Favorite Foto Friday #44~Daisy Girl Scout Fun!

Madeline & I have been quite busy lately with many activities. One of them being Daisy Girl Scouts. We headed to the cookie warehouse to pick up all the cookies our troop sold since I was one of the cookie moms. Katie, the other cookie mom, and I headed and picked up all the cookies and then went back to sort them all out. It was a lot of fun and the girls had a blast helping to. The day after that was the Daisy Day out where we went to the girl scout camp and earned patches for our smocks. The girls had a great time doing many fun activities as well. So as you can see it has been a busy time for us. Of course I still spend a lot of time on facebook these days, but still have not forgot about my precious blog here. I am able to post more of whats going on here! I have posted many pictures our our fun weekend. Above is Madeline & Ashley as we drove into the cookie warehouse to pick up the cookies. It was very cool. We just drove in the van and they loaded all the cookies for you. What service!


We got back to Ashley & Katie's house and unloaded all the cases! Madeline & Ashley above cheesing for the camera

Madeline hiding

Ashley hiding

Cheese mom!

Daisy Day out. Madeline & Emma doing a craft project

Balloon Race!

Troop 622. What a great group of girls...

Madeline enjoying her art project.

It has been a great year for Madeline in Kindergarten. She is doing great in school too. She missed her first days of school this past week because of a stubborn virus. She said on the second day that she missed school & her friends, so that's a good sign she does love it. I hope everyone is having a great year. We are now in countdown mode for our trip to Chicago for Madeline's birthday! Her birthday is march 19th, but we are taking off on march 13th to go to AMERICAN GIRL. She cannot wait. We have planned on doing this for sometime. She actually got online today and made a wish list.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Favorite Foto Friday #43~LOVE

I LOVE my girl~Madeline

Madeline and Mac--Always LOVE being together

Madeline loves her Kitty~Mac ~

I LOVED Jamaica. (See my previous post)

Happy Valentines Day to everyone:)

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Jamaica ~January 2009!

Jamaica~ What can I say. Just beautiful!
Since Madeline was born I have done a lot for my wonderful daughter. She is my world. But I knew that it was time to treat myself to something special. My best friend Michele called my one day and said, what about a girls trip. I am thinking, ok~ how about Gatlinburg, Nashville, something to just have a fun weekend with the girls! She next said, "what about Jamaica?" I was like, What? She said we deserve a fun trip in the middle of winter to somewhere warm and that there were some great deals to Jamaica~better than a cruise! SO we looked into it. At one time 4-6 of us were going and has the booking time got closer it dwindled down to 3. No problem, it was going to be fun no matter what. Right after booking the 3rd person had something come up and was very sad to drop out, so it was down to Michele and I. We were heading to Jamaica no matter what. All we could think about was laying on the beach, in the warm sun, the sound of the waves, no one saying "mommy" or interrupting. We wanted to have drinks, relax, and just soak up the atmosphere! We did just that. January 20th we headed to Cincinnati to stay all night so we could catch a 6:40am flight to Jamaica. This was my first time out of the country. I had to order my 1st passport. How exciting. (rest of the story continued at the bottom)


The view from one of the 5 pools.

The kids pool was amazing. Huge slides, a boat, a lazy river. Someday I will bring Madeline back with me.

This is a picture of the last day. We were waiting for our ride to the airport. Can you see my horrible sun-poisoning on my face? A day later it would be much worse!

The lawn-at the end was the gazebo where weddings took place. Our room was just to the right of that right by the beach.

Our fun bartender. The Pina Coladas and Strawberry Daiquiris were awesome.

Michele & I at the bar and after a long day in the sun. Can you tell?

Another sunset! I took this after dinner one night. The dining room was right on the beach with this view.

Jimmy Buffet's Margartiaville. Yummy:)

A picture from our balcony, AWESOME!

Another picture from our balcony.

The open lobby!

We arrived in Jamaica to a great welcome by the locals. After heading through customs we were on our way to the resort. It was all-inclusive so as we were in line to check in the were already bringing us drinks. What service. I knew I would love this place. We went to our room and were amazed by the room we got. It was right on the beach. We needed no sound machine-- we could just lay down on the bed and hear the waves. We relaxed a bit then went shopping. It was a little overcast and since it was late afternoon when we got there we paid a driver to take us into town to buy some t-shirts and gifts for our girls & family. When we got back we headed to dinner. Dinner was self-serve, but you felt like you were in a 5-start restaurant. The workers were in black and white and the men stood there with towels over there arms waiting to serve us. They brought us wine and refilled our drinks. All the tables had crisp white linens and candles lit. The openness of the dinning room had the sound of the waves right in the distance. Ahhhh, this was it. All that I deserved for me!

We spent our long weekend heading to the beach, reading, talking, listening to our ipods. Doing whatever us mommies wanted to do. We just enjoyed ourselves as well as each others company. The entire weekend was just peaceful and beautiful. The last day we spent talking to some women up at the pool-one from Canada and one from Fargo, ND! At lot of people from the north...goodness, their winters were worse than any of ours. I would probably escape every winter if I lived that far north.

We headed home on Sunday, the 25th with a renewed peace. Looking forward to seeing our kids (Michele has 2 girls-6&9 years old) and of course I had one, Madeline. We landed in the Cinncy airport at 12:10am with it snowing. We tiptoed in our flip-flops and capri pants to our van to take us back to our car parked at the Holiday Inn. There was 2 inches of snow on the ground in Cinncy! Just a few hours earlier we were on a beach. We got in the car and headed to Louisville, not knowing what was ahead. We could barely see at time the snow was coming down so hard. We just laughed and giggled to the fact we were still in flip flops and complaining of sunburn (me) and it was now snowing. We finally got home at 2:30am. Luckily we would get home when we did. The prediction of snow was in the forecast for the next day, Tuesday. Little did we know it would be the "winter-storm 2009", the worst ice storm in Kentucky;s history-knocking out power to over 500,000 in the state and making nation news. To be honest, I was happy to be home with my girl and spending time with her. I could not have imagined being stuck in Cincinnati the week without her. (to see pics of the storm, see previous post)

Overall, Jamaica was a life experience. We are hoping for a girls trip every year to let us mom's refocus and spend some time for ourselves! I cannot wait to stamp the passport again!

Winter Storm 2009

As many of you have heard on the national news, Kentucky one one of the hardest states hit in the recent winter storm. It has been quite a week here in Louisville. The snow came on Monday night into Tuesday, the the ICE, then more snow. The ice has brought down more tress then the windstorm this area had back in September. Is is really sad. Over 500,000 people without power in KY, and just in Louisville over 180,000. As of today approx 80,000 are still without power and it will be one week tomorrow since the heavy ice fell. I just got back from Jamaica on Sunday January 25th and then had all this. I thought I would post the "cold" pics first, then share my Jamaica trip next post. I cannot believe the weight of the ice and what it has done to the trees. I am hoping to get more pictures of trees down in the city. Huge branches and trees split in 3 from the weight of the ice. I am just speechless. My sister-in-laws parents live in western, KY (Paducah area) and a large tree fell into their house. They told them they may not have power until March. What is really cool is to see the help that has come from all the surrounding states. Electric company trucks from Alabama, Georgia, etc are all here to help "US". Anytime I see one of these trucks I try to give them a "thumbs up" as a thanks for helping our community. I took a few pictures out on Saturday. Melting had started as we got some sun that day. You can still see a lot of the ice on the trees and branches.

*The picture above is a single blade of grass. As the ice was falling, any grass appearing looked like this. Isn't this cool!?*

All the trees were slumped over or broken

Ice on the holly tree

Depressed tree (filled with ice)

Just amazing

Madeline enjoying some time outside

I love this with Madeline sneaking around the tree and MAC in the window in the background. He wanted outside too!

Her favorite snow activity- Snow Angels

Ever wondered why we are called Magnolia Girls? This is at the entrance to our condo...

Madeline throwing a snowball at me!

Be looking for my next post~Jamaica~coming soon

Thanks for visiting my sporadic post blogging.

~Lisa