the end is almost here

Tonight was The Mayor's end of the year ceremony for Cubbies.  For 34 weeks, he has gone to church every Wednesday night, memorized a weekly Bible verse, learned more about Jesus and made some great friends.  And tonight was the last class for the school year.

I teared up when he walked in and especially when he walked across the stage of the sanctuary and received his certificate.  The tears were mainly for tomorrow...just thinking about his PreK graduation.  It just made me so sad, and happy, to think of this being the end of preschool.

D was in Chicago all day today so he missed the ceremony tonight but thankfully he will be here for the big day tomorrow.  As will Aunt Nat, Uncle Tom, Trey and Luke, who are currently on their way to Atlanta!  Meega, Bennett and PopPop are coming tomorrow too!  It is going to be an amazing day and tomorrow night we will have a little pizza party so J and Mamie can join us with the festivities and we can celebrate a great day for The Mayor.

waiting patiently for his name to be called

just received his certificate

waiting for the rest of the Cubbies to be called for their certificates

singing their Cubbies song

love bug's end of year party

Today was Love Bug's end of year party.  The party was at Monkey Joe's from 10-1...which in my opinion was entirely too long for a two-year old class (even though they are all 3 now) to play.  By 10:30 Love Bug was asking to eat and by 11:15 she was cuddled up on my shoulder ready to sleep.  No one lasted until 1:00...we pushed it by staying until 12:40 but regardless of 12 tuckered out cuties, they all had such a great time.

Ms. Julie and Ms. Karen (Love Bug's teachers) made all of the kids t-shirts.  They made caterpillars with each circle of the caterpillar's body being a different color with one of the munchkin's names in it.  They were absolutely precious and the kids looked adorable with their matching shirts.

The teachers also gave each of us a memory book for each kid.  It is a laminated bound book with a page for each month of the school year.  On each page, there are pictures they took of them during that month.  Oh my, on the September page, one of the pictures is Love Bug from her first day of school.  And she looks like such a baby!  I can not believe how much she has changed in just one school year.  Ms. Julie told me Love Bug is the one who has changed the most...a lot of that change is due to her hair.  Wow...did her hair really grow this year!  I absolutely love this gift.  I will look back on this book with such fondness and see how much my gorgeous girl has changed over the course of 9 months.

Tomorrow is a busy day.  The Mayor has school, Love Bug and I are going to the gym, The Mayor has karate and then we go to church for his Cubbies end of the year awards ceremony.  Then Thursday is the last day of school and PreK graduation...bring on the tears!

hate this is blurry...but she looks so cute!

sporting her dress, I mean t-shirt :)

my monkey climbing

pretty girl

a year ago she couldn't do this alone...such a big girl!

weeeeeeeee!

girl is serious about her pizza...she ate 3 slices...

Ms. Karen, Love Bug and Ms. Julie

a month of crazy

I can't believe it has been a month since I blogged.  We have had a birthday, Mother's Day, a promotion into a big girl bed for Miss Love Bug and The Mayor has started karate since I last blogged.

We will start with D's birthday.  The kids were so excited for D's birthday...I bought them each a ceramic mug with ceramic paint and I let them decorate the mugs all by themselves.  I didn't help at all...which was a pretty remarkable feat considering my OCD nature :)  The Mayor painted a train on his mug and Love Bug painted her hand (using all 4 colors at once) and some flowers.  We put them in the oven so the paint would harden (like a kiln) and the kids were so eager for the baking to end so they could see their masterpieces.  D loved his homemade gifts and he was excited with the plans the kids made for his big day.  The Mayor and Love Bug decided D wanted tacos for dinner and ice cream for dessert.  So we went out for Mexican and frozen yogurt, where the kids sang "Happy Birthday" to D in the frozen yogurt place.  It was a great night!

helping daddy open his cards

The Mayor's train mug on the left and Love Bug's handprint mug on the right

an awesome canvas The Mayor painted at school and gave to D

So D has wanted to move Love Bug into a big girl bed for about a year...and I have been dragging my feet.  She sleeps great in her crib and she doesn't crawl out.  So we decided once school was over for summer break we would make the jump.  Well, in typical female style, Love Bug became impatient and decided to start crawling out of her crib two weeks before school was out.  It's always nice having a little visitor at the side of your bed at 2AM who isn't supposed to be there.  We immediately converted her crib into a toddler bed to buy us time before we bought the full-size bed, but in typical Shirley kid style, she hated the toddler bed.  Her brother was the exact same way.  After one nightmare night in that toddler bed...Love Bug and I went mattress shopping.  Luckily we found an amazing deal on a full-size mattress that was in the store and we were able to get it home that day.  Thank you PopPop for being our delivery man!  Love Bug and I went to Target to get the sheet set and we will order bedding soon.  She is doing better each night.  For some reason, once we removed the crib, she became afraid to be in her room.  So that was a little bit of a battle, but now she is happy to be in her big girl bed, with us lying next to her while we read and then she falls asleep.  Over time it will continue to get better, but we are now a crib free home.

don't let the smile fool you...she was excited about the new bed until it was time to actually sleep.  This is the toddler bed that lasted only one night.  I will post pics of her big girl room once we have the bedding.

Pretending to sleep

The Mayor started karate last week.  We are really pleased with the training center we are going to and love the instructors.  It is amazing to see how focused The Mayor is during class.  He has a few moments of being antsy, but for the most part, he is so focused.  He is picking up the basic skills very quickly and received his white belt Saturday and earned his green stripe today for demonstrating his basic skills (high blocks, front punches and front kicks).  We meet with the program director later this week to talk longer-term goals and getting The Mayor tested for his orange belt.  The Mayor is so happy and loves going.  This can only mean good things for him.

before his first class

ready stance 

high block

front punch

front kick

front kick and knocking over the pad

receiving his white belt (he already has his green stripe and earned 3 life skill stripes too!)

so handsome

The end is quickly approaching.  This week is the last week of school...which means it is the last week of preschool for The Mayor.  His PreK graduation is Thursday and I will be a basket case.  I just know it.  I can't believe this chapter of our life is almost over.  We are so proud of the progress our boy has made over the past couple of years and he is ready for "big boy" school.  He can't wait to go to kindergarten.  But it is still sad to see this chapter of his life come to a close.  

Friday we had his end of the year party for his class at a local park.  The kids all wore tie-dye shirts they made in class and had a great time playing and eating together.  Each kid received a goody bag which was a bucket and shovel, candy and a water squirter for the water fight we let them have.  Each kid got a water squirter and there were two buckets of water.  They had the best time.  It was great to see The Mayor participate and have so much fun running around getting wet and drenching his friends. A year ago, this sort of activity would have been torture for him but he did awesome!  It was nice being away from the school where everyone relaxed and the moms had a chance to talk.  We collected money to give the teachers a nice gift and one of the mom's had a brilliant idea for a photo collage.  She took a picture of each kid with what they wanted to be when they grew up and then she made it into a collage and framed it.  Isn't that the cutest gift idea ever?  I love some of the occupations the kids said and the facial expressions of some of these kids is priceless.  I mainly love the enormous grin on The Mayor's face with his Fireman sign.  

Love Bug's class party is tomorrow.  It is hard to believe her first year of preschool is almost over.  Time is definitely flying by.

The Mayor and Mrs. Karen

The Mayor and Mrs. Virginia 

(he can't say her name, so it comes out Ms. Vir-june-ia)

making silly faces

his PreK class

jumping for joy

rocket face painting 

octopus tattoo

the photo collage

(The Mayor is on the left in the 2nd row)

water fight!

i love you babies

Today, another horrible tragedy in this world occurred.  And I'm scared and hate the world that we have become.  I haven't blogged in several days just because we have been so busy, but I am blogging this short post just so my sweet babies will always know just how much I love them.  Love Bug and The Mayor, your mommy and daddy love you more than words could ever express.  You are our world and I didn't want one more second to go by without you having it in writing so you can always look back on this and know how much you are loved.  I pray for you daily and pray for this world that you will be growing up in.  It is a horribly imperfect world filled with tragedy but know we have a peace in knowing this life isn't it for us.  Your daddy and I will do everything in our power to raise you to know, love and have a personal relationship with our Savior so you will have an eternity in heaven where there is no fear, disease or horrible tragedy.  Until then, you will be loved and we will do our best to protect you to the best of our ability.  I love you my sweet, sweet babies.

Easter take 2

Since we had to postpone our Easter dinner on Sunday because The Mayor was sick, we had Easter dinner with my family last night.  PopPop, Mamie, Meega, J, Bennett and Walker were all here.  We hid eggs in the backyard for the kids and then had an awesome dinner.  We hid 15 eggs each for The Mayor, Love Bug and Bennett with each kid also getting an egg with a quarter in it for their piggy banks.  The kids had so much fun running around finding their eggs and The Mayor found his 15 eggs before Bennett and Love Bug found two.  The kid moves fast.

Today was cold and rainy so after a few errands this morning, we spent the rest of the day at home watching movies and doing laundry.  Not the most fun day of Spring Break but it was still a pretty good day.  Tomorrow we are going to get together with Vicki and Aidan so that will give us something fun to look forward to!  After the rain moves out in the morning, the day should warm up to the 60s with sunshine and warm temperatures coming in for the weekend.  And Tuesday's high is 78!  Hello Spring!

baby Walker loves to chew on his burp cloth 

The Mayor running hard for his eggs

always the princess

Bennett found his money egg!

day 2 of spring break

Today was another great day.  We went to the gym so I could go to a 10AM class with my friend.  We went to a cardio kickboxing class.  The class was great but the teacher was super intense.  I almost felt like she was training us to be the next "Karate Kid" but I left the class sore and tired.  Just the way I wanted to feel.

After the class, we took the kids to the indoor pool for an hour and a half.  They had so much fun playing in the water, going under the water mushroom and throwing the ball around.  It was great seeing them have so much fun and knowing they were completely wearing themselves out!

After the gym, I took the kids to Chick-fil-a for lunch before heading to Costco and Target and then we were home playing outside with our new bubble guns.  The weather was great again today and the kids had so much fun watching the hundreds of bubbles fly around them.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow holds for us!

spring break day 1

We started our Spring Break early.  We were up and at the gym a little after 8AM so I could go to a spin class.  Then it was home for a quick shower, a stop to Target and then had lunch with some friends at one of our favorite lunch spots.  We ended up having an impromptu play date back at our house after lunch because the weather was unbelievably amazing.  It was too nice of a day to not be outside.  If I could have ordered a beautiful day, this is exactly what I would have ordered.

Tomorrow we are going back to the gym and then I think we are going to take the kids to the indoor pool for some fun.  The kids love to swim so I think it will be a nice treat for them to swim after playing hard in the kids gym.

I am trying to cram as much fun in the first few days of Spring Break as possible because Thursday and Friday are going to be rainy and cold.  There will be almost a 25 degree difference from the temperatures today and the temperatures Thursday...ugh.  But I won't get too upset because the weekend is going to be back in the high 60s and low 70s.  Hello Spring!

the umbrellas they picked (Cars for him, Princess for her)

modeling her new dress from MeMe and Big Daddy