She's done!

First day of school



Last day of school

Kendall finished her last day of Kindergarten yesterday. She likes school but she was excited to start the summer break. What kid isn't excited about that? I can't believe my little baby is a first grader. I didn't think too much about her finishing preschool but this one hit me hard. I only have 12 more years until she goes to college! It just doesn't seem like enough time. It is almost too much to think about. She's grown so much this year that she's hardly the same kid that got on the bus in August. To top it off, she asked the other night if she could take a shower instead of a bath. "Like big kids do" she told me. She did and when she came out of the bathroom she told me "Mom, that shower is awesome. It feels sooo good. I don't know why people even take baths after they learn to take showers." I guess she'll come full circle on that one.

The Talk

The other day Kendall and Grace were playing in their room and I heard Kendall telling Grace about how girls can have babies. Here's some of what I caught.

Kendall--"Grace we're lucky because we are girls and we get to have babies in our tummies. No one else gets to do that. We can have babies when we're all grown up"

Grace--"I like babies!"

Kendall--"That's right. Silly boys don't get to do it. But we do. We're the only ones and we are a house full of girls. There will be lots of babies."

Grace--"I like babies!"

Kendall--"Yes, I know. Babies start out the size of a green pea." (I did tell her that a few days before.)

Grace interjecting--"I like peas!"

Kendall--"Yeah, but you can't eat it. The baby grows in your tummy and your tummy gets bigger and your legs get shorter. (what?) Then you have the baby. And you have as many as God can spare. Isn't it awesome?!"

I would have stayed to listen to more but I was laughing so hard I was afraid I would be spotted. She has been asking quite a few questions about babies lately. We certainly don't have a shortage of pregnant women around here so it's kind of hard not to think about.

Happy Birthday to Maddie!

I know, I can't believe it either. Maddie is one! She had a great birthday. Of course like most one year olds she had no idea what was going on. That's okay because we had a good time celebrating for her. I did not have such a good time the day before making her cake. I know I'm not ready for Ace of Cakes, but I can usually slap a cake together for the kids that looks pretty decent. I decided to make Maddie a cake in the shape of a number one with some girly accents. I was almost done and decided to write Maddie's name in pink on the top of the cake. I get to about the fourth letter and realize I have run out of room. Dang it! Okay, what would Ace of Cakes guys do? They would scrape off the name, slap on some more white icing and start all over. So that's what I did. Now the top of the cake is slightly pink and the bottom is white. No problem. I'll make a little row of flowers to trick the eye so it looks like one color. I start the name again and I'll be danged if I didn't do it AGAIN!! Now I am in pure cake panic mode. I have no more white icing. I cannot bear the thought of making more icing because there is already a fine layer of crisco and powdered sugar covering the whole kitchen. Plus nap time is almost over and I have to get this done. I start smearing the pink icing over the top hoping I can mix it up. There is now not enough white icing in the world to cover the pink. So I just left the top pink and didn't DARE try her name again. Every time I make a cake I remember why sometimes I just buy one from the bakery. Good grief! No wonder bakers are so stressed all the time.

The Sweet Pile

Last night I was teaching Kendall how to play Uno. Playing cards with Kendall is always fun for two main reasons. First, her hands are too small to hold the cards so she just lays them out in front of her for the whole world to see. Secondly, it wouldn't matter if she could hold her cards because she has no poker face whatsoever. I was explaining to her the special cards like Draw 2, Skip, Reverse, etc. Every time she would draw a special card she would say "Swwweeeeeeettttt (Ashton Kutcher style), I'm putting this card in my sweet pile." Then she insisted on constantly playing her "sweet" cards even when she wasn't supposed to. She would play one and I would say "Kendall, you can't play that one; it's not the same color." to which she would say "Okay" and just reach into her pile and play the next sweet card until either she found one that matched or she ran out. This must be a good strategy because she won two games.

One more minute

I'll share with you a little bedroom secret Byron and I have. (I'm sure my parents and in-laws just cringed.) Not about THAT you dirty minded blog readers. We have two alarm clocks. We both like to see what time it is in the middle of the night and we're both too lazy to lean over the other person to check. We usually get up at different times too so we also have to different alarms. However this week I have started getting up at 5:00am with Byron. Unknown to me until last night this was causing Byron to lose much needed sleep. Here's how the conversation went as we were getting ready for bed.

Byron "Can you set your alarm clock different? It goes off before mine."
Me "Don't you have yours set for 5?"
Byron "No, I have it set for 5:01. I'm losing my last minute of sleep"
Me "Why? Who sets the clock for 5:01? I'm not changing mine. You change yours to 5:00."
Byron "No way. Mine was set like that first. I'm already losing 5 minutes of sleep. I used to have it set for 5:06 but then I changed it."
Me "If I DO change mine, I'm changing it to 4:59 so that way you'll lose TWO minutes of sleep."
Byron "FINE, I'll change mine to 5:00."
Side note: We did discuss using just one alarm. We're not complete idiots. But I don't often hear his and he didn't want to use mine because I usually hit snooze, which is true.

So he changed his alarm and we're quiet for a few minutes. And then (and I'll receive a phone call for this I'm sure) Byron said "This is something your parents would argue about" to which I started laughing and said that I was just thinking the same thing. Consequently, his alarm went off about 20 seconds before mine this morning. So now who's losing sleep?!

Treasured memories

I know I've had performance pictures of Kendall up for a couple of weeks but I still haven't had a chance to blog about the performances so I'm doing that now. Byron and I were trying to figure out how many school/activity/sports performances we will attend for our kids. We could not come up with an accurate number but it must be in the hundreds. Kendall had her gymnastics performance a couple of weeks ago. It was adorable but I'm going out on a limb here and predicting Kendall might have my athletic ability. I wouldn't say she's the star student in her class. She does have my flair for putting a positive spin on things though. Every time she performed an exercise she would utter a quiet but audible "ta-da" and do a tiny little curtsy to go with it. It was subtle, but it was there for sure. At one time I did hear one parent behind us say "Did she say 'ta-da'?" She also would pause between roll overs to fix her ponytail and she waved at the camera as she was running to do her flip off the trampoline. She's not quite the next Shawn Johnson; unless you're talking about being on "Dancing with the Stars".

The school performance went well also. Let me clarify about the pictures. My sister asked why Kendall was the only one dressed like a butterfly when the other kids weren't dressed up. There were other kids dressed up but you can't see them in the pictures. Their performance was about animals and the music teacher said either dress like an animal or wear nice clothes. I know that technically a butterfly is an insect; but she's five so she can pull it off. One of the funniest things about the school performance (besides Kendall's face when they opened the curtain to 200+ onlookers) was the slide show they ran of the kids after the performance. It said "Introducing the class of 2021". Groannnn....I don't want to even think about that. Talk about a reality check.

School Performance

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