Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

I love being a mom to these two wonderful little girls.  I can't imagine my life without them!  It's such an awesome responsibility, and I couldn't do any of it without a lot of help.  I want nothing more than to teach these girls to love God and follow Him.  I try to fill our home with happiness and fun, so they will have lots of great memories.  I am so thankful for these amazing blessings.

I always love a good balloon, and this one is huge and fantastic!

I love this hand print bouquet that Lily made.  Absolutely precious.

Mrs. Worrell sent home this picture of Lily with the floral centerpiece she made and gave me.  Love it!

A cute teapot with tea inside that Lily made along with the sweet centerpiece.  They made lots of sweet things at school!

The girls gave me a couple of store bought cards and they each made me a card too.  They had recorded themselves saying "I love you Mommy.  Happy Mother's Day" into one of the cards.  I can't get enough of it!

The front of Lily's card.

The inside of Lily's card.  She said she and Mia are the trees, and that's me in the middle.

The front of Mia's card.

Mia traced her name and colored some birds, flowers and the sun.

We were so glad that Josh and Amy came over on Saturday afternoon to celebrate Mother's Day with Liz and us.  We had a fun evening together just catching up; the girls LOVE having them around!  On Sunday morning, we all went to church together, and then we met my mom and dad at The Georgian Club for brunch.  We used to go there each year for Mother's Day when I was a kid; this brought back lots of good memories.  It was delicious, and we all had a wonderful time together.  On Sunday afternoon, I took a nap too; what could be better?  This was a great Mother's Day!

Grandparent's Day at ACCA

ACCA hosted Grandparent's, Friends and Family Day a couple of weeks ago.  Lily was so thrilled that Granna, Papa, Bama and I were all able to come.  We started out in the auditorium where each class made a presentation.  PreK, Kindergarten and 1st Grade sang a couple of songs together which was really cute.  A little bit later, just Lily's class came back up and did a presentation.  Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoX0PHJLHAE&feature=youtu.be) is a link showing the video I took.  Lily is second from the left.  How cute are these kiddos?

After all the presentations, everyone dispersed into the kids' classrooms.  I snapped this picture of Lily with her three grandparents in attendance.

 The class did a little art project for fun and show how well they follow directions.

 Lily and Me

 Showing off a hand print butterfly that she had recently made.

 Lily with her awesome teacher, Mrs. Worrell

This was such a wonderful morning!  It's always fun to see Lily in her element at school.

Zoo Field Trip

Ryan and I helped chaperon Lily's class trip to Zoo Atlanta.  It was so much fun!  These kids are so precious, and it's fun to watch them interact with one another.  Several other parents were there too, and it was fun to talk with them.  Here are a few pictures from that morning.

Lily's class waiting to go in.  We were all excited to have the adorable Jack Sandel, Jill's little brother, join the class.  He's front and center.  Everyone calls him Jack Jack.  Seriously, all four of the Sandel kids are some of the cutest and sweetest kids around!

 Checking out the flamingos.

 Lily and Jack Jack admiring the elephant.  The elephant was a big hit with all the kids because he was eating.

 Mrs. Worrell's chickadees in the nest.

 The kids were excited to go on the carousel before leaving.  Lily and Ryan wrote together and loved it.

I'm so glad we were able to go on this field trip with the class!

Poetry Reading

Lily amazed me the other day.  Her school had a poetry reading competition.  Each class had a competition.  The winner from each class then participated in a several grade competition (PreK through 2nd, 3rd through 8th) during an assembly.  Ben won in Lily's class, and he represented PreK well in the school wide assembly.  Lily was the runner-up for her class!  Even though she didn't compete later on, she did get to recite her poem at the same assembly in front of all the kids, teachers and a lot of parents.  I was blown away that she so confidently walked up on stage by herself and recited four stanzas of Mary Had A Little Lamb while holding Mia's stuffed lamb as her prop.  It was adorable.  I filmed it on my phone but unfortunately, I was too far back for the sound to really pick up, so I'm not posting it here.  She did awesome.  I was amazed that she got up and did this!  She has come so far, and I am so proud of this precious girl!

Another Language

This morning on the way to school, Lily was telling me about her sleepover several months ago with my niece Molly at my parents' house.  She said how they had started watching a movie (The Sound of Music), but it was hard to understand, so they took that movie out and watched The Nutcracker instead.  She said "Yeah, it was in another language.  Probably Franch or Chicago."  There were two parts of this statement that made me laugh out loud.
1. That Lily says "Franch."  As in, "France" with the "ch" sound at the end.
2. That apparently "Chicago" is another language.  I guess we will have to study up before we go visit David and Jan!

Busy Times

These last few weeks have been busy, busy around here.  Lily's school is winding down so there's lots of activities up there, work has slowed down so we're trying to catch up at home, and with more sunlight, the days just feel longer.  It's been wonderful though.  These are just a few miscellaneous pictures we have snapped recently.

Lily with her best friend from ACCA, Jill Sandel.  "Jilly" is such a sweetheart.  We had her over for a playdate after school one day.  These two had a blast playing with one another (and Mia).  We are going to miss Jilly so much next year as she goes to a different school.

 Mia finds a way to get a boo-boo (real and imaginary) multiple times every single day.  Luckily a band-aide usually makes it better.  She was convinced a dot on her nose desperately needed one!

 Mia loves to go letter fishing!

 Getting ready for summer!

 Liz and the girls went to Steak and Shake with Granna and Meme for lunch one day.  So glad they had the opportunity to do this.

 I took this picture simply because I love the shirt.  It makes me laugh every time I see it because it makes me think of my all-time favorite movie, "Back to the Beach."

 Camping in our living room is my favorite kind of camping!

So Much Love

As I was leaving the house to attend a PTF meeting at the school last Tuesday, Lily came up and gave me a big hug.  I told her again that I loved her and would see her in the morning.  She replied, "I know but when you love someone as much as I love you, you don't want them to go."  Melt my heart!

A Morning in the Gardens

Finally!  Now that tax season is over, life can return to normal, and we can all have some fun again!  Last Saturday, while Ryan was doing a service project with our church, Liz, the girls and I went down to the Botanical Gardens.  We bought an annual membership when we went in November to have our family pictures taken.  We visited in December to see the lights, but we haven't been back until Saturday.  I really wanted to make it down sooner to see all the tulips in bloom, but unfortunately, that didn't work out.  However, it was a beautiful day, so the four of us headed down and enjoyed a wonderful morning together.

At the entrance.  This was the first fountain I momentarily thought they might fall in; there were a couple of them during the morning.  Thankfully, they stayed dry the whole time.

 I made them pose for this picture; you can see how thrilled they were about that.

 This frog made us all smile.

 Walking through the archway to the huge greenhouse.

 The girls enjoyed seeing all the little (poisonous) frogs just inside the greenhouse entrance.  They were amazingly vibrant colors.  Luckily, they were inside glass aquariums.

Walking along one of the paths in the greenhouse, and the girls enjoyed stopping to see the little fish under the bridge.

 I thought these leaves were pretty cool.

 Lily carefully looking inside the rock to determine if there was a snake inside (there wasn't).

 Another cool flower.

 The girls making their funny faces for the camera.

 After the greenhouse and a little walk through in the edible garden, we headed over the big bridge to the kids area.  Here the girls dug for dinosaur bones in the sand pit.

 Silly cuties.

 I love this little waterfall area.  On the other side of this path is a little pond with real (non-poisonous) frogs that were neat to see.

 The girls had a blast in the tree house.  For the longest time, it was just the two of them, so they had free range to run all around, climb, slide and explore.  It was great.  They played for a little while after some other kids came too, but then it was time to start heading back.

While making our way back, we stopped to see the bees making honey and play hopscotch on the rocks.  Just after crossing the bridge back to the gardens, a small snake slithered across the pavement right in front of us; that caused a little bit of excitement!

This was such a great morning.  I'm so glad to have my life back!

Easter Sunday

We love Easter.  First and foremost, it is the most important day in our Christian faith.  If Jesus had not risen from the dead on third day, all of Christianity would be a lie.  It's a wonderful day to celebrate.  As with any celebration, that means there are lots of fun traditions.

The first tradition is giving the kids Easter baskets on Easter morning.  I love getting to decorate with the same bunny decorations my mom used.  The girls baskets were very similar.  Each received a princess bubble wand (Cinderella for Mia; Belle for Lily), plastic eggs with Tinkerbell and princess stickers, Jellybeans, M&Ms, new sparkly pencils, new sunglasses (Hello Kitty for Lily, Rapunzel for Mia), a 3D movie (Tangled for Lily and Beauty and the Beast for Mia) and two new books (Splat the Cat's Easter and From Head to Toe for Mia; Fancy Nancy's Easter and Olivia Forms a Band for Lily).

 They had a lot of fun looking through their baskets.

 Trying out their new glasses.

 They have been needing these.

 After breakfast, we got ready for church.  We went to Chattahoochee for service this year which we all enjoyed.  The girls love wearing matching dresses.

 A sweet family picture.

 The girls love their Bama!

 After church, we all go home, change clothes and then head over to Judy and Robert's house for a family get-together.  It's filled with lots of great family time, fun activities and delicious food.

The girls had fun hula-hooping.

 Lily didn't want to stop!

 Mia and Zac had fun in the sand pit.

 The annual picture of all the kids.  This has most of the great-grandkids now, but it used to be my generation (the grandkids).  It's fun to see a growing family.

 The kids leave the steps to start egg hunting.

Lily scored big right by the steps; there were lots of eggs in the bushes.

 Having a blast!

 Mia took off running into the yard.

 Carefully watching her step to find eggs.

 Ready to go through their baskets of eggs!

After the egg hunt, we played for a little bit longer, and then it was time to leave.  We didn't have time to participate in the egg toss this year, maybe next year.  What a fun afternoon!