And So It Begins....

That time of year is now finally, although quickly, upon us.  Summer break.  Weather is finally, almost daily, warm.  Thunderstorms have started.  And the all the kids are with me all day long!  


Konner was the first one done with school, almost a whole 2 weeks before his sister was.  On his last day of school, it was bitter sweet.  This was the school that his sister went to for two years and now he had been there for one.  But this was his last year at this preschool, so it was a little sad to see it end.  We dropped him off in the morning, just like it was a normal day, only this time, we dropped him off at the park.  We were to come and pick him up a little early that day, as we were supposed to join them for a final day lunch at the park.  Greg picked up McDonald's for the boys and we arrived to bring him lunch.  We had a great time!  Food was eaten, toys unwrapped, gifts given to his teachers, and good-bye hugs for everyone.  He was a little sad to see his teachers and friends go, but eager for what summer had in store for him!

Natalli was the next one out....hers was a little more upsetting than Konner's.  After all, it was her "graduation" from Kindergarten!  She doesn't seem to be old enough to be done with her Kindergarten year of school already.  And it's even more terrifying to think that after this summer break is over, I will have a 1st grader on my hands.  Really, 1st grade already?!  I'm not sure if I'm ready for that!  The day was a little bitter sweet for Natalli as well, seeing as though she had to say good-bye to her Kindergarten teachers and all of the great friends that she's made throughout the year, not knowing if any of them will be in her class again this fall.  She's already told me how much she misses all of her teachers and friends, and I feel sorry for her.  But I know she'll see them again, probably sooner than she thinks!

She just HAD to dress-up for her last day!

We dropped her off at normal time on her last day of Kindergarten.  We returned from 10-12 for a short Kindergarten program, 

Kindergarten graduation 

Getting her diploma....

Natalli and her teacher, Mrs. Johnson, the BEST kindergarten teacher ever!

and lunch with her on the playground out back.

After that, she continued on her day as normal, waiting for me to pick her up at normal time.  Pick-up time was a little more interesting than normal that day.  Right before pick-up time our weather decided to take a turn for the worse, and we were pounded with hurricane strength winds and pounding rain.  Needless to say, we were both soaked and I need a new umbrella.


Now that school for everyone is officially done for the summer, we are excited for what summer has in store for us.  Play dates, trips to the zoo, trips to the Science Center when it's too hot to be outside, pool time, staying up late, lounging in our pajamas, the return of my bestie and her kids who moved to Arizona last year! They'll be here almost a month.....I'm so freakin' excited I can't even stand it!  And Konner is so excited to see his bestie Caden; he has been missing that boy like it's no one's business!  


And we've already got the playing outside and the pool time down pat!

Natalli and her cousin Sadie

Natalli and Sadie got matching dance outfits....Thanks Grandma!

The only bad thing about summer break is the never-ending tantrums, since they are with each other 24/7 for the next 2 and a half months!  During the school year, when they are away from each other for hours at a time, they love each other to pieces!  When they are with each other all hours of the day, it's another story.  I've never seen so much fighting and bickering before.  Ugh!


This summer will either go by way too quickly, and fall will come wishing that I had one more day of summer break with the kids.  Or it will go by all too slow, with me pulling out my hair along the way, wishing the kids could just "start school already."  Only time will tell.... 

Spring And Eggs

Spring, my favorite time of the year.  Snow is gone until next fall, the temperature starts getting warmer, the sun stays out longer, trees and flowers begin to bloom, and the air smells....fresh.  Spring is a busy time of the year for us.  Tons of birthdays, end of the school year, dance recitals, and Easter.  And one of my favorite parts of Easter, is the annual dying of the Easter eggs.  Nothing is better than three small children, hard-boiled eggs and permanent egg dye.  Egg dying was done at Grandma Besch's house, as it usual is done.  And nothing says dying eggs better than garbage bag smocks!  

Unfortunately, Heath is still a little too young to dye eggs.  He gave it a good attempt, but he got quite bored, quite quickly.  He wasn't patient enough to actually wait and let the eggs sit in the dye.  He was more interested in putting the eggs back in the carton.  So I ended up dying most of his eggs for him.  Go figure.  

Natalli and Konner on the other hand had an excellent time making their eggs match the colors of the rainbow.  Although Konner's rainbow looked more like a yellow rainbow.  That being his favorite color, that's the only color he wanted to dye his eggs.  Except for 2, which we convinced him to dye blue instead.  

Konner is the type of kid that usually doesn't like to get dirty.  He hates playing in the dirt, he hates arts and crafts at school, he hates finger painting, but somehow, when it comes to Easter eggs, all of that goes out the window.  Because he had no problem holding his eggs as he was sponge-painting them.  Covering his little hands in bright yellow as he rolls the egg in his hand, making sure he covers every square inch.  ....At least it was yellow, could have been worse....like blue!  :-)

And this year egg dying went off without a hitch.  There were no melt-downs, no freaking out, no arguing over the number of eggs, no spilling of dye, and no permanently dying of the clothes.  I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that my kids are getting older, whether I like it or not, they are growing up.  And while I miss having a small baby around the house, it's also nice to have little kids who are a little more independent, who can do free-thinking for themselves, and who can handle small tasks/responsibilities by themselves.  It's fun to see the amazement in their eyes when they accomplish something by themselves, they were so proud of their pretty eggs!

Don't be fooled, he only did one egg!

And the best part of egg dying, is being able to eat all of the hard-boiled eggs we decorated.  Although with three kids, that's a lot of eggs when they each color a dozen!  And of course, we have to watch out for the fights of whose eggs get eaten first and dealing with the sentimental aspect of them not wanting to get rid of their pretty eggs they worked so hard on.  But after the last egg is eaten, we'll still have our memories and full tummies until next year when we get to do it all over again.  And maybe next year Heath will be a little more captivated by it all.....and maybe Konner will move outside the color yellow.  ....Maybe....

Feels a lot like Spring to me!

So, I don't want to jinx myself or anything, but all the signs that spring is fast approaching have been around us lately.  Snow is melting, geese are flying North and temperatures are steadily climbing.  In fact, two days ago we had almost record temps for a day in February!  It got to 71!  Woot woot!  So we took the opportunity to get out of our house and go play....we were tired of being all cooped up anyway!  So we played a little baseball....and I found out my middle son likes to bat as a lefty. 

We did some rollerskating....do you see the fabulous sun shining?  

And we pushed our favorite truck around the driveway....

And of course, no playing, inside or out, is quite complete without having a melt-down or two. This one happened about 2 minutes after she put all of her rollerskating gear on.  She decided that she didn't want to roller skate after all and I kindly suggested that since she took the time to put on all of her gear, she should, in fact, roller skate for a little bit.  That was not a good suggestion, because that caused the waterworks to start flowing and she preceded to throw off her gear.  I was just mean enough to capture it on film....

Kinda pathetic, right?

So since his sister wasn't going to use them, Konner decided to try some rollerskating for himself.  He had never roller skated before, so he spent most of the time holding my hand as I pushed him around.  He tried it long enough by himself for me to get a picture.  I'm loving the Princess skates....I think it's about time he maybe got some "boy" skates....good thing he has a birthday coming up!

Little tiny, wet footprints....gotta love 'em!

We spent the afternoon, until the sun was starting to set in the distance, running around the yard, drawing with sidewalk chalk and seeing who could run the fastest from our driveway to the driveway next door.  It was an absolutely fantabulous day!  I cannot wait until spring comes in full force!  I need more days like this one.  Where the kids don't fight because they are stuck inside the house all day long, where they can run around the cul-de-sac like free-spirited little children.  Where we can hear the birds chirping, feel the sun's warmth on our skin and hear the cows mooing across the highway.  Soon....very soon we will be able to do this every day.  For now, I'll take this day, cherish the pictures and the memories and keep them locked away in my back pocket to take out on one of those cold, chilly winter days when we are stuck inside watching the snow through the windows.  Spring cannot come soon enough!!

This picture says a thousand words doesn't it?!  LOVE it!  :-)

Single mommy for a week

This past week has been much like any other week.  Kids have school, we have dinner, play and go to bed.  But this week has been slightly different in the fact that one main person of our family has been missing.  Daddy.  I feel like a single mom most days, as I am the only one with the kids all day long, taking them to doctor appointments and to and from school.  I'm the one that gets called if someone gets sick at school and I'm the one to take them to extra curricular activities.  But always at night, after work, daddy comes home to have dinner, play and sleep, and it makes my single-mom syndrome disappear for the night.  And then comes this week, where there is no escaping the single-mom feeling as I am the one and only caretaker, morning, noon and night for an entire week.  


So in between going to school, we had dinner dates with grandparents, play dates with aunts and uncles and we tried to have fun.  We also had a good time just the four of us.  We made angel food cupcakes; for the first time I might add.  Go us!  I was, however, a little unprepared for baking, seeing as though the only cupcake liners I had were Christmas and Halloween...oh well!  

And while the house filled with the smell of sugar and the warm oven, we "pretended" to cook with mommy's kitchen supplies.

And whenever we are in the kitchen and there are chairs close to the counter, to Heath that is an invitation to climb onto the counters and plop a squat.

We could have left them plain angel food cupcakes, but where is the fun in that?!  I didn't have any frosting on hand, which actually worked out for the best since Konner can't eat it because of his inconvenient allergy, so Natalli and I made chocolate frosting from SCRATCH!

Yum!!

They were delicious!  And of course, like anything sweet and delectable in this house, they were all gone in less than 2 days!  

And now we are upon the weekend, and the last couple of days until daddy comes home.  I wanted to do something special with them, but was having a hard time thinking of something to do that didn't require leaving the house, seeing as though we are suddenly in the Arctic Circle!  And then my mind flashed to my friend's blog, my bestie who moved to Arizona.  At first a frown came upon my face, realizing how we are frozen inside our house, while she can go strolling at 7 in the morning and be perfectly warm.  But then my mind flashed to a recent photo of hers, her family outside and enjoying the sun, and while I wished the kids and I could enjoy the same splendors, it made me think: PICNIC!  So, I made a fort in the kitchen, using blankets and the kitchen table.

The kids were MORE than thrilled with the change in the dinner routine.  And I have to admit, it was pretty fun!

I have to say, tonight made my week so far.  We had a blast under our fort, and to my utter surprise, they actually ate their dinners!  We have a couple of days left without daddy, I wonder what kind of trouble we can get into?  I usually don't look forward to my single-mommy weeks when daddy is on vacation without us, they certainly are tiring!  But this week has been a blast!  Maybe we can convince daddy to go on vacation again sometime soon!  ;-)

I'm THAT crazy mom!

This morning we woke up to this:

It is the middle of January and so far this winter we have only had two snow storms.  The latter storm produced that; 8 inches of lovely, sparkling, fluffy white stuff.  In fact, so much lovely white stuff that we had a snow day off of school.  It was too dangerous to travel, with snow-packed roads, wind chills in the negative numbers and winds blowing snow at a constant 15 mph.  So what was a home bound mom and her three small children to do on said snow day?  That's right, go outside and play in the snow for the first time this winter.  It was COLD!  -2 degrees and wind whipping your face, making it numb.  So we dressed warm....

And we set outside to explore as only children can do.  We made snow angels....

We attempted to throw snowballs, even though the snow was too fluffy to make proper snowballs.  So we improvised and used already created snow chunks that the snow blower left behind....

And even though daddy had just snow blown that morning before he left for work, the wind had whipped the snow into giant drifts, that we preceded to get stuck in while trying to frolic....

And we attempted to stay warm....

And after we were done freezing our bottoms off and decided that we should get feeling back in our faces, we peeled off our wet snow gear, went inside and warmed ourselves with a hot cup of hot cocoa.

And what goes better with hot cocoa then mini Oreos?!  And of course dunking said Oreos in the said cocoa.

And some of us were so tuckered out that we didn't even make it through snack time, we decided to fall asleep right there at the table.

I may be a little crazy, I maybe should have my head examined, but we had a great time, despite the cold.  That's all I could have asked for on our first snow day.  And that made it all worth it in the end.  And that's what it's all about, right?