9 Official Years

January 24th marks 3,285 days of us being married!  9 wonderful years!  Don't get me wrong.  We've had our ups and downs and marriage is not for the faint of heart.  But, in the end we've found a balance and I couldn't imagine life without Scott.

Since our anniversary fell on Wednesday, I thought our options were pretty limited for celebrating on the actual date.  In previous years, we've had a date night on the weekend before or after.  But, this year, we lucked out in that the boys had a half day at school Thursday.  I asked my parents to pick them up from school Wednesday, keep them overnight, and let them skip their half day on Thursday.  That allowed me and Scott to get tickets to the Pistons vs. Jazz game so we could check on the new Little Caesars Arena. 

Scott surprised me with flowers during the day at work.  He had them delivered to the school and I was called down to the front office.  It was so sweet!  And my roses are absolutely stunning!

I gave Scott a really cool Tiger's card, a Pistons t-shirt to wear to the game, and a love note in his lunch bag. 

It was so strange coming home from work to an empty house.  Not having to pick up the boys or get them started on after-school snacks and homework.  I picked up the house in preparation for our cleaning lady on Thursday and took the dog for a walk.  When Scott got home we hit the road for Detroit. 

We decided to eat dinner in Greektown and try Wahlburgers since we were casually dressed and in a time constraint with the game.  Parking was free at the garage and we easily found a spot.  Dinner was just mediocre.  In fact, I'd probably not go back again.  Our waiter was actually a former student of mine, which was crazy weird!  He gave us a free cupcake since it was our anniversary. 

We rode the People Mover from Greektown to Grand Circus Station and walked about 7 blocks to the arena. It was freezing walking that far, but we made it work!  The arena was really nice!  A little strange since getting to your seats you have to enter a specific portal number, which is different from your section number.  We grabbed a beer at Kid Rock's bar and went up to our seats.  They were super high up, but center court.  The game was exciting, with all the loud music and performances during commercial breaks.  At halftime, we walked around the main floor and took a tour of the arena.

We left close to the end of the fourth quarter and walked back to the People Mover.  Scott wanted to stop in Greektown Casino to gamble for a bit.  We ended up staying in Greektown until about 10:30pm.  Thursday morning was a bit rough since it was such a late night for us, but we had a great time out!  I'm kind of loving the weeknight date! 

Ice Festival fun!

Last weekend, Plymouth had their annual Ice Festival!  Some years we plan a date night to be able to go in the evening and hang out at the bars that face the park where the ice sculptures are, but this year we didn't since we'll be going out next week for our anniversary. 

My parents came over Saturday afternoon when Scott got home from coaching his basketball games.  We hung out at our house for a bit before bundling up and heading downtown.  It was so cold, but we made it work!

A new addition this year was a tubing run, but the line was really long and not moving very fast.  We were grateful the boys didn't mind passing it up.  Not to mention it was $5 per kid to go down and that just seemed silly to spend the money and time on such a small tubing hill.  Instead, we walked around half of the park before going in the heated tent to eat a corn dog and look at the different booths.

Of course the boys enjoyed the "kid area" where they had an ice cream cone sculpture you could put your face in, a football helmet for your face, a table made of ice with a hockey puck to pass back and forth, an animal sculpture to ride on, and tic tac toe made out of ice with little sacks of rice to use. 

Our favorite spot is always the ice throne!  The boys both fit sitting together this year.  I wonder how many more years we'll be able to squeeze them both on the seat. 

My personal favorite was the sculpture of Mickey and Minnie!  Yay, Disney! 

Our last stop was the petting zoo where we let the boys go inside the corral and brush the animals.  It was only $1 each and they enjoyed it.  By then, we were cold and ready to head back home.  We changed out of our winter gear, went out to dinner at Bob Evan's (hey...it was Weight Watcher's friendly), and came back to watch Pete's Dragon.  The boys saw Pete's Dragon on Netflix on Friday night with me and Scott and wanted to watch it again and show Grandma and Grandpa.  It's such a cute movie!  Sean almost cried. 

Now the trick is for us to stay healthy.  It never fails...around the time of the Ice Festival and/or our anniversary one of the kids always get sick.  As I'm fighting a cold and Sean has a cough, I'm crossing my fingers it doesn't turn into anything else. 

Christmas Break Activities!

As much as it sounded good in my head to have a "relaxing" break where we don't over plan ourselves, I did the complete opposite!  I planned and planned and planned.  We came, we saw, we did!  Woooo team Ferstle!

All joking aside, we ended up having a great break home together, even if it was go-go-go!

In no particular order, I'll just start sharing all the fun we had.

We saw some movies over break!  Some at home like Descendants 2, Captain Underpants, and Despicable Me 3.  And some were at the theater.  The boys and I saw Ferdinand and Scott and I were lucky enough to have a date night where we ate at Texas Roadhouse and went to see Star Wars. 

We had several playdates planned with friends and family.  We took the boys out to see my Grandma and Uncles that live in Macomb and on the way back home stopped in Rochester to see the lights and eat at the Mills.  I also brought the boys to Somerset to have lunch at Chic-Fil-A and to meet up with my co-workers and their kids.  I let the boys do a little shopping at the Lego Store and at the Disney Store, of course.

In case I wasn't out in the Troy area enough, we also planned a date for the kids to go build Legos at the Robot Garage with their cousins, AJ and Sydney in Birmingham and lunch at Griffin Claw.  I met up with my mom that afternoon for some shopping at Somerset again and dinner at Mon Jin Lau.  We definitely ate well over break!

On days where we stayed on our side of town, we did a few outings.  We took the boys to Creatopia to paint a piece of pottery.  Evan chose a crown and Sean chose an army vehicle.  We grabbed lunch at Panera and went on to the library after that.  We also took the boys to open skate one day using a Groupon I found.  It was a lot of fun!  Sean can skate independently now and Evan is still a work in progress using that plastic thing.  Another afternoon I took the boys to Jungle Java to get some energy out and we ran into Sean's best friend Corey and his dad.  Small world!

We tried to enjoy our days at home too since it was so cold outside.  My hopes of doing a lot of sledding, going to the Toledo Zoo lights, and going back down to see the tree in Campus Martius changed real quick once the real feel temps were in the negatives daily.  So, we read books, we played with blocks and Legos, did countless board games and puzzles, and let the boys play on the iPads and Playstation 3.  After all, it was nice and cozy to be at home.

We updated Evan's room by selling his old dresser, mirror, and headboard that I had from college and buying him a chest of drawers.  I think it opened up some space in his small room and it gave it a more masculine look.  I painstakingly took down the vinyl words I had on his wall and put up his new wall calendar.  He's good to go!

I got my hair cut!  And actually, she cut quite a bit off considering my hair went to the middle of my back.  Scott loves my hair shorter, so it was a win.

On our last day of break, we made the decision to ignore the cold temps and get our butts outside.  We took the boys out to Alpine Valley for the first ski of the year.  Sean wanted to be in a group lesson for two hours and Evan wanted to stay with me and Scott, so we all went our separate ways for a bit.  After Sean's lesson, we ate our bag lunches we brought and went back out to try the chairlift.  I'm happy to report that we all made several runs down the big hill and both boys successfully did the chairlift!  Sean isn't too confident on his skis still, but we're working on it.  Evan, with some ski wedges on the front, was cruising down like it was no big deal.  Very exciting!

It was a great last day of break!  We came home exhausted from all the skiing and fresh air and ready, as we were going to be, to go back to school and work.  We accomplished a lot over break from all the activities we did with the kids, to having a date night, to spending time with lots of different friends and family members.  We sold a few big items we'd been trying to get rid of, added a few new things to the house, and rang in the new year with hopes of losing weight, exercising more, and making sure I give Scott a kiss every night before bed. 

It will be a relatively quiet month, as it usually is.  Scott started coaching basketball and had his first games last weekend.  The ice festival came and went last weekend (post to come!) and we'll celebrate Bailey's 11th birthday and our 9th anniversary the end of this month.  And then it's...Tucson over mid-winter break!  Here we go 2018!