Photos....in no particular order.....

I put this picture first b/c I LOVE IT - I absolutely 100% LOVE IT!



Patrick is a sexy BEAST in his swim attire!

Wrapped up after swimming....

Cute as can be in my swimsuit!

Swimming with Daddy!

Playing around.....

All the kids on the slide.....

SO SCARED!!!

Kiegan on one of the rides at the indoor amusement park.

Kiegan & Patrick playing video games.

This was Grandpa's "reading material" at Grand Bear......

These home-made PJ's (just the onesie is home-made) that Maddie is wearing were designed especially with Aunt Tracy and Uncle Jason in mind (BOO CARDINALS!)

The back: GO CUBS

The front: Cardinals Stink

Lexi & Maddie sleeping on the couch.....

Lexi at Grand Bear being a goofball!

After a hard day's swim.....

Daddy was pooped too.....

My swimsuit - so cute! Although Mommy sorta had to SQUEEEEEZE me into it....

Kiegan at Grand Bear.....

Angel, Patrick and Tyler enjoying a swim!

Lexi swimming.....

This is what we woke up to Sunday morning. It was a fun drive home!

My first camping trip!

The daycare clan was learning about blueberries during March so I made my very first pie - blueberry! It tasted better than it looks - I promise. I decided not to make a top crust b/c making crust is NO FUN!

This one is funny - the little girl to the right is the daughter of a couple that we are friends with and I take care of her a few days a week while her mom & dad work. There is only 6 weeks difference between the two, but a BIG size difference!!

Kiegan & Maddie swinging!

Time to catch up.....

So I've been bad about posting again - time to catch everyone up!

We did go camping the weekend before Easter. I think it'll be much more fun when the weather cooperates. Maddie & I spent A LOT of time inside the camper. She was getting over cold #2 (she's now on cold #3) and I didn't want to take the chance of having her outside in the cold and then her getting even sicker. The guys spent most of the weekend freezing at the race track. In fact, Friday night they came back to the campground before it was over with because they were so cold! Kiegan was lucky and got to hang out with us girls (me, Maddie, Nicole and Ashleigh). We played a lot of cards and Nicole was even able to get a fire going so some marshmallows could be roasted. We woke up Sunday morning and it was pouring rain! So when it let up a bit, we packed everything up and came home.

Easter weekend was great! Maddie was finally over her cold, but by the end of the day she was sneezing and coughing again. Of course because she's growing so much - she no longer fit into the cute Easter outfit I had that even had a fuzzy bunny tail on her fanny. But Lord knows she had plenty of other outfits to pick from! The food was awesome and I think I just kept snacking and snacking on stuff as I would walk by. After everyone was done eating, the Easter bags were all hidden outside around the yard for the kids to find. They came home with enough candy to re-fill our candy drawer and Maddie came home with some SUPER cute clothes including some little skorts that Travis says are "too short". :o) Now if the weather would just cooperate and stay warm enough for her to wear her cute clothes!

This past weekend we had a night out with friends to celebrate a birthday. Kiegan & Maddie stayed with Mamaw while we went with a group of about 12-14 people to Bloomington for dinner at Alexander's. Travis & I had never been there before, but we loved it! Afterwards, we went to Donnie B.'s Funny Bone Comedy Club and we laughed till it hurt. We had the best time! We got to my mom's about 10:15 or so to pick up Maddie (Daddy says she can't spend the night anywhere for at least a couple of years) and home we went! It was nice to have a kid-free night with our friends.

Kiegan starts baseball this week! His first practice is suppose to be tonight at 5:30, but we'll see if the weather holds out or not. I hope it does because he is VERY excited! This coming weekend will be busy as usual. Friday night is the Drawdown Dinner & Dance for St. Mary's at The Elk's Club. Cross your fingers that we win the big cash prize!! I'm also in the process of tagging stuff for a garage sale that our neighbors, Todd & Jen, are having. Maybe we'll sell some stuff and have some extra cash! A lot of my Saturday will probably be spent at their house helping out. Sunday I'm having a 31 Party at the house - they have a lot of cute totes & bags & other stuff! On top of all of this, I'm determined to Spring clean our house this year. It will probably take me ALL of Spring to get it done, but I've got a good start. I've already finished one bathroom, the office and the kitchen. I love a clean house and old country/farm houses are so hard to keep clean!!

Yesterday was our 1-year anniversary! We'll see how many more years I can put up with this guy..... :o) We went out for lunch (with Maddie of course) to Bernardi's - so good!! It was also Lexi's birthday and Joanne's birthday so we had dinner at John & Joanne's house - steaks, cheesy potatoes, pasta salad, baked beans, corn, rolls - the food list goes on and on! And for dessert Joanne made a Dump Cake and Brownies with hot fudge, hot caramel, ice cream and nuts. I've never had so much to eat in one weekend!! We gave Joanne a photo album that was put together from Shutterfly.com - she loved it!! Lexi is rolling in the dough - she received lots of cash which she loved. She also got some earrings, a digital makeover dealio and an Easy Bake Oven. I baked up some cookies (dough from a tub - not homemade) for her to take to school today. I think this coming weekend, we might let her choose a friend to take bowling or to a movie or something like that (as if we don't have enough going on!).

I think I've caught everyone up now - we'll see when my next post happens. :o) I've got some pics of Grand Bear Lodge and other random photos to post - I'll stick them in a seperate post.

Grand Bear Lodge

What a FUN weekend we had!! We left Friday evening after all the daycare kids were gone - the drive was only about an hour and a half. The boys were busy playing their Nintendo DS's and Lexi was starting to get one of her headaches which worried us because whenever she gets one of those she has to throw up to make it feel better and we didn't really want that stench in the van! She was able to keep it all in until we made it to the cabin, but once we got the van parked she flew out of it and immediately went into the cabin to find the bathroom. The original dinner plan was BBQ, but with it being Friday and us being a Catholic family - our plans changed to tuna salad, grilled cheese sandwiches and mac 'n' cheese! After dinner, Tracy & Joanne took the kids up to the pool that first night for a bit while the rest of us stayed back. Lexi also didn't go that first night - she was feeling better, but not 100%. Joanne ended up coming back early with Patrick & Tyler. Patrick stayed with us during his Spring Break and a couple of days before we left he had not been feeling well and coughing really bad. I guess he started to feel bad again so Grandma brought him back and he took some medicine and went to bed with Grandpa. By the next morning he was feeling much better!!



Saturday morning started out with a yummy breakfast of pancakes, biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs. It was so good! Later on in the day we all got ready to go back to the indoor waterpark. This was going to be Maddie's first swim!! I had to try her swimsuit on her before we left because the one that I bought was a 3-6 months suit and she's been wearing 6-month clothes for awhile now. It fit, but barely! Travis & I took Maddie into the pool with us - the water was MUCH colder than I thought it would be so I was afraid she would get upset, but she didn't! We kept her in the pool for a decent amount of time and when we finally took her out and I wrapped her up in towels, she fell asleep in minutes. Not too much longer after she fell asleep, we took the kids back to the cabin for lunch. After eating, Travis & Maddie went back upstairs for a nap and Maddie slept for about 4 more hours so swimming must have really tuckered her out! In the meantime, some of us took the kids to the indoor amusement park to ride the rides and then over to the waterpark to play some video games. They all walked away with some of the cheapest little prizes that were just awesome to all of them. :o) Later on that evening, Travis, Tracy & I took the kids back over to the pool to swim. I started to notice that Maddie was starting to cough again - I was just hoping that it wouldn't turn into what it did the last time!



Sunday morning we woke up to probably 5 inches of SNOW! Of course this got Travis going and we took our showers, packed up and started to head back home in case he got called out to plow. We didn't have near as much snow here at home, but he still got called out around 11:00 or so to get the slush off the roads. So Sunday was spent doing laundry and getting the house ready for Monday morning! That night Maddie started running a fever - 99.8. By Monday it was gone, but she does have a cough and yucky nose so we're back on breathing treatments again. The cold never seems to bother her - she sits with Travis in the recliner and just cracks up laughing at him all the time! She's so funny....The kids had a GREAT weekend though and wished that they could live there! :o)



I've got a short work week - I'm closed all day Friday to take Lexi to a skin specialist in Blm. to see what we can do about the warts on her feet. Then we're leaving Friday to go camping at Dawson Lake for the weekend. The guys will be at the racetrack by the time Maddie, Kiegan and I get there. This will be Maddie's first camping trip - I'm sure it'll be fine. She's such an easy baby!