Ballerina girl!

For the past several weeks Adriana has been going to a fine arts camp on T/TH mornings at St. Peters Academy of dance. They learned several different dances along with other fun activities such as painting, coloring, and playing. At the end of the camp session they put on a little show for all the parents and grandparents. Adriana did awesome and remembered most of the dances she performed. Here is a few pictures of her dancing.

Here is a group picture of all the girls who were in her dance camp with her. The camp was for ages 3-5 years old. She really had a great time and made lots of new friends!

Playing with our cousins.

The other day the kids had fun playing with their cousins Gabe, Michael, and Angeline. So we had 6 kids 4 years old and under all having a great time! Here is some pictures of the fun!


This is Andrew having fun playin in the sprinklers.

What is the fun of having sprinklers around if you can't get a drink from it, especially on the really hot summer days.

Then its monkey see monkey do, and Gabe has to get a drink too!

After cooling off in the sprinklers, its always fun to ride our bicycles around. Here is Andrew and Michael riding their bikes and scooters.

Here is Joey joining in on the sprinkler fun.

Michael riding on Thomas.

Saving money!

I cannot believe how much everything is costing now adays. It seems like everything is going up except our paychecks. Well much like everyone else we are trying to come up with ways to save money. So I did some searches on the web to see different ways familys can save money. So I have come up with a few good ideas:
-do all my errand running on one day a week to help save on gas.
-do more free activities with the kids such as PAT events, playdates,
swimming in our neighborhood pool, etc.
-do more bulk shopping for items I use a lot.
-get rid of movie channels on our cable TV
-use less minutes on my cell phone.
I have also thought of a few ideas on my own. To save money on water we have decided to do family baths. Now we put all three of the kids in the tub together. See picture below:

Furniture can also be very expensive, especially childrens. Instead of buying new furniture for all the kids when decided they can all share the same furniture. Well Joey obviously can't sleep on a regular size bed yet for fears of him falling off it so we wanted to check and see if we could fit all the kids in the crib with him. Yep, perfect fit (see picture below). So now we have a few years before we have to upgrade their furniture!

Well now we have saved a lot of money, we just have to figure out what to do with it all!

Joey's standing up

My baby boy is already pulling himself up to standing. I can't believe how fast he is growing. I guess I will just have to keep holding him then he will never learn to walk......hehehe. Here is a couple of pictures of him standing up.

Emotional realizations

I never thought of myself as a very emotional person, especially with being in police work. I have seen the worst of the worst and it doesn't seem to phase me at all. I often wondered if I even had an emotional side......
Well having my babies has changed all that. I think I have cried more tears in the past 5 years than I have my whole life. Tears of sadness and happiness. I realized this today as Adriana had her last day of dance camp. All the parents and grandparents came into the studio to watch the girls put on a dance show of all the dances they learned in the past weeks of dance camp. I sat there watching my baby girl do all her dances and watched her face glow with the pure joy of putting on her "show". I felt the tear swelling up in my eyes. I quickly wiped them away hoping that no one could see them. I glanced around at all the other parents to see if they were as proud and teary eyed as I was.......nope, I'm the only pitiful one in there crying as I watched my baby perform. What a sap I have become with my kids. I even get teary eyed thinking of the day I have to send them off to school and I still have one more year. So I have concluded I am an emotional and sometimes it can be a little embarrassing. So for all you out there who joked and called me the ice queen, I can definitely say I do have an emotional side!
Oh and I will post pictures as soon as I can get them downloaded onto a computer.

Can't sleep alone!

Adriana and Andrew share the upstairs of the house with each other while our room and Joey's room is downstairs. They each have their own room up there yet do not seem to want to sleep in it. Instead they have decided they don't want to sleep alone and take turns sleeping in each others rooms. I think they made it one night sleeping alone, but thats probably it. Otherwise they have become best friends and can't sleep without each other. Here is a few pictures from different nights. Some of them are from Adriana's room and some from Andrew's room.

Even at naptime Joey and Adrew still sleep together in Mommy and Daddy's bed.

Sweet baby Joey

I can't believe how big my baby boy is getting. He is growing so fast its hard to keep up. He has now started crawling and trying to pull himself up to standing. I'm having a hard time excepting my now mobile baby, mostly because I know he will be my last one. He is also working on getting his two upper teeth in which is making for a very fussy baby. See picture below:)

Yet even through all the tears and pain, he is still my cute little boy. Here is a couple of cute little cowboy picture we got.

Peach and blueberry picking

On Monday we decided to head out to go peach picking, mainly because they were supposed to have blackberry picking that day also. However, by the time we got there (only 1 1/2 hours after opening) they were already done blackberry picking so we chose to blueberry pick again. We also met up with a friend, Christine, and her two kids, Gabriel and Lilly. The kids all had a great time.Here is Adriana picking a peach off the tree.

Adriana picking more peaches. We had 16 lbs of peaches all together between her and Andrew picking.

Here is Andrew showing me one of the peaches he had picked.

Here is Adriana picking blueberries.

Here is Andrew feeding Gabriel the blueberries he picked. I think he had more fun feeding Gabriel than he did actually picking.

Andrew picking blueberries.

Happy 50th wedding Anniversary Uncle Richie and Aunt Jean!!!

Sunday we celebrated my Aunt and Uncle's 50th Wedding Anniversary. Wow what an accomplishment to make it 50 years together. They had a nice celebration along with renewing their wedding vowes. Here is a few pictures of the event.

Uncle Richie and Aunt Jean renewing their wedding vowes.

The happy couple doing a dance for everyone!

This was a wedding gift they received from their kids and grandkids. They had a platter made up that says Happy Anniversary and had each of the grandkids make a flower on it. Then they had each of the guests sign it.


Here is the kids enjoying their cake. They had so much fun playing with all their cousins and dancing the night away!

Winners at the fair!!!

All I have to say is my horrible frog hunting night was well worth it. The kids frogs did great, even though the kids would not touch them. Andrew's age group went first and he scored third place and got a trophy. Adriana's age group went next and she scored second place and got a trophy. The kids were so excited about their trophy's and had to show them off to everyone. Unfortunately I missed the whole thing because I was in the next tent over doing the cutest baby contest with Joey. Joey scored a ribbon for honorable mention. Here is a picture of the kids with their trophy's. I didn't notice it was blurry until down loading the picture though.

Here is a picture of Joey and his ribbon he won. After the contest we went to see all the animals. Here is a picture of Andrew trying to scope out whats under the rabbits.

We met up with my friend Tiffany and her son Justin. Here is a picture of Justin and a baby cow. Adriana was too scared to go see them.

Here is Adriana pointing to one of her favorite bunnies.
Here is a picture of the kids going down the bounce house.


Here is Adriana riding one of the many rides there.

Here is a picture of Andrew on the fire truck. Luckily a couple of the fireman knew the kids Uncle Dan who is a captain at St. Charles City fire department so they got the royal treatment with these guys.

Other than battling the heat it was a really fun day at the County Fair. We just might have to make it an annual event, but I will be out getting frogs and turtles much before the night before.