Merry Christmas from the Sparacino family!

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”  

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

 “Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

Sparacino family summer vacation Days 1&2 Kansas and Rocky Mountain National Park

We are on a big summer road trip! 

We left Saturday morning and ended the day in Salina, Kansas.

Kansas is very much wide open spaces.

You can see for miles and there are lots of abandoned gas stations on our route.

There were also miles and miles of wind mills and oil derricks.

We woke up Sunday morning to finish our trip to Estes Park, Colorado.

Our first view of the Rocky Mountains was breathtaking!

Estes Park is at an elevation of 7,522 feet.

 We checked in to our hotel that has a great balcony view of the mountains and then drove up to Rocky Mountain National park for our first hike.

We were doing a 1 mile hike that included stops at Nymph lake and Dream lake.

 Nymph Lake

 The only word that I could find to describe the views of the mountains on our hike was: majesty.

We had to actually hike over snow to get to Dream lake. It was surprisingly treacherous and B Boy even had a fall. But, we made it and the view was spectacular!

At Dream lake, we were at an elevation of 9,905 feet!

Our family at Dream Lake

I'm so glad I brought the tripod on our trip! I can't wait to see what we will get to experience today!

 I also got to see an elk for the first time! A female elk was chomping away on the side of the road on the way down the mountain.

Christmas with family round two

We had a wonderful Christmas with the Sparacino side of the family on Sunday!

This was the first time that we did a big family picture since 2009!

We were missing Tim's brother and family, but hopefully we can do this again next time the whole gang is together!

We had some great food!  Our main theme was Italian food!

The boys having a Nerf gun war!

Weekend Sept 20-22

Friday night, we hung out at home with a great Mexican dinner and then looked at older family albums. The kids' reactions were priceless!!!! 

We looked through our wedding album and another one before the kids were born. This age they are at is hilarious to hear what they say about most of the photos. They LOVED when we finally got to photos of them when they were little. 

It made me miss having all of our photos in a tangible source to look at. I stopped putting our photos in albums right after we moved to Bentonville. It gets expensive printing hundreds of pictures (I take SO many). It is also pretty time consuming to put in albums. 

When I used to do it, I would print photos every few months and put in the albums. A friend of mine put on Facebook that she had been looking for a way to make photo books online that was easy and let you use as many photos as you want. 

Sites like Shutterfly and Snapfish limit the number you can use per book. She found blurb.com and shared about it. I really think I'm going to use it to catch up on the rest of 2010 and then 2011, 2012 and this year! Woohoo another project for my list, lol!

Saturday, we got up bright and early to head out to my brother's new house in Oklahoma! I'm so happy for them. It's much bigger than they had and so beautiful! 

I helped my sister in law, Veronica unpacked her kitchen stuff and find places in the cabinets. It was fun and we laughed a lot. And of course, I loved getting to see Johnathan and Noah bear! They jokingly call Noah "C Girl Jr." because they both have similar personality traits! 

The kids helped move stuff from the truck into the garage. They were big helpers! They loved playing with Johnathan and Noah. 

We listened to the Razorback game on the way home and when we got home. The game was SUCH a heart-breaker! So, so sad! I know our atmosphere will be great next week for Texas A&M but man, I wish we were going into it 4-0!

This was Braden's reading material on our travels this weekend. I'm so proud of what a great reader he is and how much he loves to read!

Lots of cousin fun!

Today, we decided to have a fun, family day!  We traveled down to Fayetteville. Our first stop was to eat lunch at Geraldi's.  We had pizza and it was great!

Next, we headed to the University of Arkansas campus to find Tim's name on the senior walk.  It was a gorgeous day, Old Main was beautiful, and it was so great finding his name!

After that, we headed over to the circus!  It was our first time to see a circus and we had lots of fun!  Some of the acts reminded me of parts of the Cirque du Soleil show that we saw in Vegas.

We came home to spend time with Tim's sister who had come to visit and stay the night with us.  We had a nice dinner and visit.  It was great to see so much family this weekend! 

We are tired from our busy day and getting ready for the week. Hope your week is great!

Ten Years

Ten. Years.

That just blows my mind.

I was laying in bed the other night thinking about how I'm now 32, and how 22 seems so very long ago.  But, yet, I still feel 22! (in my mind!)

So much life has happened in these past 10 years.  

There is no way we could see what laid before us back then.

I wonder how the next 10 will play out?

Tim, you have made my life better in every way.  I've grown up since we were married.  The many things that have happened, we've faced it all together.  I've never doubted you by my side, and you are who I always want by my side.  The prayer of my heart is that somehow through it all, our kids will see a great marriage and have that as a foundation for their lives.  I hope you know how loved and special you make me feel.  Life has a way of getting in the way, but I'm so glad we keep making us a priority.  I'm so glad you are mine.

 And I thought I loved you then...