Learning to Ride a Two-Wheeler!

Declan finally let Jason take the training wheels off of his little bike this weekend! In the past, he has always run in the house when Jason would even talk about taking them off. He was so excited and did really well but he constantly was looking at me because he knew I was taking pictures. Weird to think that by next summer the girls will be in the bike trailer and Declan will be riding beside us!! I guess that also means we probably won't be doing any more 26 mile rides to Little Man's Ice Cream anytime soon!

**Yes, he may look like a giant on that little bike and he does have a bigger one but he is more comfortable on the small one so we thought it might be a better learning bike!**

Kindergarten Graduation

We made it through our first official school year! Declan graduated from Kindergarten on Wednesday May 18th. The whole "after-party" that had been planned got crashed by a couple of tornado warnings and they all spent most of their time taking cover! We had a few ups and downs adjusting to school this last year but Declan is so excited for first grade!

Delaney is 3!

Seriously? I can't believe that my baby girl is 3! I had put so much focus on California that Delaney's birthday really snuck up on us! It was a pretty low key birthday! We took Declan and Delaney swimming at the APEX center on Saturday and then went over to my Mom's for the May birthday family dinner. Then on Sunday, her official day she had breakfast in bed, opened presents, went to church then had Jason's parents over for dinner, cake and ice cream. We also started a new tradition this year. She had 3 balloons each with a dollar in them that she got to pop at the end of the day. It was a hit!

Here are some things I don't want to forget about her at this age:

- She has been potty trained for about 6 months now, she was ready way before I was and has hardly ever had any accidents.

- She recently stopped calling her brother Deh-Deh and actually pronounces his name the right way now. ( I was a little sad about this one!)

- She loves her clothes and changes them at least 4 times a day, everyday! Her absolute favorite is her pajamas.

- She loves to help do things around the house. One day a friend was watching her and she kept following her around asking what she could help clean.

- She loves to pretend to be a grown-up. It is not very often that she is without keys, a phone, money, a baby doll or a purse. She talks a lot about recipes when she is playing.

- She calls all her babies Kyrie because of her little friend named Kyrie.

- She has no filter and tells whoever she wants to if she doesn't like what they are wearing. Luckily for me, she is too shy to talk to most strangers!

- She has quite a temper! Which may be why she gets away with quite a lot...

- She loves to be outside.

- She loves the swings at the park. She is fearless and likes to swing really high- higher than I would like her to and for a long time!

- She is in gymnastics and loves it. She has learned so much and is always pretending to be Ms. Connie, the teacher.

- She loves her brother although they have been fighting all the time! The one exception is in the morning when they play really well and quietly while we sleep for a little longer, how we trained them to do that I have no idea!

- She is so excited for preschool in the fall. She knows after the baby is born she has that to look forward to!

- She rarely takes naps anymore. If she does bedtime is a battle.

- She is still such a cuddle bug and a sweetheart.

Delaney definitely was meant for our family. Like my mom says, she thinks that this is her world and we are all just here to live in it! I can't believe that she is getting so big and I love seeing her personality develop. I love my little girl!

Soccer

Declan is playing on a soccer team for the first time! His team is the Blue Thunder. His coach, Coach Clay is great with all of the kids and Declan has learned a few new skills! I guess only time will tell if he follows in his Daddy's footsteps and soccer becomes his favorite sport!

Second Creek Field Day

Declan's first field day. Luckily field day fell on the one good weather day sandwiched in between all the chilly and rainy days! Declan had fun doing the race and some pirate rubber duck matching but it sure seemed like they spent a lot of time like this......

waiting around and digging in the sand!

But nevertheless his fan club was there to watch it all!

California, The Last Part

We had an amazing vacation! We also celebrated Jason's 31st birthday and Mothers Day in California. We had fun spending time with family and hanging out at the beach. We played catch and smashball a lot! We enjoyed some yummy food including some local favorites like HoDad's burger joint and some places we never go to like Golden Spoon and PF Changs. We walked on the beach and saw some interesting people...like the one man who would roller blade along the boardwalk in slow motion to music or the pigeon man who comes every morning to feed the pigeons 20 lbs of birdseed! We saw tons of dolphins swimming near the shore! We watched a few sunsets over the ocean from our patio and fell asleep to the sound of the waves every night! No wonder I had such a hard time adjusting back to normal life!!!

California, Part 3

Sea World!

Sesame Street Bay of Play

After the Shamu Show.

After such success at Disneyland Declan had to ride this ride after he saw it! While the ride at Disney was fun and you got a splash here and there this one was quite opposite, buckets of water were dumped!! Declan still liked it but it was much more fun at Disney!

The day we went to SeaWorld the weather was a little bit cooler and I think everyone was a little tired and the adults all had some sort of sunburn! I felt disappointed by the whole thing which only left me feeling guilty for the money that my parents spent to take all of us there! The shows seemed more geared towards the adults and it seemed like we spent too much time in our seats waiting for the shows to start! I had a little breakdown at lunch. It started over the crappy food choices (emotional much?) but mostly I just was sad to feel so let down by something I remembered as so amazing! I also think that having been to Disneyland first that I was expecting so much more! Luckily the kids still had a good time!

California, Part 2- Disneyland!

My favorite part of our trip was probably the day that we took our kids to Disney! It was so fun to watch them and it really is an amazing place! Here is the whole crew....my parents, my sister and brother in law included!

Declan really liked this horse drawn fire carriage on Main Street!

Her is Delaney's first successful character meet-and-greet in her life! She has always been terrified of things like the Chick-fil-A cow but she actually liked all of the characters at Disneyland!

One thing that my kids were looking forward to was driving their own cars at Autopia! I may have hyped it up quite a bit because I remember it being one of my favorite things when I was little! Delaney couldn't see over the steering wheel and neither of the kids liked the unavoidable jerking when you didn't stay perfectly on the track but overall they still enjoyed it!

At this point, it was 93° and Declan was already getting restless with some of the lines so here he is riding on top of Gramps' shoulders waiting to ride the Nemo submarine!

I would say that Delaney's favorite ride was the It's a Small World Ride. She loved watching all of the dolls dancing and was smiling ear to ear the whole time. (On the contrary, her least favorite ride as well as Declan's was Pirates of the Caribbean. There is no picture because Jason and I were both using both of our hands to cover ears and eyes for each of the kids the entire time!)

When I see this picture (above) I think of what happened right after we left this spot. My Mom had bought Declan a Dreyers Fruit Bar and I put it in my mouth before I gave it to him and it froze to my tongue and lower lip instantly! I did my best to fight the panic as my Dad poured two water bottles over my face trying to get it unstuck. Finally I was able to PULL it off after the second full water bottle! I can't imagine what would have happened if I had given it to Declan, he probably would have hurt himself really badly when he panicked to get it off! It was so bizarre!

We had to spend some time in Toon Town even though our kids probably had no idea what it is all about! Declan liked exploring more but Delaney was a little freaked out by all the loud noises that came from everywhere on the buildings!

Of course, we also stopped by Minnie's house to say hi.

And Mickey's house too!

And now, for Delaney's absolute favorite part of the day- meeting the princesses! Also another shocking moment....Delaney just let go of Jason's hand and walked right over to them! The 3 that were there at the time were Tiana, Belle and Ariel but Delaney has always been partial to Belle! (And that employee that plays Belle should get paid well because she was really good at her job!)

And now for the most successful part of the trip for Declan! It was late, we had been there for almost 11 hours by now and we still wanted to see the World of Color show, the kids had to be pretty worn out by now. We got into California Adventure right before they closed the park and saw this rapids ride that Declan wanted to go on with my sister and there was no wait. So everyone except me and shorty Delaney went and rode it and Declan absolutely LOVED it! They got off and got right back in line to do it again! The day could not have ended better!