With it being the hockey season, here is a picture from 2001 of my little hockey fan! I think this was the first year when he really knew what hockey was and used anything he could find for his helmet and stick. (Including this Elmo bicycle helmet!!) Too Cute!
Wow, only 5? LOL. Here are the ones I can think of off of the top of my head..
1. Making Calico Beans for Thanksgiving at my mother in law's house.
2. Making the same beans plus stuffing and cranberry salad for my family's get together
3. Eating a LOT of food
4. Watching a LOT of football
5. Getting to see family that I haven't seen since early July!!
2. A nice iPod, I would like to listen to my own music. If Dylan hears a song he doesn't like, he will ask me to change the station. Well this way he and Mark can listen to what they want and I can have my own playlist. :-)
3. A decent laptop computer for two reasons. First, Between Mark and Dylan I don't get too much time on the computer in the evenings AND if I had my own laptop, I could do my computing or eBaying in the living room on the comfy couch while they got their turns on the computer!
4. A new bed!!! We've had this bed for 10 years. And sadly before that it was my brother's and his wife's AND when they got it, it was from a garage sale! EWE! I think it's time.
5. A new garage door and opener so that I can start storing my car in the garage over winter, again. If I can't keep mine in the garage, then it's in the driveway and Mark's is in the street and the snow plow has to plow around it and Mark gets "snowed in". It's never fun shoveling and pushing him out, either.
6. Baby items! We have nothing in the house for the baby-to-be, yet. So it would be nice to get a few things in the house to start getting prepared.
7. Last but not least...and this one is not materialistic at all. I would love to have my mom back, at least for just one Christmas.
And here are the pictures from the previously mentioned Blackhawk's game.
Here is the famous Billy Goat Tavern (named for the Cub's dreaded Curse of the Billy Goat). We are here before the game. Good food at an unbelievably cheap price!!
Here are Mark and Dylan in front of the Blackhawk's statue outside of the United Center. Despite the 30 degree temps, we stopped walking long enough for a quick picture.
Here is Dylan inside of the gift shop "Fandemonium" at the U.C. We found a little Stanley Cup model and thought it would be cute for him to pretend he won the cup.
Here he is watching the pregame warm ups. Poor guy...he's a Calgary Flame's fan b/c their AHL team (The Quad City Flames) play here in town. Mark and I (huge B-hawk's fans) had to sit through a game with THREE Flame's fans (Dylan, Mark's brother Brent and Brent's girlfriend, Michelle). They weren't too happy..you'll soon see why..
Here is Dylan with is prized puck. Jarome Inginla from the Flame's saw Dylan's QC Flames shirt and tossed a puck to him, over the glass!
Here we are waiting for the pregame show to start. It was a lot of fun b/c we all got on TV!!! The inlaws got us on video so we can see it later.
The game..
Dylan, COMPLETELY engrossed in the game ( and not speaking to me b/c the B-hawks were kicking some serious butt!)
Final score....Bhawks=6, Flames=1!!!
Bhawks' traditional Salute To The Fans! It's tradition to do this in the center of the ice after every win. Go Hawks!!
This weekend, we went to a Chicago Blackhawk's hockey game in Chicago. I have a lot of pictures to share, but first I want to post a video. It is tradition for the crowd to cheer during the National Anthem at the United Center. We've been to a few games before and I've always gotten goose bumps and loved participating but this time I decided to video it and share it with friends. It gets me every time I watch it or am actually there ( i have to say that actually being there is a thousand times better than watching the video!!)
This should be easy!! Now that I'm pregnant, it seems that I have a LOT of pet peeves!! I'll try to stick to my top 5 though, to keep it short.
Lets see.....
#5. Deadbeat Parents- I'd have to agree with Jen and say that deadbeat parents REALLY annoy me. If you don't want children to spend so much of their free time around you, if you don't want to help them learn, if you don't want to be a good role model, DON'T HAVE KIDS!!
#4. Empty Threats- When parents "threaten" to punish when their child disobeys but they never follow through. Once in a great while is okay but when it's all of the time, thats not good for the child. If you're not going to punish, then don't even put the idea out on the table! Then these children (one across the street in particular) think that they can get away with ANYTHING
#3 Wal Mart is Already playing Christmas Music??- I mean really? It's only the beginning of November. Give us a chance to take down our Halloween decorations first!
#2. When people touch my belly when I'm only 3 1/2 months pregnant. It's not baby belly yet, just a little left over from my last one (who's now 9!) lol
#1. People who enter my fenced in backyard to let their son play on our swingset without asking, break the swing and LEAVE! Enough said..
Okay, apparently I needed to vent this morning. Hoping I didn't offend anyone! I'm usually TOO nice of a person so it felt kind of good to open up this morning, Thanks Jen and Christy!! Now let's here your pet peeves. Post your top 5 and link back to Christy so we can read about them. Have a fantastic Monday!
We started off our wonderful but busy Saturday with a trip to the zoo to participate in "Boo At The Zoo" Where some dear friends of ours came down from out of town to dress up and go trick-or-treat around the zoo for a few hours with us.
After that, Dylan went to Grandpa's for the night and I got changed to go to an AMAZING Reba and Kelly Clarkson concert with my Mother-In-Law and my brother in law's girlfriend. It was probably the BEST concert I've ever been to b/c when you put Reba and Kelly together to harmonize both of their songs together, it sounds like pure heaven!! It started almost an hour and a half late, due to problems with Reba's airplane that grounded them for a few, unexpected hours but she finally made it and it was SOOOO worth waiting for!! I'd go again in a heartbeat!
HEre's a short clip of them singing together. I get chills every time I hear the two of them sing this song and I WISH they would record it together!!Since it's that time of year again, already, I thought I would post my favorite pics of when Dylan was about 5 or 6 years old and he grew his first pumpkin plant out at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They let him plant it in the front yard and it ended up taking up about half of the yard when it was full grown!! Here he is posing with the finished product. He was SO proud of what his hard work and love produced!!
And here are Dylan and Grandpa tending to the plant shortly before the previous picture. They did a lot of hard work, together, on this project. :-)
Here is an old picture of my now 9 year old son play in the sprinkler on Grandma Shari's deck when he was almost 2 years old. I miss those days on the deck with my mom, so much! Always a great memory to look back at pictures like these!
Don't forget to stop by Twinfatuation to join in on the "When-esday" fun this week. Be sure to check out other "Way Back" photos also!
I'm just getting a hang of this blogging thing from my wonderful friend, Jen.
Here is an ADORABLE picture of a wonderful two-some...
This is Dylan during a visit to my sister's farm in Northern Iowa. He fell in love with a newer kitten named Lilly. They were best friends all weekend long and when Dylan wasn't near her, she always went looking for him. If he was inside she would look in all of the windows and glass doors until she spotted him and then just sat there, knowing Dylan would come out and play with her as soon as she gave him that precious kitty look :-)
To join in on the Two for Twos-day fun, visit Deanna's blog & get the details. Don't forget to leave her some bloggy love while you're there!
So Labor Day Weekend tradition in the Quad Cities is the Ringling Bros. & Barnam and Bailey circus. I've only taken Dylan once or twice before this year but wanted to go again so we had a mommy-Dylan date night together. We started off the evening with a visit to the tents outside where they keep the lions, horses, zebras and elephants. Our favorite tent was the elephant tent. We watched them cool themselves off by spraying themselves with dirt and hay.
And the show horses who moved so quickly that I never got a very decent picture of them.
And what is a circus without tightrope walkers to distract you while the workers clean up horse poo?
And then of course the ADORABLE tigers. These guys/girls acted just like kittens the way they paw at the leader's whips. Too Cute! Dylan and I decided that we wished we could train our Guinea Pig to do tricks like these guys.
And Bello the Clown is the lead "actor" in the entire show. The theme was "Bellobration" and at one point they were throwing Bello "wigs" into the crowd and Dylan caught one. Doesn't he look goofy?
I LOVE this picture! If only I had gotten a little closer zoom!
And they finished off the night with human canons. They are the two orange blurrs at on the left half of the picture. A husband and wife couple do this every year together!
So that was our evening wrapped into a few pictures. I had more pics but figured it might get TOO boring to look at if I put too many more in there. :-) But all in all we had a great Mommy-Dylan date night together!So a few weeks ago my dad bought a sailboat off of eBay. It's a 19 footer and pretty nice! He's had it in his driveway ever since he bought it. Well last night we got a random phone call and it was Dad asking if we would meet him down at the river just a minute or two away from our house. He was monkeying with the boat and watned to know if we wanted to test it out with him. So Dylan and I headed down there just after 3:30 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. When we got there we had to set it up....this was the HARDEST part and took FOREVER!!!! (almost 2 hours) I was a little nervous about being out ON the Mississippi River in a boat equipped with only a trolling type of a motor (I've heard stories of the awful currents down there). But once I got my "sea legs" all was good and we were able to enjoy the beautiful cool weather, light wind and calm river. And the currents did NOTHING to the boat...only the few jerks on speed boats who got pretty close at a very fast pace and made huge wakes for us! So I took a LOT of pictures and thought I'd share a few with you! :-)
Here is Grandpa teaching Dylan how to steer the boat with the rudder (?)
Dylan QUICKLY caught on and took over all by himself, lol
Here we are headed away from the I-74 bridge (going downstream)
Here's Dad driving the boat back upstream
We got closer to the bridge
Coming up under the bridge!! This made me nervous!
Almost RIGHT under. (Jenn, Hannah would like this picture!!!)
This is where Dylan spent most of the trip...up on the bow looking for fish, birds, sticks/logs, anything he could find floating in the river.
And we ended the night with a perfect sunset over the Mississippi River while we were on the dock getting the boat put away (which also took a LOOOOONG time!)
