happy birthday aaron!

today was aaron's birthday which we celebrated with family. aaron's mom made homemade pierogies (thank you!!!), and we bought kielbasa (?) sausages too. for his birthday present, tyler, emma & i got him a new tattoo. does the pin up girl's face look familiar?? tehee.

on a side note, today was the last day for tyler's jump rope fundraiser. he raised a total of $160, which was almost double his goal of $85. thank you to everyone who donated to the american heart association!

date night!!!!

last night, aaron & i went on our first date night in over 8 months. i was so excited that i even put make up on! and my purse was not a ginormous diaper bag...very exciting. we stayed in lakewood and went bar hopping. it was fun...but our endurance has noticeably decreased. by 11 p.m. we were ready to go home (i think we ended up coming home at midnight). thank you mom & dad for coming over and watching the kids while we went out. we really appreciate it.

these are some pictures taken during a christmas party at aunt lorrie's. i just got copies of them and thought i would share.

crazy snow!

last week we had a bunch of snow come our way...don't exactly know how many feet, but it was a lot (although not as bad as buffalo!). tyler's school was closed for 2 days (valentine's day and the day after). i was extremely sore from shoveling all that dumb snow, though it was fun to go out and play in it. we (tyler & i) built a fort in our front yard and then did a couple of snow angels. i have to say, the side of my butt was kind of sore from making the angel because the snow was so deep it offered pretty good resistance for my adductor (or is it abductor?) muscles.

tyler was stoked to have 2 days off of school again, though he hoped school was open for friday (what??? he wanted to go to school you say?). friday was cleveland orchestra day at severance hall so he got to wear his suit, which he really enjoys wearing.

sorry no jump rope pictures. by the time i showed up w/ emma they were all done jump roping. i thought they were going to jump rope for the whole 2.5 hours but i guess they only jumped for the first 1.5 hours.

candy sushi

these are the candy sushis i made for tyler's valentine's day party at school which never happened. after reading the post above i'm sure you now know the reason why....we ended up eating all of them ourselves. they were delicious (and nutritious because they had cereal in it).

here's a website i received from a friend of a local lady and her daughter: http://ashleyshope.org/. sad story...it must be hard to watch your child go through so much pain :(.

this one is aaron's aunt janie's website: www.caringbridge.org/visit/janiecanei. some great pictures of her. her strength, courage and faith have been such an inspiration to me (*sniff* i'm getting teary eyed), despite the pain and hardship she's going through...i don't know if i could continue to stay positive like that. we love her dearly.

cancer sucks. but seeing people come together to encourage those struggling is awesome!

today is the day of tyler's jump rope for heart event. aaron, gram and tyler have already left. i'm home for a little bit so that emma can get at least an hour nap in before we go meet up with them. anyway, this is a community service event his school is participating in, and there are other kids from other schools that will be jumping too (we just found this out today when tyler said it's not going to be at his school it's going to be at the high school). so it's a bigger even than we thought. thank you to aunt corrie and gram and pap for your donations! tyler has now raised $145! we'll post some pictures of the event (i hope i remember to take the camera!).

p.s. did you know that heart disease (heart attacks??) is the number one killer of women? ack! i have to get my butt moving and exercise more often!

little boozers

may i just add that a beer bottle is the only bottle emma has ever taken...hmmm...does that mean i should have given her beer when we tried to introduce the bottle :) ?

just to give you an idea of how cold it's been, here are a couple of pictures of aaron & tyler doing a little experiment a couple of days ago. we boiled water, took it outside and threw it out. the water pretty much turned to mist and little ice particles. crazy!

oh, and many thanks to the donations that have come in this week for tyler's jump rope for heart: ibu and grandpa john, ron and debbie west, and linda e. and angela m. (c/o ron and debbie west). tyler has now surpassed his goal of $85 (even though on his website it still says he's got 75% to go), and has raised $115 to date! awesome!

did we move to antarctica????

man has it been cold this past week...and no sign of warming up that much. this past weekend and the past 2 days temps. have been in the single digits. sunday was about 5 degrees, and i think yesterday was about the same. school was cancelled for tyler monday and tuesday because the temps. got to single digits. tomorrow is supposed to be 10 or 11 degrees or something, so he'll have school. it'll be good for him to get out of the house...we've been pretty much cooped up indoors because we can't really go out in this weather with a little baby. we're supposed to go to niagara falls president's day weekend, and i'm hoping it will at least "warm" up to the teens during our visit. poor emma, her cheeks are so chapped because of the cold weather...going out and about in niagara in this weather won't make it any better.

on a side note, what's up with the pictures on our blog??? they have disappeared, or is that just on our computer. anyone else experiencing this problem. i've also had difficulty viewing pics on other blogs, though text is ok.

oh, and thank you ibu and grandpa john for your donation to tyler's jump rope for heart!! the event will be happening this saturday, so if you're interested in sponsoring tyler please send us a check or donate online through his website (see links to your right).

embroidery endeavor

so i just started trying out embroidery. it is not as bad as i thought, though definitely tedious at times. here are a couple of pictures of some work i did. these ones were made especially for stella ledoux. thanks to sublime stitching for the awesome patterns...see embroidery doesn't have to always be OL (old lady) or tacky patterns :). my next plan is to do something for emma and tyler has put in a request as well...so we'll see what we come up with.

thanks Michelle for making the first donation to Tyler's Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser. you are awesome! between michelle's and our donation, tyler is almost halfway to his goal. on his website though, it only shows about 1/4 of the way because michelle sent us her money instead of doing it online. i wish there was a way we can manipulate the goal meter thingy on the website to accurately show all the donations received. oh well.

my car started today...hooray! bought jumper cables and got the thing running, so i went to trader joe's and filled up the shopping cart full of food. now i'm going to go and shovel some snow...anyone want to give us a snowblower?