Whew!

What a week! We made it, though!

Last Sunday, Father's Day, we were up early to take Tony and Karyn (my sister) to the airport for their trip to Washington DC with some of Tony's students. It also happened to be Tony's and my 6th wedding anniversary! (WOW...6 YEARS!)

That night, the kids and I went with my parents to dinner with my grandparents for Father's Day. We went to Kruse and Muer in Rochester Hills...we had such a good time! We sat outside on the patio and both kids were wonderful and we just had a wonderful time talking and enjoying each other's company! My grandparents just love seeing the kids, and I love the fact that my kids will know their great-grandparents, just like I remember mine!!

Our air conditioner was broken (of course!), so the kids stayed out at Tony's parents' house during the week. I went to work during the day and then out to their house in the evening to see my lovely children! They were in the pool and outside all week, so both of the have some very nice tans! Bradlee's hair is even more blonde (if that's even possible!) and Emma's got some pretty good tan lines where her swimsuit hits!! They just love the pool...

On Tuesday I took Emma to see "Up" at the theater, then we went and got ice cream! After ice cream, we went to Target and picked out a birthday present for her friend, Maddy. We both really enjoyed the movie...it was very cute. She remembered several things from the movie and would repeat them throughout the week...we had a nice time, just the two of us! Here's a picture I took of her pointing to our movie!!

The rest of the week I spent getting ready for our Relay for Life in Davison. Not only was I the Accounting/Registration chairwoman, but I was team captain for our team "The Family". I must say, I was very pleased with the fundraising we did. Overall, we raised over $1600 for our team, and helped the American Cancer Society raise over $101,000 for our entire Relay!! I didn't get to spend much time with the team and the kids, which I had anticipated, so we "hired" two of Tony's students (well, one is a current student, one is a former student...they are sisters) to help us out and watch the kids. The reason I put "hired" in quotes, is because when we asked them how much they would want for the entire day, their response was, "That's okay, just take whatever you would pay us and donate it to the American Cancer Society!" How awesome is that? They were not only AWESOME babysitters, but we had so many compliments on how wonderful they were with the kids!!! Here are some pictures of our fun times at Relay (I'll post some more when I get them from Emily, one of the babysitters!)!!! Our theme was "Cancer doesn't take a holiday!"....so we had different themed laps.....ENJOY!

Bradlee kicked off our themed lap of "Happy New Year!" by being Baby New Year! He had a sparkly red, white and blue hat on as well, but that didn't last too long!

Emma got to dress up as a firecracker for the "4th of July" lap!! She got to spend the night with us and had a BALL!!!!!

So the theme of this lap was "Pilgrims, Turkeys and Indians, Oh My!"...so My mom wore the "piligrim" hat Emma made in school this past fall, carried the stuffed Beanie Baby turkey that my sister, Karyn, had, and then had on her CMU ** CHIPPEWAS ** sweatshirt!! She stayed up the entire 24 hours to help our team....we seriously would not have been able to do as well as we did without her!!!!

This is our friend, and resident SURVIVOR, Deb! She helped me out in the banking area and on our way to one of our drops, she looked down and said, "Oh, I have my shirt on backwards!" LOL So I had to take a picture...especially because it was 7am and we had been up for a LONG time!

We haven't set a date for next year's Relay yet, but if you are interested in joining our team next year, we would love to have you! We really have a great time...and the best part is that we are helping in the fight against cancer!!!

Hope you all have a great week! This weekend should be fun, since we're going to see the DSO (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) at Greenfield Village (it'll be our 4th anniversary of going!)!! Will post pics soon!!!

Happy Father's Day!

What another great week we had! Last weekend was Fenton's Relay for Life, so I took Emma and Bradlee to check it out, since Tony had to DJ. It was so fun! Emma was able to play on the bounce houses, eat ice cream, get her face painted and then fell asleep on the way home!

Bradlee had a great time as well. Before we went to the site, we stopped at McDonald's for dinner. Bradlee was quite content munching on some french fries while Emma and I ate our dinners...then it was his time to eat!

This was a busy weekend, as well. Tony had to DJ on Saturday, so Emma, Lynne and I went to yet another Relay for Life...this time in Frankenmuth! It was a smaller Relay (about 20 teams), but Emma was able to play on bounce houses again and decorate a sun visor! She just LOVES these Relays and I'm very proud that she knows what they are all about!!!

On Sunday (Father's Day), he left for Washington, D.C. with some students from school. We celebrated Father's Day on Saturday morning with our families together and then went shopping afterwards (just for baby food!)...We got Emma a "movie-playing cart", which Emma sat in and watched, while Bradlee fit perfectly in the back part...Tony pushed! They looked so cute walking up and down the aisles, I had to take a picture! :)

So since Tony was in Washington, D.C. today, which also happens to be our 6th wedding anniversary, I took the kids with me and my parents and headed down to see my grandparents for dinner. We wore Emma out pretty well and she fell asleep on the way home....and yes, she wore the crown all day long!! (There were also bracelets that you can see on the one hand and a necklace that broke earlier in the day!)

Well, it's going to be a crazy week, with Tony gone and OUR Relay for Life on Saturday! Emma's so excited to spend the night with us! I will definitly be posting some pictures of all our fun! If you are interested in making a donation to our team, there's still time!!! Just go to my Relay for Life Website and click on "Donate"!! Thank you, in advance! Please keep us in your prayers and I'll post more next week, once I've recovered! :)

Emma's First Tiger's Game and Lemonade Stand!

We had quite the busy week! We spent most of the week nights at Tony's parents' house, preparing for a garage sale we had this past weekend. On Tuesday, Emma and I took Tony to Comerica Park for a Detroit Tigers game...it was his Father's Day gift! He has been talking about wanting to take Emma to a game for some time now, so when I received discount tickets at work, I decided to go for it! We had a great time! Emma was quite bored, but Tony took her for a walk to find Paws (the mascot) and then I took her for a walk a little later to ride the carousel. Unfortunately, whenever she's bored, she thinks she's hungry...so that night, she ate pizza for dinner (before we got there), peanuts, Cracker Jacks, cotton candy, part of Tony's cookie, a Sierra Mist and a pretzel with cheese sauce. Needless to say, she passed out on the way home!! I really don't know who was more excited to go, Emma or Tony!!!

Tony and I took over 2 PACKED van-fulls and left at the end of the weekend with 2 garbage bags!! We made almost $400 in just the two days we had the sale! How awesome!! We were so surprised and very happy... we were trying to think of something for Emma to do to keep busy during the sale on Saturday, so we set her up a little lemonade stand...Emma and I decided that it would be by donation only and the money she earned would go to Relay for Life ("to help sick people get better")...wow...that little girl made $47.00 selling lemonade! I am so proud of her and she is so excited for Relay for Life now!!!

Bradlee, on the other hand, was rather bored:

That is, until BATH TIME! :)

We had a great week and are looking forward to the last day of school (Wednesday) and Bradlee's music class starting (Tuesday) and then Emma is taking 2 music classes, along with her gymnastics! Of course, Emma's also so excited to swim in her pool and in Tony's parents' BIG pool! LOL Hope you all have a great week!

Relay for Life #1

A friend of mine....actually, it's a woman who used to babysit my sisters and me, is on a Relay for Life team through her school. Their event was this weekend, so Emma, Tony's sister, Lynne and I wet to visit and see Tina (my old babysitter) and two of her three daughters, who were also participating!

Here's Emma riding the pony...can't remember the pony's name!

Getting her face painted....her facial expressions are priceless!!

The final product! It's a butterfly with GLITTER! :)

Emma with Rebekah and Rachel and their matching faces!!!

Resting after some running around at Relay!!

I think the hardest part about Relay and Emma is trying to explain to her what it is and what it is for...I think I did a pretty good job of telling her that it's to help give money so we can find a way to help sick people with Cancer get better, because right now they don't know how to fix it...we'll see how long that explanation holds her! LOL Our Relay for Life event is June 27-28 at Davison High School, from 10am-10am...Emma is so excited that she gets to spend the night with us in a tent! It's going to be a lot of fun!!! If you're interested in donating or are wondering how our fundraising efforts are going, here is the link to our website: "The Family" Relay for Life Website. You are more than welcome to join us at the event as well! There's always something fun to do for the whole family, and as I told Emma, all the funds raised go to help find a cure for Cancer!!

Hope you have a great week! :)

Almost Summer!

What a wonderful few weeks we've had! You can tell it's getting to be the end of the school year, because both Emma AND Tony are getting pretty antsy!

We had a great Memorial Day weekend...Bradlee ended up with a double ear infection, but other than that, we had a very nice time! I got a lot of work done outside on Saturday...trimming the bushes and tree next to our garage (so you can now see the driveway and not get attacked going into the garage!) and mowed the lawn and really cleaned up the garage. We have saved a lot of things over the 5 years we've lived here (actually, 5 years on Monday!) and we're having a garage sale next weekend, so I sorted through a lot of stuff and pulled some things to sell.
Sunday we spent the day at my parents' house with some friends of theirs...it has become our Memorial weekend tradition. We had a nice time, and Emma loved playing outside, of course! She decorated Gramma and Boppa's driveway, and I even traced her body....Boppa was just hoping the Flint police didn't show up at his door!

Monday (Memorial Day) we went to Potter's Park Zoo in Lansing. It was going to just be the 4 of us, but Emma decided it would be fun for EVERYONE to come....so Tony's parents and sister, my parents and both of my sisters, Uncle Paul, Aunt Deb and the four of us all headed to the park for a grilled dinner and then most of us went into the zoo to see the animals. It's a small zoo, but wonderful for Emma and Bradlee to see animals and it's actually a really nice zoo! In August we're going to the Detroit (DETROIT JUST SCORED A GOAL AGAINST PITTSBURGH! YIPPEE!)... Zoo, but it will just be the 4 of us for sure! It's a tradition we started about 2 years ago...and we just love it!

Here are some pictures from our trip to Potter's Park:

As you can see, we all had a great time!!!

Totally Forgot!!

So I totally forgot to add this video...I was making dinner one night and Emma wanted to help...I was by myself, and Bradlee was getting hungry also (isn't that always how it goes?!)....so I told Emma that she could help by feeding Bradlee (totally thinking she'd say, "No way!")...boy was I wrong!!! Here she is feeding Bradlee, and doing a pretty good job, I might add!!

Mother's Day?

What a busy week it's been! We got a new friend in the house! :) Emma brought home her "caterpillar" from school...it's a stocking filled with soil and grass seed...how creative!!! She picked out the eyes and antennae and watered it every day (with her teachers' help, of course!) and she got a very cute, green little caterpillar! Emma thinks it's so funny that her caterpillar has grass on it's tummy! LOL

Emma was great at gymnastics last Wednesday. She goes for an hour every Wednesday and just loves it, as I've said before! It's so amazing to go each week and watch how much she's either learned, advanced or even is just willing to try! In this picture (she's the one wearing pink, with her feet in the air!), she is practicing her handstands against a mat. I call it her "dolphin impersonation"!! The most amazing part is that she does this on her own!

THEN....her teacher, Miss Jessie, took the kids over to the "big bar". Jessie gets up on the platform and the kids come up one at a time and swing over the pit (a hole in the ground filled with foam pieces) and then drop into it! Emma has been terrified to do this on her own since she started gymnastics. Last week, she did it! When she got out, she said, "That was fun Miss Jessie! Let's do it again!"

After gymnastics, since she had done such a good job, I got to tell her a secret...on Friday, Aunt Kathi (my sister) was going to take her to see "Annie" on stage!!! Here's her reaction!!

For Tony's mom for Mother's Day, we got her a toolbox, which sat in our kitchen for about 4 days prior to giving it to her. Bradlee loved pulling himself up on it...so when I was putting some things in it and such, it was open and Bradlee basically climbed right in! So, I sat him in it and took his picture. Not to be outdone by his brother, Emma was next...she didn't fit in quite as well!!

After school on Friday, Emma came home and we picked out a dress to wear (WITH tights!) and shoes to wear and headed over to Grandma and Boppa's house where Aunt Kathi was waiting...after Aunt Kathi got dressed, and we got some pictures, they headed to McDonald's for some chicken nuggets and then to the Fischer in Detroit for the show. Emma loved it...she was so excited that Aunt Kathi got her a program ("WITH PICTURES!!!!"), which also came with a little backpack!! What a great time they had together!

Unfortunately, the fun didn't last too long, for after Emma spent the night with Aunt Kathi, she woke up with a fever and not feeling well. After the fever being under control with Tylenol, I took the kids to Tony's parents' for the night so I could go to a girls' night at a friend's house. I got a call around 8:30 that Emma's temp had jumped to about 104, so I decided to take her to the ER. (By the way, Tony was DJ-ing a wedding through this part!) We got into the ER and she was finally diagnosed with a (you guessed it) virus. She threw up in the waiting room and immediately starting feeling better, but they gave her a purple Popsicle to make sure she would keep it down. We went home and she slept the rest of the night! (into Mother's Day).....

Mother's Day morning Tony got up with the kids and took care of them downstairs until about 10am when he and Emma brought up breakfast in bed for me! Emma proudly told me she buttered the toast herself!! Her and I enjoyed breakfast together in my bed and then we got ready for our early dinner with our families. In school, Emma made me a little "vase" out of a milk carton and tissue paper. It had a little flower in it! Emma also colored a picture with flowers on it and they also sent home a little poem, saying thanks mom for......putting bandages on my scraped knees (which I had done to Emma just that week), for reading stories (we read a chapter of "The Wizard of Oz" every night!), etc. etc. Emma just looked at me when I read it out loud to her and she said, "Mama, you do ALL of those things!!!" Talk about making your heart melt!!! Here's a picture of the two of us with the goodies she made at school:

We went to the Bavarian Inn Lodge for dinner with both Tony's and my families...it was a good meal and we had nice company and the kids acted great. Here's Grandma feeding Bradlee (sitting on Aunt Lynne's - Tony's sister - lap) tapioca pudding and cool whip!!

This is the card that Bradlee "made" at school...it's a "kiss coupon book" with kisses from him to me...I asked Tony how comfortable he was knowing that his son had lipstick on! LOL It was cute nonetheless...and this picture is EXACTLY how he kisses now!!!

This is the card that Emma made Mother's Day morning for me. She prints so well...Tony just told her how to spell everything (she knows "Mommy", "Daddy", and "Emma")...she loves making projects and I had given her the flower punch from my craft supplies...so it's even cooler!!

I wish I could say that everything ended great, but alas, I'm not that lucky! Sunday afternoon when we got home from dinner, Emma and I both started feeling crummy. We both had fevers and went to bed early. Emma, Bradlee and I all stayed home on Monday and Tony's parents' come to get the kids...oh I forgot, Bradlee had pink eye the previous week!! So, Emma had the fever, I had a fever and aches, and Bradlee was recovering from pink eye...Emma has since been diagnosed with a throat infection and is finally starting to get her fever under control and Bradlee's been doing well. I was home again today (Tuesday) for a sore throat, which has ended up only being a darned virus...I just want a healthy family for, like, a month!! Is that too much to ask?!!?!? :)

I'm sure we'll all be on the mend soon, and by then it will be summer break and the kids will be away from the other kids' at school and the germs (only to start again in the fall!)....ah well.....Hope everyone has a great week!