Anna Wants to Go to China in the Morning

That was her question of the morning: When do you want to go to China?

She'd like to leave in the morning.

Me, too. Like, tomorrow morning, but that's not going to happen.

New Look!

I had Verna AKA The Blog Fairy redesign my blog and give me a cool signature. I love it! Thanks, Blog Fairy!

What can I say? 19 Months Down as of Yesterday

A Couple More Pictures

Camping Pictures From This Last Weekend

School's Out.

The girls are out of school now. So I guess I officially have a 4th grader and 2nd grader now. Wow, seems like yesterday I was in China meeting each of them for the first time. Jessica is already missing her teachers, school and friends. Anna goes to a birthday party today, so although she really misses school, it's not quite the same. Also, Jessica will be going to a different school in the fall. They split up the elementary schools in our district into a Kindergarten-3rd grade, and 4th-6th grade schools.

Tuesday the school had a carnival and picnic day. I volunteered in the morning as that's when my girls were doing the carnival. They set up stations that all the kids go through from face painting to a water balloon toss to a space jump. I helped man the space bounce which is the same thing I did last year. The first 45 minutes was wild as they scheduled a kindergarten and 1st grade class at the same time. So we had to get through about 40-45 kids in only 15 minutes. It calmed down tremendously once we got to just one class at a time. It was still only about 2-2.5 minutes for each group. The kids always love this last day. I always wonder why they have to go to school when they don't really do anything those last days. Although Jessica's teacher was teasing the kids that they had to go back after lunch and take round 2 of a bunch of tests.

I intended to eat lunch with both my girls, but after telling Jess I'd meet her in the park, I found out Anna's class was going back to their room to eat. So I went through the lunch line with Anna, and met Jessica's class in the neighboring park. They were sitting on a set of bleachers, so I went to sit down and fell backward onto the ground. I was so embarrassed! Luckily no one laughed. Just call me Grace! Anyway, my neck hurts a little now, but it could be from something else, too.



So now the girls go to my home daycare provider for most of the rest of the summer. They've got a bunch of workbooks on reading and math, a reading log, and lots of books to hopefully read this summer.

Tonight I need to shop, pack, and start to get ready for our camping trip. And I tried to get some of the house cleaned. My girls were in bad moods last night and wouldn't help me at all. I made them pinky swear they'd help me tonight or they'd have consequences.

7 Years of Bad Luck? I Hope Not!

I'm not quite sure what Anna was checking out in the bathroom mirror on Saturday, but all of a sudden I hear this big crash. I run to see what fell over and Anna meets me at the bathroom door all upset. "I'm sorry Mom but I broke the mirror". After making sure she wasn't bleeding anywhere, I comforted her as she was really upset. I knew it was an accident.

So now I need to figure out how to replace the mirror on the medicine cabinet. It was really big and thick. Most of it fell into the bathtub, but I'm still picking up little pieces of glass. I'm just really glad no one has stepped in anything. Not me, my girls, my dogs or my cat. I wonder if I can just take it out from the hinges and replace the door part. It fell off in an odd location - not at the hinges, but a few inches in. But it's driving me crazy not having a mirror there. I have an old house and the mirror was kind of fancy, not just rectangular. It's always something isn't it? I'm just hoping this doesn't mean 7 years of bad luck for any of us.

Week in Review

I've heard one mom say she just dreads May and June every year. I understand why. We've had dance recitals and other dance commitments. Swimming has ended. Last week I was at the girls' school 4 out of 5 days. I helped chaperone the the first grader's trip to the zoo on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Jessica's class had an end of year picnic. It was really nice since they'll all be moving on to a different school next year - a grades 4-6 school. The parents had to play "Are You Smarter Than a 3rd Grader". Nope, we're not. I got 6 of the 30 questions wrong. Then we played kick-ball, parents against the kids. I made Jessica proud by making it to base and playing semi-okay at 3rd base. Then a pizza party in the park next door to the school. It was a really nice party. Thursday I picked the girls up from their last running club. Was it that same day or the day before that we went to a buffet for supper and halfway through Anna announces that she has to be at the school play yard for Zinedine's Paper Flying Club which she signed up for. Luckily we were not far from the school. It was just a kid in her class who wanted to make and fly paper airplanes. They had fun, but we're not going to make a habit of not telling me stuff ahead of time. Thursday night Anna's class was invited to a "social" in the warehouse of one of her classmate's mom's cheesecake business. The kids jumped rope, hula-hooped, ate a little, watched a dvd of their joke day which someone copied for everyone in the class. Friday I had to pick the girls up because my daycare provider's son was graduating college. Tomorrow is the last day of school and I'm volunteering for their school carnival, then having a picnic lunch with my girls and taking the rest of the day off. Whew, it'll be good to be done with school and school activities for awhile.

So I forgot to go to my daycare provider's son's open house on Saturday. I knew I was forgetting something, but I only got a verbal invitation and didn't see them Thursday or Friday. Just remembered that this morning.

Yesterday Anna had an end of year party at a friend's house. She has a birthday party to go to Thursday as well. Guess we need to get a gift.

Saturday and Sunday late afternoons, we decided to go to our local aquatic park. It opened Friday and we've got season passes. It was also very humid over the weekend. I was beginning to think it would rain all summer and we wouldn't get a chance to use them.

Next weekend we go on our first camping trip of the summer. I'm not all that excited about it. I keep seeing the cost of gas and thinking about the wear and tear on my van. And of course this'll be the first time leaving my new puppy home for the weekend with my friend dropping by once or twice a day. But the girls are excited about camping. Let's hope it doesn't storm.

Catching Up on Some Photos

We had a 10 minute hail storm yesterday late afternoon.

Sophie and Jinny. Jinny's not so pleased Sophie wants to share her bed!

Waiting for the recital to start:

Goldfish Dancers:

Jessica's Final Pose:

Jessica's Robotic Snail that crawled following the black line:

Anna's Volcano:

Erupting Volcano: