It's My Birthday!

I'm now another year older & mayber wiser. It's been a great day around here. Joe only worked until 11:30 today so he was home to work on the bathroom project and allow me to go out to lunch with my mom.
Tonight we're going out to dinner while Grandpa watches the kids.


I took the kids to the Shedd Aquarium 2 weeks ago and captured a quick picture of them as they were running to the door.

We spent Thanksgiving in O'Fallon, MO with Josh & April Richards. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins.

It's a healthy baby...

BOY!
My ultrasound went very well this morning. The baby is healthy and actively growing. I'm now 20 weeks pregnant.

Autumn is lovely

We are having a fun and busy time this autumn. Yesterday we enjoyed a hayride at Randall Oaks with my MOPS group. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the hay and roasting marshmellows.



For Columbus Day we went to Discovery Center Museum and the weather was so lovely that the boys got to play outside at the water table. Grammy came along to help me out.






We went to our favorite fall festival at Tom's Farm Market to play when school was out.


My pregnancy continues to be an unpleasant experience. We are looking forward to the 20 week ultrasound on Friday. We hope to find out the baby's sex!
Look for the results here!

I'm back on blogger!

Yeah, Blogger finally let me sign on again!!

So let me update my blog on what's been going on for the last 2 months.

I'm pregnant & feeling icky. That pretty much sums up the summer & start of school.

We will be welcoming a new baby Richards in March of next year.

Oh yeah, we also did some fun stuff this summer. Here are some pictures:

Joe took Zane & Braden to their first Major League Baseball game- it was at the White Sox stadium and I felt too sick to go along.

We went camping in Wisconsin. I was sick most of the weekend.

We spent a lot of the summer at Crystal Lake beach building sand castles.

Zane did great in his swim lessons.

Zane went through Safety Town and graduated!

We went to Cancun, Mexico with Joe's parents at the end of July.

And Joe & Zane spent part of our Mexico vacation building sand castles at the beach.

My busy summer schedule

I've come up with quite a summer schedule to keep me & the boys busy. I'm taking the boys to Crystal Lake main beach for swim lessons so we will be there a lot. We are doing storytime at Crystal Lake library at 9:30 on Mondays. I also signed Zane up for Crystal Lake Safety Town 6/16-6/26 from 12-2. I think it will be a great program and it's so cheap.
Email me if you would like to join us. Here's what we are doing for the next month.

Friday, 6/13 morning at park or LTF pool (depends on weather), 1pm movie at Crystal Lake library

Monday, 6/23 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Tuesday, 6/24 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Wednesday, 6/25 10am free movie at Crystal Lake theatre, 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Thursday, 6/26 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Saturday 6/28 morning at park or pool or children's museum

Monday, 6/30 10-1 Wild West Town, 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Tuesday, 7/1 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Wednesday, 7/2 10 am movie (free) Everyone's Hero in Crystal Lake, 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Thursday, 7/3 2:30-4 at Crystal Lake main beach

Saturday, 7/5 morning at LTF pool and workout

7/6-7/9 The kids are gone to Grandma's and I'd love to see some adults!

We're Back

We're back from Italy and almost over the jet lag. Here's a link to few of our photos on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/14492106@N08/sets/72157605233037912/ We took over 450 pictures but I only posted 22.

Italy was a lot of fun and it was so nice to have a week away from the kids. We had my parents & Joe's mom share the resposibility of keeping them and it worked great.
I loved seeing the art I had only seen in books. The Sistine Chapel was amazing. We also loved the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome. I was our tour leader- my degree in Art History got a little workout for the first time in ages! I also got to practice my rusty Italian, I actually had 3 semesters of it in college but I'd forgotten most of it.

Tomorrow...

Tomorrow Joe & I leave for our romantic getaway to Italy! Our 10th anniversary is next week and we are spending it in Rome & Florence. The grandparents are on babysitting duty and the kids seem fine with us leaving. Pictures soon to follow...

We're Doing Great...

I have finally found the time & energy to add lots of pictures.

From December

We built GingerBread houses with Zane's Kindergarten class.

It was messy fun!


Braden turned 3 on December 22.

We had a quiet family party at home.

From January

We got plenty of snow & Joe took the boys sledding.

From February

We got over a foot of snow & had a snow day from school.

All the boys decided to build a snow fort.

Last weekend Joe took both of the boys skiing for the first time ever!

They both did very well.