Daddy/Daughter Birthday

Our friend Riley Catherine came up with the cutest idea for her 8th birthday, a daddy/daughter "birthdate".  So Ben and Whitney got dressed up to go to the party where they got to do all sorts of fun things.  A balloon relay, wii dancing, making bow ties and corsages and "shaving" with a tongue depressor.  So cute!

Ladies Night!

Pioneer Woman book signing + burgers, onion rings, french fries, fried pickles and milkshakes at 10:15 pm = one fantabulous night!  We had to wait and weave in line for over 4 hours at Borders and, I might add , overlooked some pretty diverse books while doing so, but we finally got to her, Ree Drummond herself, aka The Pioneer Woman.  What a sweet lady she is!  And her husband, "Marlboro Man" and her two boys were there too.  Seems to be such a precious family.  Anyway, she was very sweet to all of us, took much time to chat with us while she was signing all of our 900 books and a really cool story is that she remembered me from when Ben and I met her in NYC.  I was hesitant to mention anything to her for the sake of looking like a stalker, but with a little prodding from my amigos I mentioned it. She really seemed as if she remembered and talked about how Ben was a football player and that she thought he was "darling."  How fun!

After the signing we were famished!  We zoomed over to a restaurant called Flip Burger.  The owner/chef is on Top Chef.  It was delicious.  We literally hammered four sides in about two minutes.  Then the burgers came, oh my, heaven...then topped 'er off with a Krispie Kreme doughnut milkshake.  And yes, it had bits of doughnuts in it.  Soooo good, soooo much fun!

When we got home, the Henderson kids and Whitney were passed out together in the office after a fun night with the daddy's!

New Toy

Someone got a new toy, or two...I couldn't get any pictures of the chainsaw...

Grandpa's Birthday

Ben's parents came through for a quick visit and it just happened to be around Grandpa's birthday, so we just had to celebrate!

A Jet No More

Anyone ready for the next chapter?  Well, ready or not...the Jets released Ben yesterday.  It wasn't completely unexpected.  We had anticipated that we would have to renegotiate his current contract, but they felt with all the uncertainty going on in the NFL these days, it was best (for them) to part ways.  There is a small chance they would resign him after a new CBA is reached, but if its one thing we've learned in these 8 years, its that you can't even begin to predict whats going on in the minds of upper management.  We are disappointed, but trusting in God that He has a perfect plan in store for my sweet husband and our family.  Until He chooses to let us in on that little secret, we'll just being living life, having fun and waiting (hopefully) patiently for teams to call.  And if those calls don't come, well, we'll continue living life, having fun and waiting (hopefully) patiently for our next chapter...

Cooking

Helping mama out in the kitchen!

PAO Orlando

Ben and I were able to get away for a few days to Orlando for our annual Pro Athletes Outreach (PAO) conference.  As usual, it was fantastic.  Too great to put into words.  We are so thankful for this organization.  And we were blessed to catch up and hang out with some of our super awesome friends that we don't get to see too often!  So thankful for this time!

Dylan and Melody Gandy, Me and Ben, Travis and Cory Brown (we were all in Indy together)



Ben's New Friends

So all the big boys are at work during the day.  And that leaves Ben looking for some riding buddies...this is Ben helping our neighbors/friends Blaine, Wesley and Will figure out whats wrong with Blaine's bike before riding for a bit.

Happy Heart Day!

Daddy's got his hands full on Valentines Day with three girls in the house!  We sure love him!  The girls loved their balloons from their Valentine.  And instead of going out to a fancy dinner, we got together with our friends, The Hendersons, and Mandy and I cooked up a fancy feast at their house.  The kiddos played and had cupcakes while we had a little romantic steak dinner with chocolate fondue for dessert.  Super fun night!

Boots!

She loves her boots!  And food...

100 Years

Well, as I said before, we were supposed to fly back to Ohio once the season was over.  Wouldn't you know that it would snow over a foot of snow the night before we were supposed to leave soooo...our flight got cancelled and instead of risking being stuck in the airport, for hours, with children, the next day we decided to rent a van and drive the nine hours to Ohio.  This was the longest trip we've taken in the car with the girls so we loaded up on snacks and movies.  And the girls did GREAT!  We got there in eight and a half hours and only stopped once.  Amazing!  So anyway, Ohio, we went to celebrate Ben's Grandpa Walter's 100th birthday.  Pretty amazing stuff!  They had a big party for him, I mean, 100 years, you meet alot of people in 100 years.  He had a super time meeting and greeting all the people and listening to old time music played and sung by family from Mississippi.  It was a fun weekend to celebrate him.  And we also got to celebrate some big news with CJ and Abby (Ben's sister) that they are expecting their first baby!  Yahoo!

Catching some zzz's in the car

All the cousins eating dinner

Fancy girls

Big smiles

Silly faces

So sweet

Singing Happy Birthday

Lillian and Walter

A Trip to the Nail Salon

Whitney had her first manicure and pedicure while we were back in Ohio, with Grandma.  She loved it!

Home

So...now that the season is over we have been feverishly packing up some of our belongings to ship back to Georgia and packing our luggage to head to Ohio for a few days to celebrate Ben's grandpa Walter's 100th birthday!  How awesome!  Then we'll be heading home to Georgia and our new house on our land.  We are so excited about that!  Here she is...

Ha! Just kidding!  But this is the picture our sweet friends and now neighbors sent us saying our house was in place.  We've got some real jokersters for friends!  The real funny thing was, poor Ben completely fell for it.  I called him to see if he got the picture and he was in complete agony trying to figure out what went wrong, how we got this house instead of the one we actually did get.  Needless to say, he was relieved when he heard me laughing and realized it was all a joke.  I guess I should remind you that we are getting a double-wide put in, we aren't ready to build yet, so this was our solution.  Here are some pictures of the real thing...

The first half pulling in

That's the kitchen

The two halves coming together

There she is

From the road

There's still some work to do to get it move-in ready, but it should be good to go next Monday when we get there.  Good times are on the horizon!