Easter at school

Yep.

My kids' school celebrates Easter too. 

Love it!

Once again, I have to lament about Sammy's Kindergarten experience and how lame it was. Not only did he have the notoriously worst Kindergarten teacher, but they only had one party the entire year. A Hanukkah party, which I have absolutely no problem with as it was a good introduction about the other December holidays besides Christmas, but they never had another party for the rest of the year. 

Not Halloween. Or Valentine's Day. Or Easter. I mean come on....it's KINDERGARTEN!!!! Ugh.

So, imagine my surprise to find out that Hannah's Kindergarten class was not only having an Easter egg hunt....but every child in her class was supposed to bring in a dozen hard boiled eggs to dye and 4 dozen plastic eggs filled with candy for the egg hunt. And they welcomed younger siblings to participate too which was awesome for Helene.

Sammy was disappointed that he wasn't having a hunt too and I explained that as you get in the older grades, you'll have less parties, but I would make sure H&h shared their candy with him.

It was crazy. There were more eggs than kids could fit into their baskets. 

Group shot before the hunt

Egg hunt!

 

 How awesome are these two shots? 

The quintessential big-sister-not-happy-little-sister-is-in-the-photo face. And both Hannah and Helene's body language and face are priceless in picture #2. 

Love it!

 

More birthday stuff!

Since Sammy was having his birthday party on Saturday at...yep...you guessed it: Chuck E Cheese's (again)--I didn't do a cake or anything on his actual birthday. I know that may sound mean, but I had spent the night before making 26 cupcakes to take to his class. And I was also making the birthday cake for the party. And I was planning to make a cake for Helene's birthday the following day.
And he doesn't even like cake.

Anyway. I digress.

So, Helene helped me make her cake on Wednesday.
OK--she just licked the beaters, but that's really the best part anyway.

Group pic. So love it.

And yes, that's Christmas wrapping paper...cause that's just how I roll.
(and she's only 2 so I can get away with it!)

My adorable girls

She couldn't have been more excited about her Cinderella and Little Mermaid figurines. I wish I could have captured her face the moment she opened them, but you get the excitement.

Poor Hannah was so jealous...and I really don't blame her. It's hard to sit by and watch everyone else get presents while she has to wait until July for her birthday.

Luckily, Helene was willing to share.

Sweet girl.

CAKE!! AND PRESENTS!!!

I don't have a ton of pictures from Sammy's party. It's just too crazy to take any while keeping track of kids, ordering and distributing food, giving out tokens, changing Helene's diaper, and trying to socialize.
I did manage to get a few.

Air Hockey!
(Mom's favorite!)

Stephanie and Riley and Danielle and Michael

Sammy's cousin, Jon, was in town visiting from Las Vegas--and Sammy was so excited to see him. CEC has this new thing for the birthday kids to do called the Ticket Blaster. Basically, they put you in this capsule and they start a wind tunnel and release a ton of tickets. Sammy really didn't want to do it (and I didn't blame him), so we enlisted Jon to do it for him.
It was pretty funny.

Chuck E. has a really really big head.

Cake!

My mom was so sweet to make Helene her very own birthday cake so she didn't feel left out.

Two forks...my kind of girl.

This is so Helene. She is my Prim and Proper girl.
Always saying "please" and "thank you"....and always wanting a napkin. She hates messy hands.

Presents!

Happy Birthday Sammy and Helene!

Happy 2nd Birthday Helene!

Dear Helene,

I truly don't think I could have received a more adorable, good-natured, funny, smart, sweet or loving child, if I had hand picked you myself.

You have been my light and my joy this past year. Probably because you're just now talking and therefore, I don't get the sass from you...yet. :) But seriously, there were many days when you were one of the few things that would make me smile.

I love how excited you get about little things--your face completely enveloped in joy. You're so expressive of every emotion you feel. I love it. And you give the most amazing hugs. I've never had someone hold me so tightly, it absolutely melts my heart.

You love shoes and have a definite opinion about which ones you're going to wear that day. And you crack me up how you always want to wear a sweatshirt or sweater, no matter if it's 50 degrees or 80 degrees outside.

You and I are Diet Coke soul mates. Despite my attempts to keep it from you--you somehow always manage to get a swig...or three.

You have a great sense of humor and a hearty laugh that literally makes me laugh out loud.

I love that you sing along with (well...make the same sounds and intonations as if singing along with) Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, The Black Eyes Peas, and Ke$ha. Good thing you have no idea what the lyrics mean.

You are such a Mommy's Girl, and while you're finally starting to assert your independence, you still are always making sure I'm not too far away.

Happy 2nd Birthday to my baby girl.
You're growing up so fast, but you'll always be my baby.

a little summer preview

So..it's been in the 80s for the past few days. I'm definitely not complaining (well, maybe I did just a teeny tiny bit today when my phone said it was 87 while we were at the park this afternoon...and we were in direct sunshine, so it was probably hotter than that) because who doesn't want to wear capris and flip flops in the middle of January?

Since the kids were off of school for the MLK holiday, Samuel took Sammy to the Clippers game this afternoon and I took Hannah and Helene to In-N-Out for lunch (big surprise, I know) and then off to the park to ride bikes.

Quick side story:
I got Hannah a new bike on Saturday. She and Sammy wanted to ride their bikes since the weather was so nice. So we got the bikes out from the back--only for Hannah to discover she was too tall for her Dora Big Wheel. Her knees kept hitting the handlebars and she was in tears that she didn't have a bike to ride.

(And here is why I LOVE living in the future...)

So we went inside and looked on Craigs List. I found a bike in Pasadena (no picture though), texted the seller to see if we could come by and see it, she replied with address and a picture--it was purple and had Disney Princesses (SCORE!)...and she lived about a mile away. We drove over, picked it up and she even included a purple helmet--all for $20!!! And the same bike is currently selling at Target for $70. YAY ME!! Love it!

You know when we were kids, we would have had to go to garage sale after garage sale to find a used bike and it would have been a week or more to find the right one. So yay for technology!!

Here is my awesome Craigs List find.
Hannah picked out her outfit today knowing that we were going to ride bikes at the park--I LOVE that she color coordinated her outfit with her bike.
Totally something I would do. :)

And Helene inherited the Dora Big Wheel. Her legs aren't long enough for it yet, but she's completely content to just sit there and push all the buttons that play music and make noise.

Uhhhh....yeah....that's an In-N-Out cup in the basket.
She took it and put it in there all by herself.

What can I say? She's clearly a mini me.

She was pretty proud of herself...smart girl.

Krista and Ally met us at the park and Helene traded Ally the big wheel for her scooter.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the summer temps--although I'm hoping I get a chance to wear sweaters and my new scarves (my new fave accessory!) again soon.

School update, a brief grammar lesson, and some fun

Has anyone else noticed that the days of me updating the blog three times a week are gone?

So, what am I doing with my time now that I don't document every moment of our lives on the blog?

Being a mom?

Updating my FB?

Oh, who knows.

Well, I guess some people know if they chat with me often enough, but really, the poor blog has had some serious neglect. Time for an update.

Let's start with Sammy's school situation.
His permanent teacher started this week, just in time for Back to School Night. Literally.
And if you were keeping track, that's 3 weeks after school started.
Nice.

She's seems...fine.

I know, I know...have a little more enthusiasm. Show that positive attitude you've been working on, right? What happened to "no more complaining"?

It's just hard to have a good first impression of someone who sends home a letter to the parents introducing herself--and it has a glaring grammatical error on it.

Yes, I will admit that I have a tendency to judge people when they use poor grammar. And I'm certainly no grammar queen myself, just look at all my run-on sentences and all the "--" and "....." I use. (Although I do have very strong feelings about the Oxford Comma. Yeah, I'm a big fan.) But, I'm not a teacher, so I can run-on all I want...right? Anyway, I digress.

IMO, when you are a teacher. And your job is to educate on such things as grammar and spelling and the like, I would expect you to know the difference between plural and possessive.

And clearly that is asking too much.

I'm just saying. There is a big difference between coaching "lady's basketball" and "ladies basketball".

Guess which one she used to coach? (HINT: she wrote lady's basketball)

See my problem?

Ummm, yeah..."oh my" would be the correct reaction to that. sigh.

It really is not that hard people. Use an apostrophe to show possession. Use an "es" or "s" to indicate plural. And yet, that's too much to ask of a 1st grade teacher apparently.

(Aaannnndd.....rant...OVER. Thanks for listening.)

So, yeah, he has a permanent teacher. Yay.

Moving on.
Here are a few random pictures of what the girls and I did recently while Sammy was at school.

One day I had to go to Nordstrom (yes, had to...I was almost out of lipstick!!), so after shopping I decided to let the girls ride the train. Hannah loved it. Helene cried the entire time. In fact, they had to stop the train so I could take her off it, she was that upset. Mom of the year, I know.

Another day we met up with my friend Laura for lunch, where Helene proceeded to eat two cups of ketchup. I don't know where she gets it from. I don't eat the stuff.

Friday we made Halloween cookies at Krista's house. The girls were really excited about the entire process.

But I think frosting was their favorite part.

Look at that concentration.

There were A LOT of sprinkles on those cookies!

I'm not sure which I love more in this picture: Hannah's close up face with the big smile or Ally's black teeth from all the sprinkles.
When the little ones got up from their naps, they had a few cookies too. Despite their looks of disdain--I think they enjoyed them.
So that's my update.
I know it doesn't totally make up for all the blog neglect (and there's been a lot the past few months), but I'm trying to get back into my blogging groove--because I need more chips and salsa too. :)