Happy 50th Birthday!

Another September Birthday!! My future mother in law, Judy, had a birthday this Saturday the 27th. She is the wonderful mother of three boys, Deric, Ryan and Tyler. Here are some pictures and random things about Judy you may or may not know......

(This picture was downtown Pontiac...we were watching Elizabeth dance in the Lights Parade)

-Judy is from Olney, IL.......which is the home of the white squirrels

-She loves decorating her house for the Holiday's

-I help her decorate the Christmas tree which always ends up looking beautiful, but takes half the day......oh and somehow we end up not having enough lights and a trip to Wal-Mart is needed....everytime!

-She loves to lay out in her back yard and catch some rays!

-She loves to take pictures of us and random neat things, but the pictures don't always turn out....ahaha....She somehow manages to TOTALLY miss what she was wanting to take a picture of :)

-She has come with me to Bridal Shops and her & my mom have NO IDEA what they are going to wear to the wedding......

-I love that she let her boys cut their hair however they wanted when they were little.....Ryan had a bowl cut, lines, and a tail all at one time....ahhaha...oh and I think she still has Ty's tail....

-My sister's love to go to Judy's and make Christmas cookies....they actually get to start from scratch and get extremely messy with the flour!!

-She HATES the color purple and I LOVE the color purple

(Kite Festival....not the best picture of us)

Happy Birthday Judy!!! We love you!!

I Can't Believe William is 14

On September 20th, 1994, the third Meiner boy was born. I think this was the hospital visit where we worn blue hawaiian leis, held signs that said It's A Boy!, and did the cha-cha to the hospital room....ahaha....I can't believe that was 14 years ago. William is a very athletic kid. He plays football, basketball, and baseball. I love watching him play football the most.

William and his three sisters at a football game.

I got to go with William and his class on their 6th grade field trip to Medieval Times. It was fun to go with him because when I was in 6th grade we didn't go there.

The family came up to visit and we went to the skate park. Here is William trying to do a trick.

I thought this picture was funny because during the Sequence Tournament in Minnesota, William and Theresa were on a team and stuck at Table 2 the WHOLE night.....ahaha....And for those of you that are unaware of what Table 2 was, the board was put on a night stand, some of the chairs were stools with no backs and there was no room to put your discards. One corner had the toilet paper container and the other used the top of a box fan. You DID NOT want to sit there. aww...poor william...

Even tho William is ornery and is CONSTANTLY picking on the girls (especially Elizabeth), we still love him and wouldn't know what to do without him.

Happy Birthday William!

Happy Birthday Again!

Today is my Mom's birthday!! She is a GREAT mother and I'm so blessed to have loving parents. She is a teacher at Central School now and before that, she was the 1st & 2nd grade teacher at Graymont for 21 years. Alot of my friends had her as their teacher and claim she was the best teacher they ever had! My best friend, Kym, was in her class and when St. Mary's had no school I would go with my mom to work. She would let me sit by Kym and we probably didn't pay attention at all.

She is the mother of 6 kids and I cannot count the number of football, basketball, baseball, softball and cheerleading events she has gone to. One thing that she does during, say a baseball game, is make sound effects when she's cheering on my brother....ahahha....She's the biggest fan in the stands! She claims she was very athletic when she was in grade school and high school. And I'll admit it, she can beat me in a race! She was a cheerleader at Central Catholic and then coached cheerleading for awhile at Graymont. Kym and I loved going with her to the games and sitting in the pom poms. We would always tell my mom to make the girls do the cookie monster cheer! (hahah.....I doubt anyone does that cheer now)


I love that her and I wear the same size shoes. Except when we get the same pair, she'll put red dots on the bottom of mine. She says she does this so that when I get mine dirty, I can't switch them with hers....ahhaha....real funny!

Recently her and all of us kids have been begging my dad to buy us a pool! Pretty much everyday in the summer she is taking my sisters to Statefarm park in Bloomington. If we had a pool of our own, we could save money on gas and have family/friends over for fun cookouts and parties. She's still working on that for us...fingers crossed!!

Now, she is helping me with wedding planning. We have gone to a bridal expo, wedding dress shopping, she cheered me on at Running of the Brides, and has helped me with many other ideas. We still have lots to do. I hope I'm as good of a wife and mother as she is.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Belated Birthday!

So....I totally forgot to give a shout out to my dad who turned 49 on Sept. 8th. I sent him a text at work in the morning and talked to him that night on the phone, but never announced it to everyone.....HAPPY BIRTHDAY! He is the best dad in the world. One of my favorite stories about him and I that my mom told me is when us three lived in Bloomington, my mom would go shopping and when she came home my dad and I would be eating chopped up hotdogs with ketchup and we would be watching Wrestling on TV. I don't know why my mom didn't take me with her shopping?/?

I hate to admit it, but my dad is pretty funny. Last weekend when I was home we were all in the kitchen after the football game and we hear "click, click, click" and in comes my dad with a full football referee uniform on. He had the black and white hat and shirt, the socks, shoes, and TIGHT white pants. All of us died laughing. I had no idea he was going to be a ref for the JFL games on Saturday. We thought everything looked great except for the REAL tight pants. He was practicing his ref moves in the kitchen and would include a wedgie pick every so often. My mom ended up going to Wal-mart in the morning and got him some plain black athletic shorts. He looked pretty good out there.

My dad is always thinking of others and loves to have a good time. I feel pretty lucky to have such a free spirited father. My friends love hanging out with bobby! I can remember when I was younger and the "cool" thing to do was to put lemon juice in our hair to make it look like we had highlights. So on vacation, Patsy, Christina, my Dad and I were all down in the water squirting lemon juice in our hair....ahhah...who's dad does that?....MINE :) ....He loves going to the lake, just like all of us Meiner's do. A couple of years ago he taught Ryan how to fillet fish. Thanks!! I know Ryan loves that he knows how to do it!

He's a kid at heart and loves to be "hip." My friends ask me if he can still do a flip out of his ski's when getting whipped into shore and I'm happy to tell them "YEP!

I was a cheerleader during 7th and 8th grade at St. Mary's and one home game our coach wasn't going to be there. So my Dad ended up being our coach. Before the game started he got us in a huddle and gave us a pep talk. At the end of his spiel he said "Hands In." All of us girls looked at each other like, what?/? So we all put our hands in (giggling of course) and said 1-2-3 SAINTS!

I love this picture of Dad and his buddy snoozing at Christmas. Oh and if you ask dad who his favorite kid is, he'll tell you Paul Bunyan (our dog)! If you know Paul Bunyan, you know that if he's let out of his cage you CANNOT catch him. He's crazy. So this one day, he got out of his cage and we trapped him in the basement. I forget which siblings were with me, but we could not get him for the life of us. So we called my dad, stood at the top of the basement stairs, put my dad on speaker phone and had him call for Paul Bunyan. All it took was "Come here Paul..." and sure enough he came right to the top of the stairs.....we couldn't believe it. I guess he'll listen to the person who feeds and takes care of him the most!

Okay, one last story about my dad before I go. My dad never eats breakfast and barely eats lunch. So one day at work he told all of his co-workers that he used to be fat when he was little. They didn't believe him because my dad isn't big at all. He told them with a straight face, "Yes I was, and all the kids would call me Blob instead of Bob." They thought that was soooo horrible. I would too, if it was REAL!.....ahahha......So Happy Birthday Blob! Ryan and I love you!

It's Been Awhile...

So I realized that it's been awhile since my last post. Sorry...Not too much is new in Dekalb. We have finished two weeks of school already and this week is half way over.....which is nice to see the semester flying by!

Friday night we went home and watched the PTHS Football Game with my family. My sisters performed during the halftime of the JV game, but we didn't get back in time to watch them. :( I heard they did great. It makes me miss cheerleading alot!

Saturday we had Ryan's cousin Chrissy's Wedding. So Judy, Deric, Ryan and I all drove together to Portage/Chesterton, Indiana. Judy drove the way there and I was her co-pilot. According to Deric and Ryan, we thought it was hard getting to the wedding, but I think we did a pretty good job. The wedding was in Chesterton and was outdoors. When we first got there we visited with family members under the pavilion. Once the ceremony started we took our seats and the bugs were HORRIBLE! Luckily they weren't biting us because if they were I would have looked like I had chicken pox. It was funny to hear the ring bearer state the obvious and say, "There are alot of bugs out here!" pretty loud during the ceremony....hahaha....On the way to the reception, Ryan, Deric, and I drove in one car and Judy went with her dad and brother Bill. We followed them for a little while, but they couldn't find the place, so our car took over because we had the written directions. The reception's theme was 1920's. So before going in I put on my boa and beads. Ryan wore his 20's outfit to the wedding and the reception. (he looked pretty good with his dress shirt, tie, vest, and hounds tooth pants) The reception had very good food and everyone looked great in their outfits, especially the flower girl in her purple flapper dress. We had a 2 hour car ride home so we stayed for a little of the dancing and headed out. Since Ryan and Deric took part in the open bar, I drove home. We had a pretty good trip!

Sunday was like every Sunday. We stayed in Pontiac until 1 and then left for Dekalb for work. We had a great weekend and Saturday made me even more excited for our wedding.

OH and if you haven't heard, we decided on a photographer for the wedding!!! Stevie, a friend from work, told us her sister does photography. So about a week and a half ago we met with Cassie Schott at Panera. She brought her computer and showed us examples of previous work she has done. We had looked at her blog before meeting with her (which is under links if you want to visit it and check out her work) and loved what we saw. So, I spoke with her today and she is very excited to shoot our special day! Yay!

Next on the wedding agenda:

• Florist
• Cake
• Decide what the invitations will look like (which I need to talk to Aunt Paula, Theresa, and Debbie about)
• Finalize the Guest List

Lots to do!

CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS

My sister Elizabeth is now a member of the St. Mary's Student Counsel. Yay!!! She called me the other day and recited her speech she made in front of her class. If you haven't heard it yet, I would suggest calling her and have her perform it for you. And to give you a preview of what you will hear, there is one line in the speech where she says, "I do not drink, smoke, cuss or steal." (yeah, you might want to call her and hear the rest....ahha) We are soooo proud of her and we know she will do a great job. She told me about their first dilemma. Their school dances are scheduled for Friday nights and that is when the High School will have their football games. So most people will be going to those. She is taking suggestions from anyone, if you have a solution to this problem. :) The elections are coming up for President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer, but only 8th graders are able to run for those positions. She told me if 5th graders were allowed she would SO do it! Go Lizzy!!