AIM high!!!

Just a quick note to let you all know that Izabella qualified for the AIM program at her Elementary. This is gifted child testing from what I understand. She went through 3 rounds of testing I believe, one including and interview and this week we got a note from the Gifted Program Director that she qualifies. We're not 100% sure yet what exactly this means, but from the little that I do understand it means that she will have either 1 hour a day or 1 hour a week away from her normal class to be in this AIM program that will teach her at a higher level than the students that did not qualify. We are very proud of her and as usual, Steve is taking all the credit for this as of course, she gets it from him. If she gets her smarts from him, then that leaves her beauty thanks to me!! I'll take that!

Anyway, just wanted to share. Hope you are all having a great week and a great upcoming holiday weekend!

We belong in the ZOO! and Happy Mother's Day

We had a school field trip last Thursday to the ZOO!! What fun this turned out to be. I decided to ride the bus with Izabella because she doesn't get to and she's been begging me so I decided that this would be a good way for her to get to do that. Somehow, I don't recall my hips hitting both sides of the seats as I walked down the isle to the back of the bus. Something must be wrong! They must be making these buses smaller nowadays! At any rate, because I was a bus riding chaparone, they gave me another student to be "in charge" of and who do you think that was? but of course, Mr. Drew! He and Izabella have become the best of friends, in fact, his mom and I are discussing the possibility of a sleep over with the 2 of them. Why not! Anyway, here are a few pictures of our day at the ZOO! hope you enjoy!

And then came, Sunday, Mother's Day!

Friday at school was Muffins with Mom day! She started out the day, but picking my entire outfit. Poor thing, it took forever, nope-that doesn't fit me, too small, wrong season, try again, etc. I went to school with Izabella, where she served me breakfast of muffins and orange juice. She gave me the bag you see in this picture (which was for Father's day too, on the back) and inside was a card from Izabella made for me. It read:

What I know about my Mom. (it was a fill in the blank)

My mom is very Sweet.

She is 99 inches tall.

She weighs 109 pounds (my favorite answer!)

She has brown eyes (actually hazel, but close enough!)

She has brown hair.

Her favorite food is Salad. (I don't know about that one!)

Her favorite color is Red!

She did one for Steve that I will share at Father's day! Anyway, on Sunday morning, I wasn't allowed downstairs until breakfast was made. Poptarts and fruit salad! She drew a few more pictures for me and gave me a very cute little card. We didn't do much the rest of the day and then we went out for dinner at a little place called the "Right Wing Cafe", one of our little favorites and then it was home and back to the regular schedule of shower, brush the teeth and then to bed. By the way, we all had dentist appts. last week and no cavities! for any of us!! YAY!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all of you whom I thought of yesterday and to my Mom and Mother in law again, Happy Mother's Day! Love and miss you all, XOXO!

Having some FUN!

Last Saturday, the weather finally came through for us to have a Soccer game! Yay! I'm not sure if she wants to continue because she complains the whole way there and then when we get there she's out there having the best time and she's really proud of herself when she scores, which is atleast once a game! Then she says she loves it, who knows. She wants to go karate and gymnastics but she has to finish this first. She could do both but that's up to her! Anyway, here are a few pictures from the game and then from Sunday morning, when we payed school and Izabella got everyone at their table and with a hat on and we did crafts and coloring for about 2 hours and then we had breakfast for lunch. My kind of Sunday's, nice and lazy! and fun too! Enjoy!

Sassy for the Summer!..........

Izabella and Daddy have been plotting against me to get her hair cut off. He's been tucking her hair in her shirt when she brushes her teeth and then has her come find me and tell me how cute it would be if we cut her hair off. It would be cute for Summer she tells me, and keep her cool, she says. So, I finally gave in! It's only hair, I keep telling myself. We had a very busy day on Saturday. We started out in the morning with community service for girl scouts by picking up trash in the industrial park down the road from our house! That was fun, she likes using the little grippers, she called them, to get up all the cigarette butts. She even said she got a few "butt" covers, that made her and Christina laugh so hard. I guess they figured this was the only way we'd let them get away with saying butt so many times! Then we were off to a soccer game, they don't really keep score but Izabella's team played better. She even took the ball and had a full length on everyone else and drove the ball home and into the net. You can't imagine how proud she was of herself, couldn't wipe the smile off of her face all day! After the game we went to Hotdog Heaven, a little place in Woodstock square (the cutest little downtown shopping area) and had some hotdogs outside since the weather was so beautiful! Then we went for the haircut. I was taking pictures the whole time and sending them to Daddy on his cell phone so he could experience it as well. I took 10 probably but am only showing you the best 3. So, here's the final outcome, it's really cute and she just loves it. She keeps looking in the mirror and saying she seems someone else looking back at her. But, she knows it's still Izabella. She had a sleep over at Christina's house Saturday night and I hope to post some of those pictures later so you can see them both together. They are just like sisters, love/hate relationship, if you know what I mean. It changes with the wind. Anyway, enjoy! Not too much longer and she'll be out of school and off to summer camp. She's going back to where she went for PreK during the summer.

Here we go!
Looks like a small animal, huh? I never thought anyone else could have more hair than me!

The final outcome!

Daddy's Birthday, more Easter pics and soccer!

Daddy's birthday was the same weekend as Easter this year, wierd! Anyway, I made his favorite, chocolate cake with Grandma's white icing. Made sure to double the icing since Taylor was in town because her and Steve like to eat it by the spoonful! yuk!
Then we painted Easter eggs all night and came up with some real beauties! I think you'll agree. That same weekend we had Izabella's first soccer game. We also came up with the name of the team, the "Tornados!" and I have to tell you a quick story about this. It was their first game of the season and before we left the house we were trying to come up with names for the team to pick from and Izabella kept saying anything but the Tornados which is ironic since that's what they ended up picking. Well Izabella was one of the first 5 out to play and I have to say, she's a little trash talker. I have no idea where this comes from but I couldn't hear what she was saying but I did see one of the coaches reactions, which was like, "well OK then, let's just play!" when I asked him later he told me that she said, "we're gonna suck you up!" her explanation for this was, well we're the Tornados, get it, we're gonna suck you up! I couldn't very well argue with that. I didn't know whether to encourage or discourage this. We got quite a kick out of this, Tay and I laughed about it all day! Enjoy!

Easter Slide Show....

I have finally found the time to upload all the pictures from the 2 Easter Egg Hunts we went to. The first one is from the city's annual egg hunt and the 2nd one is from her Elementary school, the day we picked up Taylor for her Spring Break. Hope you enjoy!

Taylor comes to play........

Yay! Taylor came to visit us over her Spring Break last week. She got here on Friday before Steve's birthday and was able to spend his birthday and Easter with us this year. It's been a long time since that's happened, if ever! The day I picked Taylor up, I took off work to go to school with Izabella to attend her Easter egg hunt and party there and then we left and hit the road. We met Tay about 3 o'clock and then headed back home. We spent the rest of that day and night shopping for Daddy's birthday presents. Then the 3 of us girls went to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner. Izabella loves this place because they have the Mariachi band and a big stage that she's always to afraid to get on, but she loves it anyway! Then it was home. Taylor got to go to Izabella's first soccer game which was so cool to Izabella. We think they actually won the game, although there's no real score keeping at this stage. But, Taylor thought it was cute and they ended up in the backyard at least once a day practicing, which was fun to watch. Daddy was in WI and came home on Saturday, his birthday. We had planned on going out to dinner, but he'd had a long day getting home due to weather delays and he wasn't up for going out. So, we ordered in pizza instead and then opened presents and had cake. The cake was fun! I ended up having to make 2 of them because I let Izabella help me and she set the oven too high and I didn't notice it until I pulled out 2 chocolate hockey pucks and knew that meant I had to start all over. This is one of those times where it's nice that Taylor can drive because she was out the door before I could even ask her! I swear any excuse to get behind the wheel! I remember those days......we also started dying a bunch of easter eggs too! We took Soxy to the dog park on Sunday and it ended up being a lot colder that it was supposed to be so we didn't stay too long. We just ended up hanging out at the house and staying up way too late, just talking.

I took Mon, Tues and Wed off so I could spend some time with Taylor since every other time she comes I'm working. The school schedules are different here so everyone was in school. We did a lot of shopping, got my hair done, got our toes done. Oh yeah, we went to check out the high school that Taylor would be going to if she decides to move in with us before next year. She was nervous because this school is much bigger than the one she goes to now. But, it's not too far from our house and we talked to the counselor about all the things we need to get in place and done before the next school year starts. So, now it's up to Taylor to decide what she wants to do, we'll see what happens here but we'd love to have her and I know it would just make Izabella the happiest little sister ever!

On Wed, Steve, Tay and I went to Izabella's school and Taylor read to her class before lunch. We stayed and ate lunch with her and she just loved that. She was sad though when we left because she wanted to go with us, but she couldn't. They eat lunch at 10:21 in the morning so it was a bit hard for the 3 of us to eat school food that early in the morning. But, we managed! I went back to work the rest of the week and Friday night we took the girls to Chili's and then to see Horton hears a who, because Taylor was leaving on Saturday. We didn't get home until about 10:30 which Izabella just loved! But, by the time we pulled up I think she'd passed out in the car, but she was adamant about the fact that she wasn't tired!! Too funny! Doesn't want to miss anything.

I have a ton of Easter pictures from the city egg hunt, the school egg hunt and the one we did at home in the front yard. While Izabella was looking for the eggs that were clearly in plain site, I was telling Taylor about how when David, Carrie and I were little we'd have Easter Egg hunts at Auntie Ann and Uncle Rob's house. That was some fun back then! I remember the house was always decorated for every holiday and Easter was no exception! Anyway, I'll put together a little slide show with all the pictures from Taylor's visit and put them up over the weekend!

Take care everyone! Until next post............