We had such a fun time in CS - probably the best bonding experience Eleanor has ever had with her grandparents as she got to spend so much time with them without us. Grammie did a great job feeding E her favorites for dinner (pasta, avocado, and fruit) both nights and bathed and put her to bed without a fight! THEN the biggest gift was definitely that Andy and I got to sleep until 10 both days! Thank you Grammie and Grandpa!
We went to mass at St. Mary's at noon on Sunday and then headed to Dallas to celebrate Marmi's AND Grandpa's bdays! Grandma is in town for a Dr. appt. so we had so much fun spending time with them this evening. The girls and Pop Pop collaborated to put together a feast complete with bruschetta, Hot Spinach Dip, and mom's favorite "Boursin" cheese and crackers to start. We then had a salad, grilled asapragus, baked potatoes, and STEAK cooked a perfect medium rare! Good job Pop Pop! This was also Eleanor's time to try and DEVOUR her steak! It must have been because Grandma cut it for her! She also enjoyed feeding it to "Baby Tina."
Eleanor helped Grandpa and Marmi open their presents and even helped sing Happy Birthday and blow out the candles. Katie made Grandpa's favorite - yellow cake with chocolate frosting and pecans on top along with strawberry jello and bananas and she did an amazing job at it! The icing on the cake was Eleanor and her grandmother and great grandfather all sticking to the Thomason/Aldon tradition and sticking their fingers in the cake. What a fun night with family, we are so blessed! Happy Birthday Marmi (June 10th) and Grandpa (June 4th)!
Showing posts with label Birthdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthdays. Show all posts
Monday, June 18, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Eleanor's Birthday Party - "Stesame Street"
-1.jpg)
Pardon the blurred out invitation...what is missing is the address first and then my phone number...
I couldn't have done it without them!
I had so much fun with Pinterest and the many episodes of Sesame Street that we watch as my inspiration planning Eleanor's 2nd Birthday Party. With the help of my amazingly crafty sisters, we pulled it off. I am working on finding better pics so I apologize if some are blurry to start. We were fortunate to have our apt. clubhouse to use at no charge because the party was during the day.
The inspiration - the dress
When you entered the party, you were greeted with a table of Sesame characters and an ABC Sesame Street Board Book for Eleanor that also served as a guest book. We loved reading what people wrote and Eleanor will always be able to see who came to her 2nd bday party!
The dessert table showcased most of the themed food items along with the basis of the favors. My sweet sisters, Mary and Katie, painted the buckets to look like Sesame Street characters and in each was some crinkle at the bottom, a Sesame Street book, a shovel (for digging into the candy jars), and a note from Eleanor. The note thanked her friends for coming and reminded them which activities to see while at the party and what to add to their bucket to take home as a favor. Some of the highlights of the dessert table were - Abby Cadabby's Magic Fairy Wands (pretzel rods dipped in white candy melts and covered in sprinkles), Bert and Ernie's gumballs, Oscar's Dirt - see if you can find "Slimey" his worm, Cookie Monster's Cookies (my gooey chocolate chip cookies halfway dipped in dark chocolate candy melts and covered in dot sprinkles), and Big Bird's "Radar" Gummies (Big Bird's bear is named Radar). It also had her cupcakes which I broke down and bought this year from Market Street but did make the cupcake sticks on my own.
Some of the activities included Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough Station where the guests played with mini playdoughs and got to take them home and Ernie's Bubble Bath where the party guests got to hunt through packing peanuts (bubbles) to find one of Ernie's rubber duckies to take home. We put this in Eleanor's splash table and it worked perfectly! The kids loved it!
The girls especially enjoyed Abby and Zoe's jewelry box where they had so much fun finding bracelets, necklaces, and glitzy sunglasses to wear and take home. As you can see Belle went to town!
Hallie, Annabelle, and Katie enjoying Elmo's goldfish
Eleanor and "Kate" as she calls her...
Eleanor loves Garrett!
Some more of the decor...
Eleanor was so blessed to have both her grandparents, the sweet Klement family, ALL her aunts and Uncles (Uncle Matt came a little later), my room mom, Robin, her dear mom, Nana, and a sweet student of mine, Tanner, and almost all her best friends in attendance (Reese came the weekend before to celebrate and a few others had their birthday parties at the same time). We had such a fun time and Eleanor was so tired afterwards she conked out on my chest with a gummy in her mouth. This was following a pretty bad fall after which she proceeded to do her thing where she gets so worked up she stops breathing but she survived and was ready to go onto Katie's 2nd bday party later that afternoon.
Marmi and Pop Pop
Grammie and Grandpa
Aunts and Momma
Momma loves her girl - I coordinated with bright pink pants
Dada coordinated with his bright blue shirt - you know how I love the matching!
My dear bosom friend and her sweet husband, Jason, and girls, Hallie and Annabelle even got to come from Houston!
We were so excited to have the Dibbles come and it was so cute how much Luke loved Sesame Street too!
The Klements are so special to us! They often help out with Eleanor as I used to babysit them years ago!
The Jones Family came to play! Eleanor loves Garrett and Lyla!
I just love this girl!
Ready to open presents!
She was showered with precious dresses, fun toys including a gardening set, a cozy coupe, vacuum and other cleaning supplies, puzzles, books, a grocery cart, stroller, lawn mower, Aggie chair, and CD player with microphones just to name a few.
After presents we sang Happy Birthday and once again helped her blow out her candles. She had so much fun eating her cupcake - Mommy had fun using makeup remover to get the icing die off!
And yes once momma had seen she was given her cupcake - the dress did come off...
Monday, January 2, 2012
What a Year - 2011/Christmas Card Letter
This, our third edition of the Reinberg Family Christmas card, leaves us feeling utterly blessed by an amazing 2011. We have so many things to celebrate and give thanks for this year. We thought last year was full of firsts and realize that only continued into this year as well. Our family also encountered some trials and hard times that still leave us feeling though, how blessed we are. We pray for those who have endured suffering and strife and are amazed at their strength and faith that God would pull them through.
"These are a few of our favorite things" from 2011:
January - We celebrated our first New Year as a family of three and enjoyed a wonderful celebration with our dear friends, the Vanicek and Jones Families. We decided it would be the first of many New Years Eve parties with kids included and Eleanor had a blast at her first NYE party with friends, Katie (2 days younger) and Garrett (2 months older). Eleanor also crawled for the first time on New Years day!
February - Eleanor got to experience her first real snow and a week of Mommy and Daddy held captive in our tiny apartment as school was cancelled due to icy roads. Andy enjoyed a week of playing old school Nintendo games and Lindsay of course couldn't sit still and organized the entire apartment from the Tupperware cabinet to the ribbon drawer while of course also enjoying a week of non-stop sweet baby girl! Don't worry - none of that organization lasted more than a month or so in our teeny little shoe box.
March - We enjoyed a celebration of Eleanor's first St. Patrick's day complete with a lake house spring cleaning, green beer, and a new family favorite - Lindsay's first attempt at creating Irish Potato Salad - Colcannon.
April - Eleanor's first steps were just in time for her first Easter. It was her Daddy's wish that she be able to Easter egg hunt and boy did it come true. She had so much fun picking up the eggs and putting them in her basket. We had a wonderful time celebrating our Lord's Passion, Death, and Resurrection with the Aldons and awaited only a few weeks until our sweet baby turned one!
May - Eleanor's first birthday will never be forgotten. Her day began with a party thrown by Lindsay's 4th graders complete with animal crackers and goldfish to share. After her first party, she ventured to Houston's with Mommy, Daddy, Marmi, and Aunt Mary for her birthday dinner. Houston's is a popular Reinberg hangout for all things celebration including where Andy and Lindsay went to celebrate pregnancy and finding out Eleanor was a girl so it was only appropriate that we celebrate her first birthday there. The night was capped with Lindsay and Eleanor covered in her first chocolate sundae. Andy's favorite part of May was spending hours and lots of words that shouldn't be repeated putting together our birthday girl's present - a brand new kitchen. What first birthday would be complete without a party? Eleanor enjoyed her pastel pink themed party, cake, and most of her family and friends who also dressed in pink (even her Daddy!). Her smash cake was so super cute and wonderful from tart bakery - Mommy and Aunt Jenna (also her godmother) made the cupcakes, cake balls, white chocolate dipped pretzels and strawberries and the hamburger lunch. There was even a pink drink that many of the mommies enjoyed - a copycat of Cheesecake Factory's spiked raspberry lemonade.
June - Andy and I, after much urging from our parents (on both sides) were blessed with the opportunity to attend a Worldwide Marriage Encounter Weekend where we got to stay in a nice hotel and basically just focus on each other for a weekend. It was a nice break but we also missed being away from Eleanor for the first time! Our first family plane trip brought us to visit Andy's sweet grandparents, Grace and Gene Reinberg in Ft. Davis, Texas. Eleanor had a great time on the plane opening and closing the window and peering behind the seat incessantly saying, "hi" to the man passed out behind us. She wasn't ever phased that he never responded. She also gave us the first of, I fear, many scares as a parent. On this trip (in the middle of nowhere), she hit her head and passed out, and taught us a new trick of hers - she tends to hold her breath when she gets too worked up and makes herself pass out if we don't remind her to take a breath. This is what the EMTs who said she was fine when we rushed her to the local fire station (don't worry, an ER was over 30 min. away) told us and we later learned Andy's dad used to do the same thing as a child.
July - Another first - a trip across the country and Eleanor's first 20+ hours straight in the car to visit Lindsay's Family in Virginia, the Thomasons, Andy's first encounter with our Nation's Capital and any Civil War/Revolutionary battlefield he could get his hands on, a beautiful wedding of Lindsay's cousin, Jessica and her new hubs LJ, and visit to Lindsay's Dad's side of the family in Baltimore, Pop Pop's hometown, then to travel south along the coast to visit Lindsay's 95 year old Grandmother, Grandmary and Aunt and Uncle in Pinehurst, and introduce them to Eleanor for the first time, topped off with a few days by the beach in Florida on our way home. Eleanor was a champ on the trip and loved meeting all her family members along with the waves and sand at the beach. Andy and Lindsay celebrated their second wedding anniversary in pieces this month - one date was a day alone to road trip to Gettysburg, PA, their favorite battle of the Civil War (nerds), another was a date alone to tour the capital, and the third was a steak dinner cooked by Andy with in tow on the actual day - July 18th.
August - Andy and Lindsay BOTH had amazing opportunities come in late summer. Andy, a Varsity defensive football and Head Track Coaching position at Ranchview HS in Carrollton and Lindsay a 5th grade position at Town Center Elementary in Coppell. She has dreamed of working in Coppell since HS and not only was she granted the opportunity to work in Coppell but at (in her opinion) the best elementary school in the district gifted with amazing parents, innovative technology available to students, and a wonderful crop of students with a desire to learn like no other, and a 5 min. commute (as opposed to her 1hr+ to Richardson). Andy had been awaiting an opportunity to coach at a Varsity level and now to also earn the head track coach spot made him even more excited to take on high schoolers! Both miss their friends from their old schools but are so thankful for this new opportunity.
September -Varsity football consumed our lives this month and next. Eleanor loved going to the games and was a trooper staying awake until sometimes as late as 10pm so she could run on the field and see her Daddy at the end of the games. We also earned a whole new family at Ranchview - Lindsay with some wonderful wives to accompany her in the stands, and Andy with a most uplifting and positive coaching staff he could ever dream of. Eleanor also has made friends with the coach's kids.
October - Lindsay celebrated her 27th birthday and Andy never failed to make it special. He arranged for Aunt Mary to babysit on a weeknight and took L to Nordstrom to get her makeup done and some much needed new products seeing as she hadn't bought new in almost 2 years! He also treated her with some perfume and a dinner at none other than, Houstons. October brought a two month wave of viruses for Eleanor - poor baby just couldn't get well. One of those we could actually name being 5ths disease. Eleanor also enjoyed her second Halloween. She was a butterfly (butt-bye as she said) and though she still had a terrible rash from her 5ths disease (she was no longer contagious), she went to a couple houses, including Marmi and Pop Pop's and LOVED her first candy! Lindsay's Uncle David also suffered a heart attack and a couple of months in the hospital and though we missed having Marmi around, were so thankful she could be there with her brother to help. We were SO thankful for the friends and family who helped with Eleanor in Marmi's absence. We are so blessed!
December - Eleanor finally began to feel better come December and we had a wonderful month preparing for our Lord's birth. A new tradition we began in the Reinberg house as we counted down the days of Advent was that Eleanor got to open a new Christmas book each day. She LOVED practicing unwrapping the gifts and looked forward to opening her new book every night before bed. Lindsay ran her first half marathon this December finishing in 2:08.?? and feeling great! She is either going to run another half and hope to better her time or do a full or maybe both in 2012. She couldn't have done it without the support of her husband and sister Mary (who watched Eleanor and stood on the sidelines cheering in the rain) as Andy ran the last 4 miles with Linds. Andy celebrated his 28th birthday with a 3rd annual trip to Billy Bobs - this time to see Jack Ingram. Andy's almost entire coaching staff game along with his parents for the first time and brother, Tim along with Lindsay's sisters Mary and Kel and Andy's best friend from HS, Greg and girlfriend Michaela. It was a fun weekend as always! Christmas was spent at home and Santa came for the first time to the Reinberg house. We enjoyed 5pm Children's Christmas Eve mass for the first time in a long time and said goodbye for probably a while to midnight mass. After mass we enjoyed a spaghetti dinner and agreed it was a new tradition - way easier than a Turkey and all the fixins. Eleanor put cookies and milk our for Santa and woke up in her own bed, so excited to see what he brought along with eat the rest of his cookies! We then traveled to the Aldon's for a day of fun and just can't reiterate enough the blessing of family.
We are so thankful for all those who are in our lives and pray that God Blesses you and yours this Christmas and in 2012. If we haven't seen you in a while, our door is always open - you might have to squeeze in Eleanor's room on an air mattress but are always welcome!
Love,
Andy, Lindsay, and Eleanor
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
My new love...
For Mother's Day/My bday/Christmas...probably a few other holidays as well, Andy and Eleanor got me something I have wanted FOREVER - a DSLR Camera and without question, a Canon. I have always had Canons and after reading reviews confirmed that I was in the right place with them as specifically with SLRs, I can use my mom's old lenses and the Canons have more automatic user friendly settings while also having the professional features for a more seasoned photographer (which I aspire to be someday).
If you know me, you know I refuse to pay full price for anything! In fact, that is why I didn't get the camera right at Mother's Day as I was waiting to see who would put it on sale haha! This desire could be due to my bargain hunter of a mom rubbing off on me or to my old boss at Sewell Lexus, Jerry Griffin, preaching to me NEVER to pay full price and telling me the story about how he buys new shoes. He had been in the car selling business for years so quite naturally would be blinded to every other method of doing business which is why you have to take this story with a grain of salt but also see some truth in it. Jerry went to buy a pair of dress shoes and when the salesman told him what his total was, he stopped and said, "Wait, what are you going to give me for these?" as he held up a tattered pair of old dress shoes. The salesman, tactfully tried to explain to "Mr. Griffin" that this was not the car business and shoe stores didn't take "trade ins". Jerry wouldn't leave without a fight and convinced the salesman to discount his new shoes and he ended up taking the old home (the salesman said he didn't want them).
I tell you this story because though it might seem ridiculous to some, my motto is, it never hurts to ask. So when I go to make a pretty big purchase, I have to somehow win and ALWAYS ask.
I researched prices online along with at other stores I had purchased cameras from in the past. I was going to not put down the company that irritated me but in an effort to be the better business beruau for a bit, I will go on ahead and say that Wolf Camera was terrible at their customer service and product knowledge but when I called Best Buy, I recieved the stark opposite and spoke with wonderfully knowledgeable and friendly people. After a few phone calls and learning that the camera I wanted was on special, I decided to go in.
On my way out the door, I googled "best buy coupons" and stumbled upon a 10% off coupon that expired on the 31st, the day I was going to visit my new friend, Ken, at Best Buy. When I arrived, my next favorite person, Ryan, told me all about the camera, played around on the camera with me, and took an hour to answer all my questions and show me what all I needed to go along with this new toy. Yes, I fell victim to "upselling" but knew I would going into the whole experience. Of course you need a memory card and in my experience, an extra battery. Much to my surprise, not only did I get the 10% off on the camera but also 30% off on accessories so upsell it up - especially if I am getting 30% off right? SEEE what checking google will get you? Over $200 in savings in my case this time!
SO I said you should always ask. Since I did some research, I knew that Wolf Camera, though they sucked at customer service, made up for it in a free photo/camera class. So, in an effort to get what I wanted, earn Ken my business, I asked "what he could do for me" shared with him my perdicament. I of course wanted to give him my business, he and Ryan did all the work and were so helpful but the camera was the same price on Wolf's website AND THEY threw in a free photo class. I didn't mention that Wolf DIDN'T have a 10% off coupon but that wasn't necessary...what did Ken do but he discounted the class they offer at Best Buy and made it work.
Another reason I love Best Buy is their warranty. For 3 years, I can do anything (I mean anything, drop it in the toilet, smother it in sand, jump on it, drive my car over it) to it and they will replace it. At the end of the warranty, I can purchase the warranty again too! It is a little pricey but worth it, I have used it on past cameras purchased there and my BOSE Ipod docking station. Lastly, Best Buy's rewards program sent me a $30 credit to the store for whatever I wanted just for how much I spent on the camera. Love you best buy, love you camera!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
