I Solemly Swear I Am Up To No Good

Talk about a weekend full of all things Harry Potter !!! We had a great time this past weekend. It all started off on Friday night, Tiffany tipped us off about an awesome harry potter festival leading up to the release of the final Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, at midnight. It was a bit of a drive to get to the small town hosting it, but it was worth it. They blocked off 3 block downtown and turned all of their shops into different stores from Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, King's Cross platform 9 & 3/4, Hogwarts, and the even had a Knight bus roaming the streets. My favorite was the sweet shop where us muggles all got to taste butterbeer, dragon snot, blood pops, chocolate frogs, bertie botts every flavour beans, and more. The butterbeer was my favorite. People got all dressed up as their favorite characters; my favorites were Hagrid and Dobby. If they were having a costume contest those two would have won for sure. The kids all got to play a ton of fun games where they had to answer trivia questions, perform spells, get sorted, and more. riley's favorite challenge was a little game called "pin the tail on dudders." she did so good that the nice ladies running the booth gave her a great prize of a harry potter party box filled with all kinds of goodies: suckers, harry potter glasses, stickers, a key chain, and more. abbi and elli also won a ton of great prizes, and can you believe it was all free?? we had to pay for food and some trinkets of course, but the festival, the knight bus, and all of the game booths and prizes were free! Some cooler stores were more expensive though, such as ollivander's wand makers and the pet shop, where we bought riley her own little Hedwig. We had to buy her an owl of her own because they actually had real owls there as well and she was just so excited to see them. Anyway we had a blast and we got home just in time to put riley to sleep, relax for a bit, and then tiffany, gabe, elli, and i headed off to the midnight ball at border's to pick up our books. it was insane and that is a whole other blog, but needless to say we ended up leaving border's at 1am for wal-mart where we got our books with a free poster, a free bookmark, no muss, and no fuss!! i was never a big wal-mart girl, but after that night i have been converted. of course i devoured the final book, it was amazing!! i laughed and cried and cheered, as i am sure all potter fans did. but alas, you will find no spoilers here . . . david has been sucked in and is currently reading book 5, so i don't want to ruin anything for him. riley was so sick of me reading on saturday that when i was only a few chapters away from being done, she started in with a repetitive round of "book go bye bye, book go bye bye." So I bribed her with cookies and Boog, and went about my merry way. I am sad for the series to be over and will miss the excitement of awaiting the next book, but at least there are still two movies to go. In the meantime I am tempted to bide my time and start back again with the "The boy who lived." Mischief Managed!!

things that make me laugh

i was just flipping through a bunch of pictures, and all of these were ones that made me laugh out loud, or at the very least, gave me a good chuckle. so i thought i would share the grins :) most of them involve someone sleeping, i don't know why that is so funny, but it is to me . . .

big game

hey everyone -

we spent friday night getting ready to go watch the big baseball game at the stadium. it was play off time so we thought it would be fun to go watch and support dyson's team :) we had a lot of fun . . . by we i mean tiff, pete, and the kids; sara, kyle, and aj; lisa and brody, joe and angie; and us of course. sara made adorable shirts for all the little kids so they were all decked out in red and blue, even one for baby hillebrand on the way. thanks again sara!!! brody, aj, and riley got crazy and had lots of fun at joe and angie's ahead of time, then we tried to make them all sit nice for a cute picture. which is when the craziness really started . . . you try to get a cute picture of 3 toddlers all under 2 and let me know how you do !! sometimes i have to laugh wondering what it would be like to be them on the other side of the camera watching six adults be goofy, making weird noises, jumping up and down, and flashing bright lights at you; the kids probably think we are all nuts. anyway the game was awesome, what parts we actually got to watch while trading off chasing the kids. or in kyle's case, keeping aj out of the women's restroom, he takes after his daddy already:). we won 8-2 and it was a lot of fun, we look forward to doing it again this week. although riley ate so much junk while we were there, i literally had to loosen her carseat belt so i could snap it . . . next time david's going to be a food nazi, look out everyone :)

Happy 4th of July!!!
hey everyone -
so this is definitely a few days late . . . but we just wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of july :) things here have been going really well, aside from the heat anyway. we've had a few strong storms which i thought might cool things off a bit, but instead just made it more hot & sticky. go figure . . . we spent the fourth having a cookout at our house with david's dad, julie,jerry, judy, joe, angie, paul, tristan, and of course grandma helen. it was a lot of fun to have everyone over all together for the first time, especially for riley & enzo who always enjoy company to play with. we ate an obscene amount of food, and even topped it off with coffee cake. after that we went to mom's for another cookout with a bunch more food including s'mores! yummy!! then we were so hot and full we came home, got cleaned up, & put riley to bed. after she was asleep we watched some fireworks on tv and then carried on with our harry potter marathon leading up to the next movie :) i'm so excited to go see the 5th h.p. movie next week, and am even more excited for the 7th book, although i am really sad for this to be the last book . . . i guess i will just have to read them all again!! i'm sure i won't be the only one . . .