Looking Back May Edition

Earlier this month we got to go to a small recital for Little girl. She has been in a 12 week piano course after school and learned a few songs during that time.

Her class also did a Wax museum project too. They each had to pick someone who was a leader and learn more about them. Since Little girl loves gymnastics all three of her choices were gymnasts. She ended up deciding on Simone Biles. She had to make a project board or diorama. She also had to memorize her part about Simone Biles. I was so proud of her. She worked on memorizing it and never looked at her notes about it once. 

One of my favorite things about how this was set up was that there was a play button at each station for the students. you can see her presentation below. It was really noisy with other kids doing their presentation down the hall and people watching them.

Her teacher also does this with the kids every year.

I love the way her teacher teaches the kids and shows them love. She had each one of them write about their favorite part of them. There were a ton of different things and reasons. I love her confidence here. I never want her to be prideful or conceited but there are so many girls who don't like the way God has made them. I pray that she always sees herself as beautiful. Just as God has made her.

My sister and brother in law had the chance to go to London for over a week and my mom went to keep her two boys. We went down for one night. We got to hang out with them and play. We also got to go to the little's tball game and eat at a yummy pastry place.

Little girl wasn't the only one to have performances this month. Golden boy had his class recorder program this month as well. I would post the performance but since there are other kids in the video i don't feel right about posting it. lets just say that it was way better then i could have imagined. they did such a great job with stage presence and learning the music.

On May 22 my Nana in law celebrated her Birthday in heave. Little girl asked last year if we could send her a balloon. I noticed that i had a note about buying a balloon on two of my calendars. I was out the night before and bought one. Then that morning i had them write her a little note and we released it to. it was sweet and a good way to keep her memory alive since my kids both have memories of her.

He makes parenthood fun. Sure, there are challenges but choosing to focus on the good stuff like watching him read (or look at pictures as he says but can then spout off football stats that had to come from reading) or his arms around my neck (at school, in front of all his friends) there are struggles but the good surely does out weigh them. Here we are waiting to go back to be fitted for new hearing aids. 

Here are a few other posts about our hearing aid journey

ears

tigger ears

Lost another tooth too

He is 10 and lost tooth #10

10 more left and then all big teeth

i'm not sure i can handle the teeth falling out.

stop the growing up

a post from when he got his first tooth

post from when he lost his first few teeth

we headed to the lake the weekend of Memorial day were Golden boy got to fish, fish, fish. he only caught one but was determined 

they both got the tube. Little girl was way more interested in tubing. Big brother went along. (remember he just wanted to fish)

And we ended the month with the anticipation of a new year. 

The count down is on. In just a few hours she goes from being 7 to 8. 7 has been a challenging year. A growing year for all of full us. A figuring some things out kind of year. I think it will also be one I look back on and smile. This girl is full if great things. If you take the time to look, see, know her.....your life will be greatly blessed.

The BIG 10!

TEN years ago today you took your first breath. it was a difficult one, one that would keep you on a ventilator for week but it was our first breath.

and when I looked at you for the first time, you took my breath away.

I am so thankful that God chose me to be your mommy.

you are wild and strong and funny and passionate and more type A than I would have ever imagined, you are creative and stubborn and so very full of adventure.

I love everything about you.

Happy Birthday Sweet boy.

Cousins

this photo was taking the night we celebrated Little girls birthday.

we invited the local cousins over for some pizza, cake, ice cream and pinata fun.

there is nothing like spending time with cousins.

Two Handed Counting Vol. 2

My baby will be adding another finger to the number count of her age tomorrow.

6 has had its ups and downs and twists and turns but we made it through and are staring in the face of 7.

i think i say something like this every year but 7 doesnt seems like a baby anymore. with 6, i was still so close to touching 5, she was in school but 7 just ssmes so far away from that small age where she could count her age all on one hand.

at the bottom of this post you can see the last day of when she counted on only one hand. 

What I learned in July....

i  have only done this for the past few months but it has been fun. Check out more about the What i learned posts on Emily's blog and link up there.

1. how much i love all-inclusive vacations and can't believe it has taken me this long to go on one.
My hubby and I went to Cancun this month to celebrate our 14 years of being married. (yeah, we are weird like that, we celebrate strange years)

2. celebrating my sons birthday with a camping trip was fabulous and so much fun
the past few years we have been doing combined birthday parties for the kids but this year since we did a paint party for little girl we asked golden boy what he wanted to do. he said camping. he wanted us to rent a camper but we took my nephew and two nieces and we just weren't all going to fit in a pop up camper. (which was the only thing that our van could have pulled) it was a quick weekend but I think that the kids had a fantastic time.

3. i have good genes or so we have been told. I posted this picture on my dads 60th birthday and it was commented two or three time how they want whatever my parents are taking. this picture is straight off of my phone.  no editing. my parents don't look even close to 60.

here is a picture of the originals.
My little sister, mom, me and my dad
we got to spend some time together, just the four of us, the last weekend of the month. it was my dads 60th birthday

here are my other links:

June

May

March

Little Girls Paint Party

so I got the idea for a paint party from Ashley Ann's blog Under the Sycamore.

as it got closer to little girl's birthday I asked her if she would like to have a paint party. she loves all things crafty so she was in love with the idea. I asked her what it would be that she wanted to paint. her immediate response, no hesitation, was a butterfly.

I got to work purchasing the canvases. (12x12 ones) the transfer paper to trace the butterfly on, the easels, paint and brushes. I had her tell me all of the colors that she wanted to use for the butterfly too. we got on pinterest and searched for butterfly designs that she liked.

If you can kind of see, this is what all of the girls butterflies looked like

I bought paint pallets from Wal-Mart for under a dollar and decided to go with a set of five brushes for each girl to use to paint with.

my initial thought was that they would all paint it the same. we had an example that we painted the week or so before. but once the girls got there, they were all asking if they could paint it any way that they wanted and I didn't have it in me to tell them no. it was fun to see all that they came up with and they did ask for held in mixing the colors up for different colors.

we ordered pizza and had cookie cake (birthday girls request)

she wanted this pretty pink lemonade and sprite. we wanted to make sure that everything we were doing was what she wanted and she told me one day. well mom, I love everything but I would really like to have sprite at the party.

I am so proud of how they all did