Lucy Turns 8!

Does it seem weird to anyone else that I have an 8 year old?  I remember a few years back when Lucy was still 4 (what I consider a toddler) and my friend had a daughter turning 8 and I thought "Wow! That sounds SO old! I can't even imagine having an older child."  And now here we are!  I think about her life in 2 different ways.  Sometimes I think about it and when I go back to her early days when we were living in Boise I think "HOLY COW that seems like eons ago!" and then sometimes I think about it and I'm like "wow, it all went fast enough that the years are blurring together."  The phrase "the days are long but the years are short" certainly applies here. 

Lucy is a very up and down child.  What I mean by this is she is constantly challenging me daily with her sass and fits and "tweenage attitude," but she also really, truly has a huge heart.  She cares about others' well-beings more than a lot of other 8 year olds.  When someone is sick, she wants to make them a get-well card (or in my Mom's case, a get-well banner, haha), she always wants to make sure to write "Thank you" cards after receiving a gift, and she loves to try to comfort her little brother when he is sad by asking if she can rock him to calm him down. A perfect example of how big her heart is, is this: Saturday (her birthday) was also Piper's dance recital.  We let Lucy open her gifts before the recital so that if she got something she wanted to bring with her to hold during the recital she could.  Well, one of her gifts was a card from her Aunt with a $5 bill in it.  When we left for the recital I said "is there anything you want to take with you?"  She said "I want to bring my birthday money so that I can buy Piper a gift." See, outside of the recital,  in the lobby, there are always gifts you can buy for the performers- flowers and other trinkets.  So when we got there she looked all around at everything she could buy.  First she chose a big stuffed animal that she wanted to buy for her so badly, but it was $20 and she didn't have enough money.  She was disappointed but she was set on making sure she continued her search.   The lady behind the counter showed her where all the $5 gifts were and she studied them all very closely.  At last she found a little ceramic pig with a tutu on it that she said "THIS.  This is something Piper would LOVE.  She will just love it!"  I said "baby, are you sure you want to used your new birthday money for this? You don't want to save it for something to buy for yourself?"  She said "no, I want Piper to feel proud of herself for dancing today, so I want to buy this special present for her."  I literally started crying at the sweetness of it.  Her birthday, her money, and she wanted her SISTER to be the one who felt special.  

When she's alone with me, life is easy.  One-on-one time with her is my favorite.  When we are alone she treats me like I'm her best friend ever. She wants hugs and kisses and wants to hold my hand everywhere we go.  When she's about to have a melt-down when we are alone together I can usually calm her down and reason with her before the tears start.  For whatever reason, this doesn't work when she is around her siblings, but one-on-one time is pretty nice with her. She's at the age where we are able to start having some more grown-up conversations about things.  It doesn't all have to be sugar-coated the way talking to a toddler is.  She's simply starting to grow up.  She still has her innocence in terms of the tooth fairy (which visited her the night of her birthday!) and Santa Claus, but she won't let me do her hair anymore (something that has been extremely hard for me to let go of), she WORSHIPS Taylor Swift, she wants to constantly wear clothes I would never dream of picking out for her, and makeup and keychains and sharpie drawn on her nails consumes her.  She's over the stage of dolls and barbies, but still asked for mermaid swimming fins and walkie talkies as gifts, so there is some "child" left in her.  I just feel like she acts more like an 11 year old than an 8 year old with the things she is "into" right now! I know I was most certainly still playing dolls and barbies well into the 4th grade!  She's outgrown all of that and is only going into 3rd grade :( 

At least she still loves to draw me pictures and make me cards.  She thinks about me all the time and she is a total Mama's girl.  While her baby and toddler self treated her Daddy like a total celebrity, these days she's all about her Mama.  Of course her and Shawn are close, but I think between my 2 girls, she will be the Mama's girl while Piper is the Daddy's girl. She loves me and I adore her.  She was my first true love and there is something really, really special about that. A forever bond that could NEVER be broken- even on her hardest days!

This year she chose to have 2 of her "BFF's" spend the night instead of having a party.  But you know me, I still like to decorate a little for my babies so they have something fun to see when they wake up!  She asked if we could decorate with emoji's (and if I'd bake her an emoji cake) so that's what we did!  This poor girl has been waiting for a Saturday birthday since she was in Kindergarten, and she finally gets one and it also happened to be on the day of Piper's dance recital.  A recital that was at 2:30 in the middle of the day.  I am so sad that Lucy's birthday had to be shared with Piper but we made the most of it!  

She had breakfast in bed (the night before she specifically chose out the shapes that she wanted us to cut her french toast out in in the morning), we took her to a "salon" to get a hair cut because she wanted that done SOOOOOOO badly!  She's been begging for that for months! Great Clips is a salon in her eyes ;-) and then we let her open her presents before the recital (I will do a separate Recital post later).  We picked up a couple of pizzas later that night and her cute friends Camden and Lillian came over. The girls had a blast giving themselves manicures, making slime, coloring, telling scary stories, watching a movie with TONS of buttery popcorn, sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags,  smashing a piñata, and being cute little 8 year olds who decided to sleep all in the same bed because they were too scared after their ghost stories to sleep separately ;-)   Crushes haven't started yet, they all still believe in the magic of holidays, and even though Barbies are a thing of the past, I think this year is going to be a great one.  The age of innocence is still alive.  

She thought cutting 9 inches off was a good idea.  I struggled with it, but I didn't want to stand in her way! She wanted it cut and I let her choose the length because I promised myself I'd never be the Mom that forbade her daughters' to cut their hair.... however, I like longer hair so it was hard for me to watch! I definitely saved some for her baby book!

She asked me to bake her an emoji cake which was so incredibly easy! I am thankful for easy cakes:)

They all said prayer before bed, which I just love.  Everyone here is Christian and prayer is said before every meal and before bed every night, no matter where you are (at almost every birthday party we have been to it is said before the kids eat their cake and pizza!).  It's definitely something I wasn't used to witnessing in public before I moved here but now I see it as the norm. It's one of the things I love most about living here. 

Anyway, it was a really good day.  Everyone was happy despite the rainy day and the crazy packed schedule.  It was a sweet day for all! 

And all of a sudden I have an 8 year old.... It was September 2010, around 5:00am, when I found out her heart was beating next to mine. And I loved her from that exact moment until now, and every heartbeat in between <3

It's great to be 8 and I love my little 8 year old more than all the leaves on all the trees!

Catching Up!

So, since May has a bajillion activities packed in, I need to write a couple mid-month posts just to catch up up so that I don't have one post that is 953 pages long at the end of the month- this one is already long enough, sheesh!

First things' first, I was awarded a speeding ticket.  YAY!  Just what I need- another bill looming over my head during, quite possibly, our most expensive month of the year.  I haven't gotten a ticket for 12 years so I suppose it was time.  It's not fair though because I was SLOWING DOWN.  I just didn't slow down enough before I hit the new speed mph sign.  It was one of those tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere off a highway that takes you from like 75mph to 35mph and he got me before I had the chance to get to my slowest speed.  The cop was a jerk and I bawled like a baby.... the first thing I did was call Shawn and I was just sobbing.  I was on my way to IKEA, which is in Frisco, TX 3 1/2 hours away from home.  Instead of getting mad at me, he said "are you OK? It's ok babe.  I'm not mad.  It will be OK."  And then he put Sully on the phone and said "Sully say 'it's OK Mommy.  It's OK.'"  Sully's little voice telling me it was OK was the sweetest thing. Talk about a nice husband.  He has gotten 3 tickets in the time we have been married and I am never nice to him about it like he was for me.  The thing is, this trip was actually a little getaway for me and I was sad that it started out with a ticket :(  We had a garage sale 2 weeks ago and made just under $200.  We REALLY needed new dishes (we were down to just 1 full size plate here!) and I know IKEA has the best deals around and I could easily find a new set for the amount of money we made at the garage sale.  So I was going to drive there and back in 1 day.  But Shawn, the nice husband that he is, told me to stay the night in a hotel (he had BARELY enough points left for one night) and treat myself to a night of relaxation away from home.  I felt very "Pretty Woman" the whole night (minus the prostitute thing, haha!).  The reason for this is- he booked me a standard room in a fancy hotel but they upgraded me for FREE into the NICEST room I have ever stayed in.  It had SUCH a gorgeous view of a river and gardens surrounding it and- IT HAD ROBES!  I have always wanted to stay in a plush hotel with the big white robes and I finally got to! When I walked into the room there was huge bouquet of flowers waiting for me (flowers are not something he usually buys for me because I always cringe at the price of something that doesn't live very long) but he wanted me to feel extra special since this was the first time I've ever snuck away like this by myself.  Since it was a fancy hotel, they don't have free parking OR a continental breakfast for the regular guests. However, they DO have free valet parking, gourmet dinners and hot breakfasts for their "diamond members" in a special executive room on the 9th floor that is ONLY accessible by a special "diamond-member" key card.  So even though I am not a "diamond-member," Shawn is and since HE is the one who made the reservation, I was the one who reaped the benefits.  I felt so important.  A MASSIVE room with a huge bathtub in the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in with gorgeous, fresh flowers waiting for me and food that was SO incredibly delicious! THAT is why I felt like  "Pretty Woman."  Plus, it was after a day of shopping at IKEA and TJ Maxx- so maybe it wasn't Rodeo Drive, haha, but it was still an AWESOME day/night and I wish so badly I could have stayed a little bit longer.  But, May is busy enough as it is and Shawn only had enough hotel points for one night.  He played Mr. Mom by picking the kids up from school, doing homework with them, taking Piper to dance, making lunches, babysitting Sully all day, etc.  It was one of the best 36 hours I've had in a long time.  I applied a face mask, turned on a book on tape and took an hour long bubble bath that night.  I tried to sleep in, but my body wouldn't let me.  However, I enjoyed breakfast overlooking the beautiful river and then went and read by the outside pool for 2 hours before I left at 1pm the next day.  I am forever thankful that Shawn likes to pamper me when he can.  He is not always the most romantic guy, so flowers were a huge surprise and the frugal lady in me kept reminding myself to just ENJOY my getaway because who knows when this will happen again!!

You better believe I buckled these babies up (literally) and drove them back home with me the next day!

Now, on the total opposite side of feeling glamorous at a posh hotel, I chose to celebrate Mother's Day by going camping, haha!  I love camping and had the itch to get out with the kids before the intense heat hits and enjoy the great outdoors.  It was a quick 2 days that went by much too fast but it was so much fun.  It rained through the night on Friday so we woke up to lots of mud around us on Saturday.  Sully was in HEAVEN!  He was rolling his tractors all through the mud, flinging it around with sticks, jumping in the puddles, etc.  Piper benefitted because all the frogs and turtles from the lake came up on land during the rain and she loves getting critters like that to play with.  And Lucy and I played hours of Uno while we relaxed in the great outdoors. All of us loved the fire flies we saw flying around all night :) The campsite was on the lake and the weather was perfect.  Cold the first night, but almost hot the second.  I didn't take tons of pictures because camping is meant for "unplugging" but I did get some from the first night and it was a blast.  My kids all love to camp so it makes me a happy Mama!  I had a very happy Mother's Day!!

Look at this massive lizard! Or is it an iguana??? Either way, it's so cool!

This is why I LOVE camping. A fire at night with gorgeous views.

She is holding a baby Aligator turtle.  When they grow up they get MASSIVE and bite peoples heads off- like an alligator. But he was a tiny little baby so he couldn't bite yet.  She named him Al :)

Some more things that took place within the last couple of weeks are as follows:

I got the girls' Spring pictures back and they are cute as can be!

The Pi Baby and her kindergarten class lead the entire school in their Monday morning assembly (Rise and Shine). They were brave, confident and adorable! Piper’s job was to lead them all in saluting the flag of Oklahoma. My fingers weren’t fast enough to get her first couple of sentences on camera but she did SO good! They all did!🇺🇸

Side note: Piper's teacher (the one behind them) is the worlds sweetest lady!  She has been teaching Kindergarten for many years but she loves her current class SO MUCH that she said she couldn't imagine not having them for another year.  So she asked if she could move up to 1st grade with them and keep them all for another year! I was ECSTATIC and brought to tears when I found out! I am SO happy for Piper! Mrs. Sumler has a heart of gold and everyone who meets her loves her!

Sullivan goes from THIS to THIS within hours and it doesn't matter what he's doing, he is still the worlds cutest little boy ever. EVER.  I can't get enough of him!!

Every Wednesday morning he anxiously waits for the trash truck. It’s his favorite; he lights up and yells and waves when he sees them Every. Single. Time. And they ALWAYS wave back👋🏼

My cute girls LOVE being silly ;-)

Lastly: The other day I looked outside and saw my two favorite guys mowing the lawn together and thought it was just the cutest thing💙. That boy completely idolizes his daddy, and Shawn’s so great because he lets Sully do everything with him. Yard work, handy work, errands, even sometimes work-work (when he’s working from home). I love their relationship and I love how much Sully looks up to his Dad. They’re the best of friends!

 

So now within the next 8 days we have 2 field-days, an AWANA celebration party, 2 end-of-school year celebrations at the park, Lucy's birthday, our anniversary, Piper's dance Recital, and last-day-of-school festivities.  And THEN.... we can breathe :)