I have a child in middle school!?

Shawn graduated Elementary school last May and I am now just getting around to posting any pictures, since this Summer was a blur and super busy with kids in all directions. I am super proud of Shawn though and I wanted to put that on here.He graduated from Coyote Ridge Elementary School, 5th grade in Mrs. Yenny's class. He has been to 5 different elementary schools, so needless to say we have moved around a lot.

Kindergarten-Tavelli Elementary (Fort Collins)

1st grade-Cottonwood Plains (Fort Collins)

2nd grade- Tozer Primary (Windsor)

3rd grade- Ravenwood Elementary (Olathe, KS)

4th grade- Same school 2 years in a row-yippee!!

5th grade- Coyote Ridge Elementary (Fort Collins)

One of Shawn's Favorite teachers -Mrs. Yenny

Congratulations Shawn you made it through Elementary school!!!

My youngest child is getting too big, I so glad to have such a good, fun and active young man for my son. I am so happy to be his mom. Good luck on your next adventure--Middle School.

Well he has been in Middle school for a month now and I can not believe how well he has adjusted and is doing fantastic. He goes to Lucille Erwin Middle School in Loveland, we are on the border of the school districts even though we live in Fort Collins. I am sure we will have lots more to say about his year as the year movees on. He has started playing the trupet in band, so that is new and interesting and he really likes it.

James at Preschool

James finished his first half year of Preschool, he has two more years to go, but he had a fun time at 'Fun Time Preschool' at the YAC in Fort Collins. Sometimes it was a challenge to get him to go into the classroom, but his teachers were amazing and he always had fun once he got in there and settled down.This was after his last day at Preschool, we went to Grandma Jo's and she practiced face painting on him, he wanted to be Spider man and he also got spiders on his arms.
Here is is James and his teacher Miss Lisa. She was a great teacher and James really liked her. He only wanted a picture of them making a funny face:)

Here is Lucas playing a bit of floor hockey, super cute, he kept going "ohhh" when he would get to the ball, and then he would go after it again.

James is very good at balancing, he had fun putting these things together and then walking on them back and forth.

There were a ton of balls and he of course practiced some soccer, great kick James!!

This is James' classroom, at the beginning of class they have play time and they had the animals out today

He didn't want to come into class today so I had to sit down with him and play for a little bit, he still didn't want me to leave so we went over to the animals.

It was pajama day and they all wore their PJ's, it was very cute to see them all dressed for bed, even their teachers Miss Amy and Miss Lisa.

Crazy hair day was the day before PJ day, so he wanted it spiked up like his bothers like to do and then sprayed with green and orange hair paint, we made stripes.

Say cheese!!!

Lucas turns 1:(

My baby is 1, which means he won't be much of a baby anymore, and that is very sad to me, I love the baby stage, I think I am pretty good at the baby thing, it is when they start talking back that it gets really hard for me. I will miss it a lot, but I know that there are many more amazing memories to come and I can't wait for what the future holds.We have not had a party for him yet, but here he is at the kids school at their field day, which was very cold and not so good weather, but the older boys seemed to enjoy their fun day and James enjoyed playing on the playground while I watched. Lucas explored on the ground for awhile, trying to eat the tire remnants from the playground.
This is how Lucas gets around, he has not yet started walking but he loves to walk on his knees, he will either walk on his knees or crawl really fast. He gets around pretty well, and he loves to climb on everything, I have a hard time keeping him off of chairs and small tables. He is really good on the stairs as well, only fallen down the big set once so far. I will keep my fingers crossed.

We went to Dairy Queen on his birthday and got him his own ice cream. We will have a cake this weekend, I will put more pictures of that messy, fun experience next week.

My very adorable 1 year old. I love you Lucas!!

He loves to make messes.

Mikey Turns 10!!

I can not believe that I have another child in double digits. I will soon have teenagers and that is pretty frightening. But for now I will enjoy my boys when they are younger and still want to talk to me:) Michael turned 10 on May 14th and got a PSP and a lot of fun games and some other fun stuff to play with. Yea for the PSP!!

Aunt Sydney got him a gift certificate to the movie theatre, that will be fun this Summer.

It is fun to have cousins around for all the fun events.

Cool guitar cake that Grandma Jo made

GRRRRR!

He is just so darn cute, and he loves to sit on his knees all the time and play.

(Sorry about the red eyes- need to fix that)

I just had to post this, because it just happened. Lucas has been growling a lot, and my mom and Chris had been playing with him about a week ago with a lion and growling at him. I guess we had all been doing it here and there since then with him. I have been on the computer while he is just playing by himself with the toys and he found the lion and started growling over in the corner while he was holding it. It was so darn cute I had to write about it. I guess I need to write more stuff like his, so I don't forget these amazing moments with my kids. James has been saying some pretty funny things lately, but of course I can't remember any of them, I will have to write it down next time he comes up with something funny and cute.

Family fun in Estes Park (Christmas)

My entire family met up in Estes Park, CO a couple of days before Christmas and a great time. We stayed in a few condos and got to hang out and enjoy the snow and each others company. Here is my cute niece, Cody and my cute sister, Lissa.

My baby seems to always be asleep and not as happy with people other than me so we have lots of cute pictures of Cody with aunts and uncles. Uncle Brett with baby Cody Uncle Eric(Lissa's husband) with baby Cody We went up to Rocky Mountain National Park and went sledding, it was a blast, the kids had a lot of fun, so did the adults:) This is me going down, this is pretty good for me, I hate to be cold, so I don't do this very often.

My cute mom and aunt Karen

Me and James, yippee!!

I had to drag my foot so that we didn't go too fast and run into people.

James and Evelyn building something in the snow

My Brother Jared and his cute family -- all girls

Aunt Lissa and James

Uncle Jared with Evelyn and Ruby and Uncle Blake(Ches's husband) with Cody

Mikey is flying down the hill

Here comes Shawn

This was too much fun, too bad we are missing Jake in this pile up.

Me and my husband--12 years and counting!

My whole family, it is so much fun to be older and have such great relationships with all my siblings and parents, what a blessing:)

Our beautiful family

Me and my crazy siblings, I love them all so much!!

My kids are getting older

Well little Lucas is 8 months old and so darn adorable. (I will have pictures up next week when we have our new computer) He is growing developmentally so well, but he is still such a little guy. I had him weighed a couple weeks ago and he is only 15 lbs, he is only in the 3rd percentile for weight. I guess it is nice to still have him so tiny though, it is fun to hold him and snuggle with him everyday. When they get big they don't want to do that anymore and I hate that. He is crawling everywhere, up the stairs and all over the house. His favorite thing is to go up the stairs, but I have been blocking it off and he hates it, he just trys and trys to go up and starts whining when he can't figure it out. He pulls up on everything, he hasn't been taking steps yet, so I don't see walking in the near future, but that is just fine by me, it will come soon enough.

James is growing up so fast, he is in a pre-preschool right now for an hour 3 days a week. I think he likes it. He has some days where he reluctant to go and last week he tried to escape, but the teachers are great and he has started talking about his friends more, which is great because he has a hard time making friends that are his own age, he would much rather play with adults. He is constantly asking me or whomever is near him if they will play with him. He says " Just for a minute" which is kind of sad, because that is what I say all the time when he asks because I have a million things to do or Lucas needs to eat or whatever. So I have been trying to make time just for him when Lucas goes down for his nap that we play something, and for longer that a minute:)

Michael is getting older and doing well in school. He got a guitar for Christmas, and he started guitar lessons this week. He said he liked his teacher and is excited to practice. I hope it lasts, he will be great if he sticks to it. He is also a big help with the younger two, he plays with James and and hold Lucas when I need to work on dinner or get something done. It doesn't always last that long, but at least he is usually willing to help, and I really appreciate that.

Shawn is almost 12 and that blows my mind. I guess not almost- not til October, but still it is this year and I can't believe it. He is doing great in school and of course is very into soccer. We have been doing indoor soccer and soccer training and now he is starting Futsal (another indoor soccer thing), and he starts his outdoor soccer practice for Arsenal today. I can't believe how much soccer is in my life. He is also a good helper when it comes to helping with the younger 2 boys. Him and Michael aren't too keen on helping me with chores a lot of the time, but hopefully we can work on that this year.

Well I guess that is the happenings right now for our family. I guess I can mention that Chris is playing the guitar all the time and loves it and continues to buy new guitars. He is getting pretty good for self teaching, he uses his phone to help him learn and it works pretty well. I am not doing a whole lot beside trying to keep up with 4 kids-boys! It is a lot of work and I am having a hard time adjusting to it, I always feel like I am behind and doing something wrong. I hope that I can figure it out and try to get some sort of balance soon. I love my family very much and an so blessed to have such wonderful, healthy boys.

Can't wait to get to put pictures up when we have a new computer next week.