Girl scout awards ceremony

Today we had a bridging ceremony for our girl scouts. Mykenzie wasn't moving up yet but she had some girls in her troop her were and the Daisy's moved up to Brownies as well. Mykenzie sot some patches, her 3 year pin as well as the "Eager Beaver Award" For always being so eager to help and willing to try new activities with enthusiasm. I also got an award, which I wasn't expecting at all because I wasn't as involved as I was last year (got some then too) as well as a camping patch. Next year I will be very involved because I will be helping out with the brownies, so I will be at every meeting. Kaylee will have to go with me so they are going to make her an honorary Daisy, even though she won't technically be old enough to be one. So she will be thrilled she gets to be involved. Part of me is like, ugg what was I thinking agreeing to this but another part is looking forward to it, and another part wishes I was going to be the leader. LOL Here are a couple pictures from the day.

Let the summer fun begin!

Today we had a playdate at the Splash Pad! The girls had a wonderful time running through the water and mommy had fun taking pictures and chatting with friends. The splash pad is FREE so we will be there often throughout the summer! We ended up running into Kaylee's friend from school there and she was thrilled. Hopefully we can have a playdate with them soon. After a couple of hours at the splash pad we went to Chandra's for a little bit and then home to shower and change to go out as a family to Fuji to get some Japanese food. It was yummy! I am so full I can't move so I am uploading pictures from our day :) I was supposed to go see the Sex and the City movie with some girl friends tonight but I didn't get through all the seasons on DVD and I really want to watch them so I didn't want both the episodes and the movie to be spoiled for me. Hopefully I will get through them soon and will be able to find someone to go see the movie with!

Well part of the song is true!

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks!!! That is right my friends (hmm, I sound like McCain) school is out for the summer!!! I am so happy that this year is over. I am sad that time is going by so quickly and my baby girl is going to be in 3rd grade already.... BUT I am so done with second grade. We had such a rough year and I am hoping for a much much better year in 3rd grade! We decided that Mykenzie will still be doing school work at home this summer. Last year she forgot alot of what she learned and had to start over and since she isn't where we would like her to be anyhow anything extra will really help. She has done well in school, don't get me wrong, but we know she can do better. And thanks to teacher of the year we didn't know how much she could have advanced if she would have actually been taught. I am not going to start on that yet again though. She brought home a ton of workbooks that are less than halfway completed and she is not reading where she should be so she has her work cut out for her this summer. Plus we need to make her feel more confident about her abilities and make her learn to trust that she is smart enough to do this stuff. So it is summer and we are done with her teacher (thank you Jesus)but the books and pencils remain. We will still do plenty of fun things so don't think I am going to force her to do school work all day but she will have to do a few things everyday unless we are on vacation :) Happy Summer Break!!

Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day!

What a great weekend! On Saturday our friends from South Carolina came to town for a visit. Mary is one of the best friends I have made as an adult and I miss hanging out with her terribly. We were together almost every day and our girls were the best of friends. Mykenzie and Sarah picked up right where they left off and it was wonderful! Of course they are too cool together and couldn't be bothered with Kaylee cause it isn't cool to have a little 3 year old hanging out with almost 8 year olds :) Once Jacob was ready to play (he fell asleep on the drive over) he and Kaylee hit it off and left the big girls alone for the most part. Night time came and they decided to go outside and catch lightening bugs, well they aren't out yet. So being the smart resourceful girls that they are, they decided to catch moths which were around in abundance :) Of course when they got close to catching one they freaked out and squealed like... well like little girls :) They ended up staying till 10:30 and we wish that it wasn't so late so they could have stayed longer. Hopefully next time they will come for a longer period of time. We will have to go visit them sometime soon as well.





Sunday came with me sleeping in! Woo Hoo! I love sleeping in so very very much. So we ended up skipping church, again. We will go back I promise. I am not a fan of the series he is doing right now so I am avoiding it. We played outside for awhile and then came in and watched Over Her Dead Body. It was funnier than I thought it would be. The girls played upstairs till it was over and then we all got ready to go have a late lunch/early dinner. After we ate we went to get some ice cream and Travis took the girls back out to play while I went in search of an open pharmacy. We put the girls to bed and Travis and I watched the movie Untraceable. Yeah, it was a little too scary for me. I don't do scary movies. It was good though I have to admit.

Today we took it easy. Mykenzie and I went to see Narnia 2: Prince Caspian. I liked it. I don't know that I liked it as much as the first one but it was pretty good. I seriously need to go read the books. My 3rd grade teacher read them to us but that was a looooong time ago. Geeze, Mykenzie is going to be in 3rd grade in the fall! I AM OLD! We were going to have hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill but when we got home from the movie it was pouring down rain so we had to settle for hot dogs on the George Foreman!lol not the same at all but what can you do. Pretty good weekend, now it is back to the grind of school for a few more days. Mykenzie has school Tuesday, Wednesday and a half day on Thursday and she is done for the summer. I must say the thought of not having to be out the door by 7:30 am sounds pretty great right now. The girls are just excited about going to the pool.

You're freakin me out!

So Kaylee's new thing to say is now some form of "You're freakin me out man" I often tell her when she is having a fit over nothing to quit freaking out. I probably say it more than I ought to. lol However she has figured out how to twist what I say and use it in another context and it makes sence when she says it. She is nuts.

What a week!

This week has been emotionally exhausting! To make a long long story short, we had a scare concerning Kaylee's health. She was tested to determine if she was diabetic or not. The initial tests her glucose levels came back high so she had to fast overnight and go back for more testing. Thank the Lord they came back completely normal and she is not diabetic. It was a very long couple of days though.

Yesterday was Kaylee's last day of school. They had a bounce house and a pizza party and then right before they left they made ice cream sundaes. Kaylee really loved school this year and has learned alot. Her teachers were wonderful! Her main teacher wont be coming back to the school next year so she will be sad not to see her anymore but her teacher's aide will be the music teacher next year so she will still see her weekly :) I can't believe how fast this year went and that we are at the end of the school year! Mykenzie still has 2 weeks left but I am sure they will fly by. I have Mykenzie signed up for swim lessons in June as well as VBS at our church and a sports camp at another church. With all of those things June will fly by just as quickly as the past few months.

Here are a few pics of Kaylee's last day at school :)

Ahh Friday

Today we were out of bed by 5:30 and out the door by 6:20 headed to Chandra's for our yard sale. We stayed pretty busy and sold a bit of stuff. Still have tomorrow left so I am hoping the rest will go tomorrow, at least the toddler bed and mattress! Then I took Mykenzie to get evaluated for swim lessons. She is in level 2! Woo hoo! I am thrilled she gets to skip level 1 which is where I thought she would be for sure. It is a 6 lesson class so hopefully by the end of summer she will have completed all 5 lessons and rock at swimming :) She doesn't start till June 3rd and will go twice a week. Right now she is the only one signed up for the class so that is sweet cause she will get lots of attention if she is the only student! I want to put Kaylee in also but I am NOT getting in with her. I guess I should have checked into it to see how old you have to be to go in without a parent. Either way I will put her in next February-ish so she will be able to do basics by next summer.

Right now I am debating on what activities to put the girls in and I think I am leaning toward putting both in gymnastics. I was going to do dance for Kaylee but it is pricey with shoes and leotards and then costumes for the recitals. So I am thinking that gymnastics will be the way to go. Plus if they are in the same thing I get a discount ;) And I think they will both love it. Mykenzie has been begging for me to put her in it.

I think I am going to put Mykenzie in softball also. We missed Spring sign ups but we will catch it next time around. I think she would like to do that but if she decides against it oh well. Once I get Kaylee checked out by a cardiologist again (nothing is wrong, she has a murmur still and we had issues when she was born so I just want it checked again before I let her do sports) I will look into getting her into some type of sports as well. On second thought I should find a place that does tennis for Mykenzie, she would probably really enjoy that. Hmm. Anyone know of a place that does tennis here?

Now for the funny of the day... When getting Kaylee out of the car to take Kenzie to the swim thing I look at her and say, "you look like a ragamuffin" and she said I look like a drag a ga gone. I laughed and said "a ragamuffin" and she says "I look like a draga queen!" OMG I have such silly children

Muffins with Mom

Kaylee's school had muffins with mom this morning. We dropped the kids off at their class and then went down the hall and chatted for a little bit. When they were ready the teacher came and got us and we lined up in the hall. Then each mom stood in the doorway and the teacher called the kids name and they came over and took our hands and showed us to our seats. So cute! We then ate our muffins and then came gift time! They passed out these ADORABLE cookbooks! Each child told there favorite food that their mom made and then explained how she makes it! What did Kaylee pick? Cereal and Pop Tarts! LOL Here are her words on how to make it...
"You get some milk and put it in a cup and drink it. You put cereal and milk in a bowl. And that's all! You put the poptarts in a toaster- chocolate and strawberry. It pops and then you eat them."

The kids also traced their hands and cut them out and attached it to a long piece of string with a heart in the center that said "Mommy, I Love You This Much"

After gifts we planted a flower in a pot together and brought them home. It was a fun morning and Kaylee loved showing me the things that she had made for me. She gave me so many hugs and just kept telling me over and over, "I love you Mommy!" Such a sweet girl.

Kaylee and her friend Addison

Kaylee getting dirt for our flower

Kaylee and her flower for mommy
Mommy and Kaylee

Kaylee and the gift she made me

Picture on the front of the cookbook

Makes me laugh

I am not a fan of Taylor Swift's voice. I do however like alot of her songs (not so much saying Slow instead of Low, if you read that post) This new song of hers called Picture to Burn really makes me laugh. I know it isn't that funny people but it is the little things in life that make me smile and this is one of them, especially the first verse :)

Color me finished!

So I finally finished the girl’s rooms. They have been done for a while but I needed to move a few pictures on the walls that had beds put in front of them. I got that done a few minutes ago. They both look really cute I think. Then on Wednesday I decided that I was going to paint their bathroom... Orange, bright orange. After a lot of stress and tears because I totally suck at painting, the room is orange. I was going for a bright sherbet color but Travis says it looks more TN Vols orange. Whatever. I was kind of freaking that it looked bad but now that I have all the stuff in it I gotta say I am happy with my bright orange bathroom. I went shopping today to see if I could find a towel for the towel bar and towel hooks like this but with 4 hooks (couldn't find so this is still left to complete and will go under the word splash in the photos) and I found a cheap towel but it is not what I want for the long haul. I ended up at Old Time Pottery and found shower curtain hooks that are bright orange and hot pink balls. OMG they match my shower curtain so cute and they were only $1.50! I also found some letters at Hobby Lobby 1/2 price so I bought some of those for in there too :) I think it looks cute, I definitely don't think the color is something most other people would like but I do :)

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone!! What have you done lately to help out our environment?? Do you recycle? It is important and easy to do so if you don't already make today the day that you start.
REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE!!

Here are some fun facts:

*If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 800,000 cars.

*40 million water bottles are used every day and only 15% are recycled

*Using reusable shopping bags can save the average American 300 to 700 plastic shopping bags per year, which will save 3 to 7 gallons of crude oil. A population of 100,000 can save up to 14,000 barrels of oil per year using reusable bags.

* 27% of the newspapers produced in America are recycled.

* Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!

* Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!

* The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.

* A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
* To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.

*Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

* If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

* An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!

* Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline

Our Day

It was a beautiful day today. I thought it was going to be an awful day when I woke up this morning and both girls threw fits over clothes and were just mouthy and awful. After Mykenzie was at school for her final day of her TCAP testing I got Kaylee ready and we met some friends at Chick Fil A for some playtime and some lunch. The whole group of us went to Target and did some shopping. I picked up the shower curtain for the girls bathroom before they sell out of them. Then Kaylee and I headed across the street to Walmart so I could get Mykenzie some new gym shoes for school. Kaylee has been begging to go to an ice cream shop for a little over a week now and though we had ice cream from DQ we ate it at home and that just wasn't the same for her. So I took her to Dippin Dots for an ice cream treat before we went to get Mykenzie.


After Mykenzie got home we went outside and played. The girls played on the swings and we played some soccer. The best part of the day is when we tried to fly a kite. OMG you would think that by the time you were 27 years old you would be able to fly a kite properly. Well then you would think wrong because I can't do it. I look like there is something wrong with me as I was running around the yard with a kite over my head. I gave up. We threw the kite in the trash.
Travis came home and we grilled burgers and corn on the cob for dinner and now the girls are putting on pjs and getting ready for bed. Mykenzie is having a fit because she can't find her pj shorts so my day is now ending just the same as it started. Joy. So the beginning and ending of my day sucked but the middle was pretty great.

Growing up

Mykenzie is getting a new bed that will be delivered any time now. Kaylee is getting to big for her toddler bed and it was time to get a bigger bed for her. We decided that it made sense for Mykenzie to get a full size bed and to give the twin to Kaylee. Kaylee has more toys in her room so she needs more floor space than Mykenzie and neither of their rooms are that big. So after ALOT of searching we finally found a bed. It is a white sleigh platform full sized bed with a trundle. Since they are delivering it today we broke Mykenzie's current bed down and moved it into Kaylee's room and she just slept in there last night. (side note:thank God I talked myself out of having them share a room! Bad idea) With the toddler bed set up next to the twin it made me a little sad to see how they have both grown up so much.






Now I have to find bedding for both girls rooms, which will probably mean redecorating completely ;-)

Biggest Loser Finale! Tonight!!!

I am a huge Biggest Loser fan! You get so attached to the contestants and it is so exciting watching them transform their lives. Tonight is the finale of the couple edition. The people that I really wanted to win have already been booted (I love Brittany and Bernie) but I am hoping one of them win the money for losing the most weight at home. This is the first REAL chance that a woman has to actually be named the biggest loser. I am counting down the hours till the 2 hour LIVE finale! Go Ali and Kelly!!! I can't wait to see how much more they lost since leaving the ranch! Anyone else out there watching? NBC tonight check it out! You'll get hooked

Sweet and Juicy Perfection!

So I bought a new gadget today. I went to the store and saw pineapple for only 99 cents. This is very cheap for fresh pineapple and I LOVE it. So I bought 2 :) If you have ever eaten and cut fresh pineapple you know it is a total pain in the butt to deal with. Peeling and coring it is a nightmare and generally leaves you with next to no pineapple to actually eat and enjoy. So I bought a new gadget that slices, skins and cores it all with a few twists of the wrist. I was unsure how well it would work and told a few people I would let them know. Well it was awesome!! I love it and for $9 it is well worth the investment if you are a pineapple lover!

Spring??

It was spring. We had some really beautiful days. We had 2 days that were over 80 degrees. Now it is 44 with a high of 47. Tomorrow High is 46 Low 33.
This. Is. Not. Spring.

Good Citizen

Mykenzie was choosen to be a Good Citizen at her school this grading period. Each grading period 3 students are selected per classroom. They had a Good Citizen family breakfast follwed by the awards ceremony. They do a pretty good job at making a big deal out of it and making the kids feel really special that they earned it. They all walk into the gym to music and clapping and they parade around the perimeter and take their places on the stage. Then each grade level is called to the front of the stage, their names are read and they are handed a certificate. They each get a Tshirt as well. Congratulations Mykenzie for doing so well this year and for setting good examples for others :)

Some Ohio Pictures

Here is a link to see all of our vacation pictures! And here are a few random pics

Jaden, Lily and Kaylee



Kaylee and Jaden


Kaylee and Lily


Mykenzie and Uncle Tony riding Jaden's dirtbike


My girls and Rachel's boys


Papa, Abby, Kaylee and Mykenzie

3:16

God so loved the World that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.


We have been studying this verse in church for the past 5 weeks. I thought it was appropriate to post in on here today being that it is Good Friday. Until this study I hadn't fully grasped the sacrifice that was made for all of us. My pastor said something while describing Jesus' brutal beating and Crucifixion that will stay with me always. He said Jesus didn't just die FOR us but he died BECAUSE of us. Wow. I never thought of it that way and I have to say that it makes me feel much more grateful when it is put to me like that.

Here is the sermon if you are interested
http://www.fbcsmyrna.org/common.aspx?shellfunction=mediacenter&cid=624&aid=5

Have a Great Easter everyone!

I'll admit I am "that" mom

I take Mykenzie to school in my pj's. Sometimes no shoes, sometimes Travis' sandals with socks. In my defense I don't have to get out of the car and I am only gone 5 minutes. IF I had to get out of the car I would get myself presentable. I was putting the girls in the car this morning to go to school and Kaylee says to me "Mom your hair is a mess" of course I reply, "Thanks Kaylee that is so nice" to which Mykenzie chimes in "No it's not Kaylee, It always looks like that." Lovely. I just looked at her and she quickly replied "well in the mornings it does" Kids are way to honest sometimes