Professional Pictures

When the babies were about 2 1/2 weeks old we did some pictures with a former student of mine.  Nick Barnes did the pictures, he had been doing photography for a long time and is truly talented!  

 Alex

Tony

 Alex

 Alex

Tony

My newborn pics of the babies

We had a professional do some newborn and family pictures, but I also wanted to give it a shot.  I think they turned out pretty good. :)  I can tell after seeing his though, that I am in fact not a professional :).  Also, Nick has told me that someday they are not going to be happy with me because of the pictures, but I am really hoping in about 30 years, they recreate them with a white onesie and all!

 Alex

 Their feet were peeling and I did a project with white paint, that is why their feet look so bad.  I still love baby feet though.

 I timed it during nap time, so they were very cooperative

 Alex's feet

 Big brother love

 Tony

Tony's feet

 Alex's feet

Tony's feet

 Baseball bottoms

Vince's Birthday

Vince turned 7 this year!  Truly hard to believe that he is that old already.  He is a great kid who did really well in Kindergarten this year!  I have to say his school did an amazing job with him and made his first real school experience great.  Vince's interests include baseball, reading, the Trans Siberian Orchestra, football, basketball, baseball again, etc.  Health wise he is doing really well, we even are on a break from physical therapy for the time being because he is doing that well.  He still has lots of doctors and he always will, but luckily for now, everything has just been routine.  We know in the future he will need another shunt, because they don't last forever, but we are hoping that is a long ways away.  About 95% of shunts have been replaced by year 10 and we are at year 6.  At 7, Vince realizes that he is a little different than other kids in his abilities, but it does not seem to bother him.  Every once in a while when Dominic can do something he can, it bugs him, but we talk about it and try to help him understand that there are things he will be better at and things that other people will be better at.  Vince also gets a little frustrated with the his potty routine, but again there we discuss it and try to find the positives from it.  He has to be cathed 4 times a day and we have to do cone enema every night, which is about a 45 minutes commitment.  We got him a tablet for Christmas to try to help pass the time better and found that doing homework doing this time was good.  I am amazed at how many people in the school district I work at and Vince goes to school at know Vince.  On a very regular basis I have people come up to me and tell me how much they enjoy him and how happy he is.  I rarely know these people (I do find out who they are), but it is good to know that he is polite and happy with other people too.  I am pretty sure more people know him than me and I have been there for 8 years.  We are very proud of Vince and are blessed that he is our son!

 We did Vince's birthday a little different this year because the twins were born only a month before we had everyone down, but at different times.  This made for quite the birthday week.  In all Vince had three birthday treats at home and one at school! 

Blowing out the candles 

 Vince asked that we decorate for him and we did.  You don't see it here, but Nick also blew up a bag of balloons and those lasted forever!  Best 2.00 dollars spent.

Baseball stuff!  That is what Vince asked for.  We also started a college fund for all of the boys to use someday, so that was contributed too.

 Both boys got cleats, Dominic was super excited because we had told him he could not have any for T-ball.  They were on sale :) 

You can tell the babies were super excited!

Vince decided that he wanted us to make a cake instead of buying one at the store, so me and the two bigger boys made it and it turned out really good!  It was a lot more cost effective too!