Wordless Wednesday #38 ~ "Dogged Determination"

CJ's first T-Ball game. He's on a team called the Blue Dogs.

Check out the closed eyes, and the tongue sticking out!

Holly and Hal Moose: Our Uplifting Christmas Adventure!

Yesterday, a couple of blogger friends and I had an awesome opportunity! We got to go to a sneak preview of "Hal and Holly Moose: Our Uplifting Christmas Adventure," at the Mall of America theaters. We were each allowed to bring one special guest. My friends each brought one of their preschool age children, and I brought my grandson CJ, who lives with me at the moment.

BURBANK, Calif. (Oct. 15, 2009) – ABC Family and Build-A-Bear Workshop® are coming together to create a little holiday “hoofla” this season as the network debuts an animated special that marks the first time in the retailer’s 12-year history that its plush animals are brought to life on television.

"Holly and Hal MooseTM: Our Uplifting Christmas Adventure,” a one-hour feature movie, makes its nationwide premiere on ABC Family on Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 7:00 PM ET/PT (with an encore presentation on Saturday, Nov. 28 at 10 AM ET/PT). The television special is based on a book and series of webisodes that introduced Holly and Hal Moose last year and captured their holiday antics, powerful imaginations and love of adventure.

We arrived at the Mall and had to find our way to the movie theater. When we got there, we were surprised to find Holly and Hal there (in person) to greet us, before the movie!

Here's Sassyfrazz's little girl, giving Holly a big hug.

Here's the movie stars, Hal and Holly.

They were super excited to be starring in their very first film!

I even got a couple of pics of the movie itself. The kids really enjoyed the show. The story was mostly about following your dreams, (Hal has always dreamed of flying with Santa's reindeer),

But there are other good elements to this tale as well, for example, when Holly, (the older sibling) is asked to watch her younger brother after school, she's forced to make the tough choice between going to her friend's party and doing as her mother as her mother asked...you'll have to tune into the movie on Tuesday to find out what she chose...but of course, just as every good children's Christmas story goes...our heroes, Hal and Holly ultimately end up saving the day, when "the storm of the century" threatens to cancel Christmas!

Don't forget to tune in to ABC Family, Tuesday 11/24 at 7pm Eastern, 6pm Central. There will also be an encore presentation on Saturday, 11/28 at 10am. For those of you who do not have access to ABC Family (we don't), this cute new holiday movie will also be available on DVD, starting on Wednesday, 11/25. I'm sure we'll have to go pick up a copy. CJ just came in and told me he wants to watch it again!

Here's my grandson, CJ and me.

And below, is Lisa (QTPies) and Sarah (Sassyfrazz) with their little ones. Did you know that Holly Moose actually has her own blog as well? You can go to Holly's blog to get more info and previews of this fun adventure!

The movie was a very fun treat...but wait...there's more! Courtesy of Build-A-Bear Workshops, we were also invited to their store after the show, to make our own Hal and Holly Moose pair to take home! They provided the animals, as compensation for our reviews, but any clothing or added items, like sounds or accessories were extra.

Our experience at Build-A-Bear Workshop was awesome! This nice lady led our group through the entire process. First, we had to bring our mooses (meese?) to the stuffing machine.

Each of the children took their turn stepping on a foot pump to make the machine work. Below, is Maddie stuffing her "Holly" while CJ and Sam look on.

CJ's turn to stuff his Hal.

Next, our helper tightens up the pre-sewn threads at the back of each moose. Just before this happened, we were all instructed to pick out a heart for each animal, because after all...everyone needs to have a heart, right? Also, if you choose to put a sound into your creation...this is the time to put that in, as well. I chose to put the song, "Jingle Bell Rock" in Molly's Holly.


The next step, is "fluffing" our new little buddies...CJ seemed to take this job quite seriously.

There is another foot pump here, which causes air to blow on the animal, while it is being brushed. Next, we picked out clothes for them. We all decided to dress them in their signature outfits from the movie, but they have quite a large selection of clothing available for purchase.

At the movie premiere, we had each received a Build-A-Bear backpack too, (gotta love swag)...so we put our new little buddies in the backpacks for the kiddos to carry around, it was so cute!

Here's our little threesome in front of Build-A-Bear Workshop.

I love this picture of one of the huge trees at the MOA, with the three little ones looking waaay up to the top. The tree was humongous, it was at least 3 stories tall!

We had to stop and take a picture of Nickelodeon Universe, on our way to the food court for lunch. Shortly after lunch, we had a bit of a scare. As Lisa was throwing our garbage away, 3 year-old Sam wandered off...in a very crowded MOA food court at lunch time! This is an experience that many of us mothers/grandmas have had before, and we tried not to panic...but I think we all earned another gray hair or two at that moment. Thankfully, in probably less than a minute or two, mother and child were reunited! Whew!!

Here's CJ and his pal, Hal on the way home.

Molly was very excited to meet "Holly" and CJ has been carrying "Hal" around everywhere, ever since his good friend was made! He even attended church with us this morning. Thank you, thank you, Build-A-Bear!!

V.B.S. Takes Its Toll on Everyone!

Today was the first day of Vacation Bible School at our church. This year's theme is "Studio Go Game Show." It will be every morning this week from 9AM to 12:15. My grandson, CJ is attending with a lot of his friends. I'm helping out with the babies in the nursery, with my good friend Lisa, (QTpies7), and Molly is helping out by leading the worship etc with some other older girls. So far, so good. There were over 100 kids there this morning, not counting the 6th and 7th graders that were there helping out! Everyone is having a great time, despite the rainy start to the week today.

However, ever since school got out last Wednesday, we've been pretty lax about what time anyone goes to bed around here. Hence CJ and Molly...and I were up a bit later than we should have been last night. After we got home this afternoon, I made lunch and sat down to watch one of my favorite shows, and fell asleep on the couch. Molly had been on the computer and CJ was running around playing. I woke up after a few minutes and it seemed rather quiet in the house. I assumed CJ was upstairs with his mom in their bedroom...until I saw a little head lying behind the recliner in the living room...

CJ curled up next to his "trumpet" that he made in VBS

And then I walked into my bedroom and found this...



Molly had decided to take over my bed. I guess I'll call her "Goldilocks" from now on. I tried to get her out, but there was no budging her. It is now after 5:30 and they are both still asleep! I'd better go wake them up, so they don't stay up half the night tonight and repeat this behavior tomorrow!!

Memorial Weekend Happenings

Our Holiday weekend started out nice. Sarah called on Saturday morning, to ask if it was alright for them to come down for a visit for the weekend. They had planned on camping in Northern Minnesota, but the weather up there was not cooperating. We told her that would be just fine, we had planned on grilling and having our first campfire of the season that night anyway, so it would be great to have company for it. We invited my son Joel and Ray's other daughter, Ruth and her husband too, but unfortunately, Joel had to work and we never heard back from Ruth.

Meanwhile, while Sarah and Brad were on their way, I got Ray working on my "Honey-do" list. They were just minor little things that I wanted done, like hanging the American flag out on the front porch, putting a lock on the bathroom door, fixing my chair and attaching our bed to the headboard, so it wasn't always trying to fall on us in our sleep. He did end up getting most of that accomplished. I have one more project for him to do, but he said that one was a little more "involved" than he thought it would be. Of course, this is the same project that was left over from th last time I gave him a list of things I wanted done.

After Sarah and Brad arrived, we took them with us to the first grad party of the season. It was a beautiful day for an outdoor party, and CJ had lots of fun playing with his friends, Caleb, DJ and Charlie, who all happened to be there at the same time we were. When we got home, we made brats and hot dogs on the grill and got ready for our campfire.

Here are Jake, Molly (with Bart in her lap), Sarah, Brad, Buster, and Jess with CJ in her lap.

Here we are, enjoying the fire and roasting marshmallows for S'mores. You gotta have S'mores to make it an official holiday weekend, don't ya think?

Here is Molly, posing with Jake, Bart and Buster. We had ourselves a real "Three Dog Night"

On Sunday afternoon, we all headed out to my mom and dad's house for another "work day". Most of my siblings were there, and some of the grandkids. They were all doing odd jobs around the place that needed doing. Some of us were painting Mom and Dad's bedroom, while others were doing some painting outside. They even painted the basketball/flag pole! That's my brother Bob in the orange shirt, and the other one is my BIL, Steve. I believe my brother Mike is operating the equipment here:

While they were doing that, my sister Kathy was busy painting the old basketball backboard, too. She did a very nice job on it, but we were thinking it needed the script, "Don't even think about parking here", along with a painting of Felix the Cat playing basketball...or something like that. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if actually did that. She's one talented lady.

Monday morning, we all got up and Ray made his famous omelets for everyone. Sarah and Brad packed up and headed North around noon or so. Ray, CJ and I took a ride out to the campground that our church is going to for a weekend in July. It looks like a nice place, and is only about 20 miles from town, so even if some people didn't want to stay, they could still come out to visit for a day. The lady from the campground told Ray that he had to show me the "outhouses". I thought that was interesting. I'll post more about the campground later.

Girlfriend's Duluth Weekend Getaway

Sarah graciously agreed to be our driver for the weekend. She has the biggest vehicle, so that worked out well. Actually, her van is the exact make and model that mine is, but mine has not been running since shortly after the start of the year. After she and baby C had picked up Anna, then Lisa and then me, we all headed over to Jody's to pick up her and baby K. Here we are in Jody's driveway, about to set out on our journey...with 5 ladies, 2 babies...and a bunch of stuff.

When we arrived in Duluth, we were hungry, so we stopped and ate at a Chinese buffet. The food was very good, but they must have been getting ready to close or something, they were almost out of everything...and they didn't seem to be restocking anything. Oh well, I probably didn't need to eat any more than I did anyway.

By the time we reached the hotel room, the babies were both fast asleep. They did a lot of that over the weekend, and I must say, they were both very good babies.

Shortly after we arrived, we decided to get a group picture, laying across one of the beds. I had the fun part. I set the timer on my camera, set it on a half-wall and had 10 seconds to run over and jump on the end of the bed and assume the pose that the rest of them were in already.

Well, almost. I didn't hear the part about raising just my right foot here. There was one other one I took, that I was laughing really hard because I almost fell right off the bed. I won't post that one.

Our hotel room was right on Lake Superior, with a very cool view. This is an old lighthouse we could see from our window.

On Saturday evening, we looked out our window and saw something way off in the distance...could it be a ship? Yes, it was! We wondered how long it would take to get in. Anna called down to the desk and they said it should arrive in about 10 minutes. She, Jody, baby K and I all took a walk down to the pier to see it come in. I got a video of the lift bridge going up, and then this one of the ship making it's way toward us. It was HUGE.

There, my ship has finally come in. Well...at least A SHIP has finally come in. It was pretty cool to see up close like that. Here is a video of it going under the Lift Bridge:

After the ship passed under the bridge, I turned around and got this picture of the lighthouse. There were seagulls flying all around so I waited until there were a couple of them in my viewfinder. I like the results...especially the gull that looks exactly like people draw them in pictures up there in the right hand corner.




After we saw the ship come in we walked around to the front of the hotel, this picture was taken from the hotel's driveway. That's how close we were to the lift bridge. It was a very nice hotel too.

I had to take this picture of two little ones...aren't they adorable??

The girls decided they need to do some slumber party/girly-girl things too. Here's Lisa applying some cute little butterfly decals to Anna's fingernails, while Sarah dyed her and Jody's hair in the bathroom. I was sort of babysitting the little ones during all this and enjoying every minute of it.

After that they really got silly and a few of them thought it would be fun to have an old fashioned jumping-on-the-bed pillow fight! It did look like, fun but being the "token old lady", I decided I'd better behave myself and chose not to join in. Jody (Make a Joyful Noise), must have been really tired, because she and baby K slept through all the noise, and didn't participate either. I didn't get any pics of them, because I didn't want to leave baby Cole on the bed to go find my camera, but I'm pretty sure if you go to Lisa's (Our 7 QTPies), or Sarah's (Sassyfrazz) or Anna's (Moving Forward) sometime this week...you'll be able to see a picture of these silly girls. For some reason, about 10 minutes after they were finished with their pillow fighting...security showed up and the door and asked us to quiet down...I have NO IDEA why they would do that! LOL!



After a fun-filled weekend, and cleaning up our very messy hotel room, (can you imagine what the bathroom looked like after 5 women were using it for 2 days?) we checked out, packed up the van and walked down to the shore to get another group shot. There just happened to be another ship leaving at that time. A very nice gentlemen offered to take the picture of us...so I agreed and gave him my camera. Little did he know that 3 other women were going to hand him their cameras too! He said he didn't know what he was getting into when he offered...but he was a good sport and took a picture with each of our 4 cameras!

Here's one last picture of the babies on their "first date". Who knows, this could be a budding romance... And if they end up married to each other some day, they may just want to go back up to Duluth for their honeymoon.

We had a wonderful weekend, and I want to thank all my buddies for inviting me. Also, thanks to Jody and her husband Dan for allowing us to use his hotel points for a free 2 night hotel stay. Many thanks to Sarah too for driving us all up there in her van. We'll have to do it again sometime!

Wordless Thursday?

I had a great picture I was going to post yesterday...and forgot about it. We were at Molly's concert last week and CJ decided to take a couple of pictures with my camera. First he took a picture of Grandpa's arm, then a not-so-flattering one of my face then a picture of the back of the lady's head who was sitting in front of him...and then he turned the camera around to take one of himself:

Sorta up close and personal...don't ya think?

Okay, maybe it wasn't so "wordless" after all.

Wordless Wednesday #21 ~ If Only You Could Keep Them on a Shelf, Just To Look Cute!

Happy Birthday, Molly or La Hanau, Moli!

My baby turned 12 today. You may think we're having a cold spell this week, but 12 years ago on this date, it was so cold that the governor of MN closed ALL the schools in the state! I'm not sure if the actual temp was colder than it's been this week, but there were wind chill factors ranging from -50 to -60 if I remember correctly. She came into the world at 5:10 pm, weighing 8 lbs 6 oz and was 21 3/4 in long. Molly was my 4th child, but came 13 1/2 years after child number 3! She was only 4 months old when her oldest brother graduated from High School.

Here's Molly at approximately 9 months of age. I had to dress her in pink, or in ruffles like this so people wouldn't mistake her for a boy, since she'd not been blessed with a lot of hair yet.

But by 1 1/2 she had ringlets of curls starting in the back. If you asked her how old she was then, she would reply, "Sixteen". I also caught her sitting at the computer around this age, too. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Checkin' my eee-mail"! That's what happens when a toddler has teenage siblings, I guess.

This picture was taken at a little over age 2, which is about when we met her step-dad, Ray. Before they met in person, they had a little chat on the phone. Molly was a very early talker, and had quite the vocabulary by then. When I finally got the phone away from her after a few minutes, Ray said, "I can't believe I'm carrying on a conversation with a 2 year old!"
Can you blame him for falling in love (with her)?

Here she is in her Easter best, a year later. She also wore this dress as the flower girl at our wedding the following Fall.

This is her Kindergarten picture. Notice the curls are gone. Just before Molly turned 5 (and right before Christmas of course), she decided she needed a haircut. It was one of those do-it-yourself jobs...I think I cried when we came home and I found little blonde curls on the bathroom floor.

Molly became an Aunt for the 2nd time at age 7 1/2, when CJ was born.

Now, fast forward to a little over 4 years later...

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Today, she's my 5' 9" tall, beautiful, dramatic, enigmatic, sometimes silly tween-ager

...who loves to take lots of crazy pictures of herself like this one.

Her "big" sister Jessica, (the one on the right), is going to help Molly host a slumber party tonight with a Hawaiian luau theme. She's invited 3 friends for it. We looked up all of their Hawaiian names, and hers is Moli, of course. They're going to do the usual slumber party stuff, like karaoke, movies, facials etc. I suppose they'll be up giggling all night long too. That should be great fun. Happy 12th Birthday, Molly!