Everything?!?!

Mom: Harley, Can you help fold this basket of clothes?

Harley: Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here?!?!?

Oh, my dear Harley! I can’t wait for you to be a mom so you can find out what it really means to “do EVERYTHING around here”!

But for now…

FOLD THE DANG CLOTHES! ;)

Graduating to bigger things

Tater graduated from Preschool in May.

This brings very mixed emotions for me. I am THRILLED for her to start Kindergarten because she is SO excited she can hardly contain herself. However, she and I have grown SO close over the last year. Spending everyday with her has been such a joy. I’ll miss having her around everyday. I mean… who am I going to go to the store with? I try not to think about this part, because it makes me SO sad. So I just keep talking to her about how exciting it’s going to be!

Here are the pics from our preschool graduation this year…

Getting ready for the big program…

Performing our preschool songs for our family members…

Saying what our favorite thing was about preschool, and receiving our graduation certificates…

Next year, I’m going to be able to spend a little more time in the kids’ classrooms, and on their field trips. I’ve decided not to continue teaching preschool. It was a great experience for me to be able to teach Harley and Tatum. But, now I need to focus more of my time and attention on being a mom. It’s my #1 job, and I’m excited to be able to give it all the attention it deserves. I hope I’ll be able to survive being in a quiet house, by myself all day. I’m told that I’ll get used to it really quickly. :)

We’ll see…

Homework? Seriously?

I thought I finished doing homework when I finished with school. But, NO!!! The last few weeks of school the kids were all given projects to do, which meant that mom was given school projects, too.

Chandler’s assignment: A book report. He read one of the Harry Potter books and did a great book report. Then, his idea for the project was to make a magic potion. He made a “Smarty-Tarty Potion”. It was dragon’s blood (pink lemonade with blue food coloring) and juice from the cotton-berry flower (green food coloring). If you drank the potion, it made you super smart for 4 hours. However, when your 4 hours were up, you forgot who you were for 3 hours. So, there was an antidote… a teardrop from a silver unicorn (Hershey's kiss). I thought this was a really fun idea, and it was ALL his. So I got all the stuff together, and helped him practice for when he presented it to his class. He said his class LOVED it because it was so original. So fun!

Shelby’s project: The class was having a rainforest cafe. They’d been studying the rainforest, and were each given an animal to research. Shelby’s animal was the Scarlet Macaw. So we made one out of clay and covered it with colored feathers to make it look like the real thing.

Then, the class had huge celebration complete with parent visitors to celebrate all they’d accomplished in researching and writing their rainforest animal reports. It was so fun to share that with Shelbs. You did a great job, Shelbs!

Shelby asked me to make Macaw nest cupcakes for the celebration. We used chow mein noodles that we’d covered in chocolate and jelly beans. It was really simple, but looked really fun, and the kids loved them.

Harley’s assignment: Research and do a project about a Triceratops. I admit that I was a little tired by the time we got to her project. So we went with the good ol’ fall back… a poster. She was excited to make it, and I figure we’ll have lots of years ahead for more interesting projects. :) She worked really hard, and did a great job of coloring all the fact papers we printed up. Good job, Harletta!

Thankfully, school is over for this year. So we have 7 weeks to rest up before the teachers ask me them to do another project. :)

Great job on completing another successful year!

Westward Movement

Chandler’s class did a play last week about when folks started moving West. It was REALLY well done, and SO cute. Everyone had a part, and they all did a FABULOUS job!

Chandler was a member of Louis and Clark’s exploration corps who followed Sacajawea. He was definitely nervous, but he did such a great job! Here he is with his dirty “corps face”.

The “corps”…

His favorite part of the production had nothing to do with the play, it was that he got to be the curtain opener/closer. I think we have a future stage crew member on our hands. ;)

The girls loved the whole thing.

They especially loved that Grandma and Grandpa Stewart, Uncle Monti and Aunt Shannan, Gracie, and 6 day old baby Rosalie joined us for the performance. We hope Chandler didn’t feel too upstaged by the new baby, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Isn’t she gorgeous!?!?

Well done, Chandler! We are so proud of the great job you did!

Tater’s 5th Birthday

Today was Tatum’s 5th birthday.

How did that happen? My baby turned 5!!!

Seems like she hasn’t been around that long. However, it seems like she’s been with us forever. She is such a beautiful part of our family. Everyone around her ALWAYS enjoys her company. She is such a joy!

We had a very small party for her today, only 8 girls. It was almost exclusively cousins with only a couple of neighborhood friends. But, Tatum was thrilled! We watched a new Tinkerbell movie with lots of treats and snacks.

After the movie, we opened her gifts. She was in heaven! She was grateful to all of her sweet friends for giving her so many gifts.

I think this was her very favorite gift.

Then she opened a gift from her Papa and Grammy in the Congo. Very exciting!

Grammy made a cute purse before they left and everyone was excited to read the letter they sent to her from the Congo.

After opening her gifts we had her Tinkerbell cupcakes, complete with Tinkerbell rings, and pixie dust (sugar crystals).

She had a fabulous birthday. Happy Birthday my angel!

Soul mates

After hearing about my rough day (which I won’t get into right now), my sweet hubby came home from work early today, with Pei Wei and flowers to make me happy.

Little did he know, all I really needed was him. When I’m sad, the only thing that really makes everything better is to have him close by. I love that man! He truly is the other half of my soul. We were meant to be together, and so blessed to have found each other.

I love you, Rico!!!

Future Golf Pro

Chandler has been taking golf lessons, and is REALLY enjoying himself. A few weeks back we bought him his own set of clubs. He was in heaven!

He loves being able to compete against himself. He wants to get better every time he plays. It’s so fun to watch.

The girls love to go to his lessons. They don’t much care about the golfing, they just love the hills they can roll down.

Eric, Chandler, and I went golfing last week. It wasn’t our best showing, but it was so much fun to spend that time together. I see many more golf games in our future.