Baby Joey's 2nd birthday party!

This past Sat. we finally had Joey's 2nd birthday party. With having two birthday's in December it ends up being a lot so we decided to split them up this year and have Joey's in Jan. We also shared the birthday party with Joey's girlfriend (hehe) Reece who is just 6 days younger than Joey. These two kids are so cute together. When I told Joey he would have his birthday party with Reece he just kept saying "I kiss Reece", it was too cute. Apparently Reece was saying the same thing "I kiss Joey"! We really need to keep our eyes on these two!!!
I took a ton of pictures at the party so I will do my best to post just a few of them.
Here is a picture of the birthday kids playing together. Amazingly I didn't get very many pictures of these two as I did the big kids, shame on mommy!

I have a bunch of pictures of Andrew on here but just because his facial expressions were cracking me up!

Here is Adriana going down one of the slides.

My niece, Angeline, going down the slide.

My nephew Mikey!

My nephew Gabe!

Riley!

The birthday kids at it again! Just can't keep these two away from each other!

Some more of Andrew's funny faces!


Audrey!

I just love seeing all the big smiles on all the kids faces!
Here is the sign going into the party room!

The kids all waiting for the cake.

Here is Joey's cake!

And Reece's cake!

Joey while we were singing Happy Birthday to him!

Joey blowing out his candle!

I didn't realize until now that I didn't get any pictures of Reece and her cake :( I bet her mommy got lots of pictures though! It was a great time and all the kids had a blast. Happy 2nd Birthday Joey! I hope you had a great birthday big boy!

Team pink!

My little brother and sister in law had their ultra sound today and it looks like I'm getting another niece! Way to go team pink! So now I'm tied up with 3 nephews and 3 nieces! I can't wait to meet the baby girl in June!

All boy!

So my little boy loves sports, not just any particular sport but ALL sports! I must say he is definitely all boy. So his latest sport he is trying is hockey. My nephew plays on the St. Peters team and of course has lots of gear to share with us. So my sister gave us all of his old gear for Andrew to try out since I don't have the money to spend on it. Well at the Rec Plex they won't let you play hockey until you're 5 years old so I told Andrew we would let him go to the open skate times and wear all his hockey gear to practice so he will be really good by the time he can play. He was very excited about this and couldn't wait to go skate. So I took the kids today since Adriana didn't have school and the kids were getting cabin fever.
So here is Andrew in all his gear at open skate. His helmet is still a little big so he has to lift his head up to see out but he was sooooo excited and actually skated the best he ever has!

End of 1st semester!

Adriana is at the end of her first semester in school and received her report card today. I'm happy to report that Adriana is a straight S student! OK so you don't really get grades in kindergarten.....you get s for satisfactory progress, e for emerging skills, or ni for needs improvement. Not to exciting but she does do everything she is supposed to at this age and is doing wonderful! We are very proud of her and hope she can continue doing as wonderful as she is in school!

My silly kids!

I have a rule in my house that we can not say the words stupid or hate. So Andrew and Adriana have started tattling on each other and will tell me that so and so said the s or h word. Well they know they will get in trouble if I hear them say it so now they walk around and say......you're the s word........no, you're the s word. Not sure I'm getting my point across to them. Then onto the word hate. I tell the kids they can only say the word hate if they are talking about the devil. So now Andrew walks around the house saying "I hate the devil, I hate the devil, I hate..hate...hate...hate the devil". As much as I like hearing that he hates the devil, I know he is only saying over and over so he can say the word hate. I think I am slowly loosing the battle!

Happy New Year!

This year I decided to change my New Year's resolution. Instead of having one or two resolutions, I would do 25! So after much thought on what I would like to change over the next year, here are my 25!
1. Lose 15 lbs, 10 of which by summer
2. Run the St. Louis half marathon in under 2 1/2 hours.
3. Oraganize the kids playroom
4. Put an extra $5000 into savings on top of our normal amount.
5. Double what we put into our Roth IRA
6. Attend Church every Sunday
7. Become more frugal with our money
8. Finish making over Adriana's room (she wants her room like Kit's from American Girl books)
9. Redo Andrew's room and put a big bed in his room (he is still in a toddler bed)
10. Redo Joey's room
11. Organize the storage room
12. Lose 50lbs of clutter from the house
13. Spend more time with my friends
14. Teach Andrew to swim this summer
15. Help family to all start eating healthier
16. Plant a garden with the kids this summer
17. Finish the landscaping
18. Get kids to eat more vegetables
19. Stain fence, deck, and swingset by summer
20. Get kids more involved with charities
21. Volunteer more at Church
22. Give up sweets again for Lent
23. Have more date nights with my husband
24. Learn how to use my sewing machine and set up an area for it
25. Spend more one on one time with each of the kids
So there it is, my New Year's resolution! I'm going to look back at it in July and see how much I accomplished then again next New Year's.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's and I can't wait to see what the new year will bring to us!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I've been trying to hold out on a big snow to play in, but in St. Louis we just don't get many of those so I finally decided to get my workout in today and get the kids all bundled up to go outside to play. Of course I started with the older two and sent them outside to play then finally I got Joey all ready after already working up a major sweat! So the kids all decided they wanted me to pull them around on the sleigh for a bit.

So after building up another sweat, I decided to take a break and let the kids play themselves. Sunny wanted to join in on the action and thought it was great fun to try to get the kids gloves off their hands.

So after I scolded her she decided to find something else to do.

The boys decided that it might be fun to sled down the hill on their bellies instead of on the sleigh, yeah.......that didn't really work out!

Ahhhhh! Sunny finally got Andrew's glove and decided to run around the yard and tease him for awhile!

Now, of course the last one out is ready to be the first one in. So Joey and I went inside to make some yummy hot chocolate for everyone........you know the good kind with lots of chocolate and whipped cream!

Joey enjoying his hot chocolate before the other two come in.

Now, the older two are finally ready to come in after playing outside for quite awhile. I hope the hot chocolate is still warm.......hum, no complaints from them.

Now to let all the snow gear dry so we can do this all again soon!

City Museum!

Last night we got to spend the evening at the City Museum for an awesome price thanks to the kids Credit Union Bank. They rented the place out for all the bank members so it wasn't crowded and we also got a pizza buffet dinner included. This was only my second time at the City Museum and the last time we went Adriana was only 2 years old so it was so much more fun now that the kids are all older. The kids had an absolute blast! I took over 200 pictures but I won't bore you with all of them. Here is a few pictures of the evening. Also, we could get up to 10 tickets so we took my sister, Kaitlyn, her friend Paige, Jacob, and MawMaw along with us. We will definitely be doing this again next year if they have it again!

























The kids were completely exhausted by the time we left there and they were all passed out on the way home!