John & Mary Jane's 40th Anniversary Party

This past Saturday we made a day trip to Lebanon, IL for Tim's great aunt and uncle's 40th wedding anniversary. Tim spent a lot of time with the Dietz family out on the farm growing up and also took advantage of Mary Jane's cooking as well from the stories I hear!


Here is the cake - you can imagine how the girls enjoyed the frosting!

Here is Tim with his Great Aunt Mary Jane.



Yes, our little bartender. Don't worry, she was just pouring, not drinking, but got a little obsessed with wanting to fill everyone's beer. Tim's uncle put a tip jar out for her and by the end of the night she had over $20! When the keg ran out she started wiping off people's beer from the coolers and delivering them to their tables. She didn't want to leave and clung to her tip jar. In all fairness she did try to give the money to Tim's cousins who were hosting the reception, but they refused. Then Tim made her pay $2 to a girl that Abby had "employed" to help for about 10 minutes, but her Mom made her give it back to Abby. So the tip jar came home, but we convinced Abby to give some of it to church as she enjoys putting the weekly envelope in the offering. She gladly gave up some of her money, however informed us she will be buying a Barbie movie with the rest.


Megan enjoying the cake as usual.

John and Mary Jane enjoying their first dance again.

Abby and Megan enjoying the first dance as well. You can only imagine the running around and dancing they did. They were quite popular on the dance floor.

This is Sherry and Mike who are John and Mary Jane's kids. They hosted the lovely event.

This weekend is St. Pat's at our house. We did a lot of prepping for things this week with some cooking in advance but there still is a lot to accomplish, just to clean it all up again on Sunday. We are expecting 10 adults, 7 kids, and 4 dogs to be at the house over the weekend - wish us luck!

LaBousch 1999-2011

It was a sad day yesterday, our lovable cat LaBousch had a blood clot/heart attack and passed away late morning. It was quite a shock as he hadn't been acting abnormal at all and was playing with the kids the evening before as usual. LaBousch was a birthday present from a college roommate from the Rolla pound. Compared to most cats he was extremely warm and lovable, he loved to cuddle and sit on your lap, or sleep on your head. His worst trait was probably that he purred to loud and would wake you up when he snuggled. He was considered to have a "smoker's meow" which was entertaining at times for all. He got along well with the dogs and all babies.


As you can see he was very interested in the girls and loved to be apart of what they were doing. He would fight the dogs for crumbs that would get tossed off the table.


He was always following Abby around, and in the end was sleeping with her in her bed at her feet - or on her pillow if she let him.

Megan enjoyed him as well - even though he got his fur grabbed a lot he never ran away, always wanted to be around them.

It has been a rough 2011 for the Schmidt family. Thank you all for your nice comments and memories of LaBousch. He was a good cat.

Dr. Seuss

This past weekend the Auxvasse Parents as Teachers group and Callaway county schools hosted a Dr. Seuss themed activity day. As the weather was a little cold and we had never been to the high school yet we thought it would be a good experience.


Here are the girls painting their blue fish - yes it is frosting, you can see Tim smelling it to figure it out. This was one of their favorite activities. I think there were 6 less fish by the end of the activity.



There was also bean bag tossing into the hats - Abby's version....

Megan's version....

The next activity was making our Cat in the Hat hats.

Megan really enjoyed hers! There was also doorknob markers to let you know not to disturb because there was reading going on in the room, and we also made Grinch puppets - very scary! Then we made a turtle, pond, and tree for crafts.

Overall it was a very fun couple of hours. We had a great time and got to see some of our Auxvasse friends and Abby's preschool teacher Mr. P.

Megan's 2nd Birthday

This past weekend our little "Meggers" turned 2. Due to the weather we opted to have a party inside at Bonker's. We invited our family and friends in the area for a couple hours of pizza, cake, and fun. I believe all kids and some parents got naps in later in the day.


Here is Megan with our babysitter Taunia and her husband John. Megan enjoys her time and loves to play with John.


We tried to get the kids to eat some pizza in-between the playing - we were more successful when it came to cake time.

Here is Megan, Theo, and Lily in the 3 and under area. Megan enjoyed throwing the blocks at BJ.



Megan is trying to convince Theo to play a little bit more with the blocks.


Our little engineer at work. Building the blocks, then promptly kicked them over when she got out.

This was the cake that Megan picked out. It was either Cars or Rapunzel, tough choices for a 2 year old.

Megan did not quite figure out the blowing of the candle but was very happy about things.

Cupcakes and frosting - it doesn't get much better than this.



We couldn't dish things out fast enough. As you can see, all the kids were back for the cake part.


Megan started opening presents once she had been wiped down from her frosting.
She is pretty excited about these gardening tools. I think I'll have another helper this spring for the flowers.

She has the unwrapping of presents down.

This backpack was probably her favorite gift. As you can see she is in motion - I had a hard time getting a picture of her as she was just running back and forth with the backpack.


Megan at 2 Years:

• sleeping in a toddler bed
• loves to read books now, favorite is "Sleep baby Sleep"
• Still loves her sister and wants to be with her all the time
• Still fights with her sister and wants to play with everything she has
• Blankie and Baby Bear are still favorites
• Can out eat some adults at a meal
• Loves to play outside
• Is learning new words everyday
• Loves to wrestle with her Dad
• Goes through the motions of "potty" before baths
• Throws and excellent fit when things don't go her way
• Gives the best hugs

Bowling & Valentines Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all you love birds out there and hopeless romantics. This was the photo we took for Tim this morning. The girls have their coordinating Valentine's Day outfits on. It's actually a decent photos so we had to show it off.


On Sunday the Slenker Family had this great idea of lets go bowling with the kids......


Abby showing off her bowling shoes. They barely went down to her size, but we was pretty excited about them.


Tim is showing Abby how the whole bowling thing worked. The kids had the bumpers, the adults could still get gutter balls.

Abby's first attempt on her own.



After we got a couple balls stuck from not making it down the lane they gave us this little helping device, so here is Megan bowling.


She was so excited and clapping every time, it was quite entertaining.

This was Megan when she got a spare, I love the little pose!


Abby didn't think she needed the helping tool so she was bowling on her own. She actually did pretty good, those bumpers though are pretty handy.


The final score of the first game. The played a 2nd game and Landen came back and beat the girls.

Week of Snow - and finally a snowman!

This week of snow has been quite an event. It was a lot of "quality time" with the girls since we couldn't go anywhere, but we survived, and truly it wasn't that bad. Tim finally made it home from Shreveport, LA on Saturday evening due to his weather dilemmas. He got home and promptly decided we could make a snowman.


Megan was excited about big clumps of snow.


Abby was too, as they were snowballs.

Then Megan decided she should be eating the snow.....

You can see how high our snow is piled up, and some of it has melted already!



Here's Tim hard at work on the bottom snowball. You couldn't roll the snow, so he shoveled it.


"But Daddy, we want to make a snow castle!"

Abby was trying to make a snow angel, but due to the sun and snow melting then freezing she wasn't heavy enough to break the ice.

Yep - that is the top of our mailbox.

The finished product - yes it's a girlie snowman of course.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Redeker family. Ernie Redeker - our long time neighbor at my parents house passed away this past Friday. I have many memories of Ernie.

Really wishing we had a snow blower......

This is the view when I opened the garage, doesn't look to rough right at the garage, but trust me, it got deeper.


So the shoveling begins...


Just a view with a comparison to my shovel, great week for Tim to be out of town.

So the truck can get out of the garage now....

But I'm not too sure where I would go.....I swear there is a street out there. Until the city graces us with their plow I think we are stuck at home. The snow is higher than the clearance on the truck.

Gracie isn't enjoying the snow that much.

Thanks to my neighbor Frank who helped me shovel the driveway. I might try the other half later today, maybe not too.