Project Life 2014 - Week 1

This week I am sharing Week 1 of Project Life for 2014.  I am a bit behind on sharing here on the blog, but I am actually pretty well caught up on putting my Project Life pages together, and I am hoping to get back to sharing them here on a more regular basis.  I got a little behind between having to wait to pick up my photos (due to weather) and not having a working computer for a while (due to my daughter's stepping on our laptop screen).  We are borrowing my mother-in-law's laptop while we try to decide between fixing our old laptop and replacing it.  

Anyway, back to the first week of January!  This week started in South Carolina, since we were still there for Christmas.  Jim and I left Monday morning for a little overnight trip to Charlotte, North Carolina.  We didn't really do much to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this past summer, so we decided to go away while we were in the South, and we left the kids with my sister and parents for the night.  We stopped for lunch at Chick-fil-a on our way out of town, and then we stopped at some outlets and at a fabric store as we drove to Charlotte.  We arrived late afternoon, and after we got settled into our hotel, we headed downtown to the Cheesecake factory for dinner.  The Charlotte Cheesecake Factory is in a mall, and after dinner, we walked over to a shoe store in the mall to buy Jim a new pair of shoes for school.  He is on his feet a lot at school, and he wanted a pair of walking shoes that would be comfortable, but look dressy enough for school.  He bought a pair of Eccos, and then we went back to the Cheesecake Factory and got some cheesecake to take back to the hotel with us.  I ended up eating part of mine for breakfast the next morning.

The next day, we slept in, and then got ready to go.  We stopped for lunch at the Bar B Q King, which Jim had seen on the Food Network.  It was a drive-in, so we pulled in and checked out the menu board.

 The sign and building have been around for a while.

 The specialty at the Bar B Q King is the barbecued chicken.  Neither of us ordered it, though I probably should have.  I absolutely love pulled pork, and I decided to try theirs instead of going with the specialty.

 The barbecue tasted like the cafeteria barbecue of my childhood - ok, but not great.  It was a fun experience, though.

We headed back to my parents' house after lunch, and we started getting ready for our New Years Eve Appetizer Party that night.  My mom, sister, and I each made a couple of appetizers, and we ate them for dinner.  

I made Sausage Queso in the Crock Pot.  

 Nora made Wonton Tacos.  They were so good!

 My mom made spinach dip, and Nora made a cheese ball.

 I also made lettuce wraps, and my mom made sausage balls.

 Everything was delicious!  We had an appetizer dinner a few years ago and enjoyed it, so we decided to do it again.  It is becoming a fun, New Years tradition!  After dinner, we all scrambled to get ready to go north a day earlier than planned.  We had seen on the weather reports that Ohio and Michigan were gearing up for big snow storms the next evening and the following day, so we decided to leave early and try to beat the bad weather.  My parents were planning to go to Ohio to see my grandmother, so they decided to leave with us and get through before the storm.
We left fairly early the next morning, and we drove together throughout the morning.  We all stopped for lunch near Cincinnati at Skyline Chili.  They had a huge inflatable chili dog in their parking lot.  We split up from my parents after that, and we both had safe travels.  Ours got rough around Toledo, and it took us quite a long time to drive the last little stretch. We made it back to town safely, grabbed a pizza for dinner, and crashed at home for the night.

The next morning, I unpacked and took down our Christmas tree to make room for Maddie's new kitchen, while Jim cleared snow outside.   We set up Maddie's kitchen while she was napping.  It looked so cute with all her little utensils and supplies stocked in it.

Maddie was very excited about her kitchen, and as she pulled out each item to show it to me, she said, "Ta da!"

Out little chef.

Drew enjoyed trying out the kitchen too, and he helped Maddie do a little cooking.

We got quite a bit of snow that week, and Jim had to go out and clear it a few times.  His elderly snow blower is dying, and we are looking at having to replace it after this winter.

We had a family birthday party to attend over the weekend.  Our nephew, Danny, turned 7, and we got to celebrate with Jim's family on Saturday.  The birthday cupcakes were covered in mini marshmallows, and Maddie love them!

The birthday boy!

Here's what I did for Project Life this week:

In addition to the main page about our week, I also made a small insert about our Charlotte trip.

After the trip, I realized that I pretty much only took pictures of food!

The first week of 2014 was a good one, and I have a few more weeks to share in the coming weeks!