Last Day of School 2012

Madison and Noah were pretty willing to take a picture for me yesterday and I'm sure it may have had something to do with the fact that it was their last day of school before summer break. And now I have a 6th grader, 3rd grader and incoming Kindergartner next school year!

It was a great day for the last day of school as well. As always, I tend to wait until the very last moment to get teacher gifts done. Thanks to Pinterest, I was able to skim through friends' teacher gift ideas they had pinned and get some great ideas to steal. Then I had the kids choose what they wanted to do for them and thankfully they chose the same thing :)

The above gift went to their main teachers. A 6-pack of A&W Root Beer, a bag of chocolates held in the top center and create the tag to tie on. Madison also had me make this popcorn stuff I made for them at Valentine's Day because she said her teachers loved it.

I loved the Starburst idea. All I had to buy was those awesome hard plastic cups w/a straw in them (holds cold or hot liquids) and fill it with Starbursts. Then make the tag and tie around the cup. We gave this to the school administrative assistant and teacher assistant for Noah's class. Isn't that cute!

I hope all the teachers/helpers enjoyed their gifts!

According to tradition, we went out for ice-cream. Sean met us at Dairy Queen to have lunch and/or ice-cream. What a great way to end the school year before break!

Mason's 3rd Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday to Mason!!! Yesterday, anyway. Even though the day wasn't completely focused on Mason, we had lots of fun!

We started by going to Anderson Park to set up for Park Day for Noah's second grade class. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours and then ran a few errands. After a couple hours at home, we headed back to the school to pick up kids and we stuck around for Noah's last cub scout meeting. They played kickball and I took the smaller ones to play at the school park for about an hour. We'll just say he was not deprived of park time today :)

Once we finished there, we met Sean at Toys R Us and had Mason look for a birthday gift. A new Fisher Price kids basketball hoop came home with us along with a basketball "Mason" size!

Since I didn't get around to making a cake, we picked one up from the store and wrote on it with our own icing gels. I was bummed that I didn't get a Cars cake done for him, but as soon as I came home with the cake, he was so excited.

A couple cute things from Mason today:

1. Every time I would say happy birthday to Mason, he would respond back to me or any of us with "Happy birthday." So cute!

2. When asking Mason how old he is now, he would say one. I try to tell him that he's three. He says back as he counts on his fingers, "I'm one - two - three - one."

Mason loves the frosting the most!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Mason! We'll celebrate more with you this weekend!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day turned out to be a pretty good day! Before leaving for church, the kids had a book sitting out that they had made me for Mother's Day. Very sweet! We headed to mass and Sean was lector for the 9 a.m. service. We didn't leave quick enough afterwards so the kids snuck down to coffee and donuts before we headed out to brunch.

Me and my kiddos!

As soon as we got back, I drove down to Tipton Park so I could take the trails for a long run. It felt great! We told the kids if it was nice, we'd head to the track so Madison could practice some pole vault drills and we could do some mini races. Noah's been wanting to take me on in the 100 meter dash for awhile so today was the day. My legs were sure feeling it half way through after running 8.74 miles earlier. No worries, I still took him down :)

The younger three got to jump around on the pole vault pit a little, play in the sand by the long jump and compete in short races on the track. Not really sure what happened to my oldest daughter, Madison, but she wanted (that's right, you heard me - she WANTED) to run an 800. If you don't know Madison, she loves high jump and wants to be like her dad and do the pole vault, but she's not a fan of running.

Madison hasn't wanted to run much more than a 100 at track meets and now she wants to do an 800 and a 400 at the 5th grade meet this week. She is definitely not the quickest in the bunch, but I'm so proud to see her actually starting to want to do more running on her own and get a little excited about it.

Anyway, so off she went running an 800 on her own and had me rattle off splits to her. Very strange! Once she finished, she decided she wanted to race Sean in a 100 before we left. So off they went to race and Noah joined the fun as well. What an awesome afternoon!

To end off the day, we ate dinner and the kids showed me the cake they made me. Well, Madison made the cake and the rest of the kids helped her decorate it. They are amazing kids!

Noah's First Communion

What an amazing, special day! Noah made his First Communion last weekend and we had such a wonderful time with family. Since mass was on a Sunday afternoon and most of my family is over six hours away, we decided to celebrate on the Saturday night before. It was great because all of my family was able to make it, except one sister who couldn't get out of work (and not for lack of not wanting to).

It was a huge blessing that my mom had taken the train into Galesburg on Wednesday for us to pick her up. Between the busyness of track and getting sick, I hadn't gotten much, if anything, done with the house. She was my savior and did so much to help me have things ready for when the rest of the family arrived!

The kids had a blast playing with their cousins all Saturday afternoon/evening. Then on Sunday morning we were able to see off the two families that weren't able to stay. Most of the morning we were able to relax and then I took Noah in early to church and the rest of them came to meet us a little later. 

Grabbed a quick shot before going into the parish hall.

Receiving his First Holy Communion. Almost made me cry!

Noah with Monsignor Powell after mass.

Noah & Grandma Helen

Noah & his Godmother, Jackie

And to finish things off, Noah with me and Sean!

Even though I was sick when everyone came, I can't even express how great a weekend it was. It's so wonderful having so much support and love from my family and having them here to celebrate such a beautiful, important event in our child's life! Thanks and we love all of you so much!!!