Ava's First Day of Kindergarten

I cannot believe that this day has come. Ava started kindergarten on July 21st 2014. I have dreaded this day since the day she was born. I don't know why it was so hard for me, but it was.
It is an all day kindergarten. They offer 1/2 kindergarten, but it is not recommended.

Anyway, the Friday before school started, we had a meet the teacher day. We headed over to the school and met her teacher, Mrs. Loop and the Assistant teacher, Mrs. King. They had them do a little art project and we got to check out the classroom. We also got to walk around the school to check things out.

I could tell Ava was excited for school, but I also knew she was a little bit nervous. I mean, she is my daughter. I was really anxious about it. I knew she would be fine, but it is just such a big adjustment from Pre-K.

The night before, she picked out her entire outfit.

She picked out all the accessories, socks, headband, etc... She was ready to rock 'n' roll!

School starts at 8:30, but the doors open at 8:20. Since  this is a charter school, there are no buses. Every parent has to bring their child. So we got there early as we knew parking would be a nightmare and it was. The first day, most parents bring their child to their class. We walked her in, got her set and off she went. Boo... cue the tears. I only teared up once while we were just hanging out as long as we could.





Sitting on her name on the mat!

She gets picked up at 2:50. Again, we headed out early because a lot of parents were doing the same. She was such a chatterbox when we went to get her. She had a blast. Phew, what a relief. We celebrated by going to McDonalds. She wanted to go because they have a play area and a toy. This is actually her 2nd time ever eating at McDonald's and Noah's first. Haha. We just don't eat out often. She loved it. She said, "I love this place. You can play, get a toy, get a go-gurt and everything." She made a friend in the play area, her name was also Ava.

By the time we got home and settle, she came into our room and said that her throat hurt. cue the sick days. She had been battling allergies the week before, but I thought we had caught them in time even though her sinuses still looked a bit swollen. She woke up the next morning with a sore throat and sorta wanted to stay home, but I just couldn't let that happen. So we sent her to school anyway. She ended up doing fine and went a third day. When she came home, she was looking a bit worse and her sinuses still looked swollen and she was running a slight fever. I told Mike to take her to Urgent Care just to get it checked out and low and behold, she had an ear infection. Suck! She had to stay home the next day because she was running a temp. She also had to get antibiotics. Getting Ava to take antibiotics is the most painful experience ever. She makes herself sick and she didn't disappoint. She puked up 2 doses and we gave up and put her to bed.  The next day, she was finally able to get down her 1 tsp after an hour and 45 mins, but was already feeling better.

She went to school the next day and finished off her first week of "real" school!

Our Vacation in LA

Fourth of July weekend we decided to take our yearly trip to LA to visit with Mike's family. They all live out there. Mike's sister and her husband, Troy and his daughter were going out that weekend too.

We decided that we would get up early and leave so that maybe the kids would sleep a little bit when they first got in the car. FAIL. We woke them up at 4am and I forgot to factor in that they are a little bit older now and there is an excitement factor that they are well aware of. There was no more sleeping for those little one:)

Here is our 4 am morning selfie!

Mama had to have her coffee! Although it made us stop about every hour:( Sorry mike!


Overall, it was one of the best trips we have taken with the kids. There were absolutely no meltdowns. Each kid slept about 45 mins total at some point during the trip. My mom gave us a big bag of new books to read, so that occupied them for a while. I also bought new coloring books and markers for them. Ava loved that and they each got a new movie. And by movie, I mean a Mickey Mouse DVD with mini Mickey Mouse shows on it. They are still too scared to watch movies, at least Ava is.

Grandma Nini had some toys for the kids to play with and they made a farm!



I don't have any pictures, but she also has 2 black cats, Panther and Fluffy and the kids just wanted to find them the entire trip. They don't take too kindly to strangers, so whenever one would surface, they were all over it. They would frequently check in her bedroom to see if they could find them.

The first night we went out to eat with Mike's sister, Nancy and her husband, David. We went to El Presidente and Ava sat next to Nancy and talked her ear off.  I don't think she got a word in edgewise.LOL!



Noah eating a donut... One of the things that I look forward to most is the Donuts there. I had at least one every day I was there and they were delish!


For the fourth, we went to Mike's dad's house and that side of the family all came over for some yummy BBQ! I think Noah ate watermelon, strawberries and chips, chips and more chips! LOL! The kids eat horribly when we travel. If it isn't the exact food they are used to they won't eat it. Like if it is orange cheese and not yellow cheese, they won't eat it. Plus they are just too busy to care to eat. I usually just let it go on vacation because kids will eat when they are hungry.



We left early enough to head over to my mother in laws house. Since we were in LA it doesn't get dark for a while. So i think around 8:30ish, we headed to the end of her street and watched fire works for a little bit.

The next day, we headed to the beach. Ava loved it, but was scared to go in the water or even have the water come up to her feet and Noah was straight scared of the sound of the waves. Luckily we were only there for a couple of hours before we bolted!





After the beach, we met up with Mike's dad and Ellen for lunch at Versaille, a cuban food restaurant. The kids were pretty tired at this point. We headed home after that and we all napped.

Sleeping on vacation is always fun too. Ava and I slept in a bed and Mike and Noah slept on a blow up mattress right next to us. Because it is lighter later there, the kids were up pretty late every night, but up around 5:30 each morning. So by Saturday, everyone was tired. Plus, Noah would wake up 2-3 times a night and just cry. I know he was confused, but it would take some time to calm him down.

Saturday afternoon, Mike's mom's family came over to visit. We all had a good time and enjoyed some sweets!

Sunday morning we were off! We left at 5 am so that we could beat the heat when we got into AZ. The way home, the kids were a bit more antsy, but that was expected. They were pretty tired from all the events over the past couple of days and just ready to relax, as was I.

Great trip! Looking forward to next year when we can maybe do a little bit more!

June 2015....a little late!

Ok, so June has come and gone and I am not sure if anyone still reads this, but I am going to get caught up today, if I can. Mike took the kids out on an "adventure", so I have the house to myself!!1


So the kids pulled out our 2 games of memory this month and wanted to play. We have tried playing in the past, but they just didn't understand the game. We pulled it out and I thought to myself, well this is going to be easy. I might just give them a couple so that they win. Um,.... yeah... they kicked my ass! Ava and Noah are awesome at it. It took me over a month of playing and actually trying to win. I think we play at least once a day if not a million times:)


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My mom came down for a couple of days each week this month. My sister brought over Sam so my mom could babysit him as they were in transition of a new babysitter. It was definitely eye opening to have a little one in the house again. We called him Sam destruct-o because he made a mess everywhere he went. My house is no longer baby proofed so we had to keep an eye on him. He loves to open and close doors too, so he would go into Noah's room and open and close his door. The kids really enjoyed playing with him. I love that at such a young age, they all have fun together.


One day my mom and the kids made oatmeal raisin/chocolate chip cookies...

I played with Sammy!

Meesha is Noah's favorite. I will find Noah sitting next to Meesha and he will pet her and just hang out together.  This is how he can have his dog fix..

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Me and Noah playing in the sand box!

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Grandma Nini came for a visit. She and the kids picked a bunch of stuff from the garden and we all just hung out for the weekend.  This was probably the last big lot of veggies we got from the garden because it started to heat up after that.




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The kids got pretty sick at the beginning of the month. After a day of over 103 fevers, we took them to a pediatic urgent care and they were diagnosed with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. It is pretty nasty stuff. They had blisters on their throats and were miserable. They didn't get any rashes until a week later. Apparently, it is very uncommon for adults to get it because we were exposed to it a million times as kids, but low and behold, Mike got it. I got lucky and did not. It was a rough 3-4 days with temps high and not a lot of sleep.



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We enjoyed a low key Father's Day. We BBQ'd and just hung out. We went for a walk in the morning because the weather was still nice out to do so.


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Ava started swim lesson in May and finished up in June. She really loved them. I am not sure she really learned how to swim after all was said and done, but she is able to do a little on her own. I really just wanted her to be comfortable in the water and she can roll on her back if she is ever in trouble. Unless we decided to keep her in lessons, we will probably go back again next year and hopefully she will advance much faster this next time.

That was our June. Nothing too exciting. It went really fast.

May 2014

Well, May came and went!! It was such a big month for us, so let's get started...

Ava had her first field trip to the AZ Museum of Natural History. (5/9/2014). The museum is huge and there were a lot of other schools there so it was busy. Noah did not like that. They let us go in and we were on our own to do whatever it is that we wanted. We walked around, but like I said, Noah was scared with all the kids there. I had to carry him part of the way. The final straw was when we were in one room and a metal dinosaur started to roar and it freaked him out. We left shortly after that.


Her class.


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Mother's day!

The best part of Mother's day is the homemade gift that I get from Ava from school. This year they made necklaces with a washer. It was awesome!

We didn't do anything special. I just wanted to hang out and not have to cook or clean or wipe dirty butts and that is exactly what I got. Mike made steaks for dinner too!

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Ava graduated Preschool this year. (5/21/2014). I can't believe that my little girl is growing up. Her school had a ceremony and gave them diplomas. We went to Chick fila for dinner per her request. I think she is excited for next year, but not sure she really realizes what it means. We did go to her school this past Friday (5/30) for some testing, so she got to see her school.

Top right: Mrs. Wilcox (her main teacher)
Middle right: Mrs. Merritt (the asst. teacher)

I love doing these pictures. It is her on the first day of Preschool and the last day of Preschool. I can't believe how much she has grown and looks more like a kid and not a toddler:(




Getting her diploma from Mrs. Wilcox

Ava and daddy with her flowers. She LOVES getting and giving flowers!

Ava going down the slide at the play area at Chick fil-a. That is all she wanted to do was play in the playarea.

Ice Cream sundae of course. Although, she only ate about 5 bites and didn't really like it. Her and Noah preferred Mike's strawberry milkshake!
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Garden update:
Our garden is doing really well this year. We have had lot of tomatoes, squash, green beans, peppers, corn, onions and basil so far.



One day's worth of cherry tomatoes.

Noah eating corn without it even being cooked. It is so sweet and yummy!

They had to share because we only got one that day.

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Mike and I celebrated our 12 year anniversary. My mom babysat for us so that we could get out. We really didn't have a plan we just wanted to be without the kids.


We started out at Starbucks, of course.


Then we headed out to the outlet mall near our house. We had never been and wanted to check it out. IT was hot, but they had fans blowing mist to help out. After that we decided to go to the casino that was right there and do a bit of gambling. We had no idea what we wanted to do so we found a quarter machine and sat down. I put in $10 and after 4 mins, I won $60! No sense in losing it, so we cashed out and headed to Whole Foods for pre dinner drinks.

Mike got a beer and I got a taster (I was DD for the day)!
Then we went to DC Steakhouse for dinner and headed home. It was a great day and nice to get away for a couple of hours.
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Ava started swim lessons (5/27/14) at Aspire. I really like it. It is a 2 week program, that unfortunately due to the holiday she only had 3 classes the first week due to the holiday and one was cancelled because of cloudy water. I think we might do another 2 weeks after this. She gets one on one with the teacher. She told me before we left that she didn't want to put her head under water and I told her that she didn't have to if she didn't want to, but within the first 5 minutes the teacher had her putting her head under water. Ava is a good kid that way. She will do what she is told from someone other than Mike or I. Haha! She did great!


Swimming with the teacher on the far right!
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Mike always takes the week of Memorial Day off. We used to go on vacation before we had kids since our anniversary and my birthday always fall within that weekend. Now we have "staycations". This is the first time in over a year that Mike has taken vacation and Ava hasn't been sick. (I think I finally figured out why she has been sick so often: Allergies). Anyway. We had a great week with a good mix of home stuff, kid activities and just overall fun.
The day that Ava's swim lesson was cancelled, we went to the Aquarium. Every time that we go, I am reminded why we don't go that often. It is so small. All you see are fish, turtles, a shark or two and stingrays. We made it through in 20 mins and paid about $60 for all 4 of us. Rip off. But worth it for the kids. They enjoyed it.



This is the coolest part of the aquarium. It is glass all the way around. Noah was freaked out and wouldn't walk on it.

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Randoms:
My mom brought the kids a whole lotta stickers. What do you think they did with some of them:

Noah's bedroom door

Ava's bedroom door
I would walk by Noah's door and pull some off here and there and last night they let me take them all off!

I repainted our Living Room/Play room. I really want to take that room back. I have moved a good portion of stuff into the kids room and they have been playing in their rooms a lot more too. But of course, when I pulled all the stuff out to paint, Ava was all over me to help. So I let them help for a bit.



ONe day, i was busy doing some things around the house and the kids were way too quite for my own good. So I went to see what they were doing and they found a box of bandaids and put them ALL on their stuffed animal. LOL! At least they weren't fighting and being quiet!


Now just some cute pictures from a walk to Starbucks one day.






That was one busy month. I hope you enjoyed!!