In case you still thought you could keep things nice...

Let me just tell you that you are wrong. When you buy your ticket into motherhood (which comes in the form of a little white stick that you pee on) you forever throw away your ability to keep anything nice in your home. Sure a lot of your stuff may be hand-me-downs and not the nicest anyway at first, but eventually you do start to buy new things here and there. And that's when it really stinks. When it actually was nice to begin with. Oh, you're still under the impression that you can just discipline your kids and instill in them this internal desire to keep everything clean and unbroken? I'm going to show you how wrong you really are...

I had to show this. I went to use my lip gloss the other day and found it squirting out the back all onto my hand. Apparently Mya had a little bit of fun with the scissors.

So you still don't believe me? Why don't you ask me about the barf on the carpet, or pee for that matter, or the bite marks on my blinds, or the purple sticky-hand mark on my ceiling. Or take a little looksie at another piece of evidence...

So this is what got me going on this little tangent here. This damage was caused by a child who I will keep anonymous who jumped on the top bunk. Yet another broken thing that used to be sort of nice. Oh, and I forgot to add the picture of the ripped trampoline foam. That would have fit nicely with this post, along with the picture of the piece broken off our computer that I accidentally deleted. All right, venting rampage over. I guess I just have to accept the fact that stuff is just stuff and people are more important. My mother-in-law is a great example of this principle. So, if you come to my home, please don't judge us. Know that I try and try and that I don't want to have junky stuff and smudges on my bathroom mirrors and TV and oven. I just have little kids so cut me a little slack!

And I do love them and they are cute, even in their swim suits, leotards, and tights!

Bring on the summer, but please leave the humidity. I could do without it thank you very much.

Elle has officially moved on from the world of preschool! Today was the big graduation. And the ever so motivating words from her father went something like this: "Just keep graduating. Don't let this be your last graduation." I'm sure she'll do her best to follow that advice. Here's some pictures from the big day...

Above is the big graduate and the future preschooler herself. Mya will love it next year. Don't they look beautiful with their pretty blush, pink eyeshadow, and lip gloss? Below is the fancy graduation decor. I get a cringy feeling just thinking about that chalk on the chalkboard (great dislike of chalk here).

Elle with some of her little school friends. I love the boy's awesome fancy bright blue suit coat with shorts. Now that is fashion! (But don't blame him- I'm sure he didn't pick it out.)

Elle with her diploma (which she did use as a telescope sometime after sitting back down. Wouldn't you?). The lighting is not great. Sorry about that!

Thanks to Stacy I got to attend graduation kid-free. Jake surprised us by making it for the big event. We didn't think he'd be able to get off so we were so happy he could be there. Elle got a fun goody bag with some summer goodies, including goggles which up until recently she had been calling "gargoyles".

And what's graduation without a traditional lunch run to Panera?! Love that broccoli cheddar soup.

And we splurged and shared a yummy piece of chocolate brownie cake to celebrate.

As I'm sure you can guess, we reach this milestone with mixed emotions. Elle's excited about kindergarten, but I'm sure a little sad to be done with preschool. She made some fun friends this year and really enjoyed herself. I'm sure Mya is excited because now it will be her turn to get dropped off at Elle's school. I am sort of glad we won't be having to make the drive out to the school for awhile although I became quite accustomed to it. It will also be nice to not have the morning rush for a little bit, but at the same time that actually got us motivated to get up and get going in the mornings. Now I may just stay in my pj's until noon. This graduation also means my first little girl is getting ready to enter the scary world of public schools and all day kindergarten. She is I think definitely ready as far as academics and attention spans go and I know she will have fun, but it's hard to just send them out the door away from your sheltered little world. When I was feeling sad about it one day I had the thought why am I being selfish. I liked school and I'm sure she will, too. We all survived so it's going to be okay I hope. I'll let you know how it goes come August!

Home Improvements, Little Boo Boo, and an Alien Named Wanda

I hope you enjoy the titles of my posts. I try to be creative sometimes, doesn't always happen, but I do try. Anyways, we've made some fun improvements on our house over the last little bit. Besides paying a lot of money to have an electrician come fix something in our garage that took about ten minutes (such a rip off, but the plug in our ceiling didn't work for the garage door opener and we are definitely not handy with electrical currents), we got some fun new stuff to make the house a little prettier. We replaced the ceiling fan in the living room which broke awhile back and only went one slow speed. Not good for hot Houston summers, especially because the oven (which I'm always using because I am such a baker- ha ha) heats up the living room so much and there are also lots of windows to let the heat in. I can't say I'm sad to see the white beauty out on the side of the road waiting for the garbage man (or some trash snatcher- side note: I went out this morning and the fan was gone, but the trash cans still there. I was right about the trash snatching). I don't love the white fan, but I don't hate it either. It could be a lot worse. We have the same one in our bedroom (it actually works good still) which we found in front of someones house down the street out on the curb. They must have replaced theirs so we took it and put it in our bedroom. I'm sure you were really interested in that story. Anyways, back to the present. We also replaced the ugly brassy gold chandelier in the dining room and are in the process of replacing the other ugly brass light fixtures in the house. Jake's friend Deven wins the best friend prize for the day for all of his help. The deal was Jake would golf with him in the morning and then they would hang some lights. We really owe him big! Below is some of the stuff from before and what we have now. The ceiling fan is a bit big (Jake compares it to a helicopter) but our room is sort of big and has a high ceiling, and I'm happy to have a fan that actually makes a noticeable difference!

If you want the chandelier, I'll cut you a good deal and give it to you for free along with these pretty light fixtures below. (For the record, I would never pick these for my house if I could avoid it. They were what the builders put in because I'm sure they were cheap. But they are not pretty.)

Now for the new stuff...

All righty, enough about the house. Now onto Jada. I'm really sad about her getting so old. She's almost 1! She's already so much better at walking, she hardly crawls anymore, and is just growing up too fast. Don't you wish that there were certain stages that you could just bottle up or keep them at forever? Babies are so fun, especially from about 5 or 6 months until around 15 months when they become cranky toddlers. We have really loved having a baby again to watch do funny things and to just be cute.

I wanted to capture and talk about a few things that she does right now that I love and know that she won't do forever. The first can be seen below. I love when she sees something soft like a blanket or pillow and goes up to it and lays down with her arms out. I always say, "Nice baby".

I also love the head down, bum up position, especially when they pause there for awhile to look around. She's been doing it a lot lately with learning how to stand up to start walking again.

We've also ventured into climbing a little more, which is bad, as can be seen below. That is not very safe. (I posed her for the pics, but she can do this on her own. And check out that awesome hair. I'm so good at doing hair.)

Just a few more... Since she's pretty much moving on from crawling, I'll miss how she would crawl with her head down, not looking up, like she was on a mission. She would pause occasionally and put her head up to look around before stopping or putting it back down to crawl again. I love when she puts things like a headband, the crayon bucket, or even panties on her head, and how she tries to put socks on by just setting them on top of her feet. I love it when she waves when we say nighty-night to her sisters and how she makes kissy noises when it's time for kisses. I like watching her dance silly by moving her head side to side. I like watching her pretend to answer the phone and when she wants to share a toy with me. I also like checking on her at night and sometimes finding her on her tummy all huddled around her blanket. I love how she rubs her feet on her blanket when I put her in her crib. These are just some of the fun things I want to remember about her. Sorry for the personal mommy moment but that's what you get for reading! She also is getting two new teeth, but not the top front teeth like one would expect. Instead she is getting the two teeth on the sides of where her front teeth would be. I'm sure she'll look really great with a big space in the middle. It'll be kind of funny. Also, I'm sad to say that I think her first word might be "da da". She's been babbling this for awhile, but I think there is actually meaning behind it now. She's started to babble the "ma" sound now, so maybe she'll say ma ma soon.

Lastly, onto Wanderer the alien or "soul". Read "The Host" and you'll know what I'm talking about. I've been staying up way too late this week reading and finally finished last night around 2:30 a.m. Bad of me, I know. I should have been sleeping long before that. So here's my take on the book for anyone interested in Stephenie Meyer. I really liked it. At first I was a little unsure and it took awhile for me to get hooked. It's a strange idea for a story and you kind of have to just go with it, but so are vampires so I guess aliens aren't that weird of a concept after all. The whole setting and idea for the book is so new and at first it takes awhile to kind of grasp everything and understand a little of how the whole world of "souls" works. And if the book wasn't by Meyer, I'm pretty sure I never would have considered reading it. Aliens typically aren't really my thing. But the story is great, despite the feelings of hopelessness I had during reading. She is such a visual amazing writer. It's a good summer read if you're looking for a book. It's weird, yes, but still a good one. I mean, how can a book not be good if there is someone named Sunny in it?! And am I the only one that has "post-book depression" sometimes? Jake probably thinks I'm a complete nerd for saying this but lots of times when I finish a good book I'm so sad it's over. I'll read them again sometimes to stay in the pretend world, but it's never the same as that first time around. It's tricky because you don't want to be done reading, but then you can't stop reading so you finish the book and then are sad you are done. Who knows, maybe I'm the only one who ever gets that way. Maybe I really am a nerd. Thanks for being my friend anyway.

Sister and Non-Sister

It's been awhile. This is long. Here we go. So my younger sister Kirstie came to town last week for a little visit. I think it was the beautiful poem that got her here. Anyways, it was so great for her to visit. She hadn't been to Texas since we first moved here and didn't even have blinds on our windows. It was great timing because Jake had to go to Florida in the middle of the week for work so I didn't have to be alone. Here's a little rundown on what we did to keep busy...

The first night she was here we went to dinner to celebrate Cinco de Mayo at Lupe Tortilla. Highlights were Kirstie spilling her drink, the live band, learning Spanish in the bathroom, and the cool necklaces (see below). I did my best to hide the alcoholic insignia. Kirs and I also hit up the new large movie theater that is super close to my house after the kids went to bed. We saw a horrible movie. Don't see it. We watched a few movies this week, the best one being "Pride and Prejudice". Jake unfortunately missed out due to his business trip. I know he's sad.


Tuesday afternoon we headed out to the zoo. It stays open until 7 pm so we were hoping to get cooler weather and less crowds. We packed picnic dinner and had a great time. Jake met up with us at the very end. Boo Boo rode the carousel and made a cheetah friend.

Above is Jake and the girls and our new family pet. It's a little big but it'll be fun to take on walks. Wednesday we hit up "Pot Belly" for lunch which is a yummy sandwich place.

Kirs was a trooper and earned points in the best aunt category by sporting her swim suit and playing outside with the girlies. They loved it!

Friday we went to Pump-it-up which is always a hit. I was glad to have Kirs with me not only because we got to race on the obstacle course but because she helped a ton with the girls. I wanted to show the pic of Jada with her new "snack trap". I have wanted one of these since Mya was little and finally got a pack.

Friday night was a highlight of the trip for sure. Kirs and I got to join the extra large crowd at a Stephenie Meyer book signing. The pic of her speaking isn't that great but the pics of us make up for that. We loved the creative t-shirts people were sporting and only wished we had puffy painted up one for ourselves. We ended the night with an Oreo Pizookie. Any night that ends with that is a good one. I've started reading "The Host". Still undecided on my opinion. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Saturday we went swimming. The water was a bit frigid but we got used to it. It took Jada a little longer to warm up to the idea. But, contrary to what the picture of her and Jake shows, she did actually get used to it and had a good time. Thank goodness because if she didn't like the pool it would be a long summer.

Kirs and I got pedicures. The flowers on mine aren't the best. My lady was shaking so bad trying to design them. She must be new. And ignore the fact that my sister's feet are about 10 shades tanner than mine. She just got back from Lake Mead. Cut me some slack.

Mother's Day was great, with sleeping in and cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs and steak and a new electric skillet. Jake and the girls were even nice enough to get Kirs a "this is to help you become a mother" Mother's Day gift with things like gum, lip gloss, and mouth wash.

Kirs styled Mya's hair quite nicely above. And the below pic probably means not much to many people besides my sister and I. But it comes with a message for Kirs, which is: You can't escape us for long. Thanks Sister for coming to visit and for all the help with the girlies. We can't wait to see you in July!

Now for the non-sister stuff. We went to the zoo awhile back with the friends and families from Mya's Tuesday playgroup. The kids had a great time and loved playing in the water.

Jada continues to get older everyday which is so sad! I'm going to miss my baby! She's 11 months today which sounds so old! She's walking a ton, still a bit unsteady at times but getting better. We're down to two feedings a day. Nursing days are sadly drawing to a close. It's so fun to watch her start to understand life, like trying to talk on a phone, or place her socks on her feet, or comb her hair. Not long before she'll be talking and running!

I had to post about this above with Jada and panties on her head. I was doing laundry and Jada just kept on putting the panties on her head. Not sure why but it was funny. And Mya had to get in on the fun wearing, yet again, her swimsuit. She has been changing her clothes a ton lately. She just pulls over the Dora dollhouse, stands up on it I guess, and grabs something out of her closet. Luckily I love doing laundry. Ha.

Elle is also now officially signed up for Kindergarten, supplies purchased and all. August 25th will be the big day. I think she'll love it. It was fun to see the classrooms and be at the school.

Elle also had Field Day at preschool. Her graduation is next week and then she is off to the big bad great world of school. Bitter sweet.

And lastly, finally, thank goodness. I told you this was long. Mya had her preschool graduation today. It's been so great for her to have this fun preschool group on Wednesdays. Next year she's going to follow in Elle's footsteps and go to her same preschool. Graduation was filled with fun things like decorating crowns (modern style graduation caps), decorating sugar cookies, hunting for grad treats (M&M's), and watching a cute slideshow of the year made by Stacy. I think it was a successful year and it's been a really great year for these kids. They are all too cute!

P.S.- David Cook or David Arhchuleta???