8 Months Old!

Riley turned 8 months old yesterday! She is a growing machine :) I weighed her a couple of weeks ago and she was up to 16.5 pounds! She can crawl and pull herself up on things, which is very dangerous! My Mom caught her climbing on one of her toys to climb up on the coach. I would have had a heart attack. She eats just about anything and everything these days. We are still waiting on her first tooth and sleeping through the night. Her personality is really starting to show, she can flirt with the best of them! She is just like Tony when it comes to "talking" she is never quiet and is REALLY loud. Her way of talking is to scream. She is so much fun and I have to say Ron and I are both blessed to have such a awesome baby. I ask myself all the time what I did right to be so lucky, not just Riley but Tony as well. He needs an award for being such a great big brother!

Gazelle Intense!

The "Soccer" Van :0)
She is a beauty!

For those of you that have no clue what my title means then you need to read the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey! We have been working on getting out of debt for almost a year and a half now. We sold the Tahoe about a year ago to lower our debt and got a Volkswagen Jetta. Great idea at the time but wasn't the best move because we still had a payment and we rolled over some negative equity. Well I have been wanting a van for awhile now, before the Volkswagen, but I couldn't convince Ron of that. Something about his manhood getting taken away :) Well, last week we went out a bought a 2003 Chevy Venture van! Guess what, we have no car payment on it! It has a lot of miles but Ron and I are both excited about it, yes I said RON. I think he realized how convenient that are. We now have the Volkswagen for sale, so if you know of anyone looking for a good little car we have it! It was just way to small for two kids and all the stuff we tote everywhere we go, oh and don't forget Chase since he goes everywhere with us :) Once we sell the Volkswagen we will officially have no car payment! We still have about 2 years to go on being debt free between credit cards and my student loans, but we have cut almost half our debt down and once we sell the car we will be even closer. Our goal is to get it done in a year and a half so we will see how gazelle intense we really are. Ron and I can not wait to live like no one else! :)

If you are in need of some good financial advance I urge you to check out Dave Ramsey, he just makes sense. A good friend from work told me about him and I owe her everything because of it. Ron and I would have been in so much trouble when he lost his job but, because we were going in the right direction the only thing it did was put it back on paying off the debt. We were able to stay a float and not touch credit cards and most of our savings. We are trying to pass it on to Anthony as well, that is why he paid for the water park ;) He gets it too! It has been a long road because we have had to give up a lot of things but we know in the future it will pay off.

Water Park Fun!

If you look closely you will see sprinkles the boys were sneaking to her. She had them everywhere!

Not so sure about this water stuff!

The "dudes"

She loved it after awhile!

Yes Anthony really did hit 1,000 tickets. Ron and I had to sit there forever! This was the one time I felt like they actually got their moneys worth: :)

Best Friends :)

Anthony has been saving his money to take Ian back to the Caribbean Cove water park. We are trying to teach him the value of money and how to work hard for his money. He has been saving since August to pay for one night at the hotel, which includes access to the water park. Between chores and holidays it took him 8 months to save $250.00, not too bad for a nine year old :) We took them there about a year and a half ago to celebrate Anthony's 8th birthday, a little early. They had a blast last time so we knew they would this time. I was able to get Anthony out of bed early all week by counting down the days.

Once we got checked in and and changed into our swimsuits, off they went! They went down the slides play in the kid area, and never slowed down. Ron, Riley, and I just floated around the lazy river. Riley wasn't too sure of it but warmed up really quickly and seemed to have a blast! She didn't like getting splashed in the face but other than that was very happy just floating with us. After several hours of playing we called it a day and went and ate dinner. After dinner we headed up to the arcade. We were all exhausted. The next morning we all go up and ate a quick breakfast and headed back to the water park. Anthony and Ian spend most of their time on the slides. Ron and Riley spent a lot of time hanging out in kid pool. She really liked it! We didn't stay too late Sunday, we had a lot to do that day but both boys had a blast. Anthony is still tired today :) I know I am exhausted but that is because Riley did not like sleeping with Ron and I, she is worse than Tony when it comes to moving around!

He scored a GOAL!

Yes Tony comes up this kids armpits! He is a little smaller than the rest of the team :)

Go Bubba Go!

Tony had his first soccer game on Saturday with his new team. He was VERY nervous. Since it rained so much last week he didn't get to practice with them at all. We was nervous because this team is older than him, this team is 10-12 year olds. Once he got into the game and started playing he loosed up. By the end of the game he knew almost every one's name and was cheering them on. With about 5 minutes to go, Tony got the ball and SCORED! He was so happy :) It was definitely a confidence booster, he didn't stop smiling for hours!

What a bummer of a weekend!

I had to work all day on Saturday :( Silly Non-Profit Groups think they need trained to feed people at the largest sporting event in the world ;) So, I missed soccer. Tony's team smoked the other team 6-1! We had some issues with the coach so Tony is getting moved from the U10 team up to the U12 team! He was suppose to have his first practice on Monday but the rain just wouldn't go away and it was cancelled. I think in the past month he has had two practices out of 8. I will be glad when all this crummy weather is gone!

The weather forecast for Sunday wasn't looking so good for karting. I didn't think anything of it since they normally run in the rain. Well, Saturday late morning they had already cancelled the race :( Talk about two grouchy boys. We took advantage of the day and cleaned the house, planted our garden, and Ron went and worked on the kart for the next race.

Happy Easter!

Hopefully everyone had a great Easter! We sure did, it started with Tony waking us up at 7:30. We made him wait until Riley woke up or 8:15 before he could start searching for his Easter basket, mean parents I know! Once we were all up it took Tony no time to find where the Easter bunny had hid Riley's and his Easter baskets, it the coffee table! We had eggs all over this house! I think we have them all but I am sure we will still be finding them in the next week or so :) Tony got the movie Bolt, along with a ton of other things, we all watch it together this morning. It was a great Easter morning. We then went and met both our parents at the Brickyard Crossing for brunch, it was yummy! Once we were done there we went home for Riley's nap then headed out for some Easter geocaching! It was a great day together as a family. With the month of May coming up I know time together will be rare for the next seven weeks so it was good to have one day together and have a blast :)

Pretty Easter Eggs...

We spent Saturday early evening coloring Easter eggs. We had a blast and made a huge mess, I think that is tradition at our house :) Ron and I have just as much fun as Tony. Riley wasn't too impressed she couldn't figure out what we were doing. She was more interested in trying to figure out how to get the water out of her new sippy cup! Chase loved it because Ron and Tony would share the eggs they were eating. I even tried to repaint the kitchen wall when I dropped an egg into the blue coloring, oops!

Easter Egg Hunts!

We got up early this morning for Tony's first soccer game. We were literally walking out the door at 8:00 am when I noticed Ron had a missed called. I had to run and get something and told him he better check it. Well, the coach had called last night and they cancelled the game because of how cold it was!

So, we looked at each other and decided to go get some Starbucks and figure out something to do. What better thing to do than go find some garage sales! We found a few before we had to be back in Brownsburg at the park for the first Easter egg hunt of the day. It was madness, we went last year so we knew what to expect. At least it wasn't snowing this year! There are so many kids Tony doesn't get that many eggs but it is just enough to make him happy :) We went home and did some things around the house then headed out to McCloud Nature Park for our second Easter egg hunt of the day. We had not been to this one so we didn't know what to expect. We will be going back soon, we all think there have to be some caches there and it is a beautiful park. I think we were all more excited about the park than the Easter egg hunt!