Riechmann Family

Time to Bake

Since we had a Riechmann/Rodgers birthday party planned for Tuesday evening, we decided to make cakes during the day. We (Jaycie and I) are always looking for fun ways to entertain our kiddos together! We headed over after Jaycie and I got our coffee fix and began our cake making. Well, Jaycie and I actually mixed the cakes but we let the big kids decorate them!

This is actually "Mom School." I made the kids do some activities to fill some time one boring day at home.

Avery making a mess while we baked.

The girls decorated the "Girl Cake" for Milli and Avery

Jack and Braden decorated the "Boy Cake" for Dustin.

Avery decided to bang on the table for a while. SUPER ANNOYING!

The D is for Daddy or Dustin...right Jaycie ;)

The baby cake!

Our little decorators!!

Cardinal's Game Date Night

We were the lucky winners of 2 tickets to the Cards vs Reds game Tuesday night. We were picked out of a drawing at Dustin's company picnic. These were no ordinary seats. We were in the Champion's Club where you get free food, drinks and mixed drinks, AC and seats outside with TVs and fans. I'm not sure I want to go back again without that royal treatment!

Inside the club

Me enjoying an olive from my Bloody Mary...YUM!

The view from our seats.

They make you wear these so none of the riff-raff get in :)

Go Cards!!!!

Neighborhood 4th of July Party...No, not in our neighborhood!!

Historically, we have been out of town for the 4th of July, but since our family has grown by leaps and bounds, we have outgrown my parents' camper and boat. That's not really an option anymore, so starting last year we stayed local for the holiday. We called up Sarah and Scott to ask what their plans were for Monday. The filled us in on their neighborhood block party that was being held that day. We arrived at their house around 2ish and then headed to the BBQ around 4. The weather was HOT and humid. We brought plenty of stuff to manage the kids, but the brief downpour that occurred kind of put a kink in our plans. We all hung out in the garage of a friend's house for the rainiest part and when it finally let up we set up shop again. The kids had fun and the adults were able to hang out some. Avery had the hardest time, but we lasted all the way to the fireworks. Kendall cried through most of those. I swear it took me all week to recover from the exhaustion I felt from that outing! But I look back at it with fondness!

My HOT baby had to strip down to her diaper.

Randy feeding Milli

Who knows what these guys are up to!

More sassiness

A firecracker on Olivia the firecracker ;)

Who gave these boys the sugar sticks????

I told them they better hurry up and smile or I'd take a million pictures. That whipped them into a photo op pretty quickly!

Sarah and Scott

Kendall reading her (Olivia's) Bible. She was very religious on Independence Day!

Miss Milli hanging out!

Jaycie and Randy

The hubs and me!

Water Day @ the Rodgers'!!

While we all belong to the SIUE pool, it is quite a lot of work to get everyone there. The big kids are fun, but the babies get tired and hot and fussy pretty easily. Jaycie had the brilliant idea to host a water day at her house. We arrived around 10:30, the babies napped, the big kids played, we ate lunch, and went back out for more water fun. We were home and ready for some relaxation by 3:00. It was a lot of fun, which could be hard to say since there were 13 kids and 4 adults there!

Olivia and Kendall enjoy the sprinkler ball...

The big boys take a dip...

Hello Sass

These bathing beauties needed a rest. It lasted about 3 minutes.

I don't even know where to start on this one!

Avery was her usual Baby-zilla self so we had to cage her to keep her from running off.

We are in some serious trouble with this one!

The babies enjoying some shade outside

They were all very well behaved!

We also had some water balloons that Jaycie filled up (to the point of having numb fingers) that mostly lasted for about 2 minutes, but the kids loved them!

Haircuts and Fireflies...

It had been over a year since Kendall had gotten a hair cut, so it was time to get another trim. I love to go to my childhood friend Tonya so that's where our whole crew headed along with the Rodgers crew.

Before

Later that night we caught some fireflies. The kids weren't fans of touching them but wanted Dustin and I to catch as many as we could.

I think it left Daddy exhausted!

I think we ended up with about 20 and I think 19 were dead by morning. RIP fireflies.

My little beauty after her haircut!

Ears Pierced!!

While the boys were away, we decided it was a good weekend to get Kendall's ears pierced. We called Mimi and asked if she wanted to join us. She was excited to go! We met at the mall in Alton and talked her up about it. When we got there the little girl in front of us sat like a statue and was so brave. She was a great role model for Kendall! When it was her turn, she sat quietly and was so BRAVE! I thought there'd be two people working and one person on each ear, but there was only one employee. She didn't even shed a tear! They look beautiful!!

Before...

After. You can't see because she was so excited and dancing around.

There's one. She wanted the most humongous gaudy CZ earrings they had, but I was able to talk her into these littler ones!

This starts the photo shoot that evening. She also wanted a new nightgown since the boys were gone having so much fun so I had to take some pics of that!

Still dancing!

And I'm spent...

Boys Trip!

Dustin's company is based out of Indiana but they have offices in STL and Maryville (where Dustin's located). For the company outing, they gave away free tickets to Holiday World! While it sounded like a blast, I didn't want to spend a 90+ degree day standing by a stroller trying to keep Avery occupied. That being said, the "boys" decided to make a day of it for themselves. The left early Saturday morning and drove to Santa Clause, IN to Holiday World. We "girls" had our own time. They stayed in a hotel and came back by mid-afternoon Sunday. They had a good time, but we did miss our guys :)