Father's Day

Father's Day is a lot like Mother's Day.  We always have some type of BBQ/dinner with each side of the family.  This year we were missing my brother Matt's family as they had a prior committment and Dustin's brother Clint's family since they live in Texas!

Both dinners turned out great though!  It is always fun to have good food, good weather, and most importantly awesome company!  The only downside was when my cute G-pa Stan lost his balance and fell on my sister's back patio.  He scraped up his arm pretty good and bruised his leg :(    But, he ended up being OK.  He gave us a good scare though!  Love you G-pa!

We love our guys!



Our awesome dad!



My beautiful family!

These kids love their g-pa!

These kids love this G-pa alot too!



Geesh - Can you tell they are related? :)



Mother's Day

The day of celebrating Moms!  We had dinner, the day before, at my brother Matt's house with my family and my wonderful grandparents.  On Mother's day we hosted dinner with Dustin's family.  Dustin cooked a delicious dinner for all of us.
My kids gave me, as always, heartfelt sentiments on cards they make themselves and Dustin bought and planted my flowers, for me, for my front yard pots.  He actually picked out some very pretty flowers - ones that I have never tried before.  They still look great too!

Christmas is here!

"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree:  the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other."  ~Burton Hillis


We had the Hardcastle family dinner on the 23rd since Dustin had to work Christmas Eve and Christmas :(.  We have dinner together and open gifts.  Along with giving all the grandkids their regular Christmas gifts, my in-laws like to have a prize game for the grandkids.  They buy a whole bunch of random gifts, wrap them, and then give each kid two raffle tickets.  They put the matching raffle tickets in a bowl and whatever number they draw then the kid gets to pick a gift.  It is always funny to see what they buy every year and the kids can trade with each other too!

Since Dustin was working the holidays - we thought we would try something different and have the 12 days of Christmas.  The kids got to open one of their gifts each day up to Christmas then they had just a few small gifts along with their stocking on Christmas morning.  I save all year long so we have our "Christmas budget" to spend when holiday comes around.  Dustin and I put a limit on each other this year so we tried to see what we could get each other without going over our amount.  I think we did a great job!  The 12 days of Christmas was OK - we tried something new but nothing compares to the excitement of Christmas morning!

Carlin's treasures!

Caden's loot!

Someone is loved!

I am spoiled - I even got my favorite Chocolate covered Cinnamon bears!

Christmas Brunch at my parents house has been a tradition for years.  We all go over in the morning and open gifts.  With 10 grandkids there is a lot of commotion and wrapping paper everywhere! LOL!  With the exception of my kids all the younger grandchildren received pillow pets.  It was so funny to watch them open them and see which animal they received.

Then we always have more family arrive to eat brunch with us - grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins - it varies every year depending on what plans are made.  My G-pa Freeze and my aunt Sherene and her kids were able to make it this year.  We don't see them very often so it was great to be able to spend time with them.

Happy November Birthdays!

Birthdays galore in November!  I love them all!



My Cool nephew Austin - turned 22 (with Caden)
He was a baby when Dustin and I started dating! I am old! 




My great MIL Kathy (on the right)





My sweet niece Hailey!





My awesome SIL Heather (Who is turning 30 not 36 by the way but my brother did not have a "0" Candle - Nice . . .)



My cute nephew Camden!