Sarah & Gina's Birthday lunch

January 5, 2012

Some of my dearest friends at our Birthday lunch. Sarah's Birthday is Jan. 6, and mine was a week earlier, so Celeste suggested we celebrate together. Waht a fantastic idea. Inez and Nancy joined us along mith my Mama at Granite City. We had a yummy lunch. I think the favorite thing ordered was the steak salad and french onion soup. I however enjoyed the huge chocolate chip ice cream cookie that was brought at the end! Super fun company, and delicious food! Thanx ladies!

Gina's 43rd Birthday

Dec. 31, 2011: I had an amazing Birthday once again. What made it even sweeter was my Mama was here to celebrate with me. We started off the day going to Macadoo's for breakfast. Chuck hates breakfast, we can never get him to take us, so on my special day... that's what we did! It was delicious! I think he might have even enjoyed it:) Later that night we went to PaPa Vino's for amazing italian dinner. Of course I couldn't decide on where to go to dinner all day, when I finally did, there were no reservations available. Mama used her Calif. skills and some sob story to get us to the front of the line and at our table in less that 10 min.! She's awesome. Don't know what she said, but we sure got some dirty looks from the hostess the whole time we were there! Oh well, it worked! And it was yummy! Ohn the way home we stopped at our most favorite Dessert place and got our favorites to go... No bake Peanut Butter Pie, Key Lime Pie, and Peanut Butter Fudge Cheesecake!!! It's no wonder I packed on the pounds over xmas break. I think I did it all in that one day!

Christmas 2011

What a month we had. Mama came for her visit Dec. 19 and stayed for 3 weeks! It was so great having her here for before Christmas stuff. She helped me with baking, shopping, wrapping... all the fun stuff. She almost got her wish of having no snow until towards the end of her visit when we finally got dumped on. The picture on far left upper corner is us at Amish Acres, seeing the Christmas Carol. That was super fun. We had dinner there right before(pic. on bottom left). Yummy, family style. Our favorite was I think dessert. Then after Christmas before New Years we went to Chi Town for a couple days(pic. on bottom center) was us standing in front of the NorthFace store by the Harpo sign. The weather was cold, but no snow. We had two days filled with shopping on Michigan Ave. Chuck's favorite stop... American Girl Place! The girls favorite Christmas gift this year= Uggs from Grandma! Morgan had no idea Grandma had such good taste to pick her the black sequinned ones she had been wanting, hmmmm.... I wonder what little bird told her? My favorite gift, was having Mama with us, but coming in second was my new Northface coat from my honey(seen in chicago picture).