Last Day of Preschool

Teya had her last day of preschool on Friday.  It's been a lot of fun but I sure won't miss the crazy mornings of getting everyone fed, dressed, packed and out the door by 8:25am to take her to school. Since she's been out I've enjoyed the more low key feel in the mornings, making me very grateful that she is signed up for afternoon kindergarten!

Here she is on her first day of preschool.

And here she is 9 months later on her last day with her beloved teacher Mrs. Henderson. 

And outside with her other dear teacher, Mrs. Roma.

They didn't really have much of a graduation but the parents were invited to come in on the last day and watch them sing some songs and have ice cream.

While I was there I took a picture of Teya and her "prince." I think they were a little embarrassed ; )

Also got a pic of her bff Mia who will be in her same kindergarten class in the fall.

Nothing like a little ice cream to close out the year. Hard to believe I'll have an elementary school student this fall! yikes!

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Brinley also had her last day of preschool on Wednesday.

My amazingly talented, crafty and just plain awesome friend Darby held preschool once a week in her home for 4 little students.

Darby had the best lessons and Brinley came home every week with the cutest little projects, handouts, crafts and special treasures.

Not only was Darby an amazing teacher but she also went the extra mile and would drive 20 minutes from her house in Hollis to Nashua to pick up all 3 kids from their doorsteps, drive them all back to her house for school, and then drive them back to Nashua and drop them off individually again when they were done! Like I said, she is amazing!

Brinley is too young to have a prince, but she really loved Darby's son William and I think they were good little buddies.

Maybe when they're 16 we can set them up on a date ; )

I tried to get a picture of Brinley with her schoolmates and Mrs. Darby but Teya decided to streak across my picture right when I snapped it, so this is what I got. Oh well. : )

And just for the sake of reminiscing, here is Brinley on her first day of preschool. She's grown up a lot in the last 9 months.

Proudly displaying her diploma

And heres a cute 25 second clip of her Brinley singing the month song on her last day of school. My favorite part is when they get to December, very cute : )

Fitness University

Last night we took the kids to Fitness University, an 8 week summer series for kids organized by our local running club. Basically they offer free clinics once a week for the kids to come exercise, run, stretch, play and learn about healthy living and eating. At the end of the series they have a big field day where the kids get T-shirts, run races and have fun putting all their new fitness skills to the test.

 Teya was SO excited to put on her "running clothes" and go to the track like Daddy. The kids are grouped by age so as soon as we got there she made a beeline for the 5 years olds and got ready for a lap around the track.

 She ran the whole way, keeping a nice steady pace. We've taught her well ; )

 All smiles coming into the finish

 And of course she had to stop and stretch when she was done.

 Then the 3 year olds were up

 Brinley was cuter than a bug running on the track. Taber caught a 15 second clip of her running that gives you an idea of the adorableness.

 It took the 3 year olds a bit longer to get around the track since they had a few more walking breaks : ) But they made it around and were rewarded with a cool drink after their tough workout.

 Then they stretched

 And Brinley was pretty proud of herself.

 After a vigorous game of follow the leader, the 3 year olds sat down for some lessons on healthy eating. Their homework for the week is to eat a new fruit or vegetable they've never tried before.

 Back at the 5 year old camp Teya was playing duck duck Goose.

 And Cam was just soaking it all in with his toothy little grin.

The 5 year olds finished with the long jump and I must say, Teya looked pretty awesome!

The whole thing was so fun for the kids who can't wait to go back next week for more fitness fun : )

Mothering Six

On Monday my cute friend Jenn went into the hospital to have her twins, which meant we got to keep her 3 sweet girls for a few days while she recuperated. The experience was one super sleepover play date for the girls, and one whirlwind Mommy bootcamp training for me. If I'm going to be the mother of Taber's basketball team sized dream family, I got my work cut out for me! (kind of kidding, but kind of not on that one ; ) Coincidentally I would also like to give a shout out to two of my Mommy idols, Joanne and Alida who both have 6 kids and are AMAZING Mommies. I honestly thought of you two all week and really came to appreciate how much you do for your sweet families. You ladies rock!

So yeah, the last few days have been busy. From about 5:30am when the girls would wake up (little rascals!) Till 11 pm when I would crash, I was going non stop. Jenn's girls were super easy, it's just that getting 5 little girls ready in the morning, fed 3 times a day, and transitioning smoothly through all their activities keeps one very busy, especially with little Tootie boy to look after too. It was so much fun though and actually a big confidence booster to me when I saw how much I could pull off with 6 kids to look after. Maybe Taber will get his dream size family after all ; )

Brinley and Eliza are just a few weeks apart, so they were pretty psyched to get to sleep together. (Pay no attention to the bottle in her mouth, she has promised to give it up next month when she turns three. Three year olds are good for their word right?)

 The older girls pretending they're asleep

  

But really they were just beginning their nightly giggle fest : )

Meal times were always fun. I kind of cheated to make it easy and fed them total kid foods like sugar cereals, pizza, hot dogs, mac and cheese and even McDonald's one day. (Sorry Jenn! I promise they ate lots of fruits and veggies for snacks!)

 This particular night Taber had to work late and I still managed to bathe them all before dinner. I was feeling pretty awesome after that : )

 Happy Meals! (and yes, that is my new organization calendar system in the background, told you I was cleaning up my act!)

My proudest moment is when I took all six out to the backyard to swim. It was quite the production getting everyone in swimsuits and lathered up in sunscreen. At least we only had to walk out to the backyard. It was also quite the production getting them dried off, bathed and dressed afterwards. Still, totally worth it to see them having so much fun. 

 Pool time!

Bed time routine also took intense focus and diligence on mine and Taber's part to get everyone dressed, brush all their little teeth, get them to go potty and read them their stories. Glad I had back up for that.

After 4 fun days their parents came to pick them up and we got to meet these little angels, Ari and Ephraim.

Now my week of mothering 6 has ended and Jenn's life of mothering 5 begins! I think that earns her a spot on my Mommy idol list too : )

I hope we're ready!

"I had a major panic attack yesterday when I looked at the forecast and saw that today and tomorrow were going to be in the high 90's!!  

Flashbacks of me and the kids with flushed cheeks and sweaty faces, melting in our house with no AC starting playing in my head. I started hyperventilating at the thought of about being stuck in the torture chamber sauna again.

Last year we took some steps to alleviate some of the pain, mainly buying a few window AC units. They help a little, but even with those our house would still push into the high 80's on a hot day. 

When it's that hot, no one can sleep, the kids are lethargic, and Mommy is cranky! I don't want to cook, clean, or do anything productive, just eat popsicles and sit in a cold bath in my swimsuit all day. It ain't pretty.

So that's it. I'm scared. I see a forecast like that and it terrifies me. Enough so that even after a long exhausting day of chasing around 6 kids, (My cute friend just had twins so we have her 3 girls for a few days,) I still went on a late night run to Target after they were all in bed to get another window AC unit for Cam's room.  Then I made Taber stay up late with me to get it all set up and installed. (Don't worry, we didn't drop it out of the window this time ; )

I also was out in the backyard at 6am this morning, dumping out our pool, cleaning it and getting it ready to refill after an unfortunate potty accident that left me unable to stomach the thought of the girls swimming in that water again. Ah life with kids : )

Here are some cute pool pics I took of them before the "accident." Cute aren't they?

So that's it, I've got 3 window units going upstairs, windows are all closed to keep out the humidity, blinds are closed, pool is filling up, freezer is stocked with popsicles and swimsuits are washed and ready to go. I think I've done all I can.  Hopefully it's enough to beat the heat!

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p.s. Thank you so much for all the great organization tips!! I've been working on cleaning up my act and things are looking so much better. I'll have to post an update once I'm completely "rehabilitated." : )

Intervention!!!

I need help. 

Serious help.

I seem to have a bit of an organization problem, as in, I am freakishly unorganized.

This is embarrassing, but for interventions sake I'm going to publicly reveal my weakness in hope that somebody out there can give me some ideas to help me get my life in order!

So here it goes:

I get appointment cards from the doctor or dentist and lose them.

 Sometimes I just forget about the appointments altogether until the office calls me the day before to remind me.  

Then I have to scramble to rearrange my whole schedule to fit in an appointment I forgot about.

This goes for car appointments, hair appointments, visiting teaching appointments, kindergarten registration appointments, you name it, I forget it.

Another huge problem: I have no laid out system for the mail.

 I just grab it at random times and either leave it in the car or drop it on the table of chaos (pictured below) where it gets lost, buried, turned into scrap paper or forgotten. 

This has resulted in many failing moments that I'm not proud of, such as the time when Taber's mom sent him a birthday card with birthday money, making a special effort to get it here on time and I lost it in the pile of chaos. I found it a month later but I felt pretty bad when his mom was trying to figure out how it got lost in the mail. Not lost in the mail, lost in the hands of captain chaos, (a.k.a. me!)

Or the time when I got a notice saying we needed to send in a check to renew our car registration by a certain date or our registration would expire. Yeah, um, found that one a month late too. fail.

I have honest intentions but without a good system of organization in place everything just gets jumbled together and I can't seem to stay on top of it. 

The big wake up moment happened on Wednesday. 

I was rushing Teya to preschool and when I got there I noticed that all the other kids were unloading bikes and helmets at the drop off.  When I pulled up Teya's teacher asked if I had gotten the paper work about the Roll-a-thon and if Teya was going to participate. 

I had no idea what she was talking about. I'm sure Teya did bring home the paperwork and my guess is it was buried somewhere on the table of doom.

Teya asked where her bike was. 

I told her mommy forgot it and maybe we should just skip preschool that day.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

The mommy guilt was crushing.

My cheeks were burning red with embarrassment and disappointment in myself.

I was that mom, the mom that forgot. The mom that's not organized, and it didn't feel good.

I had to be at a Dr. appointment for Cam in 30 minutes but I hoped it was enough time to remedy the situation. I parked the car, ran inside the school and filled out all the permission slips. Then I ran home, grabbed Teya's bike and helmet, labeled them, and rushed them back to the school. Then I ran to the Dr. appointment, got Cam's vaccinations, and sped back to the school to watch Teya and her classmates roll on in the roll-a thon.

I'm glad I was able to salvage the situation but it could've been avoided.

I need to get organized.

Somebody, anybody, please help me! 

What do you to to stay on top of appointments, paperwork, bills, callings, and kid's schedules? Now that I have 4 other people's lives to coordinate I need to be on my A game. If you have ideas, even if you don't think they're great, I'm sure they're better than my junk table system so please send them my way. Please oh please! Thanks!

Baby at the Beach

When Taber suggested a beach trip for Memorial Day I had my reservations. Any mom knows that a fun beach day for the kids means an astronomical amount of prep work and labor for the grown ups. Not to mention I was pretty nervous about taking a 4 month old baby to the beach. How would he nap? How would I nurse him? How would I keep him cool? How would we be able to relax and enjoy the beach? I wan't sure how it was all going to work out but I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a try.

 What do you pack for baby at the beach? Well we brought a tent to keep him shaded, a baby swing because I didn't want him sitting in the sand, a spray bottle to keep him cool, diapers, wipes, change of clothes and my nursing cover. Add that to the sand toys, beach towels, beach chairs, beach blankets, sunscreen, sunglasses, change of clothes, snacks, lunch, and drinks for everyone else and it felt like we had enough stuff to take a 10 day road trip across the country!

It was a lot to lug out there but it ended up being worth all the work. Cam was as cute as a button and loved the new sights and smells of the ocean.  

When he got tired we sprayed him down with the squirt bottle and let him take a nap in his swing. He looked pretty happy and relaxed in his little beach hut.

He loved being held by mommy

And Daddy

But not so much by big sister ; )

Mostly he just wanted to watch the waves and suck his thumb.

I'm glad we decided to go because the girls had so much fun. We were there for over 4 hours and they never got bored. 

The water was super cold (51 degrees!) But my girls are pretty fearless and had no problem jumping right in. 

Teya was the leader, running in and out of the waves, and Brinley was right there following her every move.

If my feet were numb from stepping in the water I can only imagine she had a frozen fanny after this stunt. 

I Love this picture so much. It captures Teya and her endless energy so well.

Jumping for joy

Happy Brinsie splashing like big sister.

In Summary: lots of work: lots of fun. Going anywhere takes more effort now that we're a family of 5 but it's always worth it to see the kids get so excited and have such a good time : )

Each Day is a Gift

My friend posted this on her blog this morning. I read it and sobbed and sobbed. I honestly haven't cried that hard in a long time. I didn't know Wendy or her husband but his words and emotions are so real and such an incredible reminder to be grateful for every minute we have on this earth with our loved ones. Here is the link:

Our Sweet Wendy

Reading this has changed my outlook today. I will be grateful for every minute on this earth, even the hard ones, and try to live each day to the fullest with no regrets. Life is too short to worry about things that don't matter. It's too short to hold grudges or be angry. It's too short to waste it wishing for things we don't have instead of enjoying the things we do. And it's too short to be stingy with praise, compliments, kisses and hugs. I know I'll be giving out a lot more of those after reading this.