Road Trip to Miami

Call me crazy, but I took my girls and one of their friends to Miami. We went on a road trip. We had actually planned this back in October because the Justin Bieber concert was going to be there, so my oldest wanted to go to that and then the new American Girl store opened up. It gave me any excuse to get out of the house for a long weekend and have some girl time. Well that is what I thought would happen, but in reality everything went a different way. To be brief and spare you the boring details it went a little like this- mouth sores, stomach bug, attitudes and spending too much money. We went to South Beach which was very pretty and the water was this amazing blue. Then, we went to the AG store and oh my is it adorable. (more on that in another post) I swear I feel like a little girl again when I go in that store. Finally, the older girls got to see their dream guy- Justin Bieber. The concert was so cute and he dances so cool. But oh my those girls can scream! It is so cute seeing so many girls just falling for this guy JB. Oh, to be a teenager again! (no thanks!)

This is the start of our trip and can you tell everyone is still pretty excited. Gabbie is with the blanket on her and I think this was the start of not feeling well.

This was our destination! So far to go.

This is the final car ride back home and the end of our trip. Everyone is tired and grumpy. The teenagers on hiding in the back of the van. Silly girls.

So that was our fun weekend packed full of excitement, headaches and so much more! 

Gifts

We had a wonderful Christmas filled with food, family and of course gifts! I don't know how you feel when you give a present and have spent so much time wrapping it and it only takes them about 1 min to tear it open. Gone went your beautiful bow you spend so much time and money on to make sure it was perfect. You are so proud of the color matching you did this year- am I right? Well that is how I felt this year- like each present I wrapped was a masterpiece- my baby- and I had to watch each person just tear into it like the bow didn't matter. Oh well, I guess it was still fun. Maybe one day someone will realize the time I put into their present.

I don't know about you all but I spend so much time thinking about the perfect gift for my children. Something they really want and have been asking for, something that is going to make them just light up with joy on Christmas morning. I love giving gifts. Some people in my family are a little harder to shop for because they already have quite a bit and I don't want to buy them something I just think is cute but something that they are going to love, so they get a gift card to their favorite store. Usually that works because I love having a gift card to my fav store and then they have a good sale- YAY ME.

Anyways, I received a few really cool gifts this year. Of course the hand made ones from the school age children- which are my fav and just adorable.

This is my wonderful and amazing iRobot- Roomba. I can schedule it to clean while I'm sleeping or gone. Isn't that so cool. I can now focus on my family more and having fun instead of sweeping & vacuuming all the time. I swear I did that 4 times in one day the other day.

This is Justin Bieber, in case you did not know, he is with my daughter and no he is not the real one but a cardboard cutout. My sweet sister-in-law gave this to her and knows how much she loves the Biebs (what he is called in our house). This has scared me many times because she keeps putting him around the house.