Beach day

On Saturday my sister came down from Phelan (Victorville area) and spent the day with us. We went to the beach and then came home and visited. It was a ton of fun in the sun! Arya won't go too close to the water unless she is carried. She loves to sit on the sand and eat it. Weird. Alyssa, Nathan, and Savannah were all out riding the waves. Alanna thought she could 'surf,' but left it to the older kids when a wave knocked her off of her boggie board.

Sneaky kids

On Saturday Jared and I had a little disagreement. Well, it was actually a big disagreement, a little fight. :) We don't have big disagreements that often. Normally there is some miscommunication, apologies, and it is all better. Our kids aren't use to little fights that we have about twice a year. They kind of band together and plan how to help us resolve it. It is actually pretty cute. Well, Saturday at lunch time we were in the middle of a little rift. The kids all left the table after lunch, meet in their secret meeting place (I think it is Alyssa's room, but I'm not sure), and they came up with this note writing plan. I didn't find out all of the pieces of this puzzle until Sunday night. But later on Saturday Savannah came and told me that Jared left me a note on my desk. Nathan had told Jared that I left him a note on his desk. So, I got the note Sunday night, and this was it:

Isn't that the funniest thing! The part I like best is that the kids wrote Jared taking the blame for the disagreement. Hmmmm. Is that because it was his fault or because they think I can do no wrong???

Ballet Recital-Alanna

This was Alanna's second little recital. The first one was in December and she did one dance with her class. She did a great job. The photos above are her with her make up and her with her best friend Analeah.

This recital they did two dances. The first one was about "When I grow up, I'll be happy as can be, like a birdie in a tree," and Alanna sang the song over and over for the past few weeks. She did a great job at this dance, smiled, danced, had a great time! She is the one on the left side in this first photo and in the second photo she is second from left.

Isn't this the cutest! Look at those pigtails fly! Alanna is second from the left. Analeah is the one jumping the highest!

The second dance they did was to the Jungle Book and they all dressed like jungle animals. It was a cute tap dance and this is the dance they did at the December recital. Alanna wore her lion Halloween costume from two years ago! She loved getting the make up on, but when it was time to go out and preform, she stood there the whole time! My friend Amy has the practice videos posted on her blog at: http://familiaayala.blogspot.com/ It is really cute and you can hear the teacher trying to get Alanna to dance. In the blue skirt dance Alanna has curlers in her hair, but she is the third from the right. In the second dance she is the second from the left, the one who stands through most of it! Now this was the practice, but for the real one, she was as pictured in the photo below for the entire dance!

Ballet Recital-Alyssa

Alyssa has been in ballet for about 5 years now. She loves it and loves to preform. In the group photo above, she is the standing girl on the far right.

In this photo on the left, she is the furthest on the left side. In the photo below, she is right in the middle.

This was her first Spring recital when she had barely turned four years old, 6 years ago. (she is kneeling in the center of the photo.) I can't believe how fast time has gone. I love looking back at the photos from her first experiences of something, such as ballet, up to now.

Another trip with Savannah to the hospital

We just got back from the hospital with Savannah. We were swimming at a friend's pool today and we had been there for almost three hours. The older girls were preparing a 'jumping into the pool' show and it was just about ready. It always makes me nervous when they jump into the pool becuase they jump in so close to the edge rather than jumping out. All of a sudden I heard Savannah crying.
Ya know, when I heard her crying, I knew exactly what had happened. I knew with how close to the side she jumps in to the pool that busting her chin or her head was bound to happen. Well, she busted her chin. When I saw the cut it looked like a little paper cut; just straight across. But I knew it would open up. I put a towel over it right away to stop the bleeding and then looked at it again and it had split wide open. With the way the skin split it look like there was a chunk missing from her chin. When we left the pool, Savannah was crying the whole way home. She kept asking if she would get stitches. I told her that I thought she would because I wanted her to be prepared just in case. I came home, changed Savannah into clothes, we said a little prayer and Jared took her to the hospital. I left Alyssa, Nathan, and Arya home and I took Alanna to her doctor to have her TB test read and then I met Savannah and Jared at the hospital.

Savannah got taken right in and was seen pretty quickly. By the time I got there they had some blue goo on her chin to numb it. The doctor didn't think it was too bad, but wanted to do a staple just in case. Then he came in to do the procedure and he said, "Oh, this is worse than I thought." He ended up putting in three stitches. Savannah was a champ!

The nurses and doctor said that she did a great job; didn't cry at all or fuss and held so still as she was being stitched up. The doctor asked her a bunch of questions when he came in. He asked her if she smoked. She said, "No, I don't do any of that bad stuff." The doctor laughed. He was such an interesting guy. He said, "Savannah you are an excellent patient!" Then the nurse came in and told us how taken he was with Savannah. She said, "It's really funny because he normally doesn't like children!" So, my little charmer lived up to her reputation!
As we were leaving she asked if we could go back to the pool!! What a trooper. She can't go swimming until Monday.
Here is a slide show of the event. Jared, in true form, had his camera out the minute I got home from the pool with her, so he documented the whole event. What a character. As we were leaving the hospital a helicopter was taking off, so we got some photos of him waving to the girls. To get the full effect, watch this as a slide show with a full screen view!

Bike Rodeo

Nathan started scouts when he turened 8 in February. He has loved it. They have great weekly activities planned and he loves getting together with his friends. He is very motivated and follows me around daily asking what he can do each day with his scouting. They have a big pack meeting on June 24 where he will get some awards, so I want to wait until then to post all of the cool things he has done over these past five months, but this last Wednesday they did a bike rodeo and he had a ton of fun. Here are some photos.

My little Princess

My sweet little baby turned two today. Poor little girl has a cold and wasn't too interested in much. I let her wear her pajamas most of the day, she picked out her favorite movies to watch, and then went and played while the other kids watched the movies!

She had a doctor appointment today for a one year check up. She normally HATES doctors. Did I mention she HATES, HATES doctors? Seriously, she cries from the time we enter the exam room until the time we leave. We have a new doctor that we have been with for about six months. I LOVED our previous doctor, but he stopped taking our insurance. :( So, they do things a little different at this new place. Alanna and Arya both had appointments and they did them at the same time, which worked well actually. Arya got to watch the doctor look in Alanna's ears, and then she wasn't so freaked out when the doctor looked in her ears. Anyway, Arya didn't get any shots, but Alanna got four and a TB test. So that was nice for Arya!

We came home, at dinner, and then had 'cake.' Arya makes such a mess with cake and honestly, I am tired of cleaning up mess after mess. So, I asked her if she wanted birthday cookies and she got really excited. I made this cool birthday cookie 'cake' and I think I will never make regular cookies again. I was so moist and chewy and not all dried out or flat and I didn't have to spend all of my time spooning batter onto cookie sheets.

She loved the attention of everyone singing to her. She got a little close to the candles and singed her hair.

Then we all watched and laughed as she tried to 'dive' into the cookie, but was very apprehensive and ended up just liking it. The kids all made sure I gave that piece to her.

Alanna was so sad that Arya turned two and is growing up. She wants her to stay small. I guess it is my fault that she feels this way.

I tell the kids constantly how I wish I could just keep them small. It is a lot of work, constantly doing stuff for them, never having my own time, but I sure miss having a little baby and the time goes so quickly by. I couldn't slow time down slow enough to enjoy it all. I really wish I could keep them all between the ages of 3 months to five years forever. Such precious, precious times.

Alyssa's Crazy Sleepover

Alyssa entered the wonderful world of double digits this year! To celebrate we had a party with some of her closest friends. This would be fine, but then she decided she wanted them all to sleep over. I figure I only give her a party with her friends every other year, so, why not! The party was great. Alyssa planned it all out, complete with a map as to where she wanted the games, how she wanted it set up, and a timeline for it all. (I don't know where she gets this detail-orientated personality disorder from.)

To explain a little: Ever since we found an adorable pair of Robeez shoes with cupcakes on them (see Dec. posting) Alyssa and I have been in love with cupcakes. So, she wanted to have a cupcake party.

There were about 10 girls that came. They started off by sewing a cupcake pocket on an apron.

Then they decorated cupcakes.

They played pin the cherry on the cupcake.

They played balloon darts. (Absolutely nothing to do with cupcakes, but fun!)

Ate pizza, more cupcakes

Then they watched movies, made friendship brackets, did a crazy dance at midnight, and then at about 2am settled down to go to sleep. In the morning they woke up at about 6am, had a pillow fight, Jared made awesome smoothies for them, and then they went home.

Alyssa had a great time, her friends were so generous with their gifts, and it is just such a blessing to me that she has such great friends from wonderful families.

All of the girls went home with an apron and a cute little tote. Fun times!!

Levi Commercial

This is a commercial that we made for Alyssa's state project for fourth grade. She organized it all, wrote out everyone's lines (but everyone decided to add their own), and planned it all out. A cool side note; we filmed this at a park in Diamond Bar where my dad use to take us when I was Alyssa's age.

My Wolf Scout

Nathan was so excited to turn eight so that he could start going to scouts. February 1 was his birthday. We outfitted him head (hat) to toe (socks) with all of the official scouting stuff we could find. He looks really sharp! He started right away on earning his badges and pins.

Two months into scouts he earned his Bobcat.

One month later he earned his Wolf.

He has also earned his gold arrow, two silver arrows, and academic/sports belt loops and pins. He loves being part of scouts and I love that he is so motivated to do it on his own. He has been writing reports, researching information, building things, and it has been great to observe. I hope it lasts!

June Already??

I can't believe it is June! May just flew by. We had a great, but busy month with Alyssa and Alanna both having birthdays, Mother's day, finishing up with homeschooling, preschool ending, and the list goes on and on. I still need to post some photos of Alyssa's crazy sleepover birthday party, but I had to get this one up tonight. Today was the first day all of the kids were done with their home school work. Tomorrow is their last day of school and I think everyone just wanted to relax and have fun today. We had our last day of soccer, and the kids came home and sat around and read for about 2 hours! The house was so quiet, I was able to get a ton of stuff done, and it was so nice!! We cleaned up, ate dinner, and then the fun began.

Arya loves to sing the theme to Star Wars. It is so funny to hear her burst into this little tune. So when she did it tonight Jared started singing the music when Darth Vader comes into the picture. Arya started saying, "No, no no!" She hid her head in her highchair (this was just after dinner and we were cleaning up), and then Jared tickled her. It was really funny, but then all of the other kids got involved and for the next hour it was screaming, laughing, tickling, rough-housing, and crying when they got hurt. We hardly ever horseplay like that, so it was a lot of fun. It was really hard to get into the Family Home Evening spirit after that, but I think it was well worth it!