Wish you were here...

These are my two entries for Mandy's photo-contest this week. The theme is "Wish you were here".

This first picture was taken in Anchorage. We had just come in to port from an amazing cruise up the inside passage.

This picture was at sunset on the beach in Maui. By far, the most amazing vacation I have ever taken!! Can't wait to go back.

Ice storm...Sleep-over-style!

I have lived in Oklahoma my entire life, and never have I seen a winter quite like this one. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the winter-weather. I HATE to be cold. However, if it is going to insist on being 5 degrees outside, I would prefer it to at least be beautiful and white. Anyway, last month was my friend Mandy's birthday. She was totally bummed because her entire family was supposed to come in to town for a birthday celebration. Of course, Mother Nature seems to hate Mandy's birthday :) so much of her family were unable to make it that weekend.Rich and I both had the day off, so we decided to head over to Matt and Mandy's house to take her a birthday lunch, and play Scategories. For six hours, we played, ate, laughed, and continued to watch the sky fall! It was definitely becoming evident that the snow was NOT stoping anytime soon, so we decided that we should try to make it home and suggested that we move the party to our house. Before we knew it, we had a big Adult-sleep-over planned. I usually am not a very spontaneous person, but this was SO MUCH fun! Everyone got packed and ready to go, and we all headed back to our house.

I wish that I had taken more pictures from that night, but we laughed ALOT, and played Wii until 1am. All the babies went down great. Addi was so excited to have Viv and Vi in the next room! We all got up early the next morning (I say all...not Matt. He got up around noon or so. JK), and i made huevos ran cheros and muffins. We kept sending Viv in to the guest bed to drag Matt out of bed. It was pretty cute. Anyway, once he was finally up and around, he and Rich had the most brilliant idea. "Let's take off our shoes and socks and see if we can run all the way around the back yard". Let me remind you that there was 1 inch of ice and 6 inches of snow on the ground. Pretty ambitious, not very realistic. It was pretty amusing to watch.

Started out pretty cocky. You know, kind of strutting...


Quickly turned in to a run, and a bit of a whimper.

And then a full-out sprint.

Because they failed miserably in proving their masculinity in the snow, they resorted to physical contact. Pretty sure Matt won that one.

Viv and Addi had a blast dancing.

And then headed for bath-time.

Viv being such a good-helper.

After all the precipation finally ended, this is what we were left with.

Pretty, right??

Sat night, we finally were able to go out to celebrate miss Mandy's birthday. We went to Sumo which was YUMMY! Here is the delicious cake that we got for the birthday girl.

Addi very intent on watching the chef.

Matt and Mandy being silly, and trying to sneak in on my picture.

Aidan, Vivian and Addi...dancing and showing off for everyone.

The Birthday-girl hat.

The birthday-girl with her birthday-cake. It was AWESOME. We even had several random people come up to ask us about Katie's cakes. One guy even asked for a bite.

Anyway, that weekend was so much fun and spontaneous. I wish that I did things like this more often, and would encourage all of you to do the same. Hope you guys all had a wonderful February. I have so much more to blog about, but will have to save it for another time.