Christmas!!

I'm a slacker for not posting Christmas until March, but hey better late than never. BEware IT will be picture overload!!

Danielle and I took Lauren and Bladen to Monticello on the train to have lunch with Santa. The kids loved it! PB&Js with Santa what more could you ask for!

Bladen got "exactly what I wanted" at his daycare Christmas party... a Playdoh set!

Before we left for Utah, we got together with Ryan, Jenna and Kendal to let the kids open their gifts from one another.

Bladen got his regular and swine flu shots right before Christmas. In these pics he's "laying out the sections" of the newspaper.

Santa visited Bladen early in Illinois since this gift couldn't come back with us on the plane.

FINALLY made it to Utah.

Bladen helping Nana deliver neighbor gifts on his 4-wheeler

I surprised Nate with a 30th birthday party with all all of our family at Rusty's... it was great and he DIDN'T have a clue!!

The cake decorator asked me what he liked to do and I said all he does is work, but I guess you could put the Illinois logo on it since that's who he works for... poor guy doesn't have time for anything else!

As always on Christmas Eve, we have the Bulloch Christmas party down at Crystal Inn.

Bladen and Auntie sprinkling reindeer food on Nana's lawn.

Christmas Day breakfast... this is usually the only time I ever see dad cooking :)

Bladen and Pri riding his snowmobile for the 1st time

No we didn't plan to match on Christmas Day it just happened

Dad has gotten Bladen trained already

Bladen is such an animal lover that we can't leave Cedar without Ben taking us to the farm. It was fun this year since the baby lambs had just been born.

We spent New Years Eve back in Illinois with just our little family watching movies.

Halloween and Bladen's Birthday

It's been FOREVER since I last blogged and we've had so many fun things we've done. This is going to be picture overload...

Bladen celebrated his 3rd Halloween as a DRAGON! I let him pick out his own outfit this year... thank heavens it wasn't Spongebob haha! We started it off by having his Halloween parade at school.

All suited up!

Patiently reading books before start time

Lauren and Bladen = classmates and friends in the Cheetahs room!

Bladen and Flat Stanley carving pumpkins

Our finished products!

Ready to go trick-or-treating for the 1st time!

Bladen ABSOLUTELY loved going trick-or-treating and would run house to house with Daddy chasing close behind!

All done and headed home!

SUGAR HIGH!!!!!

My parents came in on the Thursday before B's birthday to surprise him for his birthday! We told B he had a package coming in air freight and we had to pick it up from the airport (we never thought we'd get it past him since we only go to the airport to pick family up), but he ran around like a wild child waiting for his packages to be dropped off at the bottom of the escalators. When he saw my parents coming down he was THRILLED! He said there's my Nana and my Papa and then just started giggling his head off. He was SO excited to see them! I got to take Friday off of work so we spent the day just hanging out... me and mom spent lots of time shopping, Nate worked and Bladen and dad fixed things around the house (haha mom can't get dad to do crap around the house, but here he was Mr. Fixit).

Raking leaves and Bladen hiding in the middle!

Bladen and Papa painting the hitch on the truck (haha my child looks like a scrub)

Saturday we went to the Illini football game. My dad has never been and we all thought he'd hate it. He actually enjoyed himself, which is understandable because a game with 60,523 in attendance in not boring! Could not have asked for a nicer November day in Illinois!

Papa's already training B to stratch his back!

Sunday we had Thanksgiving for lunch and then headed off to Bladen's birthday party at the bowling alley! Bladen sang "Happy Birthday to Batman" ALL day and was SSOOOOOO wild and full of energy. He had a good time with all the girls at the party and came away with a HAUL of presents! Pretty much everything he got was Batman with the major item being the Batman Castle from Nana and Papa. Thanks to Auntie who veered from the theme and did dinosaurs :) I'm so thankful my parents were able to come out and spend Bladen's birthday with us... his Nana and Papa mean the world to him!

Eating Thanksgiving

Birthday boy playing air hockey!

Kendal Jenna and I

Bladen doing his annual Birthday Dance hahaha - he definately has rhythm and loves entertaining all the girls!

Bladen and his "sister" Kendal

The Party Crew

Setting up the Batman house with Papa

Bladen on his REAL birthday with his hat from school :)

Me and Bladen cooking Thanksgiving dinner this morning.... I am so grateful for my wonderful family, our health and my job so that I can put a roof over our head and food on the table! Happy Thanksgiving!

Fun Weekend

We have had a fun weekend so far and it's only Saturday! Friday night we ate Bladen's choice of Mac n' cheese for dinner and then watched Monsters vs. Aliens. On Saturday we woke up early and headed to the Illinois Homecoming game vs. Michigan State. Ohhh man the Illini struggle this year but you can't pass up 50 yard line, $50 tickets for FREE!

Then a half hour after we walked into the door from the game, we had a play date over at our house. We had 5 kids under the age of 3 running around like they were wild indians, but they had a good time gutting and decorating pumpkins... with stickers of course because paint or anything else would have been SO messy! Then they watched a Halloween show with apple juice, apply donuts and chocolate chip cookies. These kids have all grown up together so it's fun to get them together to do stuff and they are now at the age where they can actually play and have fun together.

They all were holding hands :)

Illini Fan Day

I took Bladen to the Illini Football Fan Day a couple week ago and I didn't know what to expect... he came out with over 100 autographs and LOVED seeing all the players on "his" team!

His shorts do not match his outfit, but I bought him this jersey 5 minutes before it started and didn't have time to change
This picture is hilarious! Bladen is flaring his nostrils and has the biggest, cheesiest grin! B was so excited to meet Zac - he is the son of a partner in my office!

One of the players WANTED to sign K's bum!

It was bright out so B couldn't keep his eyes open!

B's football was covered in autographs and then he got 3 of the best players and Coach Zook's autographs on his jersey.

Crappy Days

These last couple of weeks have been quite crappy around our house. Labor Day weekend, Bladen and I were wrestling and when I went to stand up, he ran up behind me and pushed me over and I fell from standing up to the floor with all my weight on my right hand... breaking the bone under my pinkie joint! Since my job consists of working on a laptop and writing all day, not to add that I am like a single parent having to take care of B at night alone, they decided not to put a cast on and put me in a splint instead. It's been so annoying to get anything down and I feel so slow!

Then the next weekend, I wake up at 2 in the morning with the worst ear ache in the world. I was up from 2-6 shaking and nauseous because of the horrible pain... let me just say I would have rather popped out 4 babies than having to do that again. I went the Dr. the next morning and she said I had the worst case of adult ear infections she's ever seen. Because the infection was so bad, she put me on some strong drugs, which included a potent antibiotic and steroids. I'm such a sissy when it comes to medicine anyway, I can barely take Tylenol without get sick, so the medicine knocked me on my butt for a whole week. I literally thought I was going to die. I couldn't stand up or lay down without feeling like I was going to pass out because I was so dizzy and I couldn't keep anything down. They finally pulled me off the steriod and put me on the lowest dose of antibotics. So after a week of being in bed and another week of no hearing... I'm finally back to normal :)