Golden Birthday

Tomorrow is Jude's Golden Birthday - 4 on the 4th. We'll be celebrating by heading out early to a race of mine (read more about that here ) and then who knows what! Hopefully fireworks will finish out the day.

Here are some photos from Jude's birthday party (from last weekend).

Party Tomorrow

We're celebrating Jude's 4th birthday tomorrow with a little picnic. If you read between the line there, you've translated it as, "Jeremy and I are going crazy cleaning, inside and out, to get ready for a party."

Jude doesn't turn 4 until July 4th, but we've discovered, after 3 years of planning his party, the 4th of July weekend is a crazy weekend to find a time when everyone can come here for a party, so we're having it 1 week earlier this year. Hope it works out well.

It's supposed to be nice out tomorrow, so I'm hoping to take a lot of pictures (and then post them, of course).

Happy Birthday to my soon-to-be 4 year old buddy :)

Welcome Summer

When I was a kid, I liked summer, but Fall was always my favorite season.

For some reason, summer is now my favorite time of year, so I'm excited to officially welcome summer today! It was warm, humid, sunny, rainy and all around just great :)

I am in the 4th week of a 6-week summer semester @ work and it's just crazy-busy (which is good because busy keeps me out of trouble). It's so beautiful on campus, so lunchtime walks and early morning runs are becoming routine for me.

Evenings have been filled with swinging, digging in the dirt, and plenty of quality time on the paddle boat. The boys and I go out almost everyday looking for wildlife - here's some of the great things we've found (missing from this line of photos is the huge water spider that commuted around the lake with us this evening - eeeek).

A water snake in all its glory

The frogs are our faves

We even try rescuing bugs

My next post will be about our nest......

We Are Family

It doesn't get any better than this!

Camp Silver Pines

My cousins invited us to spend the weekend @ their family camp that's located in, well, kinda the middle of nowhere -about 1hour, 20 minutes from our house. We planned to go Friday night and stay over, but Jackson wasn't feeling well, so we just did a day trip yesterday. We had sooooo much fun - need proof? Check it out:

Me and my boys (Jerm's taking the photo) in front of Silver Pines camp



We went on an adventure ride through the woods - oh my goodness did we have fun!

The boys had a ton of fun riding on all the little ride-ons - the Gator, the 4-wheelers, the paddle boat...

Throwing sticks from the bridge - this was my cousin's dog, Max. He would jump from the bridge to chase sticks. I think we totally wore him out doing this. I wish we could have taken Gert with us, she would have had a blast.

Jude and his cousin, Xavier. These two are like 2 peas in a pod. They'll be playing soccer together this fall, so get prepared to see more picture of these 2 together.

If this weekend is any indication of our summer, it sure will be one filled with fun, adventure, love and friendship.

Onto the next adventure - Memorial Day picnic @ our house tomorrow. I'm sure many more adorable photos to post!

Story Hour

My mom and Jeremy have been taking turns taking Jude to Story Hour at the Lilly Library for the past school year. He participated in the end-of-the-year program on Wednesday evening. He was so darn cute!

Jackson attended this program when he was younger (I think he went 3 years in a row). We just love how much this program helps the kids learn basic things like ABCs, 123s, shapes, colors, etc.

Here's Jude saying his ABCs (we honestly never thought he'd get up in front of everyone with a microphone and do it, but he did):

Jude will go to this program next school year also (he will attend preschool M-W-F and story hour on Tuesdays).

Here are some more photos.

The Man of the Hour/Day

Congrats to Jackson who made his 1st Holy Communion today. We're so proud of him.

I'm not so sure what was happening in this series of photos, but I'm guessing Jeremy just wanted to get 1 nice photo of the boys and instead this is what they gave him.



Me and Jack

Jackson with Ga-Ga and Pop (who are also his Godparents)

Grammy Linda's cake for the celebration luncheon!

Just want to say thanks to all my family who made Jackson's day extra special for him. Thank you for coming to celebrate; thanks for the food, cake, support, gifts, etc!

It was a special day, indeed.