KK loves Artichokes

KK is one of the pickiest eaters ever! Seriously, she has what seems only a hand full of items that she is willing to eat. She would rather drink her calories. However, one odd thing that she has loved to eat ever since I can remember is artichokes. Tonight she ate my entire artichoke. I need to make sure that I make her her very own now! At least she is eating something that is good for her!

Aly's kindergarten graduation

Last week Aly graduated from kindergarten. She was so excited to dress up pretty and even asked me to curl her hair. I had just recently purchased some clothes at Gymboree outlet that were totally adorable and a really good deal.

I know it has been forever since I have uploaded a video so here is one finally! Here are some great pics too!

Here she is posing just before leaving for school.

Here she is accepting her certificate.

Aly wanted some pictures with her favorite friends!

Aly with her teacher and her best friend Nathan.

Can't Sleep

Have you ever had one of those nights where you just have difficulty sleeping? Well last night was the night for me. First of all it was too hot when we went to bed, so we opened up the screen door and the window on the other side of the room and had the fan blowing the air across the room. This is sure a good way to start out the night but by the middle of the night it is freezing! Now I am wide awake, cold, thinking about things that don't need to be thought about in the middle of the night. Like, I need to start sorting through the girls clothes, what are we going to do after kindergarten graduation, how can I get flowers for Aly for graduation for a surprise without her seeing, how can I find a dalmatian stuffed animal for sticker grandma without the girls seeing, how hard is it going to be to make the cupcakes for their party, will the school really keep a 30 to 1 ratio in K-3, if not will they bring another teacher back or will they hire a part time teacher to just teach reading and math?

I hate these nights! My life really isn't filled with stress and for me to lay awake and cause myself meaningless stress really just drives me mad! Finally after too long of a period lying awake I get up and decide to be useful. Since KK has crawled into our bed in the middle of the night, I decide to go into her room and go through all of her old clothes! Do you know how much of a procrastinator I am? When I finally went through her clothes. There were two years worth of clothes that were too small for her in her closet and her drawers. I filled an entire garbage bag. The good news is I will drop the bag off at my friends house. She will go through and take what she wants. When she is finished I will either sell the rest or donate them to a local thrift store.

Now Aly has managed to go from her bed in the playroom to the extra bed in KK's room. I should make a run for it now and go through her closet. I wonder how many years worth of stuff I will find in there?

Backseat Driver

Oh my goodness, can I just say our family has more than one annoying backseat driver! I won't say who the first one is...if you know us you probably know who it is..but I will say our second backseat driver is our youngest child KK.

KK is quite bad for an almost four year old. A day doesn't pass that she isn't telling me what to do. She even says it with attitude! "Mommy, you're driving too fast!" Mommy you just made me spill my drink!" Mommy, stop making the road bumpy!" Mommy you are driving too slow!" Mommy why are you stopped? Why don't you go?" Etc., etc., etc......

Some days it can be quite annoying while other days I find it quite amusing. Is this an indication that she is going to be a control freak? My other daughter doesn't do it and she is quite the control freak! Should we be thrilled that she will be a cautious, aware driver when she is older? Whatever the case, I sure hope this phase ends soon....

The Play set is Finished!

We are all so thrilled! Hubby worked on the play set yesterday from 9-5 and finished it. Doesn't it look beautiful? The girls were thrilled to play on it. Their favorite part was the third story look out tower with the telescope. Our yard is now a park! The only thing we are missing is a paved bike path. No, I do not want to make a paved bike path, imagine how much work that would be for hubby!

I do still need to purchase a trapeze bar. I just need to shop around. I know I want a green one with the chain guard and the rings, I just need to find the best deal...you know me! Don't want to pay extra if I don't have to!

Thanks Daddy for working so hard to make us the best play set ever!!!!

Playset Day 9..almost done!

Hubby started on the play set shortly after 9 in the morning. He built the ladder, rock climbing wall, monkey bars, swing bar, and started on the third level deck. He worked until 8 p.m. last night. He had a lot of trouble with the third level deck.

Today he is hoping to finish. He needs to finish the third level deck, a small portion of the roof, attach the ladder, rock climbing wall, slide, and swings. Let us hope it all goes smoothly. We are all ready for it to be finished! I think he would like to spend Monday gardening. I need to order a truck load of tan bark and I told him I would work on getting the tan bark from the front yard to the play set during the week.

KK's last day of preschool

Thursday was KK's last day of preschool. Since her birthday is the beginning of June we decided to celebrate her birthday on the last day of school. She was thrilled to make cupcakes. The only problem was she wanted to eat all of them herself! Yes, she was very angry when she found out we had to bring the cupcakes to school for her party. She did have fun decorating them though. I let her put the candy kisses on all by herself. Of course in her mind the more the merrier!

I wasn't able to get any pictures of her at school sharing her cupcakes. The preschool director told me she didn't want to do the cupcakes until 1:00 p.m. I had to volunteer at Aly's school for the kindergarten picnic. So I went down to Aly's school, volunteered during the morning, then checked Aly out and left at 12 to go up to KK's preschool. Since they weren't doing the cupcakes till 1 I called the school and told them I would run to Safeway and grab a sandwich so I could eat. I called at 12:30. The lady on the phone said that would be fine. We got back to the school at 12:50, ten minutes before they were supposed to do the cupcakes. Guess what? They did them at 12:30! Yes, I could have skipped Safeway and went right over if I had known. I was pretty bummed because I wanted to get pictures. The kids were all happy though and apparently lots of wipes were used because the cupcakes were quite messy!

The girls are dancing!

Last Christmas Aly and I got to see The Nutcracker Ballet. She absolutely loved it! It was her first ballet and it got her really excited about dancing. So we asked Daddy if she could dance and he reluctantly agreed. We found a class locally too which was a definite plus. Typically we have to drive down the hill for most classes. So in January Aly started dance. KK watched and wanted to dance as well. In the beginning I wasn't sure if I wanted to let her. I wasn't sure if she was ready. So we let her do a trial class in March and the teachers felt like she could do it.

The girls love dance. The only downfall is they won't let them share the same dance class so we have to go to the studio on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It can be a bit challenging especially because Aly and KK want to dance together. We have tried it. They want to stick to each other like glue and dance next to each other. The teacher doesn't want them to so it ends up being a big deal..

In August the girls have their first dance recital. They will be dancing at a High School in Sacramento during the weekend of August 1 and 2. Their Saturday show will be at 7 p.m. and their Sunday show will be at 2 p.m. I am really looking forward to seeing them dance on stage. Don't worry I will be video taping it. They will only let me video tape Friday's dress rehearsal though. I think KK will end up being a riot. She really dances to the beat of her own drum!

What a Rough Week

This has been one of those tough weeks for hubby. He is working crazy hours and not getting much sleep. On Wednesday night the poor guy had to skip volleyball and ended up working so late he didn't get home until close to 3 a.m. This of course had me worried because I was afraid of him driving the hour home so tired. With the curvy mountain roads I was nervous he could fall asleep at the wheel and run off the road.

Last night he worked late but at lest he was home shortly after ten. I told him if it was going to be another late night I wanted to get a hotel for him near his work. That way he would get two extra hours of sleep and we wouldn't have to worry about him falling asleep at the wheel.

Now we are hoping that he can get everything he needs to get done today so he can still have a three day weekend. If not the poor guy will have to give up his three day weekend. You know what the worst part of all of this is? He is salary. He doesn't get paid any over time for any of these hours!

Playset Day 8!

Hubby made a lot of progress today. He got an early headstart shortly after 8 this morning and worked all day through to 3 this afternoon. He built the roof, windows, and the porch. It looks great and the girls had a great time playing around in the playhouse part. Did you know that the roof is soo tall that I can stand up in it without ducking? Even hubby can stand up without ducking. Gives you an idea just how big this thing is!

Next weekend hubby will build a ladder for the backside, build the swing bar, build the monkey bars, build a third level deck, build a rock climbing wall, and build the slide. That will complete it. O.k., that may be too much for one weekend, but a girl can hope!

Playset Day 7

Hubby worked on the play set all day today. Check out the walls, windows, and roof line for the second level. He still has the roof to build, the swing set bar, and the monkey bars, and a third level deck, I am wondering if he just may have that completed by the end of next weekend!

Finally after 7 years!

It is no secret that when we moved into our house it was an absolute dump. It needed new carpet throughout, painting, tons of shelving removed from the walls, new appliances, etc..etc..the list goes on. While we have managed to do some of those repairs we have put off the bathroom cabinets. Those of you that have been to my house have seen the shameful bathroom cabinet downstairs that has a homemade fabric curtain around it because it is missing doors. Yes, I have had to live with that for seven years! Plus a year ago during a plumbing problem we ripped out the bathroom cabinet upstairs. Can you believe we haven't had a bathroom sink for over a year!

Well all that will change now. Since we are in the middle of a refi we need an appraisal. Obviously this is motivating us to make a few quick changes. So I will also be painting the walls before we install the cabinets. I really need some advice. What color should I paint the walls and how should I decorate the bathroom? What color shower curtain, towels, etc.? I am obviously not only fashion challenged but decorating challenged as well. I am completely clueless! So please help! Leave me a comment with your suggestions!

Here are pics of the new vanity/sink.



The wood is a deep cherry brown and the top is a black granite marble with a white bowl.

Playset Day 6 we hit a problem

Check out the progress on the play set today! Hubby worked on it from about 9-2. He is at a point where he can no longer finish until we get some missing parts. Apparently they gave us the wrong L brackets and we need to call them tomorrow to get the correct ones. I sure do hope they will have them to us by Friday so he can continue to work on it next weekend! I bet he is going to be so tired of working on this thing by the time he is finished!

To KK with love

Today is Mother's Day and I have decided to start writing you an annual letter each Mother's Day. I wrote you your first one last year. I cannot believe how much you have grown and changed just in this past year. It is amazing and I am so proud of the girl that you are becoming. Last year at this time you were still very much my little baby. Now you are growing into my little girl that I just don't want to let grow up.

Last year at this time you had learned all of your letters and sounds. Guess what you are doing now? Yes, you guessed it you are reading three letter words like cat, rat, dog, dad, etc. The most fun part is that you are also spelling words too. Your writing in the last couple of months has developed amazingly. You can now write all of your letters including lower case too. It is so much fun to see you sitting and coloring at the table. One of your favorite things to do is to draw a Dalmatian dog and write the word of on the paper. You know your numbers well too. You can count to 20 and you recognize your numbers through 10. I am so proud of your desire to learn new things. The best part is you do not get easily frustrated and you are very tenacious. You just keep trying until you get it right.

You have also amazed me at preschool. I totally thought that with your strong personality preschool would be quite an adjustment for you learning to listen to other adult authorities. The opposite was true. While you did vocalize if you did or did not want to do something, you would always do what you were told. I am so happy that you are a respectful little girl. I look forward to your social development next year and am interested to see what type of friends you will like to have.

You imagination is so much fun to watch. Do you know what your favorite thing to do is right now? You love pretending you are a dog, specifically Pongo from the 101 Dalmatians. In fact, you have been so in love with this concept over the past 3-4 months that you have even gotten your sister interested. She is now known as Perdita and you both have a blast playing Dalmatians together. I hope you both grow up to be best friends and find comfort in each other. I never had a sister and always wished I had. I was so happy when I found out that I would have two girls and have always hoped you two will grow up with a special, loving bond.

One of my favorite things about you is your constant smile. You are always happy. It is so much fun to be around you just to soak in your happy state! I hope that you grow up to be a happy, positive woman who looks for the good in everything.

I really look forward to watching you grow over this next year. I will enjoy watching you learn to read, watching your drawing skills develop, and watching you learn how to make friends and share with one another. I want you to know that I love you more than I ever imagined I could. I will always love you no matter what!

To Aly with love

Today is Mother's Day and I decided to write you a message expressing just how much I love you. I wrote you your first one last year here on this blog on Mother's Day and I am hoping to continue each year. It has been an amazing year for you. You started kindergarten this year and have grown up so much right before my eyes. It is amazing how fast a year goes by.

This year has been so much fun. You have really grown a lot physical, emotionally, and academically. Perhaps my favorite thing to see was you developing empathy and compassion this year. You have really wanted to learn to be good to others, be a good friend, and treat others the way you would want to be treated. I am so proud of you for that. You have learned to take turns during play and not always be the leader. You have also developed good relationships with new friends you have made this year. I am so proud of you.

Academically you have also really blossomed. You now read at a third grade reading level, you can do addition, subtraction, time, money, and even multiplication. You know what the best part is? You are self motivated! Most of the time you are the one going to the learning bins and picking up something to learn. I admire you for that. I love your natural curiosity for things and enjoy listening to the new questions you have for things in your daily life. You even began exploring where babies came from! While I took it question by question I became quite surprised when you started sharing your new knowledge with your friends. I was so hoping I wouldn't get an angry parent phone calls telling me that you told their children more than they wanted them to know about the "birds and the bees!"

I am so thankful and grateful that you are my daughter. I am so thankful that you are healthy. I hope that this next year brings you more fun and you continue to have a curiosity for learning. I look forward to you starting first grade and I look forward to have extra time with you during summer break. I hope that we can continue to do fun things together! I love you more than you will ever know! I am so proud of the beautiful girl that you are!

Playset Day 5 good progress

Hubby worked on our play set today. It is official he only has three more weekends to work on the play set to have it finished by their birthday party. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will get done. I am thinking he is about 1/3 of the way done. He still has two more levels to build plus the bar for the swings and the bar for the monkey bars.

The progress he made today has made it fun for the girls to use already! Today he anchored the play set down, put the seat benches for the sandbox, built the picnic table, and built all the side rails for the bottom of the play set plus one bar at the top. His play set is still perfectly level and he is very proud of it. That is what has made for slow progress but the good news is it will last for many years. If I built it I wouldn't have done a careful job and the wood would have started splitting early, etc., etc.

I can't wait to see the play set progress, it is getting fun now!

KK makes a trip to the doctor

Yes, this past week and a half has been quite the sick time for all of us. Well, all of us except hubby that is. Good thing hubby didn't get sick, I had enough of people getting sick in this house. On Wednesday KK spiked a fever so off to the doctor I took her. I was actually afraid she might be getting strep throat since Aly was diagnosed with it on Friday. The good news was it was only an ear infection. She handled her illness well too. The bad news is now I have two girls on two different antibiotics. Now I have to remember to give Aly her meds twice a day at 9 mililiters and KK her medicine three times a day at one teaspoon. Good thing I wasn't having to manage this at the peak of my sinus infection. I can guarentee I would have gotten it all wrong!

Here's to hoping this is our last illness for the spring, and that we may have an illness free summer and enjoy the beautiful weather we have outside!

The party theme has been decided!

The girls have made their decision. Believe me it was an easy one too. In a matter of seconds they both decided they want a dalmation themed birthday party. We have also decided this year to have their birthday party in our back yard with our new play set. That is if the play set is finished. Don't you worry though, I have a back up plan if the playset isn't finished. We will move the party to a local park. See how easy going I am...LOL...

Now the hard part starts for me. I have to try and figure out decorations. I think I will use red plates. The girls are actually asking if they can use zoo pal plates. That is fine, I will have both, red plates and zoo pal plates. I think I can make the invitations...I can probably buy a balloon or two on ebay and pair it with some other red and white balloons. The fun part is searching the internet for ideas of how to make either dalmation cupcakes or a dalmation cake.

I think the girls will get dalmation sleeping bags for their birthday. Oh Aly, I hope you don't read this. She sometimes puts this website on all by herself and looks at my posts. I am not sure if she reads them or just looks at the pictures. Aly if you read this please tell me so that I know to be more careful...

Wish me luck with the party planning and if you have any ideas please leave a comment!

3 Doctors, 6 Medicines, later

This week has been the worst week for illness in our house since I can remember! Man, poor Aly was so sick it was unbelievable! On Monday we took her to the Doctor after she had been complaining of her ear hurting and had a bad cough for the past two weeks. She was also running a fever. After seeing the doctor we were told she had bronchitis and an ear infection. We were given zythromax, an expectorant, and an antihistamine. I myself was quite sick with a sinus infection and at this point had not yet seen a doctor. When we went to the pharmacist to pick up Aly's medicine he told me we would need a dropper because the dosage was a small amount. Someone this made me confuse milliliters for teaspoons and by Wednesday I had realized that I was under dosing her. Bummer, she had only gotten 1/5 of the dose she was supposed to be getting. See, sick mommies shouldn't be in charge of giving medicine!

On Wednesday I was no better and had a hard week. I decided to drag myself to the doctor with two children. It was no fun! I brought their Leapsters with me but hadn't realized that KK's was out of battery power. So I had two bored, fighting, children. It was horrible. I made it through he doctor appointment and was confirmed that I had a sinus infection. I was given an antibiotic and flonase for my sinus'.

By Friday Aly still was not getting better. She had finally broke her fever but was still complaining of ear pain and her cough was still just as bad. Aly had now missed the whole week of school. I took her to the doctor again. This time the doctor looked in her throat and said it was all red! She decided to do a strep throat culture. Crazy enough it came back positive! I was shocked that she had strep throat on top of everything else. Her doctor said that zythromax doesn't always treat strep throat well so she changed her antibiotic to keflex. Poor Aly!

What a week. I sure hope Aly starts to feel better soon. I started feeling better on Thursday and didn't even begin taking my antibiotic. I wanted to try and get better naturally if possible. I guess that is something hubby has taught me. Minimal drugs if you can.

Our trip to Disneyland

Our trip started out with a visit to see Grandma and Grandpa and some family. We spent Saturday and Sunday with family. We visited Grandma at her home and Grandpa in the nursing home. Plus my Uncle, Aunt, and a few cousins came to visit us at Grandma's house. We stayed until late afternoon on Sunday and headed to our hotel near Disneyland. This Disneyland trip we were going to try out the Best Western that was right at the cross walk for the entrance to Disneyland. We got to our hotel at 5 p.m. and checked in. Since we are annual passholders and Sunday was going to be the only day on our trip that Disneyland would be doing fireworks we decided to take the girls into Disneyland.

The girls always love a ride on the Merry Go Round!

This trip we discovered a lot of new rides and places we haven't done in the past. We sure tired the girls out!

The girls love any ride that is a tea cup style ride. The ladybugs are so much fun! Mommy skips out on these rides because Daddy and the girls want to spin them so fast!

The girls had fun on Tom Sawyer's Island. They sure have a lot of caves, bridges, and fun things to run aorund to.

Aly got to sit in the front of the boat on Storybook Adventure. She loved driving on the bumper cars!

The girls loved meeting characters and getting signatures in their autograph books.

KK's favorite character was Tinkerbell! We waited in a line for 45 minutes to meet her!

We splurged and this time took the girls to Ariell's Grotto for lunch with the princesses. They got to meet Ariel, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Belle.

Check out Snow White, is she perfect or what?

Not sure what to think about Sleeping Beauty. I think they may want to consider recasting her!

Here are some pics with Mommy and Daddy!

Check out our favorite tye dye shirts! We love you Mickey!

Matching family tye dys! Gotta love them! O.k. I am pretty sure in a few years the kids won't think it is cool anymore....

The girls tried driving the cars on the Autotopia ride. KK had fun!

KK's favorite ride is the Mickey Mouse Roller Coaster. I swear we did it 20 times during our trip! KK was so tired she started to take her shirt off and fell asleep!

The girls had so much fun. It was our longest stay ever at Disneyland staying through Thursday. Here is a video of Aly dancing in the parade: