Video of Melissa's 6th Birthday Parties

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Creative Clothes

The girls have been really cute the past few days with the outfits they come up with to play in. I know that it looks like Kayla is wearing a scripture bag, a robe and carrying a recorder, but that isn't the case. When she wanted to be a magician these items became a magician's hat, a cape and a magic wand. Clever, huh? Melissa LOVES wearing the camouflage jacket Uncle Jeremy gave her for Christmas. She puts it on and becomes invisible. This time she was a seed planted in the ground under a pile of leaves. When the sun came out....

...she became a BEAUTIFUL flower!

Abbie Rae

Love this kid!

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Seriously Ridiculous

Oh. My. Goodness. This day has been..... ridiculous. Seriously ridiculous. I woke up this morning to the sound of giggling girls. Usually I LOVE this sound, but it worries me when it is happening before I am awake... that means much mischief is to be found. I crawled out of bed and found Melissa holding her ukulele in her ROOM with water DRIPPING out of it. Considering I had just gotten out of bed I think I handled myself very well. The room was completely silent when I took the ukulele and walked out. I didn't hear very much giggling after that. After breakfast I sat down to feed Abbie and ALL of the following happened within the 1/2 hour: The girls filled big plastic bowls with water, sat under the dining room table and pretended they were in a spa, soaking their feet. This wouldn't be bad except they REALLY filled those dang bowls with water so while they were carrying them from the bathroom to the dining room they SOAKED every inch of floor between the two. Grrrr. Kayla delightfully tattled on Melissa within minutes of their cleaning up the water telling me that Melissa was "chugging the honey" in the kitchen. And she was. Grrrrr. For some reason I told the girls they could draw a few pictures and make invitations for a pretend party they were planning later in the day with their good friend CheeChee. While making said invitations they also decided to make CONFETTI. Fun, huh? Not so much. They decided to decorate the ENTIRE living room with the fresh confetti. THE. ENTIRE. LIVING ROOM. Grrrrr. By this time I was getting pretty frustrated and decided to send the girls up to their room. MISTAKE. While I was switching out the laundry the girls took every bit of food storage out from under Kayla's bed and "decorated" their room. With food storage. There were jars of tomatoes, green beans, jams, etc. everywhere. Really???? Grrrrr. While they were cleaning up the food storage they stole one of the rolls of toilet paper out of the bathroom and decorated their room with that too. Seriously??? At this point, I really asked myself if this was really my life? I cried a bit and tried really hard not to yell at my children. Fail. Just after asking myself this I found an EMPTY bottle of hand soap in their room. I have yet to find where they emptied it. By the way, ALL of that happened BEFORE 10am. At some point today, I don't even know when, they broke the lid to the toilet seat, unrolled a roll of toilet paper under a table, around it's legs and all, wrote on the curtains and somehow cut under Melissa's eye. See? Ridiculous. Now, at the end of the day I am trying to find some way to put all of this out of my head. The party with CheeChee did not happen, the house is ALMOST cleaned from all of their mischievous acts and I am listening to Ray give the baby a bath in the kitchen sink. Reading over this ALMOST makes me smile and I cannot believe how blessed I am that this is my life. These are my babies... the ones I waited so very long for. The ones that were so very hard to get here. The ones that agreed to let me be their Mommy. They may drive me crazy, but at the end of the day, I am counting my blessings, their names are Melissa, Kayla and Abbie. (oh, and my hubby too!) Now, if I can only figure out how to get their art project off of it's surface... their tushies.

Fun, fun day!!!

The girls had WAY TOO MUCH fun at Grandma and Poppa's house this past weekend. We went there so Poppa could take the girls to see "Mary Poppins" live and ended up doing so many fun things! Friday morning Kayla played outside with Evan and Christian ALL morning while I took Melissa shopping. Friday afternoon Poppa took Daddy, Uncle Jer, Melissa and Kayla to ride horses over at Ms. Jo's. She and Lauren, her daughter, as SO sweet when we come to town. They meet us over at her brother-in-law's house (where she boards her horses) and lets the girls ride and ride and ride. This is the first time Ray was able to go and he had a lot of fun too! Evidently, his and Jer's horse were in some sort of competition, but that's a story for another time... The following are pictures of the horseback riding.

Practicing horse brushing by brushing the dog!!

After they got home from horseback riding Uncle Jeremy made a fire so we could roast some marshmallows.. YUM! Then Poppa let us set up his projector and Ray and the girls watched a movie OUTSIDE on the side of the house! Talk about fun! They loved it.

Thank you SO much for all of the fun Grandma and Poppa Bear!!

Mary Poppins

This past weekend we went to Grandma and Poppa's house so that Poppa could take the girls (and Daddy-O) to see "Mary Poppins" live!! They had such a wonderful time! From the report that Grandma and Daddy gave me the girls sat in amazement as they watched the actors sing their favorite songs, fly through the air and come alive right before their eyes. I wish I had been there to see their reaction! After the show they went to eat at Red Lobster (at Kayla's persistent request) and the girls were allowed to "pet" a few lobsters. I don't think they realized it was someones dinner! They LOVED it. Thank you Grandma and Poppa for taking them!

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To say I am tired...

... would be an understatement! THIS is what I did in school today. I accused the girls of switching out the days. Nope. It was me. I forgot to do the calendar in school yesterday and did 2 days today... FAIL.

Lovin' the Great Outdoors...

...on our new playground!! Ray and the girls worked really hard and built us this beautiful, fun playground and we LOVE IT!!!

Melissa is super sweet and pushes Kayla on the swings EVERYday!!

1st Day of School!

We started school today and I would say it was VERY successful! I hadn't planned on starting until 10 and was laying on the sofa trying to get the energy to move when the girls came bouncing down the stairs BEGGING to start school right away. I REALLY wanted to finish my rest, but couldn't keep my butt on the sofa when the girls were so ready to learn! So, we started at 9 and were finished by 11! They LOVED it. One of the BEST things about homeschool? My girls pick out their own clothes and I don't have to ask them to change!

Melissa was SO pleased with her hair today! She fixed it ALL by herself! LOVE Kayla's clothes!

Playing "Muffin Match" with capitals and lower case letters. Melissa was such a good sport with this one as she already knows how to do this but helped Kayla learn some of the letter matches.

Daddy Daughter Campout

This past Friday night Ray and our friend David took our girls camping in the backyard. They had soooo much fun! A very sick David brought his daughters Eliza and Sadie to our backyard and pitched tents with Ray, Melissa and Kayla and spent the rest of the evening and the following morning cooking on a fire, running around like crazy people and playing. So many fun memories were made by the girls with their Daddies! Here are a few of my favorite pictures: And a video from the evening:

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