Today is my niece Joslyn's 2nd birthday! 
Me, my mom, my niece and our friend Mary Ellen didn't wake up at 3am to go shopping. We instead enjoyed a nice breakfast, got showered and then at 9am made our way out into the craziness of Overland Park to a few stores to snag some good deals. 
The rest of the morning was spent hanging out with the family watching the Macy's Day Parade, getting the table set and waiting for the guests to arrive. 
Around 12 noon the Taylor house was hoppin! I was nervous about having that many people in our home and worried about where everyone was going to hang out at but it turned out just fine. The men hung out in the family room watching football while the ladies hung out around the kitchen. Once the turkey was carved, we all sat down to a dee-lish meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed & sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn casserole and enjoyed the blessings of good food & wonderful family! 
And it was a success! Not only did Steve like it but everyone else who tried it thought it was dee-lish as well! 
Today is the hubby's 36th Birthday. I had the day off since family was coming into town so we spent the day together cleaning & running errands. Not too much fun for Shane but he was a good sport about it.
After we stuffed ourselves on chips, salsa & tacos we headed downtown to the Municipal Auditorium for the musical "Wicked". 
Here are a few more pics from the night:
Me and the hubby
The birthday girl is the one on the left :)
You can about imagine my excitement when I spotted these tasty "limited edition" White Fudge Oreos back on the shelves at Target. I now have 3 boxes hiding in the closet right next to my 8 cans of pumpkin :) We will see how long it takes Shane to find these...
Once my brother-in-law got home from work, we all went out to eat at a dee-lish Mexican restaurant. Tanner LOVED the chips and it was much fun watching him dip them in salsa & then eat them. He is too cute! We arrived back home bellies full & super sleepy from our early morning and day full of travel. We were all in bed by 9pm :) 
While the boys were hard at work, my sister Jen, me & Tanner ran some errands to get ready for Tanner's birthday party later in the evening. Our first stop was to the bakery to get Tanner's Elmo cake:
Once we got back home, Tanner got to open his presents and had much fun ripping paper and playing with his gifts! The Fisher-Price barn w/farm animals from mom & dad seemed to be his favorite and he squealed when he opened it & saw what it was.
Next up on the agenda, party hats & cake:
SUNDAY - Can't believe we are heading home already today - what a fast weekend! Ben made us all breakfast this morning consisting of pancakes, toast & sausage and then my brother & I were back on the road to Milwaukee to catch our flight. We tried to take a few more pics before we left but unfortunately, Tanner was not wanting anything to do with saying "cheese"! My brother was the only one lucky enough to get a pic with Tan Man before we left:
Everyone that knows me, knows my obsession with the holidays. So you can imagine my excitement when I got into my car this morning, turned on the radio station to Star 102 & hear Christmas music being played throughout the speakers in my car. I instantly got goosebumps! I cranked the holiday music way up and enjoyed my Peppermint Mocha coffee all the way into work! What a great way to start the work week! 
Once we arrived, we made our way through the streets of Hermann to find somewhere to eat lunch. We decided on a little place called Simon's on the Waterfront and enjoyed a really good meal. After we ate, we made our way to the visitor's center to get some information on the wineries located throughout the town. We met a lovely elderly lady there named Dolores who was so very helpful. She provided us with a map of where to go and we were on our way. She had told us where her house was along our walk & informed us we were more than welcome to stop and rest on her porch. About 2 blocks into our walk, we passed her home & we did just what she had told us to & made sure to get a picture: 
Our first stop was Stone Hill Winery. Little did we know it was located on top of a steep hill and since we were walking, we had to walk up that hill to get there. I thought we might lose Michelle during our hike but we all managed to get to the top - sweaty, winded and ready to try the wine!
This is on top of Stone Hill Winery. You can see the road we walked up to get here! 
We all decided to take the tour of the winery which ended up being very interesting. I just love listening to history and it was quite fascinating learning about how they make their wine. Here are a few pictures from our tour:
Barrels of wine that are left to "age" for several years
Huge steel cisterns where wine is presently fermenting 
Unopened bottles of wine left behind from 1965
Our last stop was the Tin Mill Brewery. This was a really small bar but offered a lovely little "sampler" of all their brewed beers which we enjoyed trying: 
After we finished our "sampler", we made our way back to the train station to head home. You can tell by these next few photos that we were all feeling pretty good at this point from all the wine and our samples of beer:
There weren't any seats together when we got on the train, so we made our way back to the snack car and sat at a table back there the entire way home. We did crosswords, took turns playing "name that tune" on our iPods and reminisced about our fun day.
