She's now an orange belt

Lyla graduated to the next belt level in her martial arts class. She gets very excited about getting a new belt. This class has been great for her! She loves it and it really has motivated to say "yes, mam" more often, which I love! Now Grace is participating too. She's really excited too. I'm proud of Lyla for sticking with it and really trying hard to do her best.

Putting on her new orange belt.

Her teacher is really great too. He calls her "Lyla Cat". Not sure why, but it's cute. He's really great with the kids and expects their best while making it fun.

Lyla's Sporty Birthday

We had PaPaw Gardner, Mimi, Papoo, Joni, Reesi, Elye, Julie and Easton at Lyla's party. Mom cooked ribs and we had some sides with it. The girls played outside and enjoyed the baby pool. They're really too big for it but it gives them a way to get wet.

Anyway, on to the presents. Lyla had a very sporty birthday this year. She got a real bat, balls and glove from us. She got a real basketball goal from Mimi and Papoo. She got a batting helmet from Papaw and Grandma Gardner. She got a volleyball/badminton set from Julie and Jason. Joni gave Lyla $20 in cash. We went to ToysRUs on Monday and she picked out a baby Elmo doll that had a pacifier that fits in its mouth. I tried to sway her decision but she wanted that Elmo for some unforeseen reason.

She could be really good in sports someday (at least we think so). She really likes to play sports in the backyard too. She hasn't been on a real team yet but one day she will. We did figure out that we can't really pitch the real balls to her with the real bat in the backyard. She hits them out of the fence! I can't wait to see her on a team one day. Grace is good too. They can both hit pretty good. The funny thing is that Grace bats left handed even though she's right handed and Lyla bats right handed even though she's left handed.

I wimped out and bought a generic Publix birthday cake. After the monkey cake I didn't feel like decorating another cake.

She kept yelling "Happy Halloween". I have no idea why. She's just crazy I guess.

Love these girls! Aren't they cute? I love it that they're so close.

"Happy Halloween!"

Grandma Gardner sent these umbrellas for Grace and Lyla that you can draw on. They really enjoyed coloring the pictures on these umbrellas. They worked on them for a long time!

These pictures were from later in the day. The ice cream truck came around and they still had money from Papoo for ice cream. They had just gotten out of the shower so Lyla is soaking wet. Yes, they shower together! I love being able to say, "Girls, go take a shower." It's so liberating! Now, there is a lot of water on the bathroom floor most of the time but I'll deal with that if I don't have to wash them myself.

I love natural laughing pictures.

Lyla's preschool graduation

Wow, Lyla graduated from preschool! I still can't grasp this. Just last year she was in the 3's class! Now, she's in prek and graduating on to kindergarten. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I'm really looking forward to the fall. The girls will both be in school and I'll still be teaching 2 days a week at preschool. That means I have 3 days at home without kids...every week!!! That is huge!!! I have soooo many projects on my list of to dos already!

But on the other hand, it's kind of the end of an era in our house. Babies, toddlers and preschoolers are hard, very hard, but, they're also sweet, innocent and protected from the outside world. When they go off to school you loose your grip on what influences them and they are constantly influenced by people and experiences that you haven't "authorized". That's the saddest part for me. I'm kind of glad to be out of the toddler/preschooler stage but I'm not excited about them growing up. I know that doesn't make much sense. I would actually like to freeze them right where they are. I have really enjoyed the kindergarten/1st grade age with Grace. They're big but still sweet and little at the same time. Sorry, I tend to ramble on here.

Anyway, on to graduation day. Mimi, Papoo, Julie and Easton were able to come for the big day. Lyla was excited. She woudn't tell me anything about the graduation ahead of time because she said it was a surprise. They walked in to the Charlie Brown theme, sang a couple of songs, and said the pledge of allegience. The part that made me tear up was when they sang a song with one of our song leaders from church called "Pray for Me". Oh. My. Goodness. That song is a definite tear-jerker. It talks about remembering to pray for them as they go off to school. I'm not a crier but Julie had to hand me a kleenex half way through!

Then they all walked up to the microphone and announced what they want to be when they grow up. Lyla wouldn't tell me what she was going to say. She and Ford both said they wanted to be zoo keepers. I thought it was so cute that her and Ford said the same thing. They obviously talked about it together. Lyla sure will miss Ford! They'll be at different schools and we go to different churchs, so they won't see much of each other now.

Here are the pictures. That little face is so adorable and sweet. Notice the boo-boo on her chin and neck. This was a few days after her trip to the ER for her chin.

"Zoo Keeper"

Look at that grin! She's a big stinker but luckily she's really cute! ha ha

She's recieving her Bible and diploma in this picture.

She always tries to give everyone bunny ears in pictures.

Lyla's 5th Birthday Party

This year I decided to have a preschool friends party for Lyla. We'd been to several parties for friends and I figured I shouldn't let my desire for less work get in the way of my little girl having a party like her friends. So, I went the (seemingly) easy route. My plan was to have the preschool class go to the park after preschool one day, play, and eat cake and ice cream. That was it. Easy, right? Well, I also decided to make the cake myself b/c I really do try to spend as little as possible (really, Eric!). But the cake design Lyla liked came from familyfun.com. It looked easy enough. You just use different candies to make the picture. Our theme was monkey this year. Mainly because Lyla is a big monkey. Anyway, the cake took much longer to prepare than I thought it would because all the candy had to be squeezed, rolled, and manipulated into the shapes that I needed. Eric helped, thank goodness, but my hands were very sticky after a very long time of squeezing tootsie rolls and starbursts. Lyla liked it though.

I took everything for the party with me to preschool that morning. We went straight to the park after school. There is a large picnic area at the park that was completely empty so I set up in there. As soon as I had all of the kids come sit down for cake, a parks department worker drove up and said I had to move because he needed to clean the pavilion for a group coming at 5:30pm that day. It was 3pm at the time. He said he couldn't wait even 10 minutes for them to eat cake because he had to get back to his office to clock out before 4:30pm. Huh? You can't wait 10 minutes? Really? He was not very nice about it either. I was completely embarrassed as all of the moms stood and watched me get in trouble with the mean parks dude. So, he made me move all 20 kids to a sidewalk to eat cake! They had to sit on the sidewalk and hold their plates in their lap. I was so flustered I forgot to give out the ice cream. Then I forgot to sing happy birthday to Lyla before handing out the cake, which didn't have candles either!!! Mother of the Year, I know!

Anyway, we also had a monkey pinata, which didn't have enough candy in it either. But, at the end of the day, the kids didn't care about any of the frustrating mishaps of the party. One mom later told me that her son liked Lyla's party over a Pump It Up party! I guess that means it was a success in the eyes of a bunch of 5 year olds! That's what matters, even though I was completely stressed, embarrassed and frustrated by the whole thing. That stinkin' parks dude made me so mad. My heart is racing just typing the story.

When we finally got home we let Lyla open her presents. She was very excited!!! She received a lot of great presents! Thank you to all of her friends for coming. She had a great time!

Here are the pictures. The first picture is of the picnic table we were GOING to eat on before the mean dude came along. Notice how terribly dirty (sarcasm here) the pavilion is!!! After he made us leave he used a leaf blower to blow out the INVISIBLE leaves on the ground and then left! He seriously "cleaned" for about 5 minutes. Here is the monkey cake I made.

One of the kids' big sisters were kind enough to push the kids on this big swing for a long time. They were so cute. They were yelling and raising their arms like they were on a roller coaster! I love their faces...pure joy! (you can click on the pictures individually to see them bigger)

Look how far back Lyla was swinging that bat! That girl goes full force!

After every kid wacked the pinata 3 times I had to rip open the pinata and dump the candy.

At home opening presents. Yes, she's in her pajamas and it's about 4:00pm.

These were walkie talkies. She was very excited about them. Her and Grace have had fun playing with these!