A Wicked Night! :)

I highly recommend seeing Wicked if you haven't already! Wicked is a musical based on Gregory Maquire's novel, "Wicked." His novel is called a parallel novel to L.Frank Baum's, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Maquire wrote two more books in the series that I am dying to read now, "Son of a Witch" and "A Lion Among Men."

Wicked!!

I am going to be one cultured gal this week! I get to go see this musical with my Mops friends tomorrow! Yah! I'll post some photos after the show!

The post below is a rehearsal of the performance that I saw at the NC Master Chorale in Raleigh. I wish I had a photo or video of my friend, who was the soprano soloist in the concert. She was outstanding! A friend of mine from church and I went to go see her perform, it was an excellent show!

"O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana - NC Master Chorale and Raleigh Symphony Orchestra

Mops Summit!

Can you see me in the bottom right hand corner? This last Saturday, 3 friends and I drove to Fort Mill, South Carolina to go to the Mops Summit, which is a conference of sorts to be inspired and learn about ways to be our best at what we do for Mops (Mothers of Preschoolers), which is the group at our church that I serve with. The two speakers were pod cast live at many, many churches across the US! It was a great Saturday!

Julio Catches Up to the Old Lady!

We celebrated Julio's birthday on Friday, April 9th with our cousins, Frank, Sonja and baby Annika. I turned 32 this last December, so Julio is now as old as me! Ayden is into who's older lately, so he likes to say to me, "Momma, you are the oldest adult in the family and I am the oldest kid in the family!" It is so much fun to be reminded of this. :) ha,ha! I've only got 3.5 months on him, so it is nothing really, right?
The kids! Isn't Annika such a cutie! :)
Here they are on the actual birthday the next morning. Ayden made his Dad the card he's holding and we gave him a nice wrist watch. I had to make him his favorite breakfast too, just like Gabriel the week before, which is french toast made with Great Harvest's yummy cinnamon chip bread, Yum!

Birthday Party!

We didn't have a big party for Gabriel this year because Mom was burned out from all the party throwing she's been doing lately. We figured that Gabriel wouldn't notice, so we invited our neighbor friends over to help us celebrate with some delicious Memphis style ribs, cole slaw and baked beans.
The kids had macaroni and cheese of course!
Here they are opening up Gabriel's gift (the drum from the previous post)!
Can I say, mouthful?!!! We decided that it seems like Gabriel enjoys ice cream more than cake, so I bought a bunch of different toppings and we made ice cream sundaes. I think it worked out well! :)
YUM!!!!!!

Gabriel Turns Two!!

Here's the birthday boy sitting on the kitchen sink (like he does most mornings!) waiting for his breakfast. :)
I made them some birthday pancakes and they gobbled them up!
Cheeeeeeeeeeese!! It's my birthday!

Beating the drum, a fun new birthday gift! :)

It's My Birthday!

Spring Songs & Party!

Ayden's preschool class at this year's Spring Celebration. They sang three songs and were adorable!

Here is Ayden with his classmates and friends, Alex and Isabella (who are brother and sister) at the lunch they had after the little performance.

Spring Songs!

Easter Sunday!

Here are the kids at the Koka Booth Amphitheater, which is where our church held the Easter Sunday service this year so that the whole church body could worship together (we normally have 3 service times). It was pretty amazing and it was a warm day!
Goofing around, waiting for the service to start!
Our life group after the service at our picnic lunch. We were missing two families, but we gained a few grandparents! :) It was a gorgeous day! Spring around here has been so pretty and green!

The Shower!

Here's Hazel, Keiko and I at the party!
The whole group of ladies!
We had a onesies decorating activity that was so much fun! Here are the three winning onesies!
The hostesses of the event posing by my favorite floral arrangement.
The yummy food! It was an afternoon shower, so we had pinwheel sandwich bites, egg roles, fruit salad, stuffed mushrooms, cheesecake bites and chocolate covered strawberries. The confetti spread on the table are little sheep. :)

Keiko's Baby Shower!

Always loving the opportunity to be crafty, I offered to make the baby shower invitations for my good friend and neighbor, Keiko! Above is what a came up with. :)
A flower arrangement from the shower.
This is a photo of the memory book that I made for Keiko and her soon to be baby boy! As you can tell, the shower had a little theme of sheep. :)

The Egg Hunt!

While Momma was off throwing a special baby shower, Daddy took the boys to the 1st Annual Mops Easter Egg Hunt! What a great Daddy!
Poor guys, I think the sun was in their eyes. :) Still pretty darn cute!
"And here's how you open the wrapper to get to the chocolate, Gabriel!"
I heard it was a great park for playing too!
This was the 27th of March and the weather was a bit chilly in the morning and so I couldn't help but send the boys to the egg hunt in their matching Easter outfits! It was a good thing I did because these long shirts, sweater vests and pants would not have worked on Easter morning for church! It was a warm one (photos to come!) :)

Gabriel & Quentin Dancing!

St Patty's Day!

Well, momma forgot to dress them in green until later that day (or maybe this was the day after)! But Granny sent fun, green necklaces from the parade in St. Louis, so they had a great time regardless!
Later the next week, Ayden was in his "theatrical performance" that completed his 8 week theater class through the Town of Cary. They pretended to go places for the first several weeks, hence the theme of the class, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" We have a regular video (not the short camera version) of the play, it was too cute! Ayden was the captain of the plane and said, "We are flying today at a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet! He remembered his lines and was proud of himself, Thank God! :)
We had Quentin over that week to play while Carmen got some things done. :) They had a great time together!

Last Outing With Granny & Papi

So, I came back from TN on Sunday, March 14th and I realized that Granny and Papi were due to leave the following Tuesday. So, instead of sending Ayden to preschool the next day (on Monday morning) we played hookie and decided to have some fun at the Durham Museum of Life and Science! Here we are on the train ride.
It was a such a fun morning with gorgeous weather and we even got to have lunch with Daddy (who drove over from his Durham clinic, which is not far from the museum!)

A Night in Nashville!

After we said a tearful goodbye to the Gjovigs in Memphis, the Boshes and I drove back to Nashville (since that was the airport we flew into). We drove to Memphis to make the trip shorter for the Gjovigs since they live in NW Arkansas and were driving to TN). We were flying back to our homes in the morning, but there was time for dinner and fun that evening! The Boshes were in Nashville on the Thursday evening prior, before driving to Memphis and so they knew about a great place to go called The Wild Horse Saloon! The place was packed (three floors) and they had awesome live entertainment, complete with country line dancing! I think it had been a good 10 years or so since I had been line dancing and it was a lot of fun! Thanks for a fun evening Boshes!
Here we are out in the rain that same afternoon. :)

Visiting the Govigs & Boshes in Tennessee!

Little Miss Annika Gjovig at nearly 7.5 months! Isn't she such a sweet little cherub?!
I was in the airport on my way to Nashville, when I passed by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory twice! It was a sign and so I had to get two chocolate treats for the older two Gjovig cuties, Elijah and Kiana! Since I got to go on this trip without my boys, I had a few moments to think about fun little treats for these two. :) I think they enjoyed them while we checked out the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN.
The museum was located at the site of the old Lorraine Motel, which was the motel where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed on the night before he was assassinated. Standing in this spot (below the spot where he fell) was a very moving experience. I had to buy Ayden a souvenir from the museum, a great book for children about Dr. King.
After the museum, we all headed over to this historic restaurant! They had the most amazing ribs I've ever had! And perfect baked beans and cole slaw to go with it! The staff and atmosphere made it all quite the experience! I'm so glad that Kenji had a friend who knew about this place! The food was outstanding!
I know you will kill me Bonnie for posting this! Here we are before we parted ways. Even though Julio wasn't able to join us, I was so very happy to get the chance to fly to TN to visit great friends! I just couldn't let the opportunity pass by! More photos to come...

Our Life Group Serves at the Durham Rescue Mission!

Here's the whole group that served that night! We were missing one family. It was on March 6th, Saturday for dinner. For those of you that don't know, back in October, Julio and I decided to become Life Group leaders for a group that our church leadership helped form. We have 6 families that include 11 adults and 9 children all under the age of five, with one bun in the oven as well!
The kids running around when we were cleaning up!
The cleaning crew, AKA Julio, Wendy, Tracy and more.
Here's Wendy serving some of the delicious crock pot dishes that we came up with. It was Wendy's idea for each family to come up with a recipe to serve in their own crock pot so that the ladies at the rescue mission could have a variety of dishes to choose from. We served green salad, fruit salad, rolls, drinks and dessert as well! It was definitely a success!
Here's Ayden on the play ground outside (the men watched the kids for a while before dinner)! He has been getting really great at the monkey bars lately! It has taken him a lot of practice since you have to have a bit of muscle and agility to keep going across. I've been proud of him for his persistence!