Ice skating at New Town!

After enjoying the day at the park, we decided to continue enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and head back to New Town for a little outdoor ice skating. This was our first time ice skating outside, but we had a great time!
Here is Adriana ice skating. She is back in ice skating lessons and she is doing great! She got moved up a class after she was skating too good for the other class.
Here is Ava and Whitney. Ava has only ice skated one other time but she was still doing good!

Here is Andrew. Although he is also in ice skating lessons, we are having a hard time keeping he from skating with the bucket. He got his bucket taken away in his last lesson and he wasn't liking it to much. We shall see how he does in the next class. But as you can see here, he still is using his bucket.Andrew and Ava having ice bucket races.Andrew decided to take a break and sit on his bucket. Here is his notorious goofy face!Adriana was racing Whitney, Mark, and I all night which of course we let her win so now she thinks she is the next winning figure skater :) We won't tell her any different!Taking a break by the fire to warm up.We really had so much fun ice skating outside! We even had hot chocolate specially delivered to us at the rink! I think this will become an annual tradition for us. If only we had a couple of extra warm days to do this more often!

A day at the park!

I always try to take advantage of the nice days we get during January and Thursday was no exception. It was almost 60 degrees and a nice sunny day so I met up with some friends in New Town and headed out to the park. I had to laugh on our walk there because we had so many kids with us we almost looked like a preschool class.
Here we are walking to the park.
Now long after we got to the park Andrew spotted a truck driving down the road and had to take a break to watch it.
I think the kids were playing fast food restaurant and passing out food to the customers.Here is the boys being the restaurant workers.
Andrew thinking about what he can do next.
Andrew and Lauren laughing at something funny.
Joey peeking out the window.
Andrew and Audrey hanging out. Andrew seemed to be popular with the girls today!The kids playing together.
Finally ready to walk home. What a fun day at the park!

Parent helper at Andrew's school.

Last week I got to enjoy spending a day with my little Andrew helping out with his class. I always love my parent helper day and watching my kids at school. I think they really enjoy the one on one time they get with their momma as well since it doesn't always get to happen at home. I did get a few pictures of our special day together.
Here is Andrew busy cutting away on his playdough. He did pause long enough to look up at me and let me get a picture of him.

Now we moved on to the water table. Today it was full of fish, penquins, and ice caps.Now we are using our fine motor skills and using an dropper to move water from the cup into the egg holder.Today the kids learned about penquins and they let all the kids pretend that they were daddy penquins. They gave each child an egg to hold on their feet just like daddy penquins do. Andrew thought this was really fun!

Union station!

After the Disney on Ice show, we took the kids over to Union Station to grab some lunch. I hadn't realized how long its been since I had been there until I got inside. I couldn't believe how empty it was. There was hardly any stores left! I can remember when it was packed with stores and restaurants but now there was hardly any. There was hardly any people inside walking around either. Anyway, I took some fun shots of the kids while we were there. Here are the kids looking over the balcony at the hotel. As you can tell, there are no other people in here except for my crazy kids taking over the halls!

Some silly pictures of the kids. I think they were on a sugar high from the cotton candy and slushes at the Disney show.And another goofy picture!
Ah, she slowed down enough for me to get a cute picture of her!See, Joey was there!

We did get to watch the fudge being made, and man is that the best fudge ever! Of course thats when my camera battery decided to die so I didn't get a picture of the kids watching them make fudge. I did get some pictures on my moms camera of us eating at Hard Rock Cafe that I will try to download soon. We had a great time, it was just really sad to see the place looking so empty. Hopefully when the economy picks up, so will Union Station!

Disney on Ice!

Earlier this month, my mom and I took the kids to see Disney on Ice. This was a gift that Santa had brought them and they have been excitedly waiting for this show to get here! We got there early to see the princess dresses pre-show. Adriana was in awe at all the beautiful dresses and of course wanted them all!
Here is Adriana getting her picture taken with TinkerBell, her favorite princess right now!
Here is Cinderella. I think Andrew really liked her :)

Adriana standing in front of Belle's dress.Here is the kids drinking their slushes waiting for the show to start.This was Andrew's favorite part, the Cars! My mom and I couldn't figure out how the cars were driving on the ice because you couldn't see anyone in them. Not sure if they were controlled by remote or what, but it was incredible to watch!Here is Ariel and Prince Eric dancing!The Lion King. This was really neat as well and had excellent costumes! One of my favorites!

And TinkerBell! Adriana was so excited to see her! We had to wait until after intermission for this part but boy was she excited!

And here is the grand finale. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were there too!My mom holding Joey who is sleeping and Adriana watching the show.

My toothless girl!

I finally got the pictures downloaded from Adriana loosing her tooth. So here is my big girl! She learned that she can do a cool trick of sticking her tongue through her empty tooth.

And finally a picture of what the toothfairy brought her

Toothfairy came!

Well the toothfairy came last night! She brought Adriana a pack of gum, a dollar bill, and a quarter. Adriana was super excited when she woke up and came running downstairs to show me what she got. I asked her if she saw the toothfairy and she said no. She told me that the toothfairy is very small and lives with Tinkerbell. Oh the imagination of the young! Adriana was very sweet this morning too. Her pack of gum had 10 pieces in it and she gave me two pieces, Andrew three pieces, and saved one all day for Daddy when he got home. The poor girl only got four pieces out of the ten. But thats just Adriana, she is always sharing more than she keeps. Hopefully she keeps this trait and can share it with her brothers!!!! I was so proud of her so I let her and Andrew pick out a pack of gum each from the store. Once again I think she shared more than she kept! My sweet baby girl!

My 10 year anniversary!

2009 marks my tenth year anniversary for being a police officer. I started the police academy in 1999 with University City PD sponsoring me. What have I learned over the past 10 years? I have learned a lot and changed more than I ever could have imagined. I started off a very naive little girl who thought the world was just great and a happy place. How have I changed?
My first week on the job I had three people who died in auto fatalities, one of which was a 15 year old boy. I worked a shooting involving an officer and a car jacking suspect where my field training officer, another officer and myself found the suspect laying on the ground refusing to let go of his loaded weapon. I continued on with 9 weeks of field training where I worked two homicides, one of which I watched the young man die. I worked robberies, stolen autos, rapes, burglaries, shootings, and domestic violence cases. Over the course of my five years with U City I went on raids where I found drugs hidden in baby cribs, I've taken small children away from abusive parents while they were hysterically crying for their parents, I've watched people die, I went into scenes where I will never forget the horrible stench of rotten bodies, worked abusive cases where I pleaded for the person to leave and only to watch the abuse get worse with nothing I could do about it.
I then moved onto St. Peters where I have been for the last 5 years. I've pulled meth labs out of public parks, I worked high school hockey where these kids have no respect for anyone, I worked a suicide where I had to pull the family off of the body and try to calm them down while I hold back the tears, have had young kids having sex in the parks.
I have had two friends die in the line of duty and went to many other funerals of fellow officers who also lost their lives.
I've been bitten, kicked, punched, been so scared on calls that I would literally throw up afterwards, have had my life and families life threatened, have had more AIDS tests done (because of getting blood on me) than anyone should ever have their entire lives, have been put in the hospital three times.
Have I changed? I know I have lost any innocence I once had. I've aged well beyond my years. I can remember the academy staff telling my parents how much I will change being an officer and I thought to myself, yeah right! Sometimes I wish I could take it all back and choose a different career path so I would never have witnessed half of what I did. Its a very hard job with little pay and little respect. Officers used to be held with some respect, but it seems now people are more apt to tell you what you are doing wrong than to give you a pat on the back and tell you what you did right. I have definitely become colder to seeing things because that's how you have to be in this job. If you take anything to heart it will eat you alive. I learned that my first few months on the job where I used to have horrible nightmares and some nights I wouldn't sleep at all because of things I dealt with that day. I've worked accidents on nights so cold that my feet and hands would hurt so bad for hours afterwards that I would literally be in tears. I worked holidays, rotating shifts, extremely hot and cold days, rainy days, snowy days. I worked days where I would easily put in 20 hours working on a case. Was it worth it? I'm still debating that question. I know I have several years left before I can leave so we shall see what my next few years bring me.
Sorry this post isn't the most upbeat, but its really what the last 10 years are about. So maybe next time you are quick to judge an officers actions just try to put yourself in their shoes. We really aren't all bad people, just people who have seen everything!

A blessing in disguise!

We are attempting to send our kids to St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School, which is also where Chris went, his parents went, and most of the Weber family has gone. He has a first cousin who teaches there and cousins currently enrolled in it. As I know this is going to be a huge financial burden on our family to be able to afford it, we have made our decision. I constantly go over and over in my head how we can make these payments without hurting our family finances too much. Then I started trying to figure out how I will ever be able to afford to send three kids through private high school which is rediculously expensive. I started talking to a co-worker who is also a minister at Willott Christian Church, which also has a school Willott Christian Academy. I was talking to him about my fears of being able to afford these expenses. He began telling me that there are several government grants that help families pay for private schools! Wow, I had no idea! I started doing a little research and have come across quite a few of them. So now I am going to be learning how to apply for these grants and should begin another hysterical chapter of my life as I'm not a very creative person at all. I have also discovered that most kids will get some type of scholarship to most private high schools. This is great! A wife of one of the guys Chris works with coaches basketball at one of the private high schools and we keep hearing how much they want Adriana because of her height! Maybe my kids heights will help pay off some of their high school bills! Anyway, this helped to comfort a lot of my fears of my financial future!

A first lost tooth!

Adriana finally lost her loose tooth today! I can't believe she is really big enough to be loosing her teeth, where has the time gone! She told me it didn't hurt even though it was bleeding a little bit. She said it kind of tickled and felt weird. It was perfect timing because we just got her toothfairy pillow in the mail today! Now, she is cracking me up because she thinks she is so big because she lost her tooth. You would think she just aged 3 years.
Here is a picture of her new toothfairy pillow that she picked out.
I will post a picture of her new smile as soon as I get my pictures downloaded. So yet another chapter of my baby girls life opens :( I keep telling her I'm going to put a brick on her head to keep her from growing up so much!!!!

Inauguration day!

So today was a moment in time that will be written in history books for our future to read. Although I did not vote for Barack Obama ( I know, I'm an old Chistian woman stuck in her conservative ways as I'm told) I still wanted Adriana to watch this historic event. So I turned on the television to watch history unfold before us. I was explaining to Adriana the importance of this day and what it meant but I'm not sure she was getting it. As I was telling her that Barack Obama was our first black president, she looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language to her. So I kept it on for me to watch at least as she could have cared less. I didn't get to watch all of it as I had to pick Andrew up from school but it was definitely amazing to be able to tell my kids and grandkids about how I was there watching the historic moment they will read about in the future!

Money savvy ways!

With the economy in a slump like it is, I spent one afternoon searching on the internet for ways to save money. I happened upon a site stlmommy.com and immediately became hooked. It tells you where to shop for the best deals and even goes through all the local grocery store ads and shows you ways to save more with coupons from the papers. I have become an addict of this site a couple of months ago and it really has started saving me so much money. I have my weekly shopping down to $100-$125 a week, that includes groceries and toiletries. I have also received so many free samples from different places and free items after rebates. A friend of mine has also told me about a way to make your own laundry detergent that she found from the dugger family (the family with 18 kids). I've started using it and my laundry detergent bill is down to about $8 a month! We also have learned to recycle many of our everyday products and use it in other ways and I couldn't believe what you can recycle.
I've also started shopping end of season sales. Earlier this week I stocked the boys up on sweatpants for the next couple of years for $.98 a pair at Target! I was so excited about this sale especially since my boys live in sweats in the winter time. Adriana gets a little harder to buy ahead for since she is so picky. I usually make enough money from selling the kids out grown clothes at consignment sales to get a start on their clothing for the next season.
I'm always looking for additional ways to save money so if you have any ideas I would love to hear them. With Adriana starting Kindergarten next year, I really need to budget the extra expense of the private school and always wanting to find extra money to save.

Fun day at the zoo!

At the end of December (I know I'm a little late) we had an awesome day out so we took a trip to the zoo. This is always a favorite of the kids and who can resist a day in the 60s in the winter.
Here is Andrew petting different furs that they had sitting out. The kids always like activities like this and trying to guess which animal the fur came from Adriana actually got quite a few right.

Next we headed to the children's zoo, another favorite. I guess we haven't been in a long time because the building we always go to was completely different. And the scary bat that Adriana hated was gone. It was a lot more hands on activities and kid friendly. I didn't get too many pictures in there because I was more busy chasing three kids around.
Here is Andrew at the play area in the children's zoo, he was climbing on the spider web.

After the Children's Zoo we headed next door to the Zoomagination Station, another favorite. This place is so much fun and is completely free! Its got all kinds of activities for the kids to explore.
Here Joey is enjoying playing in the house, which he played in for probably 20 minutes!

I finally got him away from the house long enough to play peek a boo with me behind a curtain. Oh he thought this was so much fun!Adriana and Andrew stayed busy in the birdseed box. This was the same place Andrew stayed almost the whole time on the last visit as well.After leaving the Zoomagination Station, we headed down to see the penquins, which is one of my very favorite animals! Adriana, Andrew, and Brianna watching the penquins play in the water.A picture of some of the penguins.We spent the whole day at the zoo and saw just about every animal there was, unfortunately my camera wasn't liking the downloading part too much so I didn't get all the pictures downloaded yet.
But before we left we did go to the Build A Bear shop and make some animals, thanks to Aunt Kimmie's gift cards!
Adriana made a cheetah and is getting her dressed. She named her blue sparkles!
Andrew made a panda and named him, well.......panda, of course:)Joey made a bear, but I didn't get a picture of it unfortunately. It was a really good time and enjoyed spending time with Cindy and her kids Brianna and Alex. I can't wait for the next warm weather day to head back again!