April 2016

We started out our month of April with a visit from our dear friends - The Getty family.  The best part about their visits is the fact that we do nothing.  We simply hang out and enjoy each other's company with good food, drinks, and this time - POKER :)  The kids pick up right where they left off and it makes for an even more relaxing time for the adults.

Here are pictures from their visit:

April 5th is my dad's birthday and recently we started doing a balloon release on his birthday.  To my surprise, Pete had a birthday "cake" with 66 candles on it (for how old my dad would have been) and we sang "Happy Birthday" and the kids blew out his candles.  Then they released the balloons that had hand-written messages on them.  It was awfully cold this year and the balloons didn't go as high as they usually would and Grace pointed out "I don't think that's high enough to get to Grandpa in heaven..."  I said that it absolutely was high enough but then quickly escorted the kids inside because the balloons were slowly sinking in the cold air :)

Balloon Release/Dad Birthday Celebration Pictures:

Claire had her first dramatic role (aside from her every day life of an 8 year old girl) in "Suessical the Musical" - the kids did a great job and it was really cute.  She had one line and she nailed it! :)

Our least-athletic child tried aerial yoga with her Girl Scout troop - here she is in all her glory 

We did a 1-mile "Viking Victory Run" to help raise money for local city schools.  I stayed back with Grace and Jake and I did my best to run the whole thing - with Grace on my back for about 75% of the run.  I couldn't help but think about how much I used to weigh...

The girls dressed in their favorite book characters one day in April - Claire is from "The Descendants" and Grace is from "If you give a Mouse a Cupcake"

Grace had minor surgery at our house...Our silent Grace kept putting a bandaid on her toe and after about 6 days it fell off.  When I looked at it - it was a grossly infected ingrown toenail.  Pete thankfully knew a podiatrist through soccer who was kind enough to come over on a Saturday morning.  He was wonderful with her and after the lidocaine shot - she read me a book while he dug into her foot to fix the problem.  Today - its good as new :)

Jake and Claire started their soccer seasons - Grace is still in debates if she wants to try.  Jake is obsessed and Pete is one proud papa.  Jake scores multiple goals in the games and has quite the celebration after.  His first game, after each goal, he ran over to his sisters and Claire would lift him up in celebration.  The crowd just laughed as this was par for the course with each kid that scored.

We had a night out with Bob and Karen to help raise money for Karen's Dragonboat Team.  This is a group of women that have fought or are still fighting breast cancer.  We had a great time and came home with a couple of fun baskets.

One Saturday it decided to be summer so we got out our inflatable pool and bounce house and had a very relaxing and wonderful Sunday.

We are blessed with many wonderful neighbors - our nightly routine during good weather is to gather in somebody's backyard and the kids play and adults hang out.  We love it!

We ended the month of April with Claire's First Communion.  Many wonderful and supportive family and friends attended and we felt so blessed to have everyone around for her special day.

Claire with her wonderful Godparents

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa came for her big day

Grammy and Opa (above) and Grandma (below) also came to celebrate

My fantastic aunt and uncle came from Indianapolis and we were so grateful to have them visit

That pretty much sums up our April :)

Looking forward to what May brings and ending another school year!

March 2016

With my birthday in early March, we had some fun celebrating a couple of different times.  I had the honor of celebrating my birthday with Pete's sisters again this year and we had a wonderful family dinner followed by pictionary.  The kids had so much fun drawing pictures for everyone and were ecstatic when people guess what they were drawing.  The next evening, we went to a Japanese Steakhouse with some of our wonderful friends in the area.

We traveled to Indianapolis the second weekend in March and were fortunate enough to make it a little bit of a longer trip and got there Thursday evening.  We went to a charity event on Friday night and it was a lot of fun to get dressed up and have a night on the town with my siblings and their friends.  We went to see a movie with my mom and I had lunch with 5 of my old high school friends.  It was a great visit that unfortunately started with Grace puking and ended with Claire puking.  Thankfully, nobody else got sick!

My mom came to visit for a little over a week while our kids were off on Spring Break.  Pete and I took full advantage and went up to Cleveland for a one night getaway.  We had dinner at a nice steakhouse and played some poker at the casino.  During the week we had a great time going bowling, playing games, and celebrating Claire's birthday.

We celebrated Claire's birthday on a Thursday night with 20 friends at a local bounce house.  All the kids wore their pajamas and jumped around.  The next night we had a quiet dinner with family and friends.  We took Claire to breakfast on her actual birthday, decorated eggs, and put together a portable basketball hoop for the kids to play with.

Our Easter was wonderful.  We had a great time celebrating with my mom at lunch and then went over to Pete's family's house for the rest of the day and had a great time relaxing and enjoying the wonderful weather.

Claire started out March getting her expander placed in her mouth.  I have had to take a "key" and crank the expander wider and wider 28 times.  Tonight was our very last crank and I am so proud about how well she did with the whole process.  Claire continues to prepare for her 1st Communion in late April and March had 3 activities in addition to her Sunday school.  She is getting really excited.  She started her girls basketball league at the YMCA and they are undefeated.  She has a really great time with basketball and has improved tremendously.  We absolutely love to watch her play.

Grace has been taking piano lessons every week.  Getting her to practice can be a challenge, but she has no problem putting on a before-bed-concert for us and we all just sit on her bed while she plays.  She is reluctantly in swim lessons and we continue to tell her that if she wants to swim without her floats this summer, she has to stay in swimming lessons.  That usually does the trick.  She loves school and reading and has completed the 1st grade sight words.

Jake started out the month with a speech evaluation and the group of professionals all feel like his pronunciations of "K" and "G" will come with encouragement and they all felt that he was ready for kindergarten.  After talking about it, Pete and I decided to start Jake in kindergarten this upcoming fall.  He is so very excited and we are so proud of him.

Here are pictures from our month of March:

Jake at his speech evaluation

Kim, Kristen and I's family birthday celebration

Grace got invited to a fancy birthday party for one of her friends - they got their hair, makeup, and nails done and walked a fake runway.  It was adorable!

Birthday celebration at the Japanese Steakhouse

Movie time with Grandma!

Fancy night out with these wonderful siblings

Date night in Cleveland

Pete and the kids took down the swingset and made big plans to build a bigger one in the fall

We celebrated the anniversary of my dad's passing on March 21st.  Sometimes its hard to believe its been 5 years and this was the first year I was able to be with my mom on this day.  It will always be a hard day for me, but we had a good time celebrating his life with some of his favorite foods - corn dogs, onion rings, and dilly bars!

Claire at her pajama bounce house party

Claire's family dinner birthday celebration

Claire's birthday breakfast

Decorating Easter eggs

Basketball from Keith and Debbie!

Basketball hoop for the kids

The first of many kids vs. parents baseball games - the kids won 10-8

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt

Easter morning

 Fresh haircuts for all!

We went to a Cleveland Cavaliers game on March 31st with Pete's coworkers in his company's suite - it was my first Cavaliers game and we had a great time!