Early Valentine's Day!!!

My husband is awesome. He knows it and I know it. He surprised me completely today by sending me this amazing bouquet of flowers from ProFlowers.

They are a gorgeous hybrid of red and white roses. I can't believe how spoiled I am!!!

Honey - I love you so much and totally don't deserve you!!!

Snow Day!!!!

To say the past few days have been stressful would be an understatement. Like many of you, we were victims of the Great Blizzard of 2010. That's my name for it anyway. Creative, no? Anyhoo - we lost power around midnight on Friday, and as of today, still no power and no definitive answer from AEP as to when it might be turned back on. Scary stuff because our heat is all electric! Thankfully, I have wonderful in laws that are letting us crash their pad until power and heat is restored at the Zimmerman abode. We measured it Saturday morning and we had a whopping 25 inches of snow on the ground!!! I have never seen so much snow in our neck of the woods at one time. This whole sitch has had me seriously contemplating flying south permanently...too bad Phil won't ever leave. Boo on him! :)

As usual, I took many pictures to share of the madness (and some cute ones of the girlies too!!

The view from our front door:















Our SUV under the snow:















The trip off the hill was a little rough, so say the least:

















And here are a few of the kiddos playing in all of this snow!

Daddy and Ralphie, er, Ella:















Wheeeeeee!!!!
















That's all for now :) Keep your fingers crossed power comes on tonight and that the insurance adjusters don't have to make a trip to our house due to any wayward trees!

Long Time No Blog

Well all, I don't really know what to say! I am so sorry for neglecting this blog - hopefully, someday, I will find the energy and time needed to be a successful blogger. And by successful I mean managing to keep up with it at least once a month! ha ha

So what's up in our lives? We are all doing pretty well. Ava is in heart of her first year of pre-school. She is learning so much! She is always impressing us and making us laugh. She told us a few weeks ago (after showing her a new shirt for summer I bought her with a whale on it) that her favorite whale was an Orca. What 4 year old knows what an Orca is?! She also recently was able to name the planets. She likes Mars the best, because its red and there are aliens on it - LOL!!! She's growing up so much now too and is about 42 inches tall and 43 pounds. She loves all things Tinkerbell and Princesses and just pink in general. She also loves Barbies and told me recently she wants her 5th birthday party to be Barbies...but she'll change her mind a hundred times between now and then so I am holding off on the Barbie napkins for now :)

Ella is just hysterical. Her speech has exploded in the past few weeks and she has a lot of knew phrases "I did it" "Tadaaaa!" and "Oh no, what happened?" are my favorites. She knows way more words than she can say now and will do a lot of things i ask her too (for the most part). She's about 27 pounds now and I am not sure how tall she is....guess I need to measure her! She's in 18-24 month clothes pretty solidly now...I can't believe she'll be in a 2T before too long. WHERE did my little baby go???

As for Phil & I - we are doing well. Just staying busy and working at being the best parents we can be. I took a job teaching night classes 3 days a week at West Virginia Business College. It's a pretty neat experience and makes me think i would have made a pretty decent teacher. I may even consider pursuing this as a career...who knows? The schedule would be much nicer, for sure! ha ha

I think that's about it. I need to get some pics up here of the kiddos soon :)

Playing in the Leaves

So this past weekend, Miss Ava wanted to rake up some leaves and jump in a pile of them. She must have heard about this fall fun activity at school and could barely wait to try it out for herself. So on Sunday - we played in some leaves :)







As you can see, a good time was had by all involved :)

In other news -- Ava had the swine flu vaccination on Monday. She did a very good job and so far is not showing any side effects whatsoever. I am thrilled I was able to get her a shot when they first became available in the area -- with her immune system issues and the asthma, I just didn't want to take a chance.

We have a busy day tomorrow. Ava has her Halloween party at school and then tomorrow evening is Wheeling's Trick or Treat. Originally I was kind of miffed at them holding Trick or Treat on Thursday since Halloween fell on a Saturday. But considering the weather report for the next few days I am absolutely thrilled it's tomorrow. Should be a beautiful fall evening and PERFECT for begging for candy from total strangers :)


We got Booed! last night :) Not in a "we suck" kind of way - but as a fun little game in the neighborhood. We now get to Boo 3 more of our neighbors, so the girls and I will be doing that this evening. I already have plenty of treats sitting around the house - so watch out if you live in our neighborhood - you might get Booed! :)

A good blogger - I am not!

So...I have to be the worst blogger on the planet, right? I think between just life in general and ttrying to keep my profiles updated everywhere on the net - this poor blog has always ended up as an afterthought. Well - I do intend to keep this up more often (how many times have I said that!) So here is an update for those who are still interested!

After my blog post about our vacation in May, I was informed that due to current economic conditions, I was going to be let go from Ogden Newspapers. As a privately held company, they have no regulatory requirement to have an auditor on staff. My position was considered to be "frosting" if you will, and thus - I was out. Thankfully, through my hard work in building a strong professional network, I was able to explore an opportunity with a compant in the Gaming Industry. I am now the Senior Internal Auditor for MTR Gaming, Inc. They are publicly traded and own Mountaineer Casino in Chester, WV (where I am based) as well as Presque Isle Downs in Erie, and Scioto Downs in Columbus, OH. I am very happy with how things worked out and it's just another lesson in having faith.

So with that out of the way - let's update you on what you really want to hear about - the kiddos!!!

Ella - Turned one on June 12th. I cannot believe for the life of me that my little sweet baby girl is one. One!!! She's an unbelievable blessing to us and is so full of energy and happiness. She's been walking now for awhile, but really has gotten her feet under her and is FAST! :) She's also a climber and we regularly find her on top of things that you would never a million years think she could climb on top of. She even can climb our flight of stairs! She's a talker, much like her mama and big sister and says all kinds of words now - though it's still mostly babble. My personal favorite is "Wow". She could say that all day and I would never get tired of hearing it. She also loves to give hugs and kisses and says "awwww" right before she's about to give you some love ;)


Ava - Will be turning 4 this month. This is also unbelievable to me. Where on earth did my little baby go? She's such a little girl now and amazes me every day just being herself :) She's started a new pre-school...sadly her former school closed its doors in June, so she's at a new school, but with the teachers she would have had at the other school :) She is in the summer program right now, but officially - her first Day of Pre-Kindergarten (actually through the County School System) is on Monday August, 31st. Tough day for Mommy!! She's having a Cinderella Party for her birthday at Recreation Station in Washington,PA. We are all busy planning that and she is really SO excited. I love how excited she is!

Other than that - we are all doing well. Phil's been working hard at the Post Office as usual and attempting to keep up with the yard. He is eagerly anticipating football season just around the corner :)

I will leave you with some pictures:

Ava as a flower girl in June







Ava and Ella at a picnic in June



Ella and Daddy on her 1st Birthday:



Ella at her Bday Party