challenge of Champions Dinner and Auction (aka...we get to dress up, pretend we are really rich and "pretend" to bid on expensive items we may or may not really need.)  :)  It's an absolute blast!  Dave manages this charity's (awesome) website, so he gets a table and invites us to come with him and Meredith.

It was nice to have a date this year. The past two years Joe has been out of town so I had to go by myself. This year I got to take a handsome date. :)

 These are the best friends anyone could ever ask for. Have I ever mentioned that we bought land close to where they are building their new house? I should blog about that soon.... :)

 The group changes from year to year, but is always a fun group!

These were fun ladies!

One of the most fun things of the night was the photo booth they had. We visited the photo booth many, many times that night.

We loved the props they had.

So fun. I didn't actually mean  to have the middle picture blurred out, but when I realized it was, I thought it was for the best since it was a kissing picture.  :)

What a fun night!

Saturday morning I headed to Kansas with Joey and Kylah for a wedding shower for my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Courtney. I'll have a post about that coming soon!

Lunch with Joey

 I have a few posts to do (we had a busy weekend...), but I promised Val that each event would get its own post, so here's the first one!  :)

On Friday, the girls and I went to have lunch with Joey at his school. He was so excited about this, and talked about it for days beforehand.

It was so cute to see him "in action" at school.  We followed him through the hot lunch line and sat where he told us to. I loved all the "hi Joey!"'s I heard. :)

 He loved showing Kylah where to get her food and where to sit.

I had to corral Norah too, but she was pretty happy to sit at the table like a big kid. :)

 I love this little snaggle-toothed boy! :)

can't buy me love

 Anyone familiar with the movie Can't Buy Me Love (with Patrick Dempsey when he was a lot younger...)

Don't these two little ones look like they could be straight from that movie?!

 Here, ma'am, let me help you get this started.

And I'll give you a little push.

These two are so sweet together.

These pictures are obviously not from today, since it was rainy and cold today. They were from Labor Day when it was still really hot.

The older ones went swimming with the dads, so Meredith and I just had these two little cuties and Andrew with us.

We can't get over how cute Matty and Norah are together.

Love them!

Happy 10 years to us (a few months early...)

Has anyone been wondering where I have been, why I haven't blogged in a while?  :)

Well, for my faithful few readers I have, here is my recap from our recent trip to Panama City Beach, FL.

Joe had a meeting with his company in Panama City Beach, so we thought we would stretch the time out, stay longer, and celebrate our 10 year anniversary. Our actual anniversary isn't until December 28th, but it often gets lost between Christmas and New Years and traveling, so it was nice to celebrate it early.

Joey got to stay here with his best friend, Connor. He had a blast! I think Mere and Dave did pretty well having 5 kids! :) Thanks guys!

Kylah and Norah got to stay at Nana and Grandpa's house. We were very thankful that Val and Josh were there, too, since Nana had to work during the days. I think Val was a mama to 6 kids this past weekend! :)  When Kylah got home she said, "I obeyed Grandpa and Nana and Uncle Josh and Aunt Val because they were all in charge of me." Thanks everyone!

We had a really early morning flight to Florida last Thursday, so we slept most of the 2 flights there. This is in the car on the way to our hotel.

We didn't really know what to expect since we didn't exactly pick out the resort/hotel. We just extended our stay and stayed at the same place that Joe's work has us booked.

We were so pleasantly surprised to walk into our room and see this view form our balcony.

Perfect!

We quickly got into our swimsuits to head to the beach/pool.

There were a few pools on the property. We ended up spending most of our time at this pool, which was much quieter and less crowded than the main pool. I think we're getting old...  :)

It was fun to get dressed up at night to head to dinner. Beautiful sunset on the beach.

We wanted a little seafood restaurant to eat at that night. We had a map and picked a place off of it. Turns out, the place looked much closer on the map than it was in real life. I think we walked about 5 miles round trip. My feet were a bit sore after that! 

After another glorious day of laying out by the pool, hanging out at the beach, and literally doing nothing all day on Friday, we headed to a luau that Joe's work put on. It was really fun with live music. (And the leis and shell necklaces made good souvenirs for the kids!) :)

They served roasted pork at one of the stations.

Yes, that was a pig's head you saw... 

We had another fun few days of doing nothing (well, actually Joe did have to go to meetings during the day on Saturday and Sunday morning), but I relaxed and again, did absolutely nothing but read, nap, and watch TV (when I got too hot). It was fabulous! 

Our last night there we headed to a fancy restaurant (we called this our actual celebration dinner for our 10th anniversary.) :)

The place was called Firefly, and it was awesome.

The bread was so good and was served with 3 different sauces/butters: while mushroom cream cheese, tomato/basil puree, and strawberry butter. 

I had the Caprese salad.

Joe had She Crab soup. 

Then our actual meals arrived.

I had a steak and shrimp pasta.

Joe had Rack of Lamb with orange, chipotle pesto glaze.

Dessert was a scrumptious Creme Brulee.

And now I realize why I gained 5 pounds during this vacation.... 

It really was amazing!

Our last day there we had to check out at 10 am, but then didn't leave for the airport until 4 pm. We had a long day in the sun, but it was awesome.

Panama City Beach 2012.

When can we go back??!!  :)