And the Award Goes to.....

JARON DANIEL KELLYHe did it! He graduated Elementary School with flying "A's" in all subjects, in all grading periods and his final grades for the whole year 98-101%!!!! How awesome is that! We are so PROUD of him! Today was the 5th grade graduation ceremonies at his school.

Here he is walking across to receive his Certificate of Completing Elementary School :)

To his and our surprise Jaron received not one but 5 awards this year! FIVE!!!! WOWSA!!! Talk about a proud Momma moment! :) I couldn't stop smiling and neither has he!
His first award was the Presidential Academic Excellence Award signed by Pres. Barak Obama and a letter from the President as well! He had to work hard for that! Having a GPA of 3.5+
(his was 4.0) all year, receiving high marks on on his state academic testing, recommendation from the teachers, guidance counselor and the principle.
VERY PROUD MOMENT!!!
Jaron had to point out the Presidents Signature!
He received awards for Jr Beta Club and Academic Team.

In each class 1 or 2 students were chosen for a Citizenship Award and our Jaron received one!!!
Way to go Jaron!!
After the initial ceremony we were released to take our children home if we desired to. Before doing so we were to meet in their classrooms. There, Mrs Miller handed out their rewards that had not being given out during the ceremony, their report cards, a special poem she had written them (which was beautiful and made me cry!) and another award that the students themselves voted on. There were only 5 given out and once again Jaron was chosen :) This time for the Best Student of Social Studies/History.
His wonderful 5th grade class!
Jaron and Mrs. Miller...she has been a fantastic teacher , Jaron really enjoyed being in her class.
I can't believe the school year has come to an end. We are very proud of Jaron but are equally as proud of our other three children as well. I truly can not believe that this coming fall we will have a JR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT! Seriously, where did the time go? I want him to be that cute bumbling 2 yr old that was in love with kittens and lizards again...sigh!

City Museum

So Friday March 12th on Sean's 50th birthday we tookt he kids for a day adventure and headed to St Louis. Destination: City Museum Let me just say...that place ROCKS! Seriously the kids had a blast! Every floor had something fun to do and was some how connected to the next floor by a secret passage way or a tunnel or slide or something. I have never gone up and down so many flights of stairs in my life and PRAISE BE TO GOD my knees held up. A little sore but not terrible! We had a lot of fun watching the kids run from one thing to another. Well here just check out these wonderful pictures of the days events...
We never knew where these tunnels would lead so we were constantly running up and down the stairs to follow the kids.
Inside the many caves the kids went exploring...remind you this is all inside of a 4 story building!

Climbing up into the wire tunnels.

This was the human hampster wheel...the little guy was pulling the brake and as soon as he let go my four when rolling backwards. It was really funny to watch!

Here we have Jaron the dragon, Kristofer the snake, Eli the tiger and Sara the bunny all getting ready to eat a fantastic pizza!

one of many tunnels to climb through

Sara loved the sea turtles.

This was on the first floor and behind the whale were the caves. Above the whale and the pteridactyl (sp?) werw a bunch of tubes made from cage iron and other tubing that the kids could climb through.

Kris loved this area! When he looked up he freaked and asked if we could PLEASE take it home with us :) My little dinosaur lover!

Date Night

YAY! Sean and I had a date night! One to celebrate our anniversary. 13 years! I still can't believe it's been that long! It is so important for couples to celebrate these milestones in their marriage. I hear too often people say, "Oh, he/she knows I love her" or "It's just another day when you get this old"! NOT! NOT! NOT! In today's society people enter marriage with the thought...if it's too hard I will just get a divorce. Never taking the covenant of marriage seriously! We have a couple in our church that just celebrated 50 years of marriage and another couple that is about to do the same thing in Feb. 50 years of marriage! Can you imagine your 50th? I hope and pray that Sean and I live long enough to celebrate our 50th!!! He will be 86 and I 76. I truly hope we get to celebrate that awesome amount of time! But even so no one should look at another year of marriage as "just another day/year" It should be celebrated. Even if you are only able make peanutbutter sandwiches and go sit at a park. Celebrate your marriage!!
We did and had a fantastic time! We went out to see a movie, "Blindside"

and then to dinner at Applebee's. We haven't gone on an official "date" in a long time. We had such a great time. The movie, "Blindside" was AWESOME! I highly recommend everyone going to see it! I don't normally make the statement..."I want to buy it when it comes out on dvd" very often but that was one of the first statements I made when the movie ended.
Then it was off to dinner. We had to wait 40 minutes to be seated but it was well worth it. I can't tell you how nice it was to just sit and talk without the diaperheads interrupting us. We needed this night so much! More than anyone could ever know. We talked about the past 13 year and more importantly talked about our future. We made some important decision that I am not at liberty to discuss here but when I finally am free to talk about it you know I will. Some of you may already know becuase we are BFs but publicly I can not discuss some of it.
We are excited about what our future holds for us and for our family. It's amazing...this year Sean will turn 50, I will turn 40 ~ yes I said it, 40 wow I can't believe its that number. But what is even more scary is our oldest is going to turn 10 this year! : ( Where does the time go??
I cherish these days so much. I know one day our house will be quiet all the time but for now I cherish the quietness of my house while the kids are at school. We are expecting a big snow storm later tonight. Which means the kids will more than likely be home for the next few days due to the roads being bad. It has been SO COLD! We have not reached 32 degrees in over a week. I am a FLORIDA girl and I am so longing to be back in that warm area! Even if they have been having some cold snaps too!
The kids are so excited about the snow! Honestly so am I! I love the first snow fall but after that it can go away. I love snow flakes. They are so beautiful. I hope we get BIG FAT ones so I can take some pictures of them as they fall and the intricate way they are formed. We shall see. If I succeed I will most definitely post them.

Father"s Day

Today we spent time as a famiy! Started with worshiping our Lord together, then lunch and then an afternoon of fun. We had planned a picnic but the heat was so terrible we came back and the kids played on the slippin slide. They had a blast! If you can't read the inscription under Sara it said, "Time Out- Look at that pout!" Yes she was in trouble and mad at me because I was enforcing the rules! But ya gotta laugh at the face!Kristofer is always the hesitant one when it comes to new things or things that we haven't done in a while. But today he just jumped right in and had a ball!
Watching Jaron was the funniest thing! He is getting to that age that you start to realize that throwing your self on a slippery surface is gonna hurt so he would wait till he got close to the end of the slide. It was very comical! He even missed once and went sliding off into the grass!

Last but not least is my little man Eli. He was the hesitant one. He wanted to play but was afraid the kids would slide into him and hurt him. He ended up joining the others after about 30 minutes of sideline watching with me. He was all laughter after the first few slides! As you can tell I am learning more and more how to use this new photo program (Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2). Its pretty neat and I can scrap book in a more organized way and that works for me! Now I just have to start getting my creative juices flowing a bit more and have some fun with the kids pictures. I have 8 years of pictures that need to be scrap booked and in that time I acquired 3 children...I have the first year of Jaron's life done...boy do I have my work cut out for me.

My Babies are Graduating from Pre-K

Can't believe it! Sara and Eli will be in Kindergarten in the fall. Where has the time flown to?? Their teacher gave me a few pictures from this year I wanted to share. I had to scan and fix them but this is just a few things they were caught doing in pre-K this year. Our schools do not have a special ceremony for graduating pre-schoolers but we think they are pretty special. This year they both learned how to write their names among other things.

So looking forward to next year! Or am I???

Happy Birthday

Ok so can someone out there tell me how to slow down time just a bit??

Today is Jaron's 9th birthday and I would really like to go backwards about hmmm, 9 years so that I can enjoy him as a baby again. He is growing up so fast and WAY too soon he will be a teen. UGH! NO NOT THAT! We celebrated yesterday because Sunday's are days that are full of church events and Sean must get some sleep since he has to work the over night shifts. We sure would like it if he could get on a day shift again.

We went to see "Monsters vs Aliens" and then had a pizza and cake party. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the movie and we had a great time last night just being a family and enjoying each others company.

Happy Birthday Jaron!!! I iwll post a few pictures later tonight. We plan to have a little party at church as well...just cupcakes with his church friends.

Birthday Fun

So I am a bit behind in posting these birthday pictures. Just a bit busy around here!

I love this picture. Sara's stance just cracks me up, her Aunt Jeanette would be proud!

How old are you now? "FIVE"

The boys thought Sara's silly grin was hilarious!

Happy 5th Birthday

Valentine's Day 2004 ~ The twins came home the day before after spending 3 weeks trying to keep them from being born and another 3 weeks preparing them to come home from the NICU.

Daddy's little miracles...first time holding both at the same time.

Eli was praising God even before he left the NICU!

This was week two in the NICU.

Today is Eli and Sara's 5th birthday. I can't believe my babies are no longer babies. Today I was searching for some baby picture of them so I could post them. I had to search through a bunch of stuff but I finally found a few of my favorite pictures. One of these days I will get them all into an album. The kids were so cute, "oh mommy who's is this, it's me? really?" " Oh Mommy I was a baby doll. Look I was bald, look mommy what are those wires, why am I wearing those funny sunglasses?" SO many questions. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them, scanning pictures, telling stories, ect. Then this afternoon wen the older boys come home from school we headed to the bowling alley. It's slowly becoming one of our family fun times. While there I was watching my family, laughing with each other an I realized all those thoughts for the future when these two little ones were babies are coming true. You know the ones, when you hold your baby or young toddler and think, "I can't wait to see you playing with your older brothers" or you dream of what it will be like when the baby is older.
I am, we, are so blessed! Four great kiddos, I can't thank God enough for these two precious babies. Ok so babies they are not but I will probably always refer to them as the babies, that was and still is a term of endearment that we have called them since we brought them home. More likely because that was the easiest way to refer to them with the older two boys who at the time were 3 and 1. Yes at one time we had 4 under 4 and all in diapers/pull-ups. I have to say I am so glad to be out of the diaper buying phrase but I sure do miss my babies. I love the smell of babies and how they cuddle up to our neck. I miss the weight of them laying on my chest as we would fall asleep laying in the recliner at three o'clock in the morning.

Here are just a few memories...we lost a lot of pictures when our computer crashed a few years

ago....always make a copy of the pictures...I learned my lesson! Enjoy...

Sara & Uncle Chris, holding hands. Uncle Chris' hand took up 3/4 of Sara's body. She was so tiny... 3.8lbs and 16 1/2 inches long at her lowest weight. From there it was all up hill!

Sara never liked her feet covered. This is how we found her under her blankets one afternoon when we went to see her at the hospital...she had kicked her blanket off and her toes were peeking out when I moved the blanket there was her little leg. The nurses said they would constantly find her undone and with at least one foot out of her sleepers or blanket. Five years later you will still find her with one foot peeking out.

Eli just hanging out in the islet.

Mommy's first time holding her little munchkins.

A bit over whelming with two, knowing I had two more waiting for me at home!

Valentine's Day First picture of all four siblings together!

Poor Kristofer didn't know what had happen.

Mommy was gone for 3 weeks in the hospital,

then three weeks later he had not one

but two babies to fight for Mommy's attention.

One of the many 3AM feedings, you can see how much Kristofer

needed his mommy back then too! Thank goodness we had a king size bed back then!Eli, I was trying to catch his smile...naturally every time I snapped the picture he would stop. This is half a smirk. He was so cute I just want to kiss those little cheeks of his.

Even back then at 8/9 mo old Sara loved frogs~ this was her first time poking one.

Sara was mad that Jaron had taken the frog away. Eli on the other hand hated them, hated being in the pool and what you don't see is him pinching the tar out of my chest in fear that I would let him go.

Tomorrow I wil post the pictures of the family party and what they look like today in thier birthday. Five years, not sure where they disappeared to but looking back over these ictures reminds me just how blessed we are and how much fun having twins actually is!

Happy Birthday Babies!!