Happy Birthday Abby!

Abby (our niece) turned 3 so we went up to the cities to celebrate. We got her a sleeping beauty barbie doll with a bed. It was only $15! But her favorite present all day was definitely her new "big girl" bike. She was in heaven! After going on a bike ride and then hanging out by the campfire, 1/2 of us watched Sleeping Beauty while the other 1/2 played some Killer Bunnies. We all finished the night by watching Sarah Palin on SNL...the most watched episode of SNL ever! Once again Scott got some great pictures of Abby with her new bike.





Abby got to eat all the chocolate shavings off the pie

Five amazing years...with my best friend

Well it's been 5 years since we were married. I have the most amazing husband in the world. I kid you not, every single day I am in awe of how blessed and lucky I am to have such a compassionate, sensitive and loving man in my life. Plus on top of that he's constantly making me laugh. I am certain he will also portray all of these qualities to his own children when he becomes a father and it just makes my heart melt to think of it. I'm thankful for every minute I get to spend with him, and it's a lot of minutes since we work together too :)

Happy Anniversary to us, here's to growing old together sitting on the front porch in our rocking chairs with a glass of lemonade.

Happy Birthday Honey!

It's my husband's birthday today! Just wanted to wish him a happy birthday. This morning I made him a huge breakfast. By huge I mean eggs, bacon, grits, pancakes, hashbrown casserole and biscuits and gravy. All from scratch. Well semi-scratch :)

Love you honey!

Tuck's Birthday Party

We spent the weekend in Tuscola, IL for Scott's dad's "surprise" birthday party. Well of course he found out beforehand so it wasn't much of a surprise anymore. The day of the party was spent mostly preparing for it. Setting up the bounce house, cleaning chairs, making food, getting tables set up, cooking the hog etc. Then the party started. Lots of family and friends were there. Tuck even put a pretty big ad in the paper inviting the entire town. Luckily we had enough food. It was my first hog roast and well, the meat kinda turned me off a little since I saw it actually getting cooked over the fire. This weekend was also the first time we got to meet the newest member of the family, Lucas James Elder. We had a great time taking pictures and cuddling with our new little nephew.

Look at all the food!


Spence waiting patiently for the Bounce House


The hog over the firepit


Tuck and Scott watching the hog


I actually ate some of this...gross


Scott's cousin Liz and her boyfriend Adam


Jennifer with Lucas at the party


The ad in the paper


A closer look at the ad, we loved how he offered a ride home to people


Tuck enjoying his party


Me and Spence climbing the "mountain"


Spence




A proud uncle


Lucas admiring Scott


I love little baby yawns






Me and Lucas

Welcome Lucas James!

I don't have pictures yet but our new nephew was just born!! Welcome Lucas James Elder to this world. I'm so excited to meet all 9 lbs of him. Mom and baby are healthy...praise God.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy birthday to my boss and Dad. He had a busy day today and I hope it was a great one.

Love you Dad!

Happy birthday to my Uncle Keith and cousin Kevin too :)

Happy Birthday Matt!

Ahhh yes, one of my trusted blog-readers and my BROTHER! My little bro turned 23 today :) Matt is currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He's graduating in just a few short months I can't even believe it. Then he hopes to go to law school. He's so dang smart! Anyway, I miss him and wish he lived closer. We have some really great talks sometimes and I'm glad we can just be honest with each other. That's what I love about him the most...his honesty. He can be a little analytical at times but he's a McCasland, what do you expect? Anyway, Happy Birthday little brother...love you and miss you. Hope you enjoy your gift!

Birthday Meal

Every year Scott takes the time to make me dinner for my birthday. He cooks a lot of the time anyway but this dinner is special. He picks all recipes that I have saved in my Allrecipes.com recipe box and cooks up 6 different things (so it's actually 4 courses, not 6). He spends a lot of time planning and cooking and it's SOOO good! Here's the menu:

Mini Reubens


Spinach Cranberry Salad


Jerk Chicken Pasta (served with garlic broccoli and cheese bread)


Jamaican Cake


Last year's menu was:

Stuffed Mushrooms


Greek Salad (homemade dressing)


Garlic Cheese Bread


Angel Chicken Pasta


Dump Cake (this picture doesn't do it justice)

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Our nephew, Ryan, was born the day before my birthday :) So needless to say we've been celebrating our "green" birthdays together. Well you know how that goes...he's 4 and I'm 27 so we're celebrating his birthday and I get a few presents. It's fun though because normally at this age you don't get a celebration at all.

I wonder if in the future they'll play off of St. Patty's day and make it a day to go "green"... you know, environmentally. I guess I haven't even checked...some places may have already done this as a way of advertising green products.

For Ryan's birthday we went to "Pump it Up" in the cities where they rented out the entire place. It's basically a large room with about 4 different HUGE blow-up things you can jump in. Adults can go too :) It was so much fun and I didn't get shocked once!! It's a great workout too. Then after all the kids jump and jump and jump, we all go into the party room to eat cake and Ryan opens his presents....chaos! It was a lot of fun. Then my family all went over to Maple Grove to a new hotel and stayed the night there....let the party continue :) Darren and Laura treated us to our hotel room and it was really nice and new. They had a whirlpool outside! We had 4 different rooms and Abby loved going in and out of all the different rooms. Ryan opened some more presents and I opened some too. His favorite present by far? Little hockey guys with a little rink...he literally played with them by himself for HOURS!

It's so funny what we get excited for as adults. I loved my gifts. I got a heart rate monitor (to help with my training for the tri), little tupperware containers for lunches (with built-in coolers) and a personal blender. Oh and of course green shamrock socks.

Another bonus to the night was I FINALLY got to go to Trader Joe's!!! This is a grocery store that offers lots of natural and good-for-you foods at prices that aren't outrageous (a dream come true for me). I've heard so much about this place through Weight Watchers and there isn't one near here. So when I found out there was a Trader Joe's right across the street from our hotel I nearly wet myself! Darren, my mom, Scott and I walked over to check it out. It was everything I imagined it to be and more. Loved it! And Scott did too. Now if only we could get one in Rochester!

Scott is now preparing a 6 course homemade meal for my birthday and I'm supposed to know nothing about it. He started this tradition last year and I have to say the food was amazing. I'm getting hungry smelling it.

Btw, I'm not going to do this birthday thing anymore once I come around to my year anniversary of blogging...it's just too much work and it's hard to decide who to do and who not to do. Unless we do something like we did for Ryan's this year, I won't be writing about them after June so don't be offended if you don't see it :)

Here are some pictures (taken with my crappy camera...we took more with the better camera just haven't edited them yet). Also some videos:


The birthday boy with his hockey guys


Abby with her new umbrella (Grandma always knows the best gifts to give)

Abby on the slide

Random footage (we mainly wanted to get Abby saying "yeyah")

Happy "Green" Day!

Happy Birthday Leah!

It's Leah's birthday today! Leah and Eric went to the cities to see ComedySportz (if you've never been GO, it's SUPER funny and fun...plus family-friendly). So in the mean time Scott and I developed a plan for her birthday. She has no idea about this and probably won't until at least tomorrow. I'm going out on a limb and assuming she doesn't check this before she gets home. Anyway, so for Eric's birthday I think last year we got him a GC and went in their apartment building (shhh, we know the code) and put the GC under their door. They said they found it later under the fridge or something. Anyway, so for Leah's birthday this year we decided to go a little more extreme. So we bought a pack of 80 envelopes and spent about 2 hours at Sky Dragon writing different things in each envelope. Some serious, some funny, some very random and some quotes from movies. And then a few had actual gifts in them. Then we went on a little excursion back to their apartment and slid every envelope under their door. Shouldn't have given us the code, Schillers! Anyway, it was much harder this time because they had since gotten a new door so we had more of a challenge. Then we left a lone Peep sitting on the doorknob. No birthday is complete for Leah without candy.

Happy Birthday, hope you enjoy your gift!!

Happy Birthday Jay!

Happy Birthday to Jay, Scott's brother. Jay is exactly 1 month older than me...weird huh? He turned 27...there I announced it to the whole world. Or at least the 7 or so people that read this blog on a regular basis. Jay lives in central Illinois and owns his own roofing/siding company. He and his girlfriend Jennifer are mom and dad to our nephew Spence :) Hope you have a great day Jay...wish we could be there to celebrate with you.

Hopefully see you in a week!

Happy Birthday Kristin!

Kristin is our first niece in the family and she turned 19 today :) She's going to college in St. Cloud, MN. We've really enjoyed getting to know Kristin over the last few years. My best memories with her include the trip to Chicago we took together with my sister and the nights she and Daniel spent at our house, usually around the holidays, where we would stay up late and eat lots of junk food. Kristin is one of the sweetest people you will meet and she's very easy to talk to. She's an aspiring beautician...she even cut my hair one Christmas in my kitchen and did a fabulous job.

Happy Birthday, Kristin, we love you!!!

Happy Birthday Laura!

My sister turned 30 on Sunday! Sorry for spilling the beans about her age :) I love my sister, I'm so blessed to have her in my life! We actually had a surprise birthday party for her on Friday and we got some pics. I'm posting this later than her birthday because I put together a slideshow and have attached it for everyone to enjoy. She had no clue about the party! Turn your volume up :)

Click here to see all the pics in a web gallery (you can download from there too).