My babies

As you know I walked the March of Dimes Walk last weekend. I was blessed with two healthy baby boys at birth. Not every baby born into this world is as lucky and they might start off fighting from the start.

So today I tribute my healthy baby boys!

6 lbs, 2 oz

Healthy baby boy, born 2 day's before his due date.

Today he is my healthy and happy 6 year old Luke.

7 lbs, 1 oz

Healthy baby boy born 2 weeks before his due date.

Today he is my happy, healthy 16 month old Thomas.

Don't they just melt your heart....

Go visit Angie at 7 Clown Circus for more great Wordful Wednesday post.

March For Babies

This weekend we did the March of Dimes walk. My husbands work normally has about 1000 employees participate in the walk and there was about 5000 people in total that walked. This year he decided to walk and brought me in on the walking also. Between the two of us we raised about $500 for the walk. It was great to do something for such a great cause.

It is also a very humbling experience as you see so many families walking because they had their own personal experiences with children born early or with health issues. I saw one family with a wagon train, 3 toddlers each in a wagon and each wagon was labeled with a sign of born at 1 lb 2 oz, 1 lb 6 oz, 2 lbs…. it was great to see all three of them grown and healthy and beating the odds. Many groups walking with shirts about a child, sometimes you don’t know if they made it or not but still so wonderful to see them out there. I had never done the March of Dimes before but being a mom just makes me want to support something so great and now I want to do it every year.

We got up early Sunday morning and drove to Downtown Cincinnati where the walk began. We took the kids with us and made it a family event. We had beautiful weather this weekend. This is Ohio and in April it can be 80 or we could have snow, you just never know. This weekend we hit 80 and it was wonderful. It was probably in the 70’s when we walked early in the morning. It was a 6 mile walk and here are some of the highlights of our walk.

We started at the river in downtown Cincinnati. We took our large bike trailer/stroller because Luke is my lazy child and 6 miles is way too much walking for a 6 year old. We walked along the river and went around The Great American Ball Park, home to the Cincinnati Reds. Then we went around the Paul Brown stadium home to the Cincinnati Bangles. Here is a picture of the football stadium.

We walked down to the bridge shown on the other side of the football stadium (seen in the picture). We then crossed the Ohio river into Kentucky where we then walked back along the river to Newport.

I took a picture of the Reds stadium from the Kentucky side. This is zoomed in from the other side of the Ohio river.

We then crossed not this bridge but the next one down in the picture back into Ohio.

A total walk of 6 miles that was pretty tough when Thomas would not stay in the stroller and wanted to be carried 90% of the walk. Poor Eric did a lot of this for most of the walk.

We crossed the finish line where they had music and activities for the kids. Eric took Luke down along the river front to check things out. Thomas and I did some coloring at one of the kid activity tables.

Finally I took this last picture as I read the different posters about the different families with some of the stories of survival and of memories of the little ones that were lost. Those were the hard ones to read about. All I can say is how thankful and blessed I was to have two beautiful and healthy baby boys.

Have you ever done a charitable walk like this?

Sing It, Wordful Wednesday

For today's enjoyment, I have a clip of Thomas (my 16 month old) singing...

Now for some reason my kids can not sing the typically nursery rhymes and such that all little kids learn. Oh no.... Luke was a Bob the Builder song lover and now Thomas has decided that Sponge Bob will be his song of choice....

Enjoy!!!

My favorite part is the ohhhh at the begining. He does that every time it comes on in our house. His Sponge Bob isn't the clearest but it is what he is trying to say.

Go visit Angie at 7 Clown Circus for more great Wordfull Wednesday post.

Mad, Mad & more Mad!!!

I am so upset right now I can't see straight. You hear about this stuff happening all the time to other people but not me. I went to Target today to buy a CD and I used a credit card that I barely ever use. I pay the balance off every month so it is at zero all the time. I just made payment in full on Friday and my card was rejected at the store. That is really odd!!! So I leave the store and call... guess what, some punk stole that I don't even know was using my card. The fraud department caught a lot of Internet transactions taking place on Saturday and put a fraud hold on my card. I feel so sick right now....

I am a very credit conscious person and I just went in and did my free credit report check two weeks ago because I stay on top of this stuff. So the fact that my card was stolen just upsets me to no end.

I am thankful the bank caught it and froze the card, not happy that they did not call me. Now in a week I have to go in a dispute all these unknown charges. This had better not hurt my excellent credit score rating. I will be pissed!!! Sorry I am mad at this very moment.

First Ever Play Date

Last Friday Luke had his very first ever play date where a friend from school came over to our house that afternoon. We met his mom at noon at school and then they followed us to our house where his friends mom dropped him off. These two boys had so much fun. I was a bit nervous about the whole thing but it turned out really great. The weather was beautiful outside on Friday so they took the Nerf guns out side and ran around the yard having a blast shooting each other with little Nerf darts.

Here are some pictures from Friday's play date.
These two chased each other around the old shed out back. The hid behind the tree, shed and anything else so they could sneak attack each other. It was fun to watch them.



Here they are together. Poor D, Luke wouldn't give him the smaller Nerf gun so he had to carry around this thing that was as big as him. He was a good sport about it.

The boys were constantly having to stop and put the darts back in. It was reloading time. The good thing they both had the same number of darts and it was always reload time at the same time for both of them.
I love this picture of Luke. I don't get to many picture of him with such a great natural smile anymore. (His nervous twitches just take away those great smiles, another story for another time). It just goes to show how relaxed and how much fun he was having.

Finally here we are again and we have the dog way back along the edge of the yard going potty in my photo. Thanks Lexis!!!

It was such a wonderful day!!!