Sleepover

Wade has his first sleepover a few weeks back.  He wanted to have his friend, Caleb, over.  I was on Christmas break, so it worked out!

We picked Caleb up, got Little Caesar's Pizza, and went home to let the fun begin!  Here's some pics to highlight the fun:

  Playing with ViewMasters- a gem of a find at GoodWill!  Who needs iPads or Wii games???  ha :)

Playing with the Nerf disc shooters-

I think they were telling me to STOP TAKING PICTURES because they attacked me with nerf discs.

It's a HIT!

Time to wind down with a movie... Ratatouille.

What do you get when you add about 7 blankets, an 8 ft banquet table, and some pillows??? 
.............AN AWESOME FORT!!!!!

Time to brush your teeth! Caleb insisted on Wade trying his toothpaste because it was awesome. 

Time for bed!  Caleb has his mouse and Wade has his football.  :)

The next morning we made Christmas ornaments with salt dough. 

We had bacon, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast and Caleb said, "I don't know what you put in this bacon, but it sure is good!"  That just made me laugh :)

Wade and Caleb had so much fun! :)

Wine Trail

Ben and I went on the South Easter Indiana Wine Trail in November with our friends, Chris and Mandy.  It was FUN! :)  An adult weekend out... wine... friends... what can get any better?  We made it to Thomas Ridge Winery, Ertels Winery, Lanthier Winery, The Ridge Winery, Madison Vineyards, and Streamcliff.  We stayed in Madison, IN... and let me tell you- there is not a more cute, quaint, cozy town than that which is Madison!  It was amazing.  It's like something straight from the movies.  My friend Kristina, found here at Misters and Misses told me all about it.  :)

Here are some pics of our trip.  Sorry, I don't have the actual winery names next to the pics- it's because I can't remember which pic is taken at which winery.  Sorry 'bout that! :)

 We stopped at a place in Madison called BoneYard for dinner.  Follow this... Ben's Brother John- John's wife Ashley- Ashley's brother owns the restaurant.  So, Ben's sister-in-law's brother :)  Anyway, we called John (he lives in Madison) to see if we could meet up.  He was busy that evening, but told us to go there- and boy it was not a disappointment.  They have ZERO fryers- they bake everything!  Even their cheese sticks-which were AMAZING! :)  Next time you visit Madison, go to BoneYard!

They serve all kinds of beer... I'm not a dark beer girl, so I drank the Bud Lights :)  Which everyone else says is like water... haha :)  But they had all sorts to choose from.  really neat

Me and Mandy

THE LIST of micros you can pick from..

and THE LIST continues on the back side with Imports.

Me and Ben.  His eyes are bloodshot because he's tired.  He was fully sober here :)  promise!

We stop by this cute coffee shop in the morning.  I snap a pic and it's all wrong.  Ben pretends to be sleeping and it totally looks like Mandy is chewing Chris out.  neither of those are true...

So, I ask a passer-by to snap our pic.  She seemed a bit wierd, so I didn't ask for a new pic... even though I look like I have a beard.

On the pier in Madison.

You  could pay a quarter to see across the pier- not worth it.  You could see everything just fine, but Ben just HAD to try it.  ha

Testing out the panoramic feature on the camera.  Any idea how to develop these now??? I can't find a site that will develop panoramics anymore!

This one is in front of Lanthier.  Their Chataquablumtchen (pronounced sh-ah-tah-qua-blum-chin) or at least that's how I pronounce it! is the BEST!!!!

Pretty butterfly! :)

StreamCliff was my fav.  They had a horse theme and all their bottles had horses on them.

In all, we bought 13 bottles of wine (3 were too tall, and we gave 2 away as gifts... if you were counting my bottles and saying "Staci, there's only 8 there...) and after finishing the wine trail, they give you wine glasses.  It's safe to say, we will do this again next year. 

Leave me a comment, and tell me how do you like your wine?  red? white? dry? sweet?

As for me, I'm a semi-sweet girl.  red or white, I don't care :)

Fun with Photography

So, here I am, a few days before Christmas, playing with my camera.  I was wanting to get some cool pics of my tree.  So, I was playing around with the settings, and I figured out how to do this cool trick.

It all started with this- I was in Shutter Priority Mode, and held a long shutter speed.  It made my lights look like they were glowing :)

Then, Wade ran by me and my camera moved...  WHOA! :)

So, I thought, this could be cool- so I found a small flashlight my mom gave to Wade (it happened to be green...) and told Ben to take my picture.  You have to keep the camera pretty still...  and vioala... BEN!  He couldn't believe what he saw on my camera- haha :)

Continued to play...

The longer your shutter is open, the more you can write...

Now, go play with your camera and you'll agree with me that it's SOOOO fun!! :)  and just plain neat :)

Dream Pig

So, I was making dinner one night and asked Wade to put the clothes from the washer to the dryer.  Not a hard job- he's been helping me out with little things like this for a while- yes I have a BIG helper!! :)  Anyway, daddy ALWAYS leaves "money's" in his pocket- for who knows what reason, sometimes I think he likes watching Wade get excited about finding "money's" and intentionally puts coins in to make his day :)

Anyway, as I was making dinner- I hear a loud thud- but think nothing of it since both my boys are eager to let me know if something is wrong and I didn't hear anything.  So- I continue to make my dinner.

Next thing I know... I see Wade walking in to the kitchen and said "Mommy, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

Here's what I see: (I'll let the pics do the talking...)

My dream pig- I love this thing- We never really said what the money in the dream pig would be for- but it was always an exciting thing to put money into.  Ben would go play poker, and put his winnings in.  If I had extra money at the end of the week that I hadn't spent it would go in the dream pig.  Occasionally our tip money from bartenting would go in there.  It was also always fun to try to guess how much we had saved.  Here's what it looked like before the incident:

And that is what it looked like after...  Now, you might say "just glue it back together"  and to that I say - uh- no.  :)  The change in this thing was heavy, I mean, it was heavy for me... and to think that it nearly missed my son's little toes, scares me.  I'm so grateful that he hopped out of the way- otherwise, we would have a 4yr old with a cast on each foot... not my idea of a Merry Christmas :)
So, I'll look for something else to store my "dream" money in, but for now- my green tupperware is safe.  :)