A Boys Day

On Alyvia's first day of school, Colson got to have a day with Daddy!

It was over 80 degrees outside, but he insisted on wearing his JD shirt, jeans and work boots!  It had to be JD because the boys were going to visit the world headquarters of John Deere and the John Deere Pavilion.  This was Cole's birthday trip.  His birthday is not until September 16th, but Alan will probably be much busier then so he took him to the Quad Cities last Friday.

They had such a fun day together!  Alan barely got him off the tractors to go eat lunch!  My kids have such a great daddy.  He truly wants to be an involved parent and honestly loves spending days with them <3  Happy early birthday Colson!

It's Vegas Baby!

On Monday Alan and I left, by ourselves, for a little getaway.  Alan is now a seed adviser for Syngenta.  The company had a conference in Las Vegas and paid for Alan and I to go! 

Livi was pretty sad when we left Monday morning :(  Our babysitter Meaghan said she moped around most of the morning saying she wanted  her "real" mommy (not the picture I drew for her)!  Luckily, Livi perked up-spending most of the time with her cousins while we were gone helped a lot!  I'm not sure Colson even realized what was going on.  I'm sure he knew he wasn't at home, but everyone said he was super happy and slept well, so that makes me happy :)

Alan and I were supposed to fly out of Peoria at 9:30 Monday morning and connect in Chicago to Las Vegas.  Our flight was over an hour late in Peoria and we thought we would miss our flight out of Ohare.  We were "lucky" the Chicago flight was delayed too so we got on the plane and thought we would only be about an hour behind our expected arrival in Vegas.  Well, after sitting on the plane for over an hour, we had to taxi back to the gate so a mechanic could fix somebody's seat back-Aaargh!  After fueling up (again), we finally made it out to the runway and left over 2 hours late.   We thought flying over the mountains was super cool (we're dorks, I know)

We finally arrived in sunny Las Vegas, albeit a little later than expected....

We stayed at The Mirage-super nice. 

We upgraded to a suite, because that's how we roll :)

The living area

2 bathrooms and an entry way!

 Monday night we went to the welcome dinner and then walked the strip a little bit.  Tuesday, Alan had meetings from 8:30 to 2 p.m.  I relaxed in the room until about 10 and then did some shopping!

After lunch, I went and laid by the pool, read my Kindle and just relaxed-it was great!!! That afternoon we went to Seigfried and Roy's Secret Garden at The Mirage.  It had dolphins, tigers, white lions and leopards-it was really neat.

You could get so close to the dolphin pool!

My phone battery died so I didn't get any other pictures of the animals :(  That night Syngenta had a dinner at The Hard Rock Cafe.  They had an Elvis impersonator for entertainment-ha!  We did a little more gambling that night, but we're not very good at it.  I wanted to play craps, but neither of us have any idea how!  The next morning Alan had a short meeting and I headed back to the pool for some more sun and relaxation :)  We flew back home that afternoon, all of our flights were on time and we got home around 10:30 that night.  It was a really quick trip, but it was worth it for sure!  Alan and I don't do a whole lot without the kids and it was nice for just us to go somewhere together.  This seed adviser thing might have more perks than I thought!! 

Father's Day Weekend

We had a great weekend!  We started off Friday evening heading up to Heritage Days in town.



Livi was pumped!!  She talked  yelled all the way up to the park :)  Once we got there, she was ready to ride!

This girl is afraid of NOTHING!  Alan and I aren't sure where she got that because we can't hack any rides!

And this cutie was content to ride along in his stroller...as long as we were moving, ha!



We hung out with Mamaw and Papaw a bit, had a funnel cake (yummy!) and then headed home.  On Saturday I left early to get my hair cut and colored (finally) and then that afternoon we headed to The Warrior Dash-crazy fun!  Today was our typical, busy Sunday family day-it turned out to be a great day though.  This morning we went to my parents house for Snyder family breakfast and we had a great turnout!  We got to meet sweet baby Joseph and hang out with family.  Colson was a little crabby because he missed his morning nap.  Wish I had gotten some pictures of the little kids, but I forgot to get my camera out :(  We left there around 11 and came home because Alan's family was coming here for lunch.  Andy, Carol, Adam, Grandma Alice, Aaron, Kelly, Kinsley and baby Brenner came to our house.  It was the first time we met baby Brenner!  He slept the whole time though (good baby!) and nobody got to hold him, which was disappointing-maybe next time.   We hung around home for a couple hours in the afternoon and then went back to my parents for dinner. 

We all had a nice weekend together.  It's been a long time since we have had a weekend without work and we needed it! 

Finally, Happy Father's Day to my dad and to my husband!  My kids are lucky to have a daddy that not only loves them so much, but loves being around them and spending time with them.  He's a wonderful dad to them and they love him very much!