more bad photos of me & good photos of little rock

happy birthday to cera (yesterday)!!! we miss you and love you SO VERY MUCH!!!

so...although we take a GAzillion photos of our doings, we do not have a family photo. so over christmas we asked cera to take a few in hopes that one would turn out. well, NONE DID and we are going to have to rock the photoshop on one to get it juuuust right. but this one right here is my favorite.

that about sums it up

this is my second favorite one, rowdy is pulling a hannibal lector look.

 

rowdyman loves him some fava beans and a nice chianti

and one more bad photo to grow on - ME. senior picture, casual style.

what am i looking at?

omg, i just realized i have a mini snooki bump thing going on with my hair there. nice. and in regards to old senior photos, i've seen better - i've seen worse. at least i am not wearing a bolo tie (AHEM, MATT MOWRER).

let's get on to the fun, for thanksgiving matt and i packed the car up with kids and necessities and hit the road. destination: little rock, arkansas. matt's grandparents live there, along with his aunt jan, uncle jim and their kids jeff (with wife mandy with kiddos james allen and baby timothy) and julie (not present this holiday, she was indiana with her honey bunny this year). we had such a wonderful time, it went by too fast.

grandma and grandpa got to meet little rowdy for the first time and our kids really enjoyed them. lottie especially liked crawling on grandpa's lap and rowdy enjoyed banging on grandma's pie pan.

anywho, see for yourself...

here we have lottie sue crawling all over grandpa

and here we have rowdy banging on that pie pan

grandma and rowdyman

grandpa carving the turkey

here i am eating something

matt and grandpa hard at work

grandma and mom hard at work as well

mom sent this photo to me, not sure why i had that look on my face

if you are a robinson girl then you absolutely do two things at a gathering. one is make a craft of some type. the last time we got together we made super fancy hats and this year we made super fancy bracelets. out of SAFETY PINS. oh, you heard me.

here we are making them one evening

and her we are modeling a few

the second thing it that we play some farkle, but i don't have any photos of that. but TRUST ME, we played it lots. i love it. grandma loves it so much that jan bought her a t-shirt that says "i sparkle when i farkle" - she is adorable in it! jan, i can't find the photo so if you could email it to me i will put it up. i don't know what i did with it!

also, please check out our ballerinas. jan gets to wear a pink tutu because she kicked breast cancer's b-u-t-t the past year. she is also currently training for a half marathon with uncle jim. way to go, guys!!! and oh yeah, lottie sue is wearing a pink tutu because she is lottie sue. 

GO JAN!!!

baby timothy tells grandma a funny joke

baby timothy being super cute

the men working on a church project for aunt jan

we had such a great time in little rock, the kids had a ton of fun and matt and i enjoyed visiting. 

miss you guys!!! smooches!

the same day we drove back from little rock megan called to see if we could make it to her parent's house for dinner. earlier i said no because i thought we would be worn out, but i could not turn that cutie pie megan smith down, so we went as soon as we got home from arkansas. glad we did!

tommy is about to fry a turkey

matt keeps rowdy safe from the fire

megan showing off said-turkey

mary ann wearing a bib

it was, as always - a great time. we are looking forward to the beach trip, it will be here before we know it!

then some other week when matt was out of town i went over to jo's house for dinner. she oftentimes feeds me and the kiddos when matt is out of town. year, she's a saint.

jo presenting blake's spaghetti

the palmers were there

thanks for the grub, y'all!

here's a thing we mowrers like to do, build a big pillow pit and jump or be thrown into it. the kids love it so it happens quite regularly. here are some photos...

a lot of those are blurry but we are moving so fast it's hard to get a good photo. we'll try to get better ones next time. lottie sue and rowdy LOVE the pillow pit. i highly recommend it.

and then i have these photos of the night lottie sue made her gingerbread house. i forgot to take a photo of the finished product though - bad mommy. it was cute though, trust me.

lottie sue about to decorate her gingerbread house

sugar HIGH

and as always...a few items of interest:

1. here's a neat story on a woman that has the job of picking out typefaces for books - i would love that job, btw

2. matt and i just watched "exit through the giftshop" - we LOVED it - truly fascinating (in a related story shepard fairey is off the hook in regards to his obabma/hope poster)

3. the freakonomics group discusses whether or not expensive wins taste better

4. here's a story on jonathan ive (he is the guy that designs for apple, he makes everything so pretty)

5. matt and i loved the movie the station agent, vanity fair has an interview with peter dinklage

6. angry birds is coming to a tv near you

7. woody allen has a piece in the new yorker

alrighty, i am burning through the past few weeks here. it will be SO NICE to finally get caught UP. blog to ya later, taters.

little rock rocks: major crafting, yahtzee & a mississippi squirrel revival

I mentioned that we traveled to Little Rock last week, and I have photos for you to view. Matt's Aunt Jan (husband Jim along with son Jeff and his wife Mandy) live in Little Rock and this year Grandma and Grandpa (Robinson) sold their home in Springfield (Missouri) and moved to Arkansas. So we packed up our car (including Lottie Sue and Sydney) and met Matt's parents for a big drive West.

We spent our time visiting, eating, crafting and playing games - it was great. If you don't believe me take a look at the photos!

hubba hubba

Matt's mom volunteers at a local nursing home and she is starting a Red Hat Society there for the little ladies. You wouldn't dare be caught at the luncheons without fabulous red and purple hats, it's required. We spent a lot of time decorating hats and making pins, it was like our own Project Runway! We then we spent a lot of time wearing them for photos. You'll see below.

an inspired sydney

Dad did a little yard work and "found" Jan and Jim's water line. Bad thing is he found it with a pickaxe. Oops. When Dad sat down to dinner he had his very own place card.

not sure if you can tell but the place card is set inside the broken pipe dad butchered, we laughed for a long time over this one

Mom and Dad brought these pears all the way to Little Rock, they grew them on one of their trees and were very proud. Don't they look huge?

objects in photo may appear larger than they are

ha, we tricked you with props - they are tiny pears, but still special

lottie sue reads a book while we decorate hats

here we have (from left to right) sydney,
lottie sue, jan, grandma and mom

doesn't dad look adorable here???

and lottie sue looks adorable as well

here i am with sydney, we donned some of our creations

grandma and a super relaxed lottie sue play together on the couch

lottie sue gave grandma lots of kisses

lottie sue could not get enough of jan's koi pond,
she would point and say "oooh"

matt and grandma in the kitchen

dad and lottie sue play ball

grandma and mom here

sydney and my hubby (fyi - matt is officially a four-eyes now)

mandy and lottie sue play games before dinner one night

We of course had a family photo session, I can't tell you how hot it was out there. I was melting.

grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, lottie sue, matt and moi

same players here but sydney is in the center

jim, jan, jeff, mandy and lottie sue

the cousin shot (jeff is crouching down here,
he's actually 10 feet tall)

And here we have the "red hat" section, it was after dinner and us girls became a bit excited about modeling.

this is my favorite hat i made, i think it looks GOOD

here we are waiting for our closeup

we make these hats look GOOD

mandy and jan vamp it up

here we are wearing the headband/veil thingies
(we made these in case they ran out of hats at the luncheons)

Afterwards Mandy performed her interpretation of the "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" (any Ray Stevens fans here?) song for us. Mandy works as an interpreter for deaf and blind persons, and she performed the song in sign language. She first did it last Christmas and brought the house down, if you know the words you can see why it's a hoot.

mandy signs away

Here is the first verse of the song so you have an idea...

Well when I was kid I'd take a trip every summer,
down to Mississippi.
To visit my granny in her ante bellum world.
I'd run barefooted all day long,
climbing trees free as a song.
One day I happened catch myself a squirrel.
I stuffed him down in an old shoebox,
punched a couple holes in the top and when Sunday came,
I snuck him into church.
I was sittin way back in the very last pew
showin him to my good buddy Hugh,
when that squirrel got loose and went totally berserk!

You get the idea, it was really cute and we actually video taped her performance. Maybe I'll post it up here if I can edit the videos we have. I'm sure Mandy won't mind...

jan cues the song while looking like the cutie pie she is

here is matt with a big smile

grandpa and grandma enjoy the show

So there you have our trip in a nutshell, a great time was had by all and I am now obsessed with Yahtzee. The Robinson family loves to play games so I was in heaven, we played every night and also during crafting breaks. I must note how delicious the food was and let me also say that Jan and Jim were wonderful hosts to us. Next time I go I may not leave.