Andrew's 1st day of preschool!

So here is my bad momma moment #whatever crazy number I'm at. Andrew's 1st day of school was actually on Wednesday. Wednesday ended up being a very busy day and when I went to take him to school I actually forgot to get pictures of his first day of school :(
So to make up for it, I took lots of pictures of Friday for his first full day of school since he also did stay and play this morning.


Joey had to join in on many of the shots of Andrew and Andrew was generous enough to allow Joey in on some of his spotlight.


Andrew getting help hanging his belongings on the rack in the classroom.

Andrew has been doing very well so far this year and is very excited to go. I can't wait to see all the new things he will learn this year!
Oh and as far as all his funny faces for the pictures, that is his newest thing he likes to do. Try to make the funniest faces every time he gets his picture taken.

Adriana participates in Mass!

Today at school, Adriana did a reading for Mass. She did two of the readings for the prayers of the faithful.The readings had some hard words on it so we practiced it several times but I was still a little worried how well she would do. Well she did GREAT! I couldn't have been more proud! She was so excited and spoke very clearly not missing a single word!
Here she is speaking.

Here is a picture of her with a few of her classmates afterwards.

The picture is a little freaky because it looks like they all have glowing eyes. I guess next time I will need to sit a little closer to get some better pictures.

Hiking at Pere Marquette!

On Sunday we decided to go hiking through some of the trails at Pere Marquette. I wasn't sure how the little ones would do but we decided to try some of the small trails to start off with. All the kids did much better than expected so we ended up hiking over 2 miles altogether! It was a lot of fun! I've been wanting to hike with the kids and found a great book called 60 hikes within 60 miles of St. Louis. It outlines each hiking trail with how hard it is, what kind of terain, how long it is and how long it should take to hike, and many other useful things. Chris and I decided we are going to see how many hikes we can do this fall with the kids and they are very excited about it.
Before we took off onto the hike, I took a picture of the map just in case we should get lost. I'm so thankful I did as we had to look at it several times since we decided to hike a little further than we originally planned.

Here are some of the pictures we took along the way.














My niece and nephew had a great time too and asked if they could go on some hikes with us this fall. We got to see a lot of great wildlife along the way too, many of which was posted on the camping post. I think its great for the kids to get out into nature like this and can't wait to go on many more nature adventures!

A day at Eckert's!

On Saturday we headed out to Eckert's farm for some apple and peach picking. The weather was perfect and we had such a great time. We picked so many apples so I can try canning apples and also make some apple sauce. We will see how they turn out ;-)
Anyway, here is some pictures of the kids apple picking.....














And at the end of the day, mommy gets to carry the 27 lbs of apples and all the drinks. I look happy don't I :)

Labor Day Weekend camping trip!

This past Labor Day Weekend we decided to head out to Pere Marquette for a weekend of camping. It was a beautiful weekend to camp and the weather was the best that it has been all summer. We also went camping with MawMaw and PawPaw and cousins Kaitlyn and Jacob.
We did so many fun activities.....such as:
Taking walks in the stroller....

Walking over the the nature's center and checking out the huge birds nest......

Roller skating......(yes, I am well aware that my child would only put on one skate).


Riding bikes.....

Finding all kinds of facinating critters.......




This picture cracks me up. Adriana holding Joey in the palm of her hand :)

And we played lots of soccer and baseball in the large area next to our campsites.




We also went to Eckert's and hiking through the trails of Pere Marquette but I didn't want to put too much into one post so I will save those for the next one.
We had such an amazing weekend and was very sad when it was over and we had to come back home :( Hopefully we will get to make it out a few more times this fall before we have to pack the camper away for the winter.

My little straight A student!

Adriana's school gives out updates monthly on the computer with how the students are doing in all their classes. Adriana has been doing incredibly well this year. I'm not sure if its because she is no longer in class with her best friend or if its because there is so many more boys in her class than girls but she has started doing so much better this year and is really loving all the learning she is doing. I think it could also be that kindergarten was more of a review year from preschool and 1st grade is becoming more of a challenge for her. But so far she has made a 100% on every test (math, spelling, reading, and religion). She is so eager to learn and spends more time on her homework and workbooks than she ever did last year. We are starting to read much harder books which she is loving the challenge. I'm so proud of how well she is doing and hopefully she will love school as much as her momma did!

Scary thought!

Last night I was watching the Dukes of Hazard movie (I used to love Dukes of Hazard growing up). While watching the movie all I could invision was Beau and Luke being Andrew and Joey. I could so see my boys doing all the crazy things those boys did but instead of driving the General Lee, my boys would probably be driving monster trucks. Oh boy am I ever going to be in trouble!