risen

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!"





Ummmmmm and on the other end of the Easter spectrum....

that's all the time we have

Bumpy cake break!




And then it was back to business.







Soon, the games drew to a close. Time for awards!


People were excited to receive even the lowly awards! It must be due to my excellent designs.




And here's the grand prize! Also, I think all of my parties should end like this. I have the best friends.


It was plenty enough of a gift to have such a fun night with friends, but amazingly I got some presents too! Brad and Ciara watch my reaction as I take in the card they made.


It was less of a birthday card and more of an experience.


One last thing- In addition to 10th place (teehee), Mike also got a special award. He was SUCH a huge help. People saw how much work went into making this night awesome, and Mike was wonderful and supportive and hardworking!

Thanks again everyone for an excellent and superfun birthday!

come on

Well, spring is gonna happen, whether the snow likes it or not. My tulips and daffodils and crocuses are trying to tough this out. I hope they make it! Despite the fact that March is almost over, we've still had many freezing cold days and therefore have had to be creative with outings that don't involve actually being out of doors.


Petco to the rescue!


She loved looking at the snakes and frogs and turtles and fish.


And the birds too! There were a few cats as well. And a couple people were there for a dog training class, so we watched that for a bit too.


A library story time ended with a craft, and we took it home to finish. Violet did a great job telling me which letter needed to come next and she glued them all down.


Also, we'd been meaning to finally try out Five Guys, so we finally went to the one in Canton since we out that way last weekend.


Smiles around! We asked the cashier how big the fries sizes were. A cook came over and said a medium size would be fine for all of us to share. He said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of you". Well, Mike and I doubted that he could assess the fry capacity of our stomachs, so we ordered a large. I am NOT KIDDING, there was a large fry in a container and then a paper bag with 4 more large fry portions dumped in. I know I can exaggerate, but I AM DEAD SERIOUS. It was crazy.


Anyway, V was into her grilled cheese, my hot dog was excellent, and we had plenty of fries. The sad part was... I didn't even really like the fries...





We keep getting these 50% off coupons for Value World. That added with the fact that VW is the cheapest thrift store around anyway makes for some very inexpensive hauls of clothing for little Violet. Gotta get ready for spring and summer!


And Mike found himself a little something at the store too. Why yes that is a board game that comes with a VHS tape.

game show gala

Here are the promised pix from my birthday game show gala! We had quite the assortment of funz...





Like I said, I came up with all the Wheel of Fortune games. (The categories at the top are just leftover from one of the Jeopardy games)
[answer for this puzzle at bottom of post]




And I wrote every Jeopardy clue for four different complete boards- 140 different questions/answers! Check out how awesomely Mike and I designed it to look authentic. Anyway, you know how Jeopardy often has a "Before and After" category where two answers are layered together by a common word? Example: "Skeptical disciple and kids train character" would be "Doubting Thomas the Tank Engine". Yes, I made that up by the way. Anyway, I did some "Before and Middle and After" categories.
[answer at bottom of post]


[answer at bottom of post]


[answer at bottom of post]


Play along with us for a minute. The first category is about Photoshop and the second is about Zooey... I couldn't resist including a lot of personalized categories.






Even more pix coming soon!
#1: Bumpy cake & Moose Tracks ice cream
#2: Teenage Dream On the Road
#3: There Will Be Blood Brothers Grimm
#4: Holy, Holy, Holy Roman Empire State of Mine [that was my personal favorite.]

more & more

More birthday week fun! Mike got me some great presents- books and things that were perfect choices for me. And a bag of Dove dark chocolate. Oh yes.


We got some hot tubbin in.


And a movie! I'd seen Silver Linings Playbook- as previously mentioned on the blogginz. But I knew Mike would really like it, so we saw it again! Let's just say when I really like something, I kind of get obsessive.


We got a chance to play this game I really like too. Oh man, this is going to sound completely nerdy, but it's this Sherlock Holmes mystery game... You read a case, and then do all this research in the "newspaper" and look up people and places in the address book and go interview them by looking up all this stuff in a book. It's suuuuper involved. And takes like two or three hours to play. BUT IT'S SO FUN. I mean, if you're me.


Here we marked a couple places where people drowned in the river.


We gotta take all these notes and everything. I think I'm good enough now to be an actual detective, dudes.


You know I had to have one of my classic birthday bashes too! This year the theme was game shows. I created multiple games of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and we mixed in some Lingo and Just Dance too. I did a ton of prep so we'd have an awesome time. That included getting ready for the award ceremony that'd take place at the end of the night.


You know me and my schedules...



All ready to go! Party pix to come!