Courageous Claire!

This afternoon my sweet niece Claire got her ears pierced.  She's been psyching herself up for this for a loooong time, and today was finally the day.  She wanted Sarah to come along so we met her and Shannon over at Merle Norman for the "procedure."  She was so nervous!  But, like women across the world, she white knuckled her way through the process of our silly beauty rituals.  She was a trooper and everything turned out great.  She looks as lovely on the outside as she is on the inside!

Shannon gets the process rolling with the paperwork

BEFORE (Looking nervous)

AFTER (LOOKING THRILLED)

Learning how to care for her new piercings

Cute cousins...helping each other through the stresses of life!

Way to go Claire!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Wow.  What a Christmas.  We've had an extremely fun filled weekend, and there's no way to capture it all in a blog post, so I'll just try to summarize it by saying we are completely, totally and undeservedly blessed.    Food, family, friends, gifts, and most of all, a Savior.  What more could we ask for?  Here are pictures from some of my favorite moments over the last four days.

Christmas Eve at our house...Nana opens a yummy smelling candle 

John receives a fun gift from Badoo

Tanner looking good in his Under Armor skull cap

Syd receives some super cute night wear

The big red bag gifts always bring lots of smiles

Taylor...Bucharest bound!

The XBox Kinect brings out good sportsmanship in everyone

Badoo gifts his girls with some handmade jewelry boxes

Cousins = fun

Sarah and Lori play with the Kinect

Leaving milk and cookies for the big guy (and I don't mean Lawrence)

Check it out!  Santa brought me Celtics tickets!

Oooo Santa, thanks for the Uggs and cell phone! (Now I'm not the ONLY 7th grader without one!)

New scrapbooks for me to fill!

A white Christmas for Duncan in his new turtleneck sweater

Dick shows off his new iPad from Mary Taylor

Pretty sweater for Sarah

New threads for John 

Merry Christmas! 

Snow Day!

The kids prayed and prayed for a snow day today...and their prayers were answered with a resounding "yes!"  This was the first snow day of the school year so of course plans were being made by 8:30 am to have friends over to play.  Our dear friends Andrew and Harrison Weis came over for the day (mom Laura is still recovering from hip surgery) and the boys decided to go around the neighborhood and see if anyone wanted their driveway shoveled for free.  I'm not sure how much work they did, but they must have been doing something right because they came home with $28!  Sounds like some kind hearted neighbors were impressed with how industrious they were.  Great day, great friends, great times.  Oh, but all the snow gear? A great big mess. :-)

Home from a hard day's work

Baby, it's cold outside!

The kids decide how to divide the money

...and Mom decides what to do with all this.

A Merry Mickey Christmas

Last weekend Lawrence and I surprised the kids with a trip to Disney World.  I've always wanted to go to Disney at Christmas time, and I was able to convince Lawrence a few weeks ago that this would be the perfect time.  I planned it for the weekend after Thanksgiving, when the parks wouldn't be crowded yet everything would be decorated for Christmas.  The kids thought when they got up for school on Thursday morning that it was just any typical day...I left them three poems with clues to tell them that instead of going to school they were headed to Disney World!  John was of course over the moon...Sarah was a bit more reserved but after the shock wore off she was ready to go.  We stayed at the WorldQuest Resort right outside of the park and had three perfect days of rides, characters, shopping and fun.  Lawrence and I both agree it was one of the best family trips we've ever been on.  The weather was perfect - three straight days of seventy degree weather without a cloud in the sky.  We had one last surprise for them when we arrived back in Cincinnati on Sunday - tickets to the Bengals vs. Saints game!  What a shock to our systems - the weather in Cincinnati was 25 degrees and snowing!  We still had fun (until the third quarter when we couldn't take it anymore).  This was such an awesome way to kick off the holiday season.  I loved every minute.  

I bought us all these Disney shirts to wear, which John thought was awesome and Sarah thought was totally cheesy. :-)

Sarah and I in front of Cinderella's castle - so cool at Christmas!

Sarah and Lawrence snuggle during the parade.  We stayed for the 10:30 parade so we had front row seats!

The kids have a visit with Donald Duck

We went to Universal Studios on Friday.  Here are Lawrence and the kids in front of the Harry Potter ride.  It was so neat!

Sarah and I shop for our ears.

After the Aerosmith roller coaster in Hollywood Studios

Lawrence and the kids have a laugh with Stitch at Epcot

Lawrence and I enjoy a glass of wine in France at Epcot

At the Bengals game on Sunday - freeeeeeezing!!!!

So Thankful

Thanksgiving weekend was wonderful this year.  The kiddos were off school on Wednesday and we spent all day preparing for our traditional Thanksgiving Eve dinner with Lawrence's family.  Our turkey turned out perfect and we had a nice relaxing night after enjoying a wonderful meal with everyone.  On Thanksgiving Day we had no where to be - that's a first!  We spent the rainy day in our cozy house, putting up Christmas decorations while the kids watched the final season on DVD of their all time favorite show - 7th Heaven.  Friday morning Lawrence and I rose at 3:30 am to head out for "Black Friday."  We had never been to any of the Black Friday sales, so we decided this would be the year we saw what all the hype is about.  We arrived at the St. Matthews Target at 4:00 am to find a line of people stretched around the building - it was crazy!  We shopped until 5:00 and came home and went back to bed.  Did we get any good deals?  Who knows, but we made a memory and crossed that activity off our "bucket list."  Later that morning we headed to Russell Springs for Thanksgiving lunch with the Lacy family.  This was the first year all my cousins and their children were there at the same time.  We had lunch for 39 people!  We had a great afternoon visiting and being together.  God bless my mom for how much cooking she did!  On Saturday night, after a busy day of basketball games and a swim meet, we gathered at Lawrence's dad's house for one final Thanksgiving dinner.  Dinner was delicious, but by the end of the night we were stuffed - three dinners in four days (plus some leftovers!) was plenty.  We are turkeyed out!  We have much to be thankful for, on Thanksgiving and every other day of the year.  

John helps prepare the turkey

Sarah chopped a million cups of onion and celery!

Holiday Table

Lawrence, Mary Taylor and Lori add the finishing touches to the meal

Nana gets a hug from Sarah, Tanner and Sydney

What I should remember to do each day

Four generations of the Lacy Family

Grandmother and the Lacy cousins

Grandmother and the Lacy great grandchildren

Fall Fun

This week was a busy one, and we kicked it off with Christmas at CAL (our annual holiday boutique and silent auction).  This is one of my favorite school events at Rock Creek, and my mom and dad always love to come too.  John's favorite part is to bid on silent auction items, and this year he ended up with a basket of UK goodies and a mini-fridge for the kids' "lounge" in our basement.  My mom and dad got in on the action also and walked away with this pretty Christmas wreath.  

This week was also "Spirit Week" at the middle school, and Sarah had fun dressing up all week.  On Tuesday she was a true "Fashion Disaster", complete with a faux ponytail that she used to seriously wear when she was younger!  Here she is with Kasey before school (Kasey's looking pretty disastrous too!)  Sarah was bummed because the seventh grade didn't win the spirit stick (they were beat out by the sixth grade class), but she still had fun dressing up for the different themes each day.

We are now barreling full steam ahead into Thanksgiving week.  Where has the time gone this fall?  Busy life, happy life...it's going by fast.

Bieber Fever

Last night I took Sarah and three of her friends to the Justin Bieber concert.  This was teeny bopper mania!  There were little girls everywhere, screaming at the tops of their lungs with Bieber Fever!  We were so lucky to have seats in the Carmichael's suite.  Of course the girls would have rather been in the thick of things down on the floor, but for this mom, the comfort and semi-quiet of the suite was welcomed!  The girls had so much fun dancing and singing (and scoring the always coveted concert t-shirt).  The new KFC Yum! Arena was fantastic - what a fabulous addition to our city.  We didn't get home until 11:00, but I would say the lack of sleep was well worth the chance to go to school today and say they were at the concert.  With all the ups and downs of middle school, this was definitely an "up." 

Sarah, Kasey Wilmsmeyer, Sarah Embry and Caroline Embry