March

The next few entries will be an attempt to catch up on what we have been doing since Tom got home in March. We took a couple family vacations in March. One was a weekend in Branson, MO and the other a trip to Disney World with half of Tom's family. I will save the Disney World pictures for their own entry.

Our trip to Branson was not very eventful. The most fun we had was probably in the hotel swimming pool because it rained the whole time we were there. Branson has a ton of shows, but we didn't go to any because we thought it might be torture with the kids and we wanted to save our money for our Disney World trip. There were some outlets nearby though, so I got a little shopping in.

Amberly, our little fish.

Cheese!

Wesley and Daddy have fun at the pool together.

Alive and Kicking

Our lives truly have not ended since Tom came home...in fact we have had some great times in the past almost three months (I can't believe it's been 3 months almost).  We've been so busy that I guess I just lost the blogging bug.  Plus, half the reason I used to blog was so that Tom could keep up on things and now he is here.  Tonight I finally got around to looking at some of your blogs and it inspired me to at least put something here.  It is truly so much fun to see everything that everyone else is doing.  It makes our lives seem rather dull in comparison, but I know that will not be the case when someone else gets to look at what we are doing.  The latest craze at the Schell home is the new pet Tom and the kids went to get last weekend.  (When I say kids, I mean it...Tom's sister and kids were visiting over the Memorial Day weekend and he took all 5 of them plus Reili and Amberly on an hour drive to pick up our new pet.  My HERO!)

Drum roll....they bought a ball python.  Amberly and Reili (and I must say Daddy) can't get enough of it.  Reili named him Michael (which as Tom pointed out is sort of ironic considering he is a snake and all.  He thought Lucifer would be more appropriate).  Well...I'll have to recap the last few months later, but this will have to do for now.

Don't Blame us, Blame Facebook

It's been a month since I got home and I've loved every minute of it.  I go back to work tomorrow, finally, but I thought I'd post a few things since it has been a while.  Here's a video from when I went to Reili's school to surprise her:

Here's a video of Amberly when she came home from preschool:

Of course, Wesley didn't remember me, but it only took a couple of weeks before he was my buddy again...  The kids wore me out...  They all wanted to spend time with daddy.  This is just an example:

My Favorite Decoration

Just before Tom came home I was able to finish (with the help of my wonderful friends) a project I had been working on for a few months.  It didn't really take a few months to do, just a few hours but somehow I could never get a round to finishing it.  Now it is my favorite decoration in our home and I wish I had done it sooner.  The picture has been up for several months (and part of my blog for even longer), but I finally got the vinyl lettering done a couple weeks ago and didn't post it then because I didn't want Tom to see it until he got home.  I love the saying...my friend saw it somewhere but it read "Land"  instead of "Home".  It definitely fits with the picture perfectly.  I love it!

Guess Who's Back?

Wednesday I was able to take a trip to St. Louis to pick up Tom.  It was so great to be together again after so long.  We were able to stay the night and then came back to Rolla on Thursday afternoon and reunite with the kids.  They were so surprised and happy.  I only got them on video, so we will have to see if they will upload.

My first glimpse of Tom at the airport in St. Louis.

So happy together!