Adilyn Turns SEVEN!

7 years old. It's hard to believe that 7 years ago Adilyn was nothing more than a tiny little 8 pound cutie destined to change our lives forever. That first summer being a new mom was definitely a challenge in many ways, but here we are 7 years later and I can't imagine a different life for myself. Being a mom is still challenging, but in different ways. Adilyn is growing into such a wonderful girl, and I love seeing her grow and learn new things all the time.
She still has many of the same personality traits as she did when she was little. She gets mad or upset at the drop of a hat, out of nowhere sometimes. She is nervous in new situations. She has a hard time being brave. She loves helping. She likes to follow the rules. Although some things are the same, she has also changed a bit. She gets mad, but she is able to calm herself down pretty easily most of the time. Even though she is nervous, she still goes and does new things. When things scare her, she still tries them a few times, maybe a little apprehensively, but she tries.
She is usually a really good big sister, unless Kacy is just really getting on her nerves. She loves to read - books, signs, advertisements on tv, basically everything. She loves to dance and sing. She is a great swimmer, and she absolutely loves the water.

Here are the answers to her 7 year old questions:
What is your favorite color? Violet
Who is your favorite friend? Dove
Who do you think you will marry? Wyatt
What do you want to be when you grow up? A hair stylist
What is your favorite food? Fruit
What is your favorite show? "Jessie"
What do you like to do at home? Play with my sisters
What do you love about Kacy? She is nice, loving, and kind.
What do you love about Brooke? She doesn't scream as much as she used to.
What is your favorite animal? Cat
What are you good at? Reading
What do you want to do now that you are 7? Have more friends over to play

Happy birthday, sweet girl! I love you!

Celebrating the Beginning of Summer!

It was our 2nd annual "Kick off Summer with Swimming, Pizza, and Ice Cream Sundaes Party" with the Hrobars! Yes, I just made up that name. :) Everyone had a great time. The kids really play well with each other, which is so nice. The first thing they did when they got here...play school. For over an hour! Really, guys?!?! School is out for the summer, and you want to pretend you are back in school already? I didn't care, but I just thought it was pretty ironic. We had lunch, and they played in the pool for the rest of the afternoon, with a little break for ice cream. I thought we might need to watch a movie in the afternoon, but they stayed out there and played and played. It was a great way to begin our summer fun :)

Last Day of 1st Grade!

My little Adilyn is now officially a 2nd grader! She had a great year overall. There were definitely some bumps along the way, but she finished strong. There were times that she wouldn't do her work, any work, for no reason. I still don't know what that was all about. There were times when she didn't want to do her homework. We always eventually got it done.
There are so many years of education ahead of her, and I really want these beginning years to be positive ones. I feel like she enjoys school, even when she wasn't doing her work, she still seemed to enjoy going. So, even though things didn't always go the way that I would want them to go, at least it's not a struggle to get her to go.
She had lots of friends, but no "best friends". I think it's a good thing because she never had any friend drama, but I do hope that she will establish a group of girls that she will really become close with soon. She did get a couple girls' numbers to call to play with this summer, so we will see.
As far as academics goes, she ended up on the reading level of M. The goal for 1st graders is J/K, so I think that is just great! She got E's in every subject except handwriting, spelling, and capitalization/punctuation. She definitely struggles in everything that has to do with writing, so we will work on that this summer. It's her least favorite thing to do, so I'm sure that will be fun :)
I am so proud of her, and of the tiny human she is becoming. She is a very respectful, a kind friend, and an obedient student (most of the time). I think that she is so very amazing!

 They made sock fish because it was o"fish"ally summer!

Beginning of Summer "Sneaky" Fun

This is my blog post of "sneaky" fun because I always feel kind of bad and kind of guilty for doing fun things with Kacy and Brooke while Adilyn is sitting at school. I try not to do anything amazing, but I still feel a little bad! I guess that's the price you pay for being the oldest :)

 

Strawberry picking! I had a Groupon forever that I needed to use, so I asked Dana if she and Hudson wanted to go pick some berries with us. We had never been to this farm before, but when we got there, we were really surprised at how small it was. We found the office, and when we went inside, the lady told us that most of the strawberries were gone, but we could go see what we could find. It was slim pickins, but it was kind of fun to have to search for them. We went up and down each row, and we found some decent ones. After we picked all we could pick, we went shopping in the teeny tiny grocery store they had. We assumed that everything they had there was local and organic, only to find out that it was regular old Walmart-style fruit and veggies. That seemed pretty weird! Anyway, we had a good time and the kids didn't seem to care about the strawberry selection :)

 Making our own water gun at the Children's Museum

 Kacy's homemade windmill

 The windy room

 Brooke loved the scarves blowing around

 Grocery shopping!

 Working at the diner

 Children's Museum of Houston! Kelli and I can never find time to get together because our schedules are so different. Finally, when Kacy and Beau's preschool was out, we could finally meet up and do something! We decided to go to the Children's Museum. It was a lot of fun! I hadn't been there since Adilyn was about 2 and Kacy was a baby. There were lots of things that the kids (and us) couldn't figure out how to do, so that was really weird, but they didn't seem to care. We found things that they liked to do, and we let them make up what to do on other things. Both the girls loved the pretend play stuff - the grocery store and the diner. We also had a lot of fun making hot air balloons, although we had to try a couple different styles before we got one to work. It was a lot of fun, and I love getting to catch up with Kelli!

 Sliding!

 Ring around the rosie on the jumping pillow

 Our middles :)

 I attempted to take all three girls down this super twisty slide in a train. That was not the best idea!

Our littles! :)

Sonja and I wanted to do something before the big kids got out of school, so we decided to meet at a place called, Wonderwild. It's an indoor playground for kids. It's basically just a really big McDonald's type play area. Everyone had a great time, though. The place was very safe everywhere, so you didn't have to worry about where everyone was. Brooke and Hannah could do most everything on their own, except both of them were terrified of this big blow up alligator slide. I have to admit, the alligator was a little terrifying up there! It was great because the kids had so much fun that Sonja and I actually had a lot of time to just talk, which was my favorite part of the day!

Brooke's Debut Performance

This seriously cracks me up! Adilyn and Kacy love "Frozen", but I think Brooke is my biggest "Frozen" fan for sure. She has some drama in this performance...

Tiny Fairies?

I love the way Kacy thinks. The other morning she came downstairs, and she said, "Why am I always in a different spot in bed in the morning?" We talked about how people move around in their sleep, and how she is a bit of a crazy sleeper. She said, "Well, I always imagine tiny fairies coming in my room in the middle of the night and moving me around." Such a sweet little soul :)

Adilyn's 7th Birthday Party

Adilyn really wanted a "friend" party this year, so we looked and looked for a good (and reasonably-priced) place to have her party. I didn't really want to have people over to our house because they are still pretty young. Bowling was super expensive, they are too little for roller skating, Adilyn is convinced that the bounce house place is "germy", so we were running out of options. One day at the YMCA we noticed that they did birthdays, so Adilyn decided to do the "Sports Party". It took me a while to find out who to contact, and the whole thing seemed pretty disorganized. I told them that we wanted to play some volleyball-type games, and they seemed okay with it, but I still had a sneaking suspicion that something was going to go wrong. Well, I was right! I got there today, and nobody was there. There was a lifeguarding class in the room that I thought we were going to be in, and there was no host and nothing set up at all. I started getting a little nervous because it was only 15 minutes before the party was supposed to start. Luckily, the lifeguarding class was over, so I could start setting up in there. The kids played with some of their party favors, and I threw out a couple of balls. They entertained themselves for a while, but I was worried about how long it would last. A lady had called the guy in charge, and she said that he was on his way. He got there about 45 minutes after the party started, and he felt so bad! He should have felt bad, but I really didn't care. The kids had fun, and that is all that really mattered. He organized a couple games for them to play. One was really fun, the other, not so much. It was quickly time for cake and presents, so we went into the room and had our cute ice cream cake. It didn't taste as good as it looked, but cake and ice cream is still cake and ice cream :) Everyone played a little bit after cake, and then we headed out. All the kids had a great time, and they left tired and sweaty - always the sign of a great party. Hannah and Brooke got right in there and played with the big kids, and even the adults got to play. Adilyn said it was the "best party, ever", so I guess it was a success! We went and had dinner with our two favorites, the Griffins and the Hrobars, and then came home to watch a movie and play with all the new toys. It was great to see Adilyn playing with some of her special friends from school and some of our best family friends!