The Epleys: Nov. '15 thru Mar. '16, According to my phone!

Warning: This is a very long post. And it contains a whole lotta pictures. Five months is a long time though, and we did an awful lot!

For instance; we threw a baby shower for my good friend Jackie! It turned out great!

And then that sweetie pie was born on November 15, almost a month early! This is Eli!

I am a para-educator at Commerce for a third grade class and we had Science Alive visit. My personal favorites were the porcupine and the sloth. I would have both as a pet if I could.

We had some fun people over for dinner, starting with Clay and Matt. The girls adore these two Impact students.

We also had the Spry family over. I think it's safe to say the girls adore these guys as well. They spent a Friday evening playing hide-and-seek with the girls. They are awesome!

My 36th birthday was on December 13th and God gave me the greatest gift; I was able to wear flip flops on my birthday. I think it got up into the 60's! It actually was a very mild winter!

These ladies sang the National Anthem for the morning announcements at school. I'll post some videos soon!

This guy celebrated his 66th birthday!

We had a girls' night here for Impact. Love these awesome ladies!

That same night, these guys went to Zap Zone to play laser tag!

We made cookie houses with the Epleys, our annual tradition. Mike made our house!

The girls all had fun at their holiday parties before break. This picture was sent to me from another mom. I didn't go to any of the parties this year.

We had the lovely Hindley family stay with us for a few days before Christmas. It was great spending time with them!

We finally got a new dining room table! We have never bought a table. My parents bought our first table when we got married. The one we had after that, was given to us. So it was time to finally upgrade. We love this table!

The Dales were in town for Christmas, along with Emily. It was so great to have them over for an evening and catch up!

We had friends over for New Years Eve and played this fun game. You rap a bunch of stuff up in a huge plastic wrap ball and then you go around trying to unwind it. I'll post a video of that soon too!

This lovely lady celebrated her 8th birthday. We had dinner at Red Robin. She also had her big friend birthday party which I posted about in January!

I used to write messages on their mirror with soap, until I discovered that dry erase markers work so much better! They look forward to their messages every year on their birthdays!

Mike and I try to take our girls out on dates periodically so this gal and I went bowling and to Dunkin Donuts, per her request!

This amazing gal celebrated her 10th birthday! TEN! Can you believe that!? Double digits. CRAZY!

We painted the red living room. I love this color! We added new curtains and this sweet mirror. It looks so much lighter! I love it.

And finally, this sweet child celebrated her 6th birthday. She loved her message too!

Mike and I went to a home show with the Darnell's. It was cool to see all the different ideas for the home. I want something like this in our backyard, next to the patio!

Allie got a love note from a sweet little boy in her class!

This girl and I went on a date to a basketball game for one of my CL2 students!

We spent Super Bowl night with the Impact students, playing floor pong. Oh and since we got a ping pong table for Christmas, AND our basement isn't carpeted yet, we've been playing a lot of that too!

I did volunteer for this girl's Valentine Party!

We met some of the CL2 groups at Buffalo Wild Wings. That was a fun night out!

We went with the Boyagians to Cast Away Bay during winter break. This is just a sneak peak. I'll post about this later!

Since we've had a mild winter, whenever it snowed, the girls took advantage and went out to play! And this is our neighbor Zoey who is also in fourth grade. Her and Ava are great friends.

Allie went to Maya's Harry Potter party, probably one of the coolest birthday parties I've been to!

Ava, Allie, and Hannah all won their jump rope for heart competition. So proud of these girls. I'll be sure to post the videos!

My former CL2 student, Catie, is getting married in June. We went to her shower and caught up with all these lovely ladies! Mike and I are doing pre-marital counseling with her and her fiance Cody as well!

I got new side tables for our room! Love them!

We went to the Rolladium for the Commerce El skate night.

Ava did an awesome job as Sacagawea in the fourth grade wax museum! She had to memorize a speech and say it every time someone came to press her button.

Thanks to my friend Jodi, we tapped our maple tree and made some maple syrup. It is delicious!

Allie went to another birthday party for her friend Delaney, this time at Bonnaventure. That's where I always went as a kid, so it was fun to go back there!

We went to a birthday party for Mike and Sophany's daughter Alliyah at Wonderland Lanes.

We visited the Robinson family and got to play with their ducks!

And we did some more renovation in the basement. We had a pipe burst during the winter and our basement flooded so we had to redo quite a bit. But it also helped us get some things done down there. Here's our laundry room that's almost finished.