Long Overdue

Where do I begin? 

 April, instead of bringing showers, it brought us Shriners Maple Sugar Bowl banquets!

The first one for the football players...

and the second was for the cheerleaders and band members.

Taylor was on cloud 9. Ashtyn was pretty excited too but obviously a tad jealous.

We cured that, at least temporarily by the beginning of May when we went back to Springfield Mass for the 

Melha Shriners Circus!

 

And we had a blast!

The girls of course had to stalk the clowns ;) 

CLOWN LOVE <3 nbsp="" p="">

"Fix It"

June came along and brought with it A HOME! We finally FINALLY have a home again! In between moving and unpacking and running around like a bunch of crazy people, we snagged a few moments to go out and have fun as a family ;)

The day after we bought the house was our annual Shrine On Springfield walkathon for Shriners Hospitals. It was a much smaller group this year due to the multiple graduations that were happening that day as well as 3 different alumni "happenings" and parades but we still raised $1733 for Shriners Hospital in Springfield and we had a fun time doing it. "Fix It" even came up from Mass for our little shindig and made the girls' day ;)

Then it was back to craziness.......

July (and especially Grammy) brought us a trip to Old Orchard Beach Maine......

.....and then sent us to see TAYLOR SWIFT! 

Which was an experience I can't say I ever want to relive. The show itself was fine, good even, but getting into Gillette Stadium was stupid! Then the first 30 or so employees we dealt were so beyond idiotic and down right mind numbing....... its no wonder some people just go postal. Wow! Luckily we met a few employees who had common sense, personalities and were completely down right awesome and turned our (or at least my) anger into a fun time. Liv, Auntie Momma and Boss Man, you guys saved the day ;)

We got a little soaked....... but all in all they enjoyed their first concert.

But if I ever even think about going to a place......

that seats 60,000 people again....someone slap me please!

Then it was time for another Sugar Bowl event............. the Golf Tournament. Ashtyn got to drive a golf cart at the country club and decided that was "the best thing EVER".

And then came the crowning of the King and Queen at the pre-game banquet last Friday

followed by the Saturday parade..............

 and THE GAME!!!!

 Tayt and her buddy Dan

We then all got a little R and R when the girls spent this past week visiting our Lakes Region family. Jeremy and I got to dust off our motorcycles and finally ride them. And the girls had their days filled with all the usual Chaos and Mayhem type fun.... Making trips to see some "Tabbies", heading to Maine for another adventure in Old Orchard, feeding reindeer and visiting with Santa up at Santa's Village, camping, baking, shopping, bubbles, bicycles and having a blast. 

I don't know about you but I'm exhausted just thinking about all of this ;) 

That's all I've got for now but there's plenty more to come........

Time for the Fez-tival of Trees

We're headed to Lake Winnipesaukee to visit my Mom's side of the family for Thanksgiving this year and it just so happens that the Bektash Shriners are having their annual Fez-tival of Trees this week too! I first heard about these Fez-tivals from the Kora Shriners website but their Temple is so far away from us that I can't just randomly sneak off over there. Luckily, after some searching online ....yes, I have "real internet" again!...... I found out that some other Shrines also host these Fez-tivals and Bektash happens to be one of them. So since we are going right by Bektash, we're going to swing in to their Fez-tival to see all the beautiful Christmas trees. I can't wait!

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"Holiday Magic for All Ages"

All fully decorated artificial trees will be raffled on Nov 25th at 4 PM

Silent Auction- bidding closes on Nov 24th at 4 PM

Visit with Santa

Children's Games

Gift Shop

Refreshments at the Candy Cane Cafe

$5 adults, $4 seniors, children 12 and under are FREE

 Nov 17 1-7p, Nov 18 10a-7p, Nov 19 10a-4p, Nov 20 & 21 10a-7p, Nov 22 closed for Thanksgiving, Nov 23 & 24 10a-7p, Nov 25 10a-4p. 

Bektash Shrine, 189 Pembroke Rd, Concord, NH.

 Learn more by visiting their website www.bektashshriners.org  or you can email  info@bektashshriners.org

The last week of summer vacation

Jeremy is stuck in class this entire week somewhere in the outskirts of Boston, so the girls and I decided it would be a perfect time to go and bug Grandmama and Papa. Our week has contained lots of visting of course but everyone has to work during the day so the girls and I have entertained ourselves shedding new life on our Tabs For Taylor well.

Not looking so new after 3 years of New England weather beating down upon it.

The fun began with peeling off the old vinyl.

And of course, no project would be complete without the kids getting in the middle of things. I'm glad she did though.....I never would have guessed she had grown this much in such little time... or just how bad the well really did look. Yikes! I should have been on that a while ago.
 

 

So I finally got things going but ran into issue after issue. The first problem: the red wouldn't cover the unweathered spots on the well

                Then, I needed 46 star stencils cut out of contact paper to stick on the white roof. The plan was to paint over the stencils then when I pulled them off, they would leave beautiful white perfect stars. Well, there is problem 2 and 3. Cutting them out took FOREVER! And to make matters worse, they peeled off the white paint and some blue when i tried to pull them off. GRRRRRR!

 

 

So we got a different color red and it covered the vacant letter spaces, and everything else for that matter, perfectly. Yay! Then it was time for the new graphics.

And a new info board.....full of pictures of course. And the painful task of trying my darndest to cover it all with contact paper to help prolong its life outdoors

And today, its finished! And looks awesome if I do say so myself. It will get the white stars on top at some point soon. I just need to get them.

Yesterday, Grandmama and Aunty Kathy took their previously planned day and tossed it in the trash to bring us to Storyland!
 

We had soooooooooooooooooooooo much fun! I can not even begin to tell you what a great day it was. Filled with Cinderella, Alice, Red, Tink, the StoryBops, Duke the Dragon, Humpty Dumpty, Corduroy....you know, the bear with the green overalls....I remember him from Miss Hesh's kindergarden class....you should too ;)  Tons of rides, and soaked is not even the word for Pharaoh's Reign. Oh my goodness was that fun!