Just Be a Duck

Dedicated to the Izzo Family.

I few posts back I mentioned that my friend Vickie's family dog had passed away. Today I was going to watch her boys while Vickie and her husband Matt were going to look at a pet adoption event at our local Care-a-lot (a store like petsmart). Instead, Gabe came down with the stomach flu, so I wanted to finally post some pictures I have taken over the year of her family.

Thanks for always making me feel like I had family out here, even if not blood related!

Roman wearing Chris's paintball helmet at our garage sale.

So excited to be playing with the gun (paintball gun)

I went along with Vickie to Virginia Beach one wednesday after we got off work to look at a dance studio. Gabe has been wanting to take a hiphop class so I went along to help with the boys. This was on the way there...

Gabe - that does not look comfortable!

Notice Roman holding his DS and his backpack!

We drove across the water another weekend and went to the beach :) This was while Nick (Vickie's stepson) was in town for the summer.

Safety First!

Self Portrait

Brotherly love!

Love this little boy!

Love this little boy too!

Momma's boy!

I love this family portrait!

Wish you could have come Matt!

Of course, someone got buried

Then Roman decided he wanted to try too

Digging holes

Georgia is always welcome at the Izzo residence. I brought her over (after her surgery-notice the cone of shame) and Gabe just took over once I got out of the car.

and this is where the cone ended up - by his choice!!!

And then Gabe put it on his big brother Nick!

So proud!

Georgia came to check it out!

Then it turned into a skirt!

And he turned into a ballerina!

These kids love stuffed animals!

Roman showing me his pals!

I made this sign for Vickie for her birthday :)

I offered to babysit for Vickie and Matt so they could go out for a movie date. The boys and I decided to play a nerf gun shooting game with the little figures from toy story.

They lined them up -just so

And then we took turns to see how many we could knock over. This seemed to keep them entertained for a good 30 minutes!

Then we watched a movie and Gabe fell asleep...

and Roman decided to pose next to the sleeping boy! This made me giggle :)

Thanks for the memories Vickie!!!

So recently, my wonderful mother decided to plan a "bucket list" trip to Las Vegas which was to include her, my grandma Mary (who has the mentioned list), katie and myself.

So... we now know that Grandma has been to Vegas many many times and it is not actually part of her bucket list... bucket list now includes New York City... Hope I am invited on that trip as well!

I started my trip off having to get up at 3:00am EST to make it to Las Vegas by noon. On my way this happened...

No this is just a suitcase... but I had sentimental attachment to it because it had broken once before and my Uncle Bill came to my rescue and fixed it for me with his leather crafting skills. ( notice the leather attached to the handle, this time the fabric gave out).

my dear mother came to my rescue this time and hooked me up with this gem. 20% military discount, thank you very much! i love it! so much and colorful.

We ended up waiting about an hour or so for Katie's flight to get in. We decided getting lunch at the airport would probably be the most afordable option considering the side of the strip we were going to be staying at. No fun huge liter drinks near our hotel :(

Cab ride pic, Gma up front

Got to the hotel... Pretty swanky! Pretty room

With an amazing view! We saw the pirate ship and Treasure Island sink every night!

Weird velvet yellow couch

Bathroom was bigger than Katie's apartment (sorry KT!)

Two levels... I could see how this type of room would be helpful for entertaining. Total this room has 3 TVs! Why? Who knows!

View of the 3rd story pools.

Here you can see TI across the street to the bottom right

Since I had been up the longest the first day they let me take a nap. When I met up with them they were a few hours of free champagne deep... (notice the hand holding!)

LOVE!

Grandma found her friend Karen who happened to be in town too!

Group shot!

Karen, her daughter Barbara, and Barbara's daughter Karen and Alyx came (Kinda like how we went!)

They came to town to see The Phantom of the Opera. I think that Grandma was thrilled to have so many people there that she loves! Can't you see it from the smile on her face?!

Next morning we went to "breakfast" at 11:15am. They had stopped serving breakfast at 11:00 so we had to order lunch foods... I was secretly very happy about that not being a huge fan of b-fast foods.

Grandma and I

Discussing how to pose for the photo

smiles!

We ended up eating at that restaurant a lot because everywhere else was super expensive! Good thing my momma got the room for free! High Roller at the Penny slots! Thats how we roll! :)

Katie and I aren't all about gambling so we went "shopping" at the mall. We tried to get a photo with the gondolas in the background...

Our shopping mostly was walking around looking at how expensive everything was... Its always a bad sign when stores don't even have price tags because they know that the kind of people that can afford their products don't care how much they cost because they can afford it...

They had these vending machines...

Katie and I got a kick out of this! $30 bucks for a pair of roll up shoes. They must sell a ton of these to people who are desperate to not be wearing heals anymore after a long night!

The person who thought of this must be a millionaire!

Got this picture in a text while we were at the pool!

Goooo GG!

We were total twins... I brought Katie the same suit as me in a different color. If our hair doesn't match we still make it work! Not looking enough like twins to me though (hint hint Katie, we need to both be blonds again!)