First Ponytail

It wasn't easy...but I managed to get it done!

Also, please ignore the dirty face.  It's summer, and summer is for getting dirty.  (Or...being lazy and not thoroughly washing your child's face after lunch, and then forgetting and snapping a photo of their first-ever ponytail, and then not being able to get another decent shot after realizing (and then cleaning) the dirty face.)

Graduation

I'm a little late on this one, but wanted it up here none-the-less.

One June 11th, our little munchkins graduated from pre-school and are SO VERY excited to move it on up to the big Kindergarten.    They are already making plans and anticipating what it will be like.  To the point where I hope they aren't let down.  Evaline was a tad dismayed to find at Kindergarten Round-up (in early May) that the students sat at tables - she was expecting to have her own desk.  I also have a hunch that she's expecting to learn how to read on Day One.  This could get interesting.

I'm going to back up a bit with my pictures to document this momentous occasion, to fully encapsulate the whole moment.

Here we are at Kindergarten Round-up:

We decided to have the girls attend Van Buren next year.  Cedar Rapids is a little weird in how its districts are drawn.  The majority of the city is in the Cedar Rapids School District (where Ian and I both teach, at Jefferson High).  A little bit of the Northeast side of town is skimmed off and attends the Linn-Mar District (where I taught my first two years).  And a bit of the Southwest side of town is part of the College Community "Prairie" District.  We live about 4 minutes away from Jefferson, and about 1.5 minutes (in a car - roughly 6 minutes if you're walking) from Van Buren Elementary...but we actually live in the Prairie district.  We can stand in our front yard and see VB.  We like the idea of a neighborhood school.  We like the idea of getting home from work, then walking over to the school to pick up the girls and walking home in the fall and spring.  We also like the idea of the girls being on the same break schedule as us.  So we're going to VB. And the girls are WAY excited.  Just look at those cheesy grins!

And here is graduation:

The graduation program included several song performances.  C&E rocked it out - I'm pretty sure they were the loudest ones with the most dramatic hand movements.

Cora had one heck of a time with that hat - it must have fallen off 5 or 6 times!

One happy family!

The very last day of preschool - with the framed diplomas!

and without.

For comparisons sake - here is the FIRST DAY of preschool, back in late August:

 It's quite hard to read, but in the frames on the FIRST DAY it says what the girls want to be when they grow up. Evaline's reads: "A mommy who also has a job which is a doctor" and Cora's: "A Mommy with Babies."  At graduation, when they received their diplomas, they also said what they want to be when they grow up.  Cora said "Movie Star," and Evaline said "Teacher."  But later Evaline told me that "[she] was disappointed that [she] had to just pick one thing to say at graduation, because [she's] only five and really, that's just too young to decide on one thing.  Right now [she's] really thinking about being a teacher, an archaeologist, or a shop keeper."

Teaching high school, Ian and I get invited to a lot of graduation parties.  I think its an Iowa thing - I don't remember anyone really having grad parties in New Mexico.  Or maybe I was just that much a loser that I didn't ever get invited to any. Either way, its a big thing here, and teachers are usually invited.  Our Memorial Day weekend is usually spent with a big list of parties and a lot of close scheduling to make sure that we can make it to as many as possible.  The girls know this, so when they first started talking about their own graduation, their first question was: So when's our party going to be.  I can't turn down a good party, so I made the trip to the dollar store...five bucks later we had party hats, a banner, plates and napkins. I didn't snap a shot of their cupcakes - but the are pretty close to the ones below, except the cakes were pink (strawberry) with purple icing.

Ok - not related to the girls' graduation, but it's still graduation. And this is more for my own record, so if you aren't interested in cake stuff you can stop here :-)  Our super good friends, the Neilly's, oldest daughter graduated (from high school) this year and they let me make her cakes!  I didn't get any shots from the actual party...but I've a couple of the cakes.  The sheet cake is lemon cake on the left and strawberry on the right, with a frosting that is a cross between buttercream and whipped cream. The cupcakes are vanilla with vanilla frosting (not as boring as it sounds).

St. Joe's, Michigan

Back in December, Ian and I decided that we needed a vacation.  A real, family vacation.  We certainly would have been happy with a little couple's getaway, but this was something that we wanted to try.  Last summer we went for a little under a week to Omaha for my brother and sister-in-law's wedding, and things went smoothly - although we had lots of family around, of course, to help keep all the kiddos entertained.

We wanted something that was under a day's drive away, so we decided on the Great Lakes area, and chose a lake town in south western Michigan: St. Joseph's.  It's connected to the slightly larger town of Benton Harbor, which will be the one to probably appear on most maps that don't go into detail.  Some of our neighbors had highly recommended this spot as a little family vacation area, and Ian's sister (and family) lived there for awhile, too.

Given that we have traveled so little with kids, and Willa still being so young, we made it a short trip - we left on Sunday and got home on Thursday.  Our first day there, we woke to this view out our window:

Day Two looked the same.  Day Three was foggy and cold - you couldn't see the buildings across the street.  But...we'd all read Arthur's Family Vacation, so we knew that even it rained you could still find a way to have fun. 

At the end of Day One, Cora said "This was the best day ever!  We went to two children's museums, rode the carousel, had popcorn and ice cream for lunch, went swimming, had pizza in an old train station for dinner and got to see a lighthouse!"  Whew!  It was a busy day!

Day Two was cold and rainy in the morning, so we stayed in and swam at the hotel pool most of the morning.  After Willa's afternoon nap, the sun kinda-sorta came out...well...it stopped raining at least.  It was in the low 70s and we figured that it would be too cold to swim/get in the water, but we headed to the beach anyway.  While we were there, the sun came out more, it was beautiful weather (for about an hour and half before the fog rolled in), the water was nice....but we didn't bring our suits.  To heck with that - we went in anyway!  (All but Ian who had a hard time having any fun because all he could think was the mess that the sand would make in the car...what a fun-hater!)

Day Three was foggy, and about 58 degrees!, but we headed to the sand dunes about a  half-hour south along the lake.  Cora and Evaline were troopers as they scaled a few dunes so steep they had to crawl on all fours.  Willa was in a hiking back-pack on Ian's back....and she didn't care for it one bit.  So she screamed for the 45 minutes we were there.  We headed back to town to have a picnic lunch and run through the huge splash pad.  The weather did get the best of us for that however.  We all needed jackets for the picnic as the wind was pouring in off the lake.  We opted for a few turns on the carousel in exchange for the splash pad, and then headed back to the hotel for more swimming.  

So despite the crappy weather, we had a lovely first family vacation.  And I believe that this view of the backseat on the way home is all the proof we need:

TGIF

Oh, just watching some Princess Bride and getting make-overs.  How do you spend your Friday nights?

Sunday Funnies

I should preface this story by saying that Evaline's three favorite TV shows are HGTV's Property Brothers, Flip or Flop, and Rehab Addict.

Last weekend we were hanging out with some friends and from the corner of the couch, we hear Evaline say "AHHH!  I'm FREAKING OUT!"

Everyone turns to look at her.

"What?!" I say "What's going on?  Why are you freaking out?!"

Her response, stated somewhat shyly: "Well, I'm on the phone with my pretend builder," (and she shows us the toy cell phone in her hand) "And he said that some stuff we wanted for our house is actually going to cost $299 and we thought it was going to be $199.  This is totally gonna blow my budget!"

"Oh my," I tell her. "What will you do?"

"I have to have it, so I'll just have to cut somewhere else, I guess."

The Willa

I have this odd habit of referring to my children as "the girls" (meaning Cora and Evaline) and "the Willa." It stems from "the girls" being such a good pair, and for the almost four years before Willa came along they were "the girls" and the only girls.  But now that Willa is here, it is hard for me to include her into that pairing.  And it also makes for awkward conversations when someone asks something like "What size clothes are the girls wearing now?"  Because when I answer I only tell them what size Cora and Evaline are in....because those are "the girls."  I probably need to change that.

Willa is at such a fun age right now.  I probably wouldn't have said that three weeks ago, because then she was at a very obnoxious age (clingy, whiny, generally discontented).  But just like everything that they go through - she grew out of that.  Thank goodness - and just in time for summer - hooray!

At 21 months (yesterday) she is a fun-loving, smiley girls who is curious, playful and loves to tease and be teased.  She's a little bit of a thing, still having to roll up her 18 month pants.  At her 18 month doctor's appointment at the end of February she measured in the 3rd (that's right) percentile for height.  She has super chubby cheeks and gorgeous (if still quite skimpy) red hair that curls straight up on top of her head in the humidity. (Its a little hard to see in these pictures, but she wasn't into cooperating.)

She was a late walker (not until around Christmas - almost 16 months), but is making up for that now.  Her trot has turned into a run, and she is constantly chasing after her sisters - every where they go, she is at their heels.  And for the most part, they don't mind.  Cora has always been a bit more willing to let her tag along, and will sometimes sit for over an hour and just play with her.  Evaline is warming up to her as she is able to do more and more.  For awhile there, Evaline liked her and all...but didn't really know what to do with her.

Willa's play is advancing - she loves to play with babies - baby dolls, her "Little People" doll house, the wooden dolls in their Melissa and Doug wooden castle set, her sisters' Polly Pockets or Barbies, any type of dolls.  She watches her sisters and copies everything they do.  This weekend we were with some friends who recently had a beautiful baby boy and she copied what she saw done with the real baby: changing diapers, putting her doll in the rock-n-play, and all that jazz.  When she gets into something, she has a very long attention span.  In he picture at the top of this post she sat and played with the color/shape sorter for well over half and hour while we were making supper.  She worked at it until she could get it right - every time.

She's starting to be a little jabber-box.  She's putting two words together - Daddy Bye-Bye, Daddy/Baby Ni-Nigh and others.  She still uses her sign language, as is still making up her own signs, which is pretty cool to watch.  I would say that between signs and actual words she's got a solid vocabulary of somewhere in the 40-50 word range.  

She loves to rock and snuggle.  She loves hugs.  She loves her dad, but prefers her mom (and I'm OK with that).

She's a fun kid.  We think we'll keep her.

The Come-back

The past year has not been one of the best. I can't offhand think of any other year to date that has been so hectic, so draining, and so ready to be over.  (As a teacher, my year ends in June.)

Last summer I got busy (doing fun things, actually), and for no good reason, I neglected the blog.  Then the school year hit and I felt myself pulled every which-a-way.  I took on more this year professionally: I took some extra professional development classes, taught a couple new (AP) classes, and set (and mostly met) some lofty goals for my classroom. However, I felt overwhelmed and treading water.  And I continued to neglect the blog.

In November I got sick.  Not the 24-hour-flu kind of sick, but the out-of-work-for-two-months kind of sick.  I got an inner ear infection and it destroyed my right vestibular nerve.  I didn't know what a vestibular nerve was when this happened to me - but apparently its the "command center" that connects the eyes, ears, and brain and manages the body's balance.  After several days of unbelievable nausea, I finally admitted that I probably didn't have the stomach flu and went to the ER, barely able to walk because my body just couldn't function in that way anymore.  Two months of physical therapy later I was able to return to work...but I'm still dealing with some after affects: fatigue and pressure headaches being the most bothersome.  At the end of the day I'm exhausted and if I don't have papers to grade or lessons to plan, I just want to veg. And so I've continued to neglect the blog.

Ian's mom, Barb, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in August, and even after attempts at treatment through radiation and chemotherapy, the tumors continued to grow.  About three weeks ago, she passed away after two months at home on hospice care.

As I said....I'm ready for this year to end.

In this year of being busy, and unwell, and tired...I found that I stopped doing a lot of the things that I used to do that used to make me happy.  I muster all my energy to do things I have to do...and then neglect the things I want to do.  I almost never bake anymore (much to Ian's dismay), and cooking has been relegated to whatever is the minimum needed to healthily feed my family for the week....and these used to be hobbies that I'd relish.  I can't remember the last book I read (fiction or otherwise).  I stopped exercising (and it shows).   I didn't grow my garden from seeds this year, like I had so wanted to.  I rarely have the time to find, prep, and do "art-craft" projects with the girls - something special that we used to enjoy with each other at least a few times a month. And I've continued to neglect the blog - something that I enjoy because I've always liked to write, and because I love to look back and have this record of the things we've done and the life we've lived.

As this year winds down (although I use that phrase a bit liberally because we still have FOUR weeks left of school...can you believe it??!!), however, I'm making my own New Year's resolution to bring back the things that make me happy.  I'm going to find a way to rearrange things and to do the things that are most important - and aren't the things that make you happy really the most important things anyway?

Re-starting the blog is going to be part of that.  I've wanted a re-start for awhile now, but didn't really know how to make the come-back.  After being away for so long - do I need to do a re-cap?  Do I need to go back with updates of all the holidays, and other photo-worthy occasions?  These are the questions, actually that have me hesitant to start again.  So, while I'm sure that would be nice...I just can't.

This is the recap:  The last year has been a rough one, but it hasn't been all bad - there have been lots of smiles and lots of laughter, too. As for the details, I don't have the time or energy to start by going back....so I'm going to just have to start by going forward.