Oh my!!!

I keep saying I'm going to get better about staying current and I'm failing miserably :( but I just HAVE to share this! We just brought 10 months worth of tabs down to Shriners Hospital.... Our tab total was between 4.5-4.5 MILLION tabs!!!!! Woo hoo! 3,000 pounds of "trash" to help kids like my little Taylor kick the tushy of the odds! Thank you to everyone who helps this wonderful cause! #tabsfortaylor <3

(My truck is still over half full of tabs!!!)

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........

Tabbie love

Little Miss Taylor has been quite the busy bee and making Mommy busy too ;)

Tayt just received a HUGE care package full of letters and picture from the Bethlehem NH kindergartners on top of the thousands of tabs they have been saving for her. She was pretty excited to say the least.

That following Friday Grandmama, Auntie Lisa and GG went down to Shriners Hospital in Springfield to present our 6 month old tab pile which consisted of approximately 650 pounds. We didn't get to go on this adventure because Taylor was sick but we did finally make it down Monday to drop off another 25 pounds of tabs that were dropped off in our North Walpole well over the weekend. And while we were there, little Mayhem was also fitted for her 6th Armie. She's still sticking with Dora the explorer and boots the monkey but this one is purple.

Saturday brought more tab love when we were invited to the BPOE in Springfield Vt so that the Elks members and Moose members could present the tabs they have been saving to Taylor personally. We were also able to visit with some Shriners who were there :) and now on top of all the excitement with the 60th Maple Sugar Bowl and Taylor's "queen status" we'll be making a few other appearances too.

I can't even try to keep up.....

Here's a quick glimpse of the last month:

Little Miss Taylor was chosen to be the Queen of the 60th anniversary Shriners Maple Sugar Bowl! But I'm so excited for her and she's bordering on psychotic over it. She can not wait to get a new "ball gown" and of course a princess crown and ride in the parade with her Fezed friends (especially the clowns). The game isn't until August so you'll have to wait for those pictures ;)

I submitted the applications and whatnot for our 5th Shrine On Springfield walkathon and I will have the confirmed walk date soon!

Our tabs-on-hand count is up over 2,565,000 and growing!!!!!!! Holy cow!!!! I can't really absorb that. I couldn't even get them all in one picture. I'm going to try again when we drop them off Friday, and I'm sure someone will succeed in grabbing a good pic. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has made this possible and continues to save Tabs For Taylor!

Speaking of Fridays drop off, we're headed down to Shriners Hospital ( if you hadn't figured that out yet) to check out Tayt's "Boots" Armie and see if its time for the third color of Dora fabric to be made into her 6th Armie .....oh my.

Last week's visit with GrandMaMa and Papa was not enough for the girls so were kidnapping my mom to go down with us and since my Grandmother "GG" is up from Florida maybe she'll come along too. We shall soon find out.

Other than that is SSDD: hanging out with friends and family, birthday parties, school stuff for Miss Ashtyn and lots of playing in the snow. And if it involves any form of chaos or mayhem..... That's how our day/month/year went ;)

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!