Big Winner

So back in August Casey's General Stores were celebrating their 40th anniversary. One afternoon late in August I was in our local store, filling the van up with gas and picking up a Mountain Dew, when I grabbed a form for their "Gas & More Giveaway." I brought it home, mailed it in, and thought nothing more of it. I figured "Why not? You can't win if you don't enter." never thinking I would actually win.

Well...I won! They drew 40 winners, and I received a call recently letting me know that I was one of the winners! I was absolutely stunned! I've had decent luck at winning things now and then, but on a much smaller scale (tickets to concerts, hand lotion, etc). This prize package is by far the biggest and best thing I've ever won.

I won:

A TracFone and 1440 minutes airtime (I've currently got this listed on CraigsList...anyone interested? I'm very happy with my current phone & service, so I don't feel like changing it.)
52 dozen donuts
26 one-topping pizzas
26 12-packs of Pepsi products
and best of all....gift cards totaling $2500 for gas (or whatever else I would want from Casey's)

This has been so exciting, especially for the gas money! What we'll be able to save in gas money alone will be such a big help to our budget! Yahoo! The food related gift cards don't expire, so we'll be able to take our time using those, and the store (gas $) gift cards expire in a year, so we should be set for quite a while!

Here I am holding my winnings (well, everything but the phone and airtime cards). It was really crazy to open the package and see the stacks of gift cards. Hooray for me!

Happy 5th Birthday!

G-ram celebrated his 5th birthday earlier this month, so I thought I would share just a few of the pictures we took. On the actual day of his birthday, we celebrated with just those of us in his immediate family. Our family birthday tradition has been that the birthday person gets to choose where to go for dinner and then we hit up an ice cream shop for dessert. G-ram chose to go to a local pizzeria for his current favorite pizza (pepperoni and canadian bacon). Afterwards we went to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. Prior to all of this though was the opening of the presents, of course! G-ram could hardly wait for A-Rand to get home so that he could open his gifts. His present from mommy, daddy, and C-man was a drum set. Here he is trying them out:


His birthday party was several days later, as his birthday fell mid-week this year. He really wanted a stop light cake (as he's been fascinated with stop lights for several months now) and from that his party evolved into a road construction theme. His stop light cake looked (and tasted) great. We had a dump truck pinata, and cone cups for favors, and cone party hats. They were so cute! This party theme was particularly funny (at least to me!) because G-rams good friends are mostly girls! So other than G-ram and C-man, the (kid) party guests were all girls, but at this age, the kids don't really seem to care if it's catered more to one gender than the other. They like to play with all kinds of toys, which is especially nice for playdates.

Here is a picture of G-ram getting some assistance from his grandpa opening his juice just before we sang "Happy Birthday" and cut his cake.

Soccer

G-ram started playing soccer this fall. Last fall he did a small soccer program through the local parks and rec department, but this fall we signed him up for the local soccer club. He has been quite the busy boy between daily kinder-prep (which is a pre-k program, every day for 1/2 a day) and soccer. He has practices on Thursday night, games on Saturdays, and optional extra practices on Monday nights. Whew! He is absolutely loving it though, so I don't mind the driving about. I am truly a "soccer mom" now! Here is a picture of G-ram heading out to his first practice, and below are pictures from his first game.