Indians Game

We took the kids to their first Indians game the other night. Both kids loved it although Hay is still a bit too young to want to sit through such long games. Caiden is really into baseball right now, i think that it may be his favorite sport so far. He sat and watched the entire game with his mit on waiting for that homerun ball to come his way...it never did though:( We got there alittle early so we let them play in the childrens area for a bit...all three (lol) of my children had a blast:)

I gave Hailey the camera during the game to keep her occupied, i love seeing the world through a childs eyes and the best way to do that is to give them a camera and see what interest them, she actually takes pretty good pictures for a 5 year old, these are all done by her

and of course i had to add this one, she cracks me up...

I have not posted anything in 2 years, working sports and just my crazy schedules sometimes has taken me away from spending time posting on here. My husband and I were going through all my old post last night and i realized how important it was for me to keep up with my blog. There are so many memories that i have already forgotten and by looking back at all my previous posts i was reminded of them again. I want to remember it all and show my kids later in life what they did, what they looked like and help them remember their childhood memories....so my promise to my children is to keep up with this and give them something to remember years from now:)

Caiden is now 8 and is going into 3rd grade this year, my little boy is growing up too fast on me. He hit a major growth spurt this year, this is his before and after 2nd grade pics, the one on the right is the 1st day of second grade and the left is last day of second grade

He plays sports just about year round now, he's very big into wrestling, football and baseball. This weekend starts fall ball, its double headers every saturday, football starts soon too. I really hope that his love for sports always stays with him! It keeps us very busy and can sometimes be too hectic but i wouldnt have it any other way:)

Caiden getting ready to slide into home...SAFE!!!

Hailey is now 5 and will be going to Pre-K this year, its a class inbetween preschool and kindergarden, basically for kids who are 5 and could go to kindergarden but are a very young 5. She turned 5 last month and we went back and forth for a long time on whether to send her or not and decided to wait one more year, if we sent her she would be the youngest in her class gradutating at 17. I guess its just one more year to keep her with me<3

This is Hailey picture of 1st day and last day of preschool, shes growing up so fast that sometimes it makes me want another one...just sometimes:)

Hailey is all girl...everything i was ever warned about and we love everything about her, she loves to dress up and have her hair makeup and nails done but on the other hand she sreams crys and fights for just about everything she wants...and then usually gets her way! Shes such a combination of me and her dad that it makes us laugh and were usually blaming the other..."she gets that from you". She has such a strong personality that i hope stays with her for life, she knows what she wants and will do anything to get it. Shes one part ornry and the other part sweet!!! Always telling everyone how much she loves them and giving her last piece of candy just to make someone else happy, always apologizing when shes done something wrong and caring about us when she thinks were sad, she truely is our little princess!

She will be starting dance this year so there will be many updates to come with that, shes going to love it!

Brad and I just celebrated our 6th anniversary! We have been together for 8 years now and i can honestly say that we are more happy now than we have ever been. We bought a home 3 years ago and are enjoying remodeling it (slowly) and raising our kids together. Brad is now working at the railroad, he's an electrician and he's finally on days...for awhile at least. It's so nice having him home at night now after being on nights for the past 5 years. Im still working part time at a country club, just 3 nights a week, its plenty for me the kids keep me busy enough here at home. We are just enjoying life right now, spending as much time as we can with our kids and each other. Every so often we get our dates night, we love going to the winery and just getting to spend time some quiet relaxing time together. Hopefully theres many more date nights to come:)

Slacking!!!

I have been the worst blogger lately. I don't really know why but i just dont feel like being on the computer lately. We have been keeping busy. The weather has been really nice, alittle cold but this is how i like it. It gets down to about 45 at night and up to about 65-75 throughout the day. So we have been spending alot of time outside.
Caiden loves to go out and play football. Brad has really got him into it this year. They watch Michigan together every saturday and the Browns together every sunday. They have even started there own season on playstation. I can't believe how good caiden is. I tried to play once with him and it lasted about 20 minutes before he kicked me off his game for not knowing how to play. I'll have to video them playing out in the yard next time just to show how much they get into it.
Hailey is teething her molars right now so shes been alittle extra cranky. I stopped nursing her 10 days ago (she was biting way too often from teething) but she is doing really good with it. I thought it would be so hard to wean her but she has already forgotten. The only downside to it is that she has always woke up between 5:45 and 6:30 to nurse and then would fall back to sleep well now that she doesn't nurse she doesn't fall back to sleep. Her normal time for waking up now is around 6:00. It's taken me awhile to get used to but now i get up easily at that time. It's funny how fast your body can adjust to things. I need to be up early anyways to get caiden to school. It starts at 8:30 so we leave here by 8:15. I'm going to do my throwback thursday this week on his school so i'll talk more about it then.
Well these were jsut a few updates from around here. I'll try and get on here everynight this week to keep up with everything. I'm off now to catch up on all of your blogs!

The Fair

I used to love going to the fair every year. I don't know if I just got older or if they just aren't as good as they used to be. You have to pay 7 dollars per person to get in, even if your not riding anything! I can understand paying that for the rides but not to walk around and look at animals.

I took the kids this past week. Neither of them really liked it. Hailey is just at that age where she wants her freedom, not the stroller and Caiden says the kiddy rides are too "baby" for him. (When did my little boy stop being my baby?) and hes still too small to the ride the big rides.

I'm not a big fan of fair rides anyways, they don't look very safe.

So we spent most of our time in the animal barns. That was the one things both the kids really liked. We went through every barn there and through the pony and horse barns twice. Caiden had to try and pet every horse, Hailey even got to pet a couple.

I'm always nervous letting him pet the animals, you never know when they might bite. They both really liked the goats too. (the goats and the horses were the least smelly)

Caiden was so funny. When looking at the cows he asked what that thing was that was hanging between their legs so i told him thats where our milk came from, he was kinda discusted by that, then he was asking what else we use animals for so i told him where we got hamburger and chicken and ham. If only i could have taken a picture of his face. I hope i didn't turn him into a vegaterian!!!

He did end up riding all the rides once, after waiting ten minutes in each line and then only to have him stare at me while on the ride telling me how slow they were going. He found one good thing about one of the rides though. He turned the handle bars into guns (he loves guns everywhere we go he thinks he needs to get a new one)

I finally let Hailey out of her stroller to walk around alittle. She really wanted to ride with Caiden but I know her too well. She would never stay sitting in the seat, halfway through the ride we would have to stop it to get her out. But she had fun just walking around.

Yes she is sticking her tounge out at me, that is her new thing she does!

Camping

This past weekend we went camping with my family, every year my step-dads side of the family all go together. This year there were only about 6 families that went, but it worked out really good cause all the little kids were about 5 years old. Caiden had so much fun.

When we first got there we went to the beach. The water was so shallow, the highest it got was to my waist, but i guess thats perfect for his age. There was a huge slide that the kids could go on (we couldn't believe how much it was though, 10.00 per person) they could go all day for that but still it's just a slide. After about 10 times going down it he had had enough. Hailey didn't go in the water too much, she's not a big fan of the sand (or maybe the smell)

All the kids brought their bikes so they spent most of the time riding around and going on the bike trails. By bedtime they were completely wore out, caiden actually told us he wanted to go in the tent to go to bed!!!

Some advice for anyone with a 1 year old, wait another year to take them camping. Although we loved going and having Hailey there with us it was more of a hassle than it was relaxing. We spent more time trying to keep rock and leaves out of her mouth and trying to keep her away from the fire than anything else. Now that she is walking everywhere we didn't get a moments rest. She also didn't sleep good there. For the last month now Hailey has been sleeping all night and has been going to bed about 10:00 and waking up around 7:00. There she didn't go to bed until 1:00am (and to get her to sleep i had to walk her around in the stroller for 1/2 hour) and she was up by 6:30 to eat.

We found out how rotten Hailey is!:-) My aunts little boy is 2 weeks older than Hailey and everytime she saw him she would try to pinch him or pull his hair or bite him, for no reason at all. I wonder if she just felt threatened by someone else her age, but we really need to keep our eye on her when she's around other kids.

In the we all had fun so i guess thats all that matters:-)

By the way Hailey found her new favorite snack-Cheetohs, the messest food ever!!

Day at the Islands!!!

Today Brad and I took the kids on his parents boat with them over to Kelley's Island. Caiden loves going out on the boat. He asks all summer "when can we go out on grandma and grandpa's boat again". This was Hailey first time and she did pretty good. She didn't really like wearing the life jacket but other than that she loved watching the water and other boats.
When we got to the island we rented a golf cart and road around on it for about 3 1/2 hours, stoppping at parks and and the beach and just enjoying the nice weather. Both kids ended up falling asleep on the golf cart! (of course the only time they nap were out somewhere and we can't nap with them) We stopped and ate and got ice cream (double chocolate- it was so good) and just really relaxed.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Caiden had a blast at the beach but i couldn't help but feel uneasy all day being out on and by the water after hearing about little Hannah's horrible accident. Although i've never met her and have hardley ever read there blog I can't get her out of my head. I think about her nonstop and just pray that her family is doing okay. I couldn't even begin to image the pain they are going through. It really makes me realize how fragile life is and to cherish EVERY moment you have with your children because you never what what tomorrow will bring.

Happy 4th of July

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July. I know we did!

Caiden was on a float in the parade this year. He loved it, his favorite part was throwing the candy to everyone! He was on the float with all of his cousins (well actually my cousins but there closer to his age) Here is a picture of all of them, the two girls on both ends of the top row are my twin sisters.

The girls on the left end of the bottom row are twins too! They run in my family, there are 2 more sets of twins but they couldn't make it.

After the parade we all went back to my aunt house and went swimming and had a cookout. I think i'm still in a food coma from all the food there! Caiden wore himself out swimming and had to show EVERYONE there how he can dive now. He had fun.

This was Hailey's first time watching the fireworks and i couldn't believe how much she liked them. I remember Caidens first year we had to leave the area because he was so scared of them, but she was pointing to them and clapping and smiling, i caught her expression during the grand final...

Isn't that adorable. She was so good all day and even took a 2 hour nap (i couldn't believe it, i had to keep checking her to make sure she was okay)

I hope my children remember these childhood memories forever!

Catching up/Monday Memories

Well it's been almost a week since I last wrote on here so i guess i have alot of catching up to do!

I'll start by telling every dad out there Happy Fathers Day! I know it's a little late but it still counts.

I also wanted to say thanks to elizabeth for having such a cute contest last week for a chance to win a hairclip...I won, i'll let everyone know what kind I got when i recieve it and i'll post pictures of it in Haileys hair! I can't wait!!

Here is my Monday Memories

Today was SOOO hot. It got to be 96 degrees and there was no wind. We spent most of the day at the pool at the rec center here in town. I got a membership for me and the kids this summer to give us something to do while Brad is at work all day, and we still don't have an air conditioner in our house (i broke ours last summer, i didn't know how heavy they were and tried to take it out of the window myself and it fell out the window onto the ground) so is theres anywhere we can go thats air conditioned or with a pool, we're there!

Caiden has gotten so much better in the water, he can't swim yet above water but he can kinda swim under the water. He doesn't even have to plug his nose.

Hailey loves the water too. She sits in the pool with me and crawls around and plays the whole time. We got the cutest float for her...

I couldn't get Caiden to stand still long enough for me to get a good picture of him but you can tell how much fun he's having!

He was finally brave enough this year to jump off the diving board. It took him a couple trys to get the courage to jump but once he did he loved it and wanted to do it again!

Later that night while Brad cooked out on the grill Caiden, Hailey and I went looking to lighting bugs to smush, oops i mean catch (caidens way of catching them is to clap his hands together, and then he wonders why they don't light up anymore:)

Caiden looks so skinny here jumping to catch the lighting bugs. We really do feed him!

Enjoying The Weather

We went over to my grandparents for a cookout and to let all the kids play together in the nice weather. It has been perfect here the last couple days, around 80 degrees, not too hot like it was all last week.
Caiden has so much fun playing with his cousins. They went fishing, swimming jumped on the trampoline (which i am not a big fan of those things, too many injuries) but the kids love them.
I got alot of good pictures of Caiden just being himself and having fun!

We all thought Caiden might have a heart attack when he caught this fish! He was jumping up and down throwing his arms up just yelling to everyine that he caught a fish. He is so funny!

He was jumping all around in the pool trying to splash me and my camera, he got me a couple times!

Hailey, who NEVER naps, took a 2 1/2 hour nap so she missed out on all the fun. But i did get one good picture of her with her aunt Holly. Holly is my older sister who lives a couple hours away so whenever she comes home for the weekend we always try to make it over there to see her. In march we went and stayed the weekend with her and her husband Sean and ever since then Caiden asks at least once a week when we are going to stay with them again. He loves seeing them (and there dogs!!!)

My Grandpa

I haven't had much time to write on here lately because we have had lot going on here.

My grandpa has been in and out of the hospital now for about 2 months. Sometimes are more serious than others, but i guess we never knew how serious. The doctors just informed us on Sunday that he is now in the final stages of emphysema. We have all known that he was sick but it's just hard to hear someone tell you that he may only have up to 2 more weeks. My grandpa smoked for about 40 years and your body can only take so much. But inspite of everything he is still himself. Singing to the nurses, making jokes, everything he normally does.

He looks very good on most days. I took the kids to the hospital to see him on sunday, he kept asking me when i was gonna bring them in. I just pray that he'll make it through this and that he has more time than the doctor are telling us, but my grandpa says that he's not afraid because he knows the good lord will be waiting for him when it's his time.

My First Blog-All about me and my family!

I have some friends who do this all the time and i like to stay updated with them and i think that it is just so interesting to read and see everything they do in there day to day lives so.... i thought i'd give it a try.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I am a 23 year old stay at home mother of 2 beautiful children, Caiden who is 4 years old and Hailey who is 8 months old and i have a wonderful husband Brad who is 24.

Brad and i have been married now for 1 year and 1 month. We met back in high school and we worked together after we graduated. I knew long before we even started dating that he was the one for me.

We live in ohio, in the same town we have lived in our whole lives. Its small but comfortable, especially with the kids. Small towns usually mean less violence and less to worry about.

Well thats all i can do for now i usually only get so much time before the kids have noticed i sneeked away :-)