Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Dog

Gracie, who just happens to be out of school today for teacher conferences, woke to her money filled red envelope in celebration of Chinese New Year.  This is the Year of the Dog.  Gracie Cakes was born in the last Year of the Dog back in 2006.

Date Night: Daddy Daughter Dance

This past Friday night, Lily Grace and Matt had their monthly date night.  They headed downtown for dinner and then attended the Valentine's Day themed Daddy-Daughter Dance at her school.  
They had so much fun!!!  
I received texts and pictures throughout the night.  I think my favorite text (and unfortunately no picture or video) was Matt bragging that he was cool (complete with 😎) because he made it to the third round of the Daddy Dance off. ha!  I so wish I could have seen that.  According to Gracie it wasn't that impressive. ha!ha!ha!
Regardless of how he did in the dance contest, he is a true winner when it comes to his role as a father.  Matt would do anything for Gracie, especially if it puts a smile on her face.  
Those two arrived home laughing and spilling all the details.  I'm guessing they spent a lot of time on the dance floor since the first thing I heard from both of them as they came in is that their feet hurt.  
Thank you God for the blessing of family!

They looked adorable! 

Pure Love

Family Day Fun: 11 years

Tuesday, January 30th marked our 11th Family Day anniversary, the day Lily Grace was placed in our arms.  
Gracie Cakes usually skips school, Matt takes off work and we spend the day together having fun.  Now that she is a middle schooler, she elected not to miss school and have to make up a lot of work.  We totally understood.  She attends mass twice a week and Tuesday is one of her days so we started Family Day at school with her.  We attended mass and thanked God for the blessing of our family. After school, we headed downtown for dinner to try a new farm to table restaurant. 
With Gracie having the day off from school today for a teacher retreat, we decided to simply move our celebration to today.  Matt took off work and we headed to Indy to try out the new Top Golf, do a little shopping and enjoy a wonderful dinner.  Lily Grace has declared it one of the best family days ever.  
We've had a lot of laughs and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  It has been a very special day indeed.  
We are so very blessed!  

After mass on Tuesday, Gracie thought we should get our picture made by the Holy Family statue.  After all, it is Thanks be to God that we are a family.   This was also Catholic Schools week and LG lucked up and got herself a dress down day.  

We had so much fun at Top Golf despite the cold, and I do mean COLD!  While the bays are heated, they are still open to the outside and when it's 18 degrees out and the windchill is 8, it's COLD!  You also can't pile on too much because it will affect your swing.  We could have cared less.  We took each other on and laughed it up!  We made it two hours before we had to call it and go thaw out. 

Red noses and cheeks...

....and hearts full of love!