Friday afternoon

flashback friday

me & my mama

start of summertime

Summertime is a lot different now than when I was a kid. OK, that's it. I'm officially my grandpa. When I was in school I used to walk uphill both ways in 5 foot of snow. Well ok, maybe I'm not exactly my grandpa but when I was in school I wouldn't already be on summer break. Serenity's last day of prek was friday and it was bittersweet. I can't believe she is going to be in kindergarten in the fall. it makes me crazy,happy,& sad all at the same time.  We have definitely enjoyed our first few days of summer. She had a great last day playing with friends and taking pictures with some so that she can put them up near her bed. When we got home from school on Friday (we were all there to play on the last day) Skip & Sis went to the store to get some crickets for fishing while Xavier stayed home with me to help me fill up the pool she got for her birthday along with some water balloons and I made & hung this sign

Serenity thought having a water balloon fight when she got home was super cool and then of course to go fishing afterwards was down right awesome but of course what made it super was her catch

flashback friday

in honor of my precious baby girl's birthday i thought a flashback of the last 6 years of  May 14th would be a great idea.

MAY 14th 2008

MAY 14th 2009

MAY 14th 2010

MAY 14th 2011

MAY 14th 2012

MAY 14th 2013

An Entire Hand

This little munchkin is 5 today. an entire hand. when in the world did i blink for so long that i missed her becoming a whole entire hand?? it's hard to believe. as i tucked her into bed tonight i told her how it just feels not that long ago that her tiny face was being pressed against mine as i met her for the first time and now she is becoming such a grown up little lady. Happy Birthday to my wonderfully sweet, exceptionally smart,super caring,always inquisitive 5 year old princess. I love you as much.....

Mother's Day

mother's day is usually a great day for moms and usually a not so good day for women who wish they were moms. those of us with kids don't always think of how this could be such a gut wrenching holiday for those who for whatever reason don't have or can't have children. but just the same i think probably goes for the childless woman thinking that mom's not only get to have children but we also get to have this holiday where our children make us presents or our husbands spoil us. but that isn't always the case. for me, mother's day is still a little rough. In 2011 i experienced what was to me the worst mothers day in the world. something that i'm not completely healed from but slowly working on. a feeling that may honestly never completely go away but i'm trying. and on this mother's day there was finally a little proof that it may in fact get better and better yet. my awesome daughter brought me home the sweetest card from school. it had a flower pot on the front of it with 3 crafted flowers in it 1 of them with a picture of her on it. inside she had written happy mother's day. I love you. it made my heart melt. both the kids happily told me happy mother's day mama. then it was off to church for me and the kiddos while daddy stayed home to work on a project. when i picked Serenity up from children's church she had drawn a picture of me and also had a book mark with proverbs 31 on it. then when we got home from church we got into the car with daddy, nana, and mia and all went to lunch. when we got home skip went back to the shop to finish up on what at this point i was pretty certain was my gift and finally the kids called me out there to see the wind chime skip had made me. it's super big and super deep sounding chimes and it's what i call the perfect wind chime :) overall it was a pretty good mothers day especially in comparison to the past 2

Serenity's party was a success

We have been pushing and pushing and pushing to get things done around the house for Serenity's party and it really did pay off. The weather app on skip's phone was still calling for rain but the radar wasn't showing any,but we decided to play it safe and go ahead and set up her party in the shop. I know Skip really isn't a big fan of having parties out there but he was a trooper and helped get it all set up. Serenity was an awesome helper this year and actually told me how she wanted some things decorated and since most of her ideas were close to what i had in my head i didn't have to pretend to like her ideas ;) Skip finished 16 complete birdhouses for the kids to paint. he had the pieces to do more but we decided unless we had more RSVP's (which people kill me with not knowing what that actually means, but that's an entirely different post) even though we held the party out in the shop the weather was nice and it held off until just about the end when we started opening presents. the kids all seemed to have a really great time and thankfully my mom had my camera in tow so there were lots of pictures to choose from :)Serenity was very pleased with her party and that alone made me very happy. the one thing i was super sad about was that we didn't get our annual picture of Serenity and 2 of her friends. one of them had their party the same day :( but even without the picture it was a great time
The kids started off by picking out an apron and then designing it to look how ever they wanted. once they were done with this they had a little food and then were off in the yard chasing each other which left a great opening for me to start clearing the tables for their next craft,painting birdhouses. I'm so thankful to my hubby for building these birdhouses. not only was it very budget friendly since we had everything already in the shop, but they were very cute and much sturdier than some kits we could have purchased. we poured the paint then placed a birdhouse at the seats for the kids then called them in to get started. once they were done we moved them to another table to dry and they were off again. it's so great that they enjoy running around so much because it made the transitions between crafts so much easier. cleaned up,well fake cleaned, i smeared the paint all over the table cloth we were using (which was just brown paper at the suggestion of my hubby, that they could also draw on as they sat) and then got the cupcakes set up. Serenity's request was tie dyed cupcakes but i decided that as a kind of "craft" i would just frost them with white icing and let them each go to town decorating their own and boy did they. especially my daughter. with the cupcakes we served homemade strawberry ice cream, another request of Serenity's. after the cupcakes we went onto the presents where she received lots of wonderful things and then that wrapped it up for the day. well at least for the fun part, next was just the clean up but luckily Serenity was entertained with one of her new presents so she stayed out of the way while we got that done :)thanks so much to nana for her new bike. to see more pictures of her party make sure to go to our photo page