It has been so crazy busy around our house lately....we had the kids last week of school (volunteer appreciation breakfasts, field day, last minute field trips, and DARE graduation)...i have not had a chance to update this blog forever. let me fist start out and wish bradley a very belated happy birthday! he turned 11 on june 8th. i don't have the pictures from his party yet, but i will tell you it was great fun. we had family over in the afternoon for cake and ice cream, and then in the evening we had his "friend" party (i.e. 13 5th grade boys AND girls!). it was so much fun...we grilled out hot dogs and brats and turned our backyard into a big outdoor movie theater. after cookie cake and presents-and when it was just about dark-we started the movie. chris brought a projector home from the office, we hung a giant tarp on our swing set, started a bonfire in the fire pit and set up chairs in the yard....i decided that this generation had not been introduced to all the great movies of our time, so we showed Back to the Future. only 2 of the girls had seen it before...hello parents?....they all loved it and couldn't wait to see the sequels!...i didn't have the heart to tell them that they were not as good as the first. as the movie was showing i passed around popcorn and big boxes of movie theater candy...it is really hard to plan a "themed-party" for a soon to be teenage boy-but this backyard theater was a hit! we had s'mores after the movie and all of the girls were picked up around 10:30, all of the boys spent the night.
on another note, we have been crazy busy hopping from one baseball game to the next..we are becoming very familiar with all the baseball fields and which one has great concessions around the st louis area! 









this past friday night we took all of the kids to their first official concert (bradley has actually been to many) but tristan and lainie have only been to hannah montana, the cheetah girls and the jonas brothers-so i don't really count those...and no we did not pay $500 a ticket for hannah montana, we got very lucky and a friend offered us tickets the day before the show-awesome seats and a good price!...anyway, back to rascall flatts. they were at the verizon wireless ampitheater and taylor swift opened up for them. i have to tell you that chris surprised me for my birthday with rascall flatts tix back in september and we ended up having 4th row seats...we were so close i could've touched them!...this time we had lawn seats and chris payne and taylor went with us. the logan's (bradley's good friend's family) went with us too! it was soooo much fun and an incredible concert! taylor swift was great, but rascall flatts were incredible!...they are one of my favorite bands, but i have to say they not only sounds great in concert, they just put on an incredible show. i told chris after the concert that i think i could become a rascall flatts junkie and just start travelling around following them from venue to venue to see them perform-chris payne agreed! we just had so much fun and the kids had a blast!








Finally, a big Happy Father's Day to my wonderful husband chris. our children are so blessed to have such a fantastic, loving father. happy father's day to all the dad's out there!


