Family Photos!!!!!!!!!!!

In case you can't tell from the number of exclamation points in the title of this post, I am PSYCHED that we were finally able to do family pictures!  It was so fun to have Jana help us scavenge through the house for coordinating outfits and go shopping for a few final items.  And then after we did the family shots she managed to continue photographing my kids while dragging along her two babies and Emma while I took Jason home.  Jana is wonder woman!  And I love love love that I have gorgeous pics of me with each of my chilluns, I've been wanting that for a long time. 

I LOVE this one!  I'm getting a GIANT print of it!

All the latest

Happy summer!  It's going to be another stressful one for me, but at least it's the last time I have to do a summer semester!  Here's what was on my camera from the last month or so:

This is the lamp post I knocked over with my car on May 18th.  I had my 4 younger kids with me on our way to school and we slid in the snow.  Thank heavens for seatbelts and insurance!  I also hit that green electrical box next to it and knocked out the power in my neighborhood for 3 hours.  I took this pic a couple days later.

The girls had a piano recital a couple of weeks ago.  Melissa isn't officially taking lessons yet (Natalie's been teaching her) but Nat and Jessica's teacher invited her to play in the recital anyway.  They all played beautifully!

Josh graduated from elementary school!  Natalie's so excited to have someone going to middle school with her next year.

 Jana came to visit!  And her darling kids too!  We had so much fun together, and she even took our family pictures! (coming soon-- just WAIT till you see how cute they are!)

I just thought this was a really cute one of Natalie being a tween.

And here is our big spring project.  Jason's been wanting to turn our back porch into a pretty little oasis for a long time, and we're finally getting it done.  Here are some before and after shots (it's not completely done yet, but I couldn't wait any longer!) I made them extra big so you can truly appreciate the fabulousness.

Amanda's 4th Birthday!

Can we even believe that my baby-- my BABY-- is 4 years old!?!?! I don't know what's weirder, that or the fact that I'll have a teenager in a couple of months.

Here's Mandie on the morning of her birthday on the throne Jessica made her. Hee!




In the morning Manda went to daycare as usual while I went to school. She brought cupcakes for the kids there, and her teacher gave her this sweet little doll. Manda named it tinkerbell.

I told her we could go to whatever fun place she wanted on her birthday and she chose the little arcade at wal-mart! Melissa went with us too, they a lot of fun!


We discovered that we had two "4" candles and she insisted on having both of them to blow out.
Mandie had two very specific birthday requests this year. She wanted silly putty (isn't that funny?) and a REAL kitchen that you could make REAL food with. We found this cute little Easy Bake set for making cute little cakes and you cook them in the microwave!

So after all the other birthday festivities we tried it out.

We made little cakes with fondant and everything!

We were very proud of them.