Nothing Exciting

Justin and Jacob are back in school....they seem to be loving it so far. This friday they both go to Wiard's Apple Orchard. They are pretty excited!!

Joey and Madison enjoy their afternoons without their big brother's around. They get to take a peaceful nap with no interruptions (ha ha)!!!

We are still working on getting Joey to talk, and Madison is just growing up waaaayyy too fast. She is pulling herself up on everything, she has recently started walking along the coffee table. She loves watching her brothers play, and we are still waiting on her first two teeth to come in. Josh and I are convinced they are never coming in.

Josh has been working a lot. Hurricane Ike brought lots of rain and wind which translates to lots of work for Josh. My work has also been very busy due to the weather, but we are just settling down to normal work loads again.

September has gone by way too fast. I know the rest of this year is going to fly by. October I am supposed to be going to Las Vegas, and the New Kids on the Block concert which I am super excited about. We hope to start Justin and Jacob in swimming lessons! November is Madison's birthday and of course Thanksgiving. I have to work weekends in November, so that won't be too much fun, but we will make the most of it!!! I have to work Thanksgiving too! :(

Then before we know it, we are looking at christmas time. I can remember as a kid thinking it took forever for christmas to come again......summer break felt like FOREVER......now I find myself saying, wait, stop, hold on. I need another few hours in this day!!! And wait, hold on, my daughter was just born yesterday only to realize she is 10 months old now!!! It's absolutely insane.

Ill be sure to post pictures of the apple orchard....the boys are super excited because Granny Shupe is taking them on their field trip.

Summer Fun

The kids enjoying the pool. Madison was napping at the time, so I did not get a picture of her in the pool in her cute little bathing suit.....so stay tuned!!! Enjoy!

Craziness

Things have been a bit crazy, and haven't had a lot of time to post. Here is what we have been up to if anyone is interested.......

Justin and Jacob finished their last day of preschool last week Thursday. They each had a program and sang some songs to show what they have learned over the course of the year. Jacob's program was first, and of course listening to 3 year olds sing "eensy weensy spider" brings nothing but laughter and awww's from the crowd. Jacob did really well singing and actually faced forward for the entire program. He even managed to get the entire crowd to laugh, by announcing "all done, time to go" after they finished their last song!!! Justin's program was the same day in the afternoon. He also did very well, and showed off all that they had learned, and announced their soon to be journey to Kindergarten. The each got a certificate and walked over a bridge as they received their certificate. I have video footage, but I'm not sure how to get it on here, I'll keep working on it.

Justin is all signed up for t-ball which starts on June 24th. He is super excited and has been practicing since we signed up. He makes his brothers run after the balls for him, and they seem to willingly participate.

Jacob is glad to be done with school. He loves playing outside and going for walks. They went swimming over the holiday weekend and amazed us with their swimming skills. We have never gone for swimming lessons and they are doing great. Jacob loves jumping off the side and going under water.

Joseph is doing well, we are about a month away from his 2nd birthday, its hard to believe. He loves trying to keep up with his brothers, steal Madison's binky, and finds plenty of trouble to keep us all busy. Justin and Jake do a good job of letting us know what he is getting into, so that is helpful, otherwise we might be minus one of our boys.

Madison is also doing well, she goes for her 6 month check up on Monday. She is sitting up great, eating lots of new veggies and fruits and of course rice cereal. She loves to bounce in her jump-a-roo, and watch her big brothers. She has quite a little temper if she doesnt get her way.

We are doing good too, a little tired, but managing. We are getting ready to celebrate our 6 year anniversary on June 1st, we might break away for a nice, quiet, peaceful meal and maybe a movie, we will see. We have been working on putting together a garage sale this weekend to get rid of some of our stuff. For only being out of our parents houses for 6 years, we sure seem to have built quite a collection of stuff. We also have Kim's wedding coming up which is keeping us busy as well.

We have been going crazy with Detroit sports right now.....Wings are doing awesome, except for their loss tonight, but that's ok, we will let this one slide. Pistons are hanging on and trying to advance in their series. How rude of the NHL to plan the playoff series so that they are on the same night as the pistons......thank god for DVR's because without it, we would be running room to room trying to keep up with both games at the same time. We are extremely frustrated wiht our tigers, they keep us guessing day-to-day. They have got to be the only team to score 19 runs one game, then turn around and score 0 runs, and walk in the winning run for the other team........ahhhhhhhh!!!! Anyways, we keep watching and wishing for our "tri-fecta" as Josh calls it.......its happened a couple of times when the Wings, Pistons, and Tigers all win on the same night.......who could ask for anything more?????

Happy Mother's Day

Before I was a Mom,
I never tripped over toys
or forgot words to a lullaby.
I didn't worry whether or not
my plants were poisonous.
I never thought about immunizations.

Before I was a Mom,
I had never been puked on.
Pooped on.Chewed on.Peed on.
I had complete control of my mind
and my thoughts. I slept all night.

Before I was a Mom,
I never held down a screaming child
so doctors could do tests. Or give shots.
I never looked into teary eyes and cried.
I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin.
I never sat up late hours at night
watching a baby sleep.

Before I was a Mom,
I never held a sleeping baby just because
I didn't want to put her down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces
when I couldn't stop the hurt.
I never knew that something so small
could affect my life so much.
I never knew that I could love someone so much.
I never knew I would love being a Mom.

Before I was a Mom,
I didn't know the feeling of
having my heart outside my body.
I didn't know how special it could feel
to feed a hungry baby.
I didn't know that bond
between a mother and her child.
I didn't know that something so small
could make me feel so important and happy.

Before I was a Mom,
I had never gotten up in the middle of the night
every 10 minutes to make sure all was okay.
I had never known the warmth,
the joy, the love, the heartache, the wonderment
or the satisfaction of being a Mom.
I didn't know I was capable of feeling so much,
before I was a Mom.

The Kids!!!!

Josh's Birthday Party

We celebrated Josh's birthday at home on Thursday. We had a little Mexican Fiesta and then a wonderful ice cream cake from Coldstone. Friends and family joined us to make the day special.

Family Fun

It's funny how big families can become so quickly. When I was growing up I always had a lot of cousins, especially on my dad's side. My Dad has 3 brothers and a Sister, and between them, they had 12 kids. We were all fairly close, and holidays and birthdays were always lots of fun.

So years later, all the cousins are now starting to have families, and so far out of the 12 cousins, 5 of us have kids of our own. Those 5 families so far have produced 14 more children. So, you can imagine what the house was like having all the kids and adults together.

On Saturday we had 12 of the grandkids together ranging from the oldest at 12 to the youngest at 4 months. It was a little wild, but of course tons of fun to see the family together. Here are a couple pictures from the day.

This is Emma, Sydney, Jake and Madison


Here is Madison and Brady hanging out....notice they are holding hands, how sweet. Brady is about a month older than Madison.

Here is a group picture of all the kids. Alyssa, Emma, Sydney, Brianna, Harley, Brian, Max, Justin, Jacob, Joey, Brady, and Madison. Notice our son who is not cooperating for the picture...

Nothing was broken, and only a couple minor fights for the whole day. I was quite impressed.

Easter Eggs

Nothing like waiting until the last minute to get things done. Josh and I are famous for doing that to ourselves. So here we are Saturday night dying easter eggs.

It's kind of funny, but when you have a large family, sometimes the simplest tasks can seem daunting and truly test your patience. As you may have read in our Marshmallow Drop post, things aren't always picture perfect.

Daddy was preparing all the dye for the kids, and I was getting the kids ready and all set up at the kitchen table. I asked Josh to hand me a towel and in the split second that Josh reached for the towel, we had yellow easter egg dye everywhere. Sweet Joey had decided to grab the cup and dump it on himself and the kitchen floor. Needless to say, we did not have any yellow easter eggs. However, Joey's belly is still yellow.....

Please take notice of the yellow dye on Joey's shirt.

Marshmallow Drop

Good Friday was the annual Marshmallow Drop at Elizabeth Park. We debated taking the kids since it was kind of cold, and we knew it would be muddy. After some convincing, we decided to just take them. We rushed all four kids out the door to be there for the drop at 9am.

We probably should have stayed home......

First: We couldn't find parking. We got the first spot we could find, and literally ran with two kids who can pretty much fight for themselves, Joey who daddy was holding. Always fun running with an extra 30lbs. And then there is me, Madison and the stroller. Our stroller is not exactly made for muddy grounds.

But ok, we made it in time for the drop.....yeah!!!

Then came the drop.....

Wouldn't you know, we had kids run every which way......needless to say Jake was getting the marshmallows, Justin was crying, and Joey managed to stay with daddy. Madison and I were still getting cleaned off from the mud.

The kids got their marshmallows and we headed for our prize. Justin was quite thrilled with his coloring book and crayons. Jake however, wanted to keep the marshmallow, he didn't want the coloring book......this is pretty much where it really went downhill.

Jacob cried for a while over not getting to keep the marshmallow, and as we were making our hike back to the car, Justin decided he needed to join in on the tears. He saw an ice cream stand that was clearly boarded up for the winter. Justin didn't seem to care and insisted that he wanted an ice cream. So all the way back to the car we had one child screaming for ice cream, the other child screaming for a marshmallow. Oh fun times!!!

No, its not over yet......

So we get back to the car, get everyone loaded, and Josh and I look at each other and say...."We should have just stayed home"......well as we were pulling away and ready to head home.....our drama continues.

Apparently the soft muddy grounds had got the best of everyone.....he we are stuck in traffic behind hundreds of other people trying to get out of the 'one way in, one way out' park.......and cars everywhere are stuck in the mud. We just happened to be the lucky ones behind the ONE tow truck pulling them all out of the mud. So an hour later, we finally exit the park.

We figure we will stop on the way home and get McDonald's......also a nightmare. Took us 25 minutes to get our pancakes, so much for fast food......

All in all, it wasnt the best experience ever, but memories are forever!!!! Enjoy the pictures!!!

Autorama

Josh took Justin and Jacob to their first autorama today. The boys had lots of fun hanging out and doing their "boy" thing!! Josh was very excited to show the boys the City of Detroit. They rode the people mover, then went to Cobo Hall and saw all the cool cars at the Autorama.

Their first ride on the Detroit People Mover!

Jacob's favorite transformer - Bumblebee!!!

The boy's loved Lightning McQueen.......

Check out them dub's.....30 inch rims

Happy Valentines Day!!!!

Happy Valentines Day!!!!!

Pottery

Justin and Jacob got to do pottery for their preschool field trip in February. The boys each got to decorate a ceramic tile. They first got to choose 6 different colors of paint, then they were able to paint their own tiles. Once the paintings are finished they were glazed, fired, and returned to the kids as a Valentines gift for their parents.

Below are some pictures from the pottery store. I will be sure to add the finished products once they are returned to us. The boys just have so much fun at preschool. Ms. Jones is a wonderful teacher and works so well with the kids.

Sesame Street Live

So this morning, Josh and I took Justin and Jacob to the Fox Theatre to see Sesame Street Live. The play was "Elmo Makes Music".....The story was about Jenny, a Music Teacher and she is moving to Sesame Street. Her truck full of instruments didn't make it, so the Sesame Street gang pull together and give Jenny a big music show with homemade instruments. Just as they finish their big show, Jenny's truck arrives with all of her favorite musical instruments.

Here are some pictures from the show.