A Winner (No Matter What) :-)

A couple of months ago, our family attended BINGO night at our local Chick-Fil-A. While enjoying our dinner, the marketing manager came up to us and asked us if we had heard about the VIP contest. We nodded our heads, "Yes", and she responded by saying "You have a REAL chance of winning!  EACH Chick-Fil-A restaurant will their own winner and they and a guest will be sent all-expenses paid on a trip to Atlanta to Chick-Fil-A headquarters."  I honestly didn't give it too much thought at the time, but a couple of days passed and then I remembered a fun personal Chick-Fil-A story for our family.  While we were living in England, we only came home to visit family in the States one time, and the  very first place that we went to celebrate our home-coming was Chick-Fil-A!

Not many people ran for VIP at my local Chick-Fil-A, so I easily qualified as one of the top 3 finalists. :-) The next trick was to get as many of my friends on Facebook to vote for me! It was amazing how supportive and loved I felt as I tried to recruit votes.  There is no doubt in my mind, I would not have won the contest if I had not had friends asking their friends to vote for me!!! Several of my sweet friends, without my asking, posted on their walls "PLEASE VOTE FOR MY FRIEND LAUREN" and gave the link.  My sister, Leigha, went above and beyond, and even started an event on Facebook and asked all of her friends to vote for me. :-)

It was a crazy close race, my competitor got A LOT of votes. I never thought I would have to get more than 100 votes to win the race, but the number of votes I needed to win kept growing and growing!
-----------------------
Faith told me on the way to the election party, "Mommy, I hope you win, but even if you don't win, you're still a winner to me.  I'll even give you a prize if you don't win!"

I responded with a big WOW!  Then I told her, "Well Faith, I don't think anything Chick-Fil-A could give me would be nearly as good as your prize.   So, a big part of me hopes I don't win now, so I can have your prize instead! "

Faith seemed a little stunned by my response, "Oh! Mommy, you don't have to hope that you don't win. I'll give you a prize if you win or don't win too!" :-)

Two days before the voting ended, Chick-Fil-A hid the number of votes each person earned to make it a surprise who won.  Then, a couple of days after the voting ended, Chick-Fil-A invited the finalists and their guests for a VIP Election Party to reveal the results. We were allowed a total of 10 people for the party  (including our family)!  So we invited our amazing, wonderfully sweet friends Anna and Mike and their adorable kiddos!!! It was so much fun having them there with us.  I knew no matter what happened, Anna would be my rock! And all the kids were SO excited for me. Jake even made a sign for the occasion and Emmie made me a card. 

We said a prayer for our dinner as a group and then the buffet began! It was scrumptious and had a lot of selection! 

All the kids enjoyed their chicken nuggets and fruit!

We had the opportunity to meet the operator/ owner of Chick-Fil-A! He was super nice.

Jake is a gifted artist and this is the awesome sign he made for the event!

"We're Party'n"

Then after dinner, we went on a back stage tour of the Chick-Fil-A.

Emily was our tour guide.

I was amazed by how efficient they are with their space.  There wasn't a whole lot of room in the back! 

You can tell Mike was enamored by what they were telling us!!! :-)

After our tour, we had dessert! We had our choice of brownies and chocolate chip cookies!! They were yummy!

Jake entertained little Anna for us. 

And then we had the big moment,

when they announced the winner ...

IT WAS ME!!!

My expressions makes me laugh! Do you see the people in the background looking at me?

Jillian was super excited and proud for me.  

A photo with Brad and I  with my Chick-Fil-A VIP plaque!

It's a little funny, but in the end, I decided not to go on the trip (today would have been my day-trip to Atlanta).  Brad has only been working at his new job for a little more than a month and has only earned one day off of work. We decided that we would rather use his day off for the holidays, also, if we accepted the prize, we would have had to pay a substantial amount for taxes ($250 because the prize is counted as taxable income...a big yuck)!   But I am very happy that I supported a great company by entering the contest and it was so much fun to be the winner! 

Halloween 2012

On Halloween, I took the girls to the Rio for a party! Anna decided that she wanted to wear her Hello Kitty Halloween shirt instead of her costume for the morning party.

We enjoyed the science performer. Then, after the performance,  they had a few drawings for prizes! I WON 2 entrees and 2 desserts at Joe's Crab Shack! I was super pumped!!  The girls were also proud that their mama won!

All three of the girls decorated pumpkins while we were at the party too!

Their pumpkin creations turned out fantastic!

All three of my girls dressed up: Faith (as Laura), Anna (as Carrie), and Jillian (as Mary) for Halloween 2012. 

Our silly girl, Anna!

Funny Faces! 

Then we made our way to our friends' house! This is a special photo because it is the only photo that we have of Anna wearing her bonnet! 

Then we knocked on the door of our friends! Trick-or-Treat! 

Aunt Michelle and Uncle Reed gave gifts to all three of the girls! Jillian and Faith were especially excited about their new Princess and Popstar dolls. 

"The tickle monster" (given his name by Faith) wanted a hug from Faith, but he first had to give her a good tickle.

Jillian had a good laugh as her little sister was tickled.

A photo of the girls with Lindsey and Erin before trick-or-treating.

Some of the families in the neighborhood left a bowl of candy out for the trick-or-treaters! Anna had fun choosing which candy she wanted.

Faith got a little cold while we were out, so her sweet, gentlemanly daddy gave her his coat.

Before we knew it, we had gone over a couple dozen houses, so we went back to the Smith's house to warm up with some apple cider.  The girls warmed up quickly and in no time at all, they wanted to go out to trick-or-treat again.  Thankfully, we had two volunteers to take the girls, Erin and Lindsey.

Anna and all the grown-ups decided to stay warm in the house.

It was a fun evening, we even ran into some new friends from church, and one of Brad's work colleagues too!

Faith was completely tuckered out by the time we got into the van. She told us on the way home, "I almost started to cry, but then I realized I was just tired, so I didn't."  I thought that was super insightful of Faith to recognize that she was a little more emotional because she was tired.  :-)

Carnival for Life

The Sunday before Hurricane Sandy, we attended a "Carnival for Life" at a local Catholic church. Everyone who attended brought donations to be given to the local pregnancy center.  The people in attendance were very generous and I could tell it was a cause that was close to many people's hearts. 

The kids were encouraged to wear a costume for the carnival.  Our girls this year for Halloween were the Ingalls girls from Little House on the Prairie. Jillian and Faith's matching dresses were inspired by the show in Season 1 "Country Girls" when Ma uses beautiful fabric to surprise Mary and Laura with matching dresses for their presentation.  (Check it out on You Tube. It is a sweet, sweet episode.)

And of course we had to have our own little Carrie too! Our "Carrie" was exhausted and fell asleep on the way to the carnival.

But thankfully Anna perked up once we got there, especially when she realized that there was candy involved in going to a carnival! 

She was a little mesmerized by her fireball (which we did not let her have at ANY time).

The girls played the cake walk a couple of times but didn't win.  Bummer! :-( The good news is the proceeds raised from the cake walk all went to the pregnancy center! 

We ran into some friends from church who were dressed as Bible characters. Brad and I had fun trying to guess the Bible characters by their props and quickly guessed Mary, David, John the Baptist....

Unfortunately, we had a super hard time figuring out the character of the boy with the beard and the green sash.  His props were not nearly as obvious as his brothers, so his mom gave us a clue, his character's name started with a "J".  

Brad and I started down the list..."Jeremiah, Josiah, Joshua, Joel, Job, Jonathan...JONAH!"  With each name Brad and I grew in our confidence and thought to ourselves, "Wow, we are amazing Bible scholars here. We know lots of "J" names!" :-)

Next thing you know, they tell us, "It's a New Testament character".  For some reason, the beard made us think of "old" like the "OLD TESTAMENT".  But that was okay, we we were on the right track now and we could totally do it. So we began again, "John, James, JUDE...." 

They stopped us there, "It's the most obvious Bible character."  

It was both funny and a little humbling that we missed the most important Bible character that begins with the letter "J"....JESUS! 

But our kind friend made us feel better when she said to us, "It would have been more obvious if he was holding a cross!" 

Jillian told me the cutest thing, "Mommy, we are the ONLY prairie girls any place that we go...that's pretty neat."

The girls had fun playing the bean toss.

Anna being the clever girl that she is, just walked right up to the game...

And threw them in!

The girls had fun doing some fishing too! It honestly reminded me of a scene from Little House on the Prairie! 

The Carnival of Life was a sweet time of fun for our family and for a very worthy cause!

Our Pumpkin Princess

Every year, AWANA Sparks have a pumpkin "contest" (everyone is a winner)! 

So this year, we made a special potato head pumpkin princess!

Faith spontaneously laid down on the yard in front of our house and I was very pleased to get this super sweet photo of our 5 year old! :-)

We wanted to keep our pumpkin safe while it rode to church, so we put the seat belt on her in the front seat of the car.

This pumpkin received a lot of enthusiasm

and lovin' too from three little girls at our house!