Partyin', Partyin'...YEAH!

Yes, that is a reference to the viral hit, Friday! haha!

After our layover @ Big Splash we headed to Mom and Dad's for a weekend of celebrating. First up was Scott's birthday (like I said, this was back in mid-March...I'm FINALLY catching up-Yay, me! :) Mom and Dad got him an Orange Dreamcicle cake for The Sweet Shoppe! YUMMMMM!! Happy Birthday, Scott!

That Saturday me, Mom and the girls headed up to the other side of Cincinnati for an Anniversary party for Susie and Hershel. They were our neighbors when I was born and Susie was my babysitter for many years. She is like another Grandmother to me. They were celebrating 50 years. Amazing! Me and my Susie! :)

The love birds! :)

We were only able to stay a couple of hours before heading back for....Brittney's Sweet 16!!! WHAT!!?? How on Earth are Billy and Brittney 16!! I can't surely be that old and they are still babies, right!?

Mom, the girls, Britt and her BFF, Miranda.

Lots of dancing and more partying! The girls had a BLAST!

Smile on 3...1, 2, 3!! Lovely, Liv....thanks! haha!

And, then they sent her on a scavenger hunt. At the end....her new ride!! I am so incredibly proud of Brittney and Billy. They are both gorgeous, smart, involved, ambitious teenagers. I missed Billy's party but he also has a new ride now! Britt is a Varsity cheerleader and state champion @ PRP. Billy is a baseball super star, playing for both North Cobb high school and an allstar team. (Just had to brag on them for a minute! :) I will try to scan and post Billy's newest baseball picture soon. I just got it yesterday!

Britt and her new SUV!! Little brat! ;)

And, Uncle and his girls! :) I LOVE our trips home.

Surprise layover....

This little activity and picture of my silly girl pretending to be at the beach sparked an idea one day a couple of months ago. I knew there was an indoor water park in French Lick, and it just so happens to be on our way to my parents, and it so happened that we were going to be making a trip home that next week. So, I got online and did some looking and we called that night an booked our stay. We decided we were going to surprise the girls and not tell them what we were doing...


They were SO excited when we got there. They had NEVER stayed in a hotel before and I think they were more excited about that than anything else! ha!

Abby was EXHAUSTED, so she crashed shortly after we got settled with no problem. BUT, she was up @ 5am! Liv, on the other hand was WIDE awake and wanted to party all night. At 11:30 she was still going strong and was shoving stuffed animals in my face and singing Justin Bieber. I finally crashed so I guess she did too around midnight, and while Scott was able to keep Abby quiet until about 6:30 or so, by 7am we were up and off to breakfast...which didn't open until 8am! ha! Once it opened, the girls were in heaven. This was also their first time eating a buffet type meal. We could have left after breakfast and they still would have been happy! ha!

Since we ate so early, we had to kill time until the water park opened.

We opened the place, and were ready to go. It was so nice. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. It was a week day, off season, so we just ran wild and did as we pleased the entire time.

They started on the smaller stuff, but that didn't last long....

They quickly moved to the bigger slides with us going too,

And, after a few times of that, they were on their own, having a BLAST!

We stayed and played for about 4 or 5 hrs. before heading on our way. The girls had a lot of fun, and were SO worn out. In all of Abby's 5 1/2 yrs, I can count on one hand the number of times she has slept in a vehicle (yes, that includes when she was an infant/baby...she NEVER slept), but she did sleep for about 45min. in the car that day! I'm sure we will do it again this coming fall/winter. It was a nice little break from the cold (we were there mid-March) and a fun little trip.

My little ladies...

What's new...I am MONTHS behind on my blogging! Grrrrr....this week...this is the week I will get caught up. ;)

But, I had a moment this morning that I wanted to blog about (one of those For Me posts) and since that moment has been on my mind, I realized it's about time to do a blog about my girls. They are growing so fast...too fast! :( I was talking to a another Mom at Abby's school today and we were discussing how we would love to just bottle them at this age. :) So, a little about these ladies of mine...


Abby...oh, my sweet, Abby! My mini-me, the other side of me, my tiny girl with a HUGE heart...and an even bigger mouth! ha! Abby is like her Dad, though. She doesn't always have a ton to say, especially in public, but she can let loose a one liner that will stop you in your tracks and leave you laughing for days! She has the face of an angel (and, that sweet face is what my 'moment' this morning was all about) and the hard head of a bull! But, she doesn't give us a minute of trouble, she's always busy with a project or a task or with saving the world...or whatever she plots in her spare time and keeps track of in her journals! :)

Very rarely do I have to wake her to get ready for school (she's my non-sleeper, remember...has been since Day 1...she even believes she's nocturnal and is so convincing of it, I half way think she's onot something! ha!) But, this morning I had to go get her up. She was fast asleep tucked in her bed, with her sleep mask on-ha!, but I looked at her little nose and mouth and face and she still looks JUST like she did when she was a baby. I just sat and stared at her for about 5min. I didn't want to move her, she was so peaceful and beautiful. I just can't wrap my head around her growing up, going to Kindergarten, one day being a teenager. It's just too much! She's so smart and driven and independent. We just couldn't ask for anything more from her. She's the yin to Liv's yang, that is for sure! ha!

Abby has a bit of OCD...check out the Order of Animals meeting...haha!

And, then there is Olivia (or Liv as we mostly call her...unless she's in trouble-which is most of the time-ha!, then it's the full Olivia Lawson!). Someone told me the other day, 'I believe God makes the michevious ones extra cute to make up for all the trouble they cause!' How true that is! This child gets more and more gorgeous every day! I bet we say 100 times a day, 'it's a good thing she's cute!' ha! Not too mention, HILARIOUS and incredibly sweet! This girl is the life of every party!...and, in Liv's world, every day is a party! She. is. a. MESS! For as serious and studious as Abby is, Liv is goofy and wild. If they continue on with the personalities they have now, Abby will, without a doubt, be a straight A student and very serious about her goals, etc....and, Liv will be the center of all social rings, simply at school because it's extra time to hang with friends! ha! However, I have to say, if her energy and enthusiasm and her need to ruffle feathers is channeled in a positive direction, she is the kind of person that will do great things, make big changes, spearhead grass root efforts, etc. So, let's all keep our fingers crossed with this one, okay! haha!
She's so funny...she will let loose with the biggest, most pathetic fake cry you have ever heard, but if you ask something and re-direct her attention like, 'hey, Liv...want to go outside and play?' the cry stops immediately and she does this hysterical, 'Oh, yeah!' and waves her hands in the air and shakes her butt! We just die laughing at her 'Oh, Yeah!' dance! I have to get her on video doing it one of these days. And, if you ask her something...for example, 'can I have a bite of that?' She answers, 'no you may not!' ha! And, while they are TOTAL opposites, the one thing Abby and Liv have in common is their hard head! We are in TROUBLE, I fear! She is also ALWAYS doing something she shouldn't be...case in point...here she is doing a round off...off of the end of the treadmill! At first, I panicked, but it was pretty impressive, so I had her do it again and snapped a picture! ha!

And, for documentation purposes, the girls must have 20 stickers by Friday in order to go to Holiday World on Monday! They have 4 as of Tuesday afternoon...like I said, it's going to be a loooong week! haha! But, even the sticker chart is a direct indication of them and their personalities...Abby's are color coordinated and in a perfect row, she's contantly looking for things to do to earn more: brushing the dog, cleaning the living rom....Liv threw her stars on there and was off to cause trouble because she had just worked so hard at being good to get the sticker, she just couldn't take it any more! She's probably somewhere right now coloring on my bar with a permanent marker...Oh, wait...that was yesterday! ha!

And, just because it's the sweetest picture in the entire world....these little ladies are the light of our lives.