The 7 Year Itch?!

Seven years ago today Mike and I became Mr. & Mrs. Eddins!  It was one of the most amazing days of our lives, second only to the birth of Lila!  In total Mike and I have been together for fifteen years and we often talk about the fact that the older we get, the wiser we get, the better our relationship gets!  We aren't perfect, but one thing we definitely are is better when we are together!

So, a little walk down memory lane in honor of fifteen years together and seven years married today!

Youngsters!

Kirsten's Junior Prom

College Years!

Cruisin'!

Ringing in the New Year - 12/31/01

 

 

Italy!

 

Bloomsbury for fall fun!

 

Engagement Picture!

 

Rehearsal Dinner @ Eagle Ridge!

 

 

The day we became husband and wife!  11/03/06

 

Cancun fun!

 

Chichen Itza

 

Celebrating NYE and the love of two friends!

 

Cabo fun!

 

Anniversary celebration - Galena, IL!

 

The day we became a family!  4/18/09

 

Mississippi Moon Bar!

 

Go Hawks!

 

A night out!

 

Destination: somewhere in Italy! 

 

A wedding @ Barbazzano!

 

Summer love!

 

Tailgators!

 

There was no shortage of pictures for me to post as we have shared so many moments together.  I don't know how I got so lucky to marry my best friend, but I did, and I am so grateful!  So, to answer the question about the seven year itch?!  The only thing I am itching to do is to continue on this journey of life with you!  Happy 7th Anniversary, Mike!  I love you!

 

 

Halloween 2013

This year the Halloween festivities were in abundance!  Not only did we have our own family fall traditions that we continued, but it seemed like there were more and more opportunities to celebrate the holiday, which meant more and more reasons for Lila to wear her costume!!!

We let Lila pick what she wanted to be for Halloween this year.  The options ranged from Alice in Wonderland to a Princess to a cute kitty.  The kitty won and I maintain it is because it had the best tulle skirt...she can't help herself, she loves all things tulle!

Getting her whiskers!

Pretty Kitty!

Our first Halloween party was the annual TrueNorth party!  The office puts so much time and thought into creating a fun event for the kids.  It includes Halloween themed snacks, a craft of some sort, and pictures to document all the fun and great costumes!

Lila & Ruby

Smiling with Grandpa!

Darling girls, darling costumes!

Lila's {happy} bat from TrueNorth!

We also made time this year for carving pumpkins!  Lila is enough of a girlie girl that the guts of the pumpkin were definitely not her favorite part, but she was still excited about picking out her personal pumpkin and what the carving should look like!

Diving in!

Spooky Cat!

The Eddins Family pumpkins!

Proud of the pumpkins!

The Sunday before Halloween Lila developed a bad cough.  We loaded her up and took her to the doctor to discover that she had double ear infections.  We were so happy that we took her in so they could get her on medication and hopefully get her better before trick-or-treating on Thursday!

A fun headband/glasses piece that Lila created at school!  BOO!!!

Thankfully by Wednesday Lila was feeling good enough to go back to school, and most importantly, go to dance with Henley!  Dance is always one of her favorite things to do, but it was also the dance class where they could wear their costumes!  For dance Henley also dressed up as a kitty, so they were twins! 

Cute Cats!

Best Buddies!

Finally!  It was Halloween and time to go trick-or-treating!  The Pfeiler's invited us to come down to their house for soup and trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  Lila could hardly contain her excitement to trick-or-treat with Sloan.  We spent Halloween with her last year and she loved showing Sloan the ropes!

All ready to go door to door!

The kiddos in their costumes!

A cat and her mouse!  They absolutely love one another!

Here we go!  How many pieces of candy can we get?!

The kids had quite the entourage!

The buckets are starting to fill up!

This year the weather had been rainy all day, but we were fortunate that it stopped by the time we headed out for trick-or-treating.  However, it was pretty breezy outside, so the kids decided that they would hit a few houses, but that it was just as fun to go back to the house and play and hand out candy to the other kids!

Lila & Mommy!

A successful Halloween night!

The thing I love the most about holidays are the traditions that we continue and the new ones that we create!  We have so many great memories with our family and friends and this year was no exception! 

Pirates & Princesses

It is no secret that Lila has a huge affinity for princesses...and she may or may not think she is a princess, too!  Several months ago I got a pre-sale email for the Disney Pirates & Princess show at the US Cellular Center which featured Sofia the First and Jake and the Neverland Pirates, two of Lila's favorites!  I hopped online quick and secured 3 tickets for 5th row center and stuck them in a secret space until the big day arrived!  We knew that we needed to keep this one quiet until the day of or we would have been bombarded (and annoyed) when asked every day when she got to go to the show!

The day arrived and we told her we had a big surprise for her, to which she responded that she wanted to guess what it was!  With a few questions involved in her guessing, it wasn't long before she figured it out and she giggled and screamed with excitement!  We got her all dressed and ready to go, but there was one final surprise...a Princess Sofia Amulet!  This special amulet was a special gift Sofia received that allows her to talk to animals!  You would have thought we had given her the world!  We were ready to go!



Wearing her {glowing} amulet!

Every time we get ready to do something like this I find myself wondering what we have gotten ourselves into?!  Yet at the same time, I am so happy to be doing it for Lila because it is really all about her when we do this stuff, it has nothing to do with Mike or I, she deserves that from time to time!  It is always fun to walk into a performance like this and see all the other parents doing the exact same thing for their princess and/or pirate lover! 

Lila's new friend, Izzy!

The show began with a short performance of Doc McStuffins, another one of Lila's favorites!  After Doc performed it was time for Sofia!  Lila was in awe of how beautiful princess Sofia looked!  Each segment of the show was them acting out an episode, so each performance lasted close to 30 minutes which was nice because it allowed them to keep a storyline and keep the kids engaged!




Doc McStuffins



Sofia the First


After Sofia there was a short intermission and it was time for Jake and the Neverland Pirates!  Lila really likes Jake, but at this point she leaned over to me and said, "I really like it better when the characters are kids like on the TV show!"  BUSTED!!!  Either way, she was having a great time and as quick as that comment came, it went and she was totally engaged in the magic of it all!

Jake and the Neverland Pirates!

Daddy & Lila enjoying the show!

 



 

The finale which included Mickey & Minnie!

There will be a time in the near future where performances such as this won't be as magical as they are right now, so we will make sure we squeeze as many of these make-believe opportunities in as long as we can!  It was a fun day for Lila, but Mom and Dad would be lying if they said they didn't have fun too!

Family fun!

Officially Fall!

Not only has the weather finally started to feel like fall, we marked our family fall tradition of going to Bart's Farm on the 5th of October!  This tradition was something Mike and I did even before Lila was born and one we plan on carrying out as long as the Gingrich family owns the farm and opens their home up to visitors who are in search of their fall treasures! 

 



Where the tradition began...our first house!



For those of you that don't know about Bart's Farm, it is a cute little farm off of Alburnett Rd.  The Gingrich family started the pumpkin patch to raise money for their kids and their college tuitions!  It has a lot of the fun amenities of the bigger pumpkin patch options, but it has a family feel that isn't commercialized.  We highly recommend going!

 

 

Welcome to the farm!

We started the adventure with a trip into the barn to see all of the animals!  The barn is the home to cows, horses, kitties, and other livestock!  After the trip to the barn we moved on to start our pumpkin gathering!

Daddy & his girl in the barn!

 

 

Lila amongst the pumpkins!

After gathering up all of our pumpkins we headed home to put our very tired girl down for a nap with promises of decorating when she woke up!  We didn't waste much time diving right in when she woke up.  Even the puppies enjoyed helping us put the display together this year.

Lila picks out a "baby" pumpkin each year!

Tag posing for a picture! 

 

The finished product!

 

 

Wait!!! Something was missing!  Oh, Lila & puppy, it's now perfect!

While putting the porch together the temperature had dropped a bit and it had started to drizzle.  We decided to go inside and warm up and bake a batch of my Grandma Harvey's delicious chocolate chip cookies.  I had shared in a recent post how much Lila is enjoying helping out in the kitchen...she is really quite the helper (she is a certified taste tester)!

I love carrying on the tradition of family recipes!

Why is it that the dough tastes so darn good?!  YUM!

Another fall tradition I love is the Saturday that I spend with my girlfriends doing our annual fall shopping & lunch trip!  We take a Saturday and start in Mount Vernon making sure to hit our favorite spots and have lunch at the Lincoln Café.  After we wrap up in Mount Vernon we pick different destinations to visit to round out our shopping and fall leaves tour!  This year we picked Independence and Vinton stopping at many of their stores and picking up items here and there!  Whether we walk away with a car full or not, it is the time spent together each fall that really kicks off the season!

A very large metal "E" that had to come home with me!

Every year I pray that we have a longer fall than the next!  The weather stayed rather warm longer this year, so I keep hoping that our fall weather will extend well into November...here is to wishful thinking!