Wrapping Up the School Year

Part One

The end of school was tough this year.  We managed the increased activity fairly well, as I wrapped up my obligations as a MOPS leader and young mom's bible study leader.  We got through the end of Kindermusik, the ballet recital, the many end of the year parties, graduations, gifts to send for various weddings, high school graduations, etc. just fine.  But this year was Christa's last year in her precious, little, safe, wonderful, church pre-school setting.  This was the last year I had to be late dropping the kids off without a black mark on our record, to pick Christa up right after lunch every day, to have Fridays to do whatever we want, to not have to be anywhere until 9am, and to be able to take a family vacation during school hours without guilt or make-up work.  Next year, we'll have to be up and out of the house by 7:45am.  (I sure hope the new baby is a good sleeper and a fast eater)!  Christa will be in school all day long, 5 days a week.  My life will revolve around dropping kids off at different places, at different times, and then picking them up in the middle of nap time for the little ones.  There are a lot of things that I am not looking forward to about the changes that will come in just over a month.  But I know it's time for Christa to start "real" school, and I've exhausted every delay tactic I can think of!  She is excited and ready, and if I have to drag us all out of the house before sunrise to send my sweet baby girl away for the day, I can't think of a better place than the safe and relatively small school we have chosen for her where we know our values will be reinforced for her.  Plus, it's located right next to a Bojangle's, where I can get a large coke in a styrofoam cup every morning, if that's what I need to cope :)
Still, I've known all year long that it will be a big change and adjustment.  The thing I've struggled the most with is the changes that are going to come with our friends from our beloved pre-school.  Christa's closest little friends are all scattering to different elementary schools and even different grades.  Their moms have become some of my closest friends, and I know that even though we might stay in touch and have the kids play together once in a while, it probably won't be the same.  I have found that it is sooooo much harder to have the same friends year after year in my adult life.  I remember hanging out with the same "best friends" for years as I was going through school.  As an adult, things are always changing.  We're always naturally spending more time with completely different groups of people, and while it's fun to be constantly getting to know new friends, I sort of miss the days of having one or two "best friends" for 5 or 10 years at a time!
So, with all of these thoughts and emotions increasing as each week of the Spring semester went by, the kids and I soaked up every opportunity to thoroughly enjoy each end-of-the-year play date and activity that we could squeeze in!  We made some great memories, and couldn't have finished out the year any better.  Enjoy the pictures!

 Elizabeth's last Kindermusik for the Spring.  She loved every second of it.... so much that I signed all 3 kids up for a summer session that we can do together!

 Elizabeth loves her Kindermusik teacher, Mrs. Wendy!  Her favorite part of the class is to "rock with Mrs. Wendy" during quiet music time.  She talks about it at home a lot, and says "Mrs. Wendy is bootiful (beautiful)."

 Christa's class took a field trip to our local, minor-league baseball game, and even scored some box seats for everyone!  Here she is with 2 of her closest friends, Adeline and Taylor.

 The sweet girls all doing the "Tomahawk Chop."

 I so wish I could listen to them talk without them knowing I was there.  They just chatter away about.... who knows what??

 During one of the last days of the school year, our friends all got together and walked to the candy store after school.  The girls loved posing in front of their school sign.

 Elizabeth didn't want to be left out, so she posed, too :)

Enjoying some Sugar!!

Seagrove/Sandestin 2013

Hello again!  My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in May of this year.  Since they were all partied out from their 60th birthdays last year, we decided to take an extended family vacation to the Destin area.  It was great, and quite possibly my new favorite vacation spot!  We stayed in some condos just a mile or two from the Seaside community, and the"emerald coast" was gorgeous!  The beach was not hard to get to from our condos, and there was plenty of entertainment on days that we were worn out from the beach!

 Family dinner at a delicious, beach side restaurant!

 Christa is pretty much obsessed with all things Aunt Alicia when she's around, and the big girls are pretty crazy about Uncle Brandon, too!

 The girls loved stopping by the ice cream shop in Seaside!  Mommy enjoyed a delicious Symphony brownie sundae.

 Elizabeth was a little shy around Aunt Alicia at first, but warmed up quickly.  Alicia requested this picture of Elizabeth not crying in Alicia's arms.

 Fun at the playground!

 Christa flew a kite for the first time ever...

 .... which was incredibly easy with the sea breeze!  I don't remember the last time any of us flew a kite, but it went right up with no effort!

 Mimi enjoying the sand and sun.

 The girls making "trees" out of soaking wet sand.  This was Elizabeth's favorite activity!

 More proof that Elizabeth loves Aunt Alicia!!

We went to the gulf-quarium in Destin one day which was really neat!  We saw a dolphin and sea lion show.  It was right on the beach, so there was beautiful scenery all around.

 Three sweet girls!

 I don't remember the name of this area, but it had lots of shopping, dining, and carousel/zip-line rides.  It was great fun!

 Another family picture at sunset.

 What a great trip!

Night at the Rodeo

Hello again everyone!!  Another attempt to catch up on the blog underway, here :)  I've made progress some weeks, but still haven't "caught up."  So, in April, Cline decided to take the big girls to the Rodeo in Athens.  Uncle Cleve is very active in the Block and Bridle Club there, and was the chair person of the big annual rodeo this year!  Elizabeth and I reluctantly stayed home.  Elizabeth is not at the best age to enjoy these things, and we didn't know Cline would be off work and able to go in time to coordinate a babysitter.  The kids had a blast, though!

 Christa wanted to wear her cowgirl dance costume from last year!  I heard that random people thought she looked so cute, they wanted to have their pictures made with her.

 Abby Kate is my brave child so far!  Christa is incredibly timid around animals, big and small, so my guess is that Abby Kate got on the pony first!

 Well, I guess Christa got up the nerve to try it out, too....

 ... as long as Daddy was right there next to her!

 Abby Kate was thrilled to hold a baby chick.  Christa was not, so there is no picture of Christa holding any kind of animal!

 Great Rodeo, Uncle Cleve!!

Two Southern Girls!

Random Pictures

So, I was looking through my pictures to see what the next blog-worthy event was after Easter, and I found several random pictures in a row.  Here is a sampling of day-to-day life in our world!

 Shhhhh.... Princess at Play!  Elizabeth has recently discovered the wonder that is putting on a Disney Princess dress.  She has also recently discovered the joy of ballerina leotards!  Fortunately for her, we are well-stocked on both of those items around here!

 Abby Kate helping her good friend, Molly, celebrate her birithday!

 Swinging with Daddy on one of the early days of Spring.

 Fun at the Fountains!

I am a big breakfast eater.  I really love breakfast food, and when I'm pregnant, I can usually count on it to sit fairly well.  So, I got a little tired of the same old fast-food breakfast places during my first trimester this time around, and my girls love to eat breakfast food, too.  I'm also a little weird in that I really love a good cafeteria breakfast.... as in hospital cafeteria breakfast.  In fact, it's one of the highlights of my hospital stay when I deliver my babies.  So, I decided to take the girls to the hospital cafeteria one day just to eat breakfast.  It was delicious!!  And they had fountain Cherry Coke - another huge draw for me!  And, as if the experience couldn't possibly get any better, there was a water fountain right outside the eating area that the girls were very much entertained by! I was pretty proud of this idea, if I do say so myself, and we've gone back multiple times since!

Easter Morning 2013

Easter morning was fun and busy, as it always is for us.  We managed to get up, get dressed, enjoy the kids' baskets, get necessary pictures, and get to church somewhere in the neighborhood of on time this year.  Go us!

 The Easter Bunny was very good to the kids, even leaving them some much-desired items from Disney World!  The older girls had played with the Ariel dolls for an hour in the huge, official Disney Store, and were thrilled to see them again!

 See??  We're not cruel to this child!  The very next day she was all smiles and enjoying the Easter festivities once again.  I was actually very proud of her attitude during the missing of the egg hunt. 

 That Easter Bunny... somehow he knew these girls were taking gymnastics without the proper attire!

 Elizabeth got some "mop-mops," (Abby Kate's original word for "pot holders" that stuck)!  I think it started when I was trying to shoe someone away as I was getting something hot out of the oven, and I snapped the pot holder in a playful way and said, "mop-mop."  This turned into a fun game, and so we still call our pot holders "mop-mops."

 Pre-church pictures!

 Pre-lunch family picture!

 LaLa with all of her grandchildren!  Thank you, Elizabeth, for being the extra-cooperative one here :)

Post-lunch family picture!

Easter Weeked: Egg Hunt

Hello again, all!  I'm on a blogging roll, so I'll post pictures from Easter weekend.  On Saturday, we went to our 50th egg hunt of the season.  This egg hunt is very nice and includes breakfast and a photo op with the Easter Bunny himself!  Enjoy.

 Attempt at a family picture.  Good ones are hard to come by during this phase of life.

 Hanging out with the Easter Bunny!

 Hunting for eggs.

 Elizabeth enjoyed the egg hunt, too, and really had her skills perfected by this one!  I have no pictures of Abby Kate hunting eggs because she got in trouble multiple times that morning.  After several warnings with no improvement in her behavior and attitude, Cline and I made the not-fun-at-all, but (we felt) necessary decision that she would have to miss out on the fun of hunting eggs this time.  Some of the grandparents felt that was a little harsh, I think, but I reminded myself that our children have and get to experience so much compared to most kids around the world, and there were multiple other Easter Egg hunts and festivities that she got to enjoy.  As tempting as it is to do the fun thing when discipline is required,  I would rather her miss out on this one small thing, and learn the lessons of obedience that might allow her greater privileges (or prevent greater heartache) later on in life.  Her behavior turned around quickly after this whole experience, so that affirmed our choice.

 I love this sweet girl...

... even though she frequently refuses to cooperate for pictures these days!

Happy Hunting!

Don't Get Blogged Down

**Re-posted from a MOPS newsletter**

"Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads."  Deuteronomy 11:18 (NIV)

Oh the mommy blogs!  I am as guilty as anyone of getting sucked into them.  I don't mean the perfect ones, like mine (hee hee), that include nothing but upbeat and intelligent posts and adorable pictures of cute children :)  I'm referring to the blogs written by the perfect mothers out there in cyber-world, who can write very well, and who use that talent to share their one-sided opinion about every. single. parenting. decision. that is to be made over the course of a child's life.  I enjoy reading helpful tips, inspirational stories, and even well-written criticisms of some less-than-stellar habits or attitudes I may have fallen into.  I also enjoy social media as a way to keep up with family and friends and to occasionally share my own opinion about a topic I feel passionate about.  In this day and age of an overabundance of information, however, I find myself often frustrated at the massive numbers of "helpful parenting articles" that constantly tell me I'm not doing something well enough.  Or that my kid's favorite snack is not only terrible for them, but laden with potentially cancer-causing chemicals.  Or that I shouldn't have taken that 10 minute break to mentally veg out on my iPhone, because I missed out on the only cart wheel my daughter would ever do at 4:15 on Tuesday, March 26, 2013.  I will never get that moment back!  My personal (not-so) favorite links are the recall/new safety concern notices that constantly inform me my favorite baby gear, car seats, cribs, eating utensils, strollers, and  fluffy stuffed animal lovies should all be trashed because of new safety concerns that could theoretically harm my precious offspring if a specific and narrow set of circumstances align together while I happen to be looking away for two minutes.... perhaps at my iPhone.  I find myself especially drawn to articles with titles I know I will disagree with.  But I read them anyway, mentally patting myself on the back for my "open-mindedness" and effort at "educating myself" from all viewpoints.  One such article claimed that the only 100% safe and nutritious food I could feed my family without any risk of cancer, obesity, exposure to toxic chemicals or other terrible ailments is kale.  This particular article concluded by stating that if you eat too much kale, you might suffer from kidney stones.

As a mom who is constantly analyzing and questioning my parenting decisions, rarely 100% confident that I am doing everything the exact, right way, I feel in my mommy-gut that this "valuable information" is probably doing more harm than good much of the time.  I was expressing these frustrations to my mother in law the other day, because I do, in fact, want to be a good, informed mother who makes reasonable safety and nutrition decisions for my family and who can speak intelligently to my friends about the latest ideas.  And my prideful self wants every other mother out there, even these super-informed bloggers who have all the answers and who, also, I will never ever meet personally, to agree with every miniscule decision I make.

With one quick sentence, my wise mother in law asked me a question that solidified what I already knew, shed new light on this issue this I've been struggling with off and on for some time, and convicted me of my true sin in all of this.  She said, "What if you and all of your mommy friends took all of that time and energy you spend reading about the best ways to do all of these things (or not do them) and you spent that time and effort praying for the salvation of your children and future generations of your family line?"  As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I knew that my own mommy blog post was born!  What good is preventing cancer or SIDS or giving my child peanut butter on the exact right day if one of my kids gets to the end of her life and doesn't understand the eternal saving grace of Jesus Christ??  What good is a lifetime of memories of finger painting, chasing butterflies, and hours of undivided attention devoted to the entertainment of the little people if they grow up and fall prey to many of Satan's lies and deceptions about the love and goodness of God?  What kind of peace and wisdom would flood my life if, instead of reading someone's opinion about a fairly insignificant topic, I infused my thoughts with the Word of God to guide my parenting decisions?  My kids (and all of us) have one, only one, thing to do in our lives that really makes the only difference that matters.  We have to admit that we are sinners and fall short of God's holy standard for us and know that God sent His Son to die on the cross for us in our place. (Romans 3:23, John 3:16, John 15:13) We then have to accept that grace and mercy, given out of a love 100 times more pure and perfect than anything I could ever feel (even for my kids who I adore to the moon and back), (Ephesians 3:14-21) and commit to doing our best to turn away from sin and towards the standard of Christ-likeness God sets for us - which can only be accomplished by asking and allowing Jesus to transform our naturally sinful heart into one that beats like His. (1 John 2:1-6)  It was no coincidence that we happened to have this conversation in the middle of Holy Week, as we prepared to celebrate Easter.

In our culture, praying and reading God's Word can often feel like something we do before we can start the "real work" of solving a mommy-issue or improving a situation.  Friends, that is one of Satan's lies that I have fallen prey to.  Praying to God IS the work of parenting or getting our family through tough circumstances.  God's Word should be our most helpful and consulted "mommy-manual," even if we do occasionally get a truly great idea from a book or internet article.

Speaking of great, supplemental books to the Bible, in the devotional, Night Light For Parents, the author shared this brief story.  "My great-grandfather, George McCluskey prayed every morning from eleven to noon for his children and for future generations of his family.  Toward the end of his life, he announced that God had made him a promise: Every member of four generations of his family would become Christians.  That promise has been working itself out in remarkable ways.  By the time I came along, every family member from my great-grandfather to me not only had accepted Christ, but also had been or were ministers.  I am the only one who did not feel specifically called to this service." 
 

By the way, the author (who was the only family member *not* called to the ministry) is Dr. James Dobson.