Sign Language

My first video upload. Let's see if it works. It's Joey's song from graduation.

Presidential Academic Award!!!

Hailee, our big girl!!! How proud of her we are!!!!!! This year, she will 'graduate' from the 5th grade and head off to middle school. OMG, how sad that makes me. Our baby is growing up!!!! Didn't she know she was supposed to stay my little precious baby girl FOREVER? She isn't allowed to grow up!

We received a letter from school letting us know Hailee is being awarded with the Presidential Academic Fitness Award. This is the highest award given to an elementary student. To obtain this award, the student must have maintained an A average in grades 4 and 5 and must have passed all parts of the Ohio Achievement Tests. Well, of course, she is a brain, this award was made for her!!!

She was given her award signed by President Obama and a Presidential Academic Excellence pin. She asked for 2 pins so she could wear them as ear rings. LOL! Only my daughter would ask that!!!

Graduation

Joey's graduation ceremony. YES, I cried my eyes out during this!!! How big my little man is getting is just insane. They did sign language to one of their songs and he practiced so hard on it. He did fantastic!!! Since it was 'his day', he got to pick the place for dinner. I thought he would have picked Frisch's, but he picked my favorite place...Don Pablos! Gotta love my boy!!!

Thank you to my sister who came to share the day with us. Love ya Kel!!!

Joey's last day of Pre-K

Where has the time gone? It just seems like it was yesterday when I dropped Joey off for Pre-K. His school put on such a huge celebration for the last day of school!!! They were to wear their bathing suits to school because they were having some water fun. The morning started with practice for their graduation ceremony, then a picnic lunch under a huge tree on the front lawn. After that, they went behind the school for all the festivities. A bounce house, snow cones, water fun...what a great day. I wasn't able to stay long, but I did get to show up to take a few pictures.

When I came to pick Joey up from school, the mother's who stayed for the day all were crying and so was his teacher. The one mom informed me they were all crying because of Joey. Well, that can never be good right? LOL! Turns out when Miss Maryann asked if anyone was scared to start Kindergarten, Joey said he was. When she asked him why he said "Because I will miss you Miss Maryann, and you will miss me, so I don't want you to be sad". He just adores his teacher. She is a really wonderful woman, so this was expected from him. I loved that school and I will definitely be sending Dominic there.

After 9 years, it's about time!

So, we have been in this house for 9 years and we haven't ever done anything to the front yard. This is the year. We have started and are still working, but this is the look so far. We cleared out all of the bushes and for the firs time, I planted flowers in the flower box along the front of the house. I also planted flowers in the area by the front door. This weekend, we are getting a sod cutter to cut out all the grass in a large area to mulch and plant our new bushes. Stay tuned...more pictures to come as we continue the project!

Oh, and look at Joey...he has a WORM in his hand. The first "manly" thing he has done in a while. ROFLMAO!!! He kept telling me "I'm the Man, Mommy"!!! Later I found a whole bunch of dried up worms in the "trunk" of his big wheel. Turns out while we were digging roots, he was stealing the worms and putting them in his bike. LOL! NASTY!

ISpace

There isn't much I like more than free family events, but when you can attend a free family educational event...it takes the cake! This May, we went to the ISpace exhibit. There was so many crafts for the kids to do, all while learning how things are done in space. We learned how astronauts fix things in space while wearing their "moon gloves". The kids got to cut the bottom out of 2 Styrofoam cups, put them inside of each other and attach 3 pieces of string to the bottoms, connecting the cups. When you want to grab something, you twist the cups in opposite directions and it forces the strings to squeeze your object and pick it up. It was pretty cool. Wish I had pictures of that.

They also had the opportunity to dress in astronaut gear, Hailee was the only one who would do it. We wrote our names on a sign to send off into space on the next shuttle run...it was all pretty cool! We made so many crafts, rode a hover-round...neat stuff to do. So worth going out there!

Oh, and the girls were in their softball uniforms because they were both supposed to have a game later that day. Both games got cancelled because of the rain. LOL!