Just a Few Things...

We had 2 major occurrences happen in the last couple of days.  Strike that, 3 major occurrences.  First off, it was Janet's birthday this last weekend.  And can I just say, I could not have asked for a more wonderful mother-in-law.  I can't even begin to tell you how much she does for our family, and how much we love, adore, and appreciate her.

 We had a birthday dinner for mom at Sherril and Roger's house, which is invariably a treat because Sherril always makes super yummy food.

The kids always have to help with blowing out the candles.  Thank goodness grandma is such a good sport to let them.  I mean, those are her birthday wishes after all. ;)  We are so grateful to live near family so that we can spend these special days with them.

Second, you'll never guess who my family and I got to meet last night... The Pioneer Woman!  We went to her cookbook signing at the Tattered Cover.  We got there right on the dot at 7:30 (which was when the book signing began), thinking we would only be there an hour, tops.  I guess a lot more people had shown up than they had anticipated.  I was talking to one of the ladies that works there and she said that for 90% of the book signings that they do (and they do a lot), usually only 30-40 people will show up.  They estimated that there were 400-500 people there last night.  Whoa!  Way to go Pioneer Woman!  So we ended up waiting in line for 4.5 HOURS!  With children in tow.  Like I said, we hadn't expected to be there that long, or I would have gone by myself, but after already waiting so much time, we figured we might as well stick it out for the long haul.

Trent was an incredibly good sport.

He must love me an awful lot to endure a 4.5 hour wait. ;)

Can you tell the boys were starting to get tired?  The kids were remarkably well behaved.  Luckily the book signing was right next to the kids section of the bookstore, and my kids literally read all night long, book after book.  They actually enjoyed themselves quite a bit.  If you've never been to the Tattered Cover, it is an amazing book store.  There are never ending walls and walls of books, so my kids were quite content to sit and read the night away.  I don't think we even had any melt downs.

It also helped that we met this fabulous lady here.  Liz was so kind to help us entertain our kids, and she was even willing to share her snacks.  She also had countless pictures of tractors on her camera that Preston looked at with her for quite some time.  Hopefully we didn't wear her out too much.  Thanks Liz for all of your help!

We finally made it up to see and chat with PW.  What a beautiful and incredibly nice woman.

And here it is, my signed cookbook.  It says: "To Kiffon: Thanks for bringing your cute family!  Ree/PW".  I can't wait to start trying the recipes from it!  I got quite a bit of time to peruse it while waiting in line, and my mouth was just a watering.

So was it worth it?  Definitely!  It was pretty exciting to meet Ree/PW.  As you can see, Preston totally crashed.

Not even two minutes into our drive home, this is how things were in the car.  Complete silence... except for the occasional snore here and there.  Thank you my darling family for being such good sports!

Third, and possibly best of all, these two do actually love one another.  I was starting to wonder for a few days there.  They have been at each other like cats and dogs, but after church on Sunday, I found them snuggling on the couch together.

I just love these two.  I especially love when they are getting along.  Two weeks of fall break was starting to put a damper in their relationship. ;)

Life is good.