Time To catch up........

Time for tea!

Sandra and I took Christina and Izabella to this little tea house we've been wanting to try out. I thought this would be the perfect place for us to celebrate with the girls the fact that they are starting 1st grade and leaving kindergarten behind. I found these hats at The Children's place and had to get them. This was our chance to get all dressed up and teach them how to have tea properly. It was such fun and the food was amazing. Sandra and I had their special cream of artichoke soup that we couldn't get enough of. We had about 100 teas to chose from and neither one of us knew a thing about tea, so we decided on the Cheeky Peach, which ended up being a very good choice. Both of the girls had so much fun. The have hat racks full of old hats that you can wear while you are there and as you'll see from the pictures, the girls took complete advantage of that. They have a lovely little gift shop there as well with beautiful tea pots, cups and everything you would need to have high tea at home. We've decided that that this will be the next stop for our "big" girls date. We have another friend that just loves tea so we have to take her there. Anyway, we had a lovely afternoon with just the girls. Enjoy!

The last days of school!! First Grade here we come!

(lord, help me!)

Bridging ceremony for Girl Scouts:

Izabella and Christina also joined girl scouts last year and when they begin they are called Daisy's. Once they complete all the "tasks" they get badges and as you'll see from their smocks in these pictures they earned all of their petals to complete the Daisy. The next step is Brownies, which Sandra has signed Christina up for but we haven't made up our minds yet on this one, but nonetheless the girls had fun over the last few months.

Sleepover at Christina's!
The girls had a sleep over last month and Sandra was actually able to catch them loving on each other instead of trying to kill or out shout one another. These are the best times when they are so sweet to each other. They are just so close, just like sisters. I guess when we see them together we're happy we don't have 2 girls, but down the road they'll be glad they spent so much time together!

Happy Birthday to Mommy!

I've been very bad lately about keeping up. With Izabella's last week of school and having to go to TN to get Tay, etc. It's just been crazy. I took all of last week off so that I could volunteer at Izabella's school for all of the last week activities! What fun that was, I will post pictures of this later. The girls and Steve took me to Kani House - a Japanese Steak house - for my birthday. They just don't slow down after 21 do they! Eek! 36! Anyway, we snapped this picture of the girls and I just wanted to share. They were both wearing their white sundresses and both looked so beautiful! We got a good gene pool it looks like to me! Anyway, Izabella started Summer Camp this week and Tay will be back to visit on Thursday for the weekend. I doubt we are going to see much of her this summer. She's taken a nanny job for the summer so I'm not sure how she'd be able to get away from that.......ho-hum, I guess I knew this would happen to us eventually. Too much stuff going on at home for her to miss. I guess we'll see her at HS graduation! just kidding tay! Anyway, have a good week everyone. My camera is in need of service, so I am getting pictures from everyone else's camera's so there may be a delay in my posts.

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!