Father Daughter Dance – My Favorite Picture of Holly
I absolutely love this picture I took of Holly from the night of the Father Daughter Dance. She was more than happy to pose for me and this one was my favorite. I love her profile and how grown up she looks.
She got this dress for her birthday back in November from Nana. When she opened it she immediately said that was the dress she wanted to wear to the Father Daughter Dance and she never changed her mind about it. I am so glad she decided to wear this one because it was so ‘her’ and looked awesome on her.
I am also glad she wanted to wear her hair up again because as much as I love her hair, I think it looks beautiful off her face because her face is so pretty. Yes she is my daughter and I’m supposed to think she’s pretty but seriously look at this girl. She is beautiful!
More Father Daughter Dance pictures to come!
by Karen on May 6, 2013
in Holly
Holly’s First Communion
Holly made her first communion this weekend and she looked absolutely beautiful. She told me after she got dressed that she felt like she was getting married. After her saying that I couldn’t keep that thought out of my head and when we were in church I thought of it and had even more tears in my eyes. Before we know it, we’ll be back there with her in a white dress again.
But the ceremony was beautiful and I love the new church we belong too. Holly also did a little reading and she did so awesome. We were so proud of her and it was a beautiful day!
It’s amazing how fast she is growing up!! I seriously feel like she was just born, or rather yet we were impatiently awaiting her arrival. I was so excited to become a mom and I couldn’t wait to see what she looked like. I would think about what she would be like as she grew up and now I see her growing so fast before my eyes and I love the girl she’s grown into.
Yes she still does challenge me at times, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Allison has the first of many birthday celebrations today. Since it was school vacation this week, I figured it was the perfect time for her to have a party with some of her Kindergarten friends. Since I have a boot on my foot and getting around is a big hassle, I convinced here to have the party somewhere else so mommy didn’t have to do all the work.
We agreed with AC Moore for an Arts & Crafts party as long as she could do something with Zebra Print. She was thrilled with the idea and couldn’t wait for the day to come.
They did such a great job at AC Moore with the kids and I was very impressed with the party. The kids decorated boxes with Zebra Print Duct Tape and they loved it. The duck tape is great to work with except the moms had to ripe it apart, the kids couldn’t.
Cute right?
They loved it and after they used the duct tape, they decorated it with jewels and stickers and used markers too.
I decided cupcakes would be better than a cake so there was no cutting involved so I asked my local grocery store to make me chocolate and vanilla cup cakes with just white frosting. I then bought some black icing and made some zig zag lines on them to represent zebra strips. She loved how they turned out as did I!
I used Zebra print wrapping paper to put labels on the little water bottles and we made Zebra food packets for the kids to take home, which were basically filled with assorted candy. THEY LOVED THAT. This was an idea from my very talented friend Kim and it was super easy to put together and we also used the Zebra print wrapping paper for the labels.
I picked up some Pink and Zebra Print plates and napkins at Target along with a Pink Bin to put the water bottles in. I would have grabbed a Zebra Print Table cloth but the store told me they had birthday party ones so we just used those.
The party was a big hit and everything looked great!
Allison wants to learn everything Holly learns. When Holly was learning to do math in Kindergarten, Allison learned to do math. When Holly was learning to count by 5′s and 10′s. Allison learned. Allison then figured out how to count by 2′s just by the logic that it was every other number, no one taught her.
Allison is smart, and hopefully will continue to enjoy learning new things as she gets older and won’t push school work aside for something else. Holly is in 2nd grade now and she is learning to write cursive and is loving it. Holly has very neat printing and her cursive is looking to be neat as well. She’s still working on it.
Allison, of course, wants to learn cursive because Holly is. So Holly showed her how to write her name in cursive….
That is Allison’s cursive writing in Kindergarten. There are some kids that can’t even print their name, but my kids and print and write it in cursive.
Where did my baby go??
by Karen on April 1, 2013
in Karen
This is no April Fools joke…..
Sometime in January I did something to my left foot. Not sure what I did or when I did it, but I believe it happened in January. It’s been hurting since then but I just ignored it. Best way to fix it right? Then last month when I went to Texas for a conference, it got worse the say I was traveling and I could hardly walk all weekend while there. I knew I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I made an appointment for the following week with my doctor from the hotel room in Texas, that is how bad it hurt.
A week later I found out that I have a stress fracture and the only thing to help it heal is time. Oh and a big, heavy, uncomfortable, wobbly BLACK BOOT.
Cute, right?
It’s hard to walk in….
it’s really heavy…
it was digging into my leg before Steve fixed it…
it’s uncomfortable…
it makes me uneven so my hips will probably be out-of-place after this is over…
it’s really heavy…..
did I mention it’s very heavy…..
But it could be worse.
So this is my new left foot shoe for the next 6 weeks. I’ve never wished time away this fast before.
We spend Easter at my inlaws but the Easter Bunny always finds us there. One year he left us seeds to grow lolipops and he knew we’d be there so he left them there.
Once again he left them some fun baskets only this year they weren’t as big as normal because the Easter Bunny hurt it’s foot and couldn’t hop along as well to gather more stuff for the baskets. But he did leave chocolate balls all over the fireplace and the girls LOVED That. We thought maybe they were Easter Bunny droppings but thankfully they turned out to be delicious chocolate eggs. WHEW!
I didn’t get a picture of the girls dressed up but did manange to snap a few pictures of them while opening their Easter Baskets…
Both shots came out blurry but you can still see how big they are getting! Love these girls.
We had a great Easter and they are still working on their candy. After a few days they lost interest so the rest of it may get sent to work with daddy soon. I don’t want to eat it all myself.
I let Allison dress herself. She wants to so I’d rather she become independent than always rely on me. That said, after Kindergarten we may have to work on her outfits more because some days the things she picks out wont fly in the upper grades.
Here was today’s outfit…
My favorite part is the blue Ariel socks with the black buckled shoes that have the worn out toes because she wears them every.single.day. And lets talk about the skirt – that is a Halloween dress up skirt but she likes to wear it as an everyday skirt. And the T-Shirt just cracks me up. Notice what it says on the shirt “I Like Being Me”. It’s PERFECT for her because she really is her own person. But I have to give the girl credit. She matched the blue socks to the blue writing on the T-Shirt.
Just another day in Kindergarten and I think she looks GREAT!
We aren’t Irish and don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day but somehow this Leprechaun still managed to sneak into our house and hang himself up on the wall…..
Just another one of Allison’s FUN Kindergarten Art’s & Crafts projects. I think she did a pretty good job!
We got a new toilet this weekend and the girls got a new toy… all in one. NO They aren’t playing in the toilet but they ARE playing in the box that the toilet came in.
Seriously these kids have enough toys to label them spoiled but yet they play with things that aren’t toys. But when they saw this big box, they knew it could be turned into something fun…………………. like a Spaceship!
They got their markers out and began decorating and writing on their Spaceship and as you can see from the picture above it’s called “SPACESHIP STAR”. That is Holly’s handwriting!
One the ship was complete it then became a hang out for the and several of their stuff animal friends and a place they could hang together and play on their iPods. It was cute how they both fit in there.
I love their imagination!
And yes, we love our new toilet.
Our friends Bob and Melissa have added to their family over the past year. They welcomed a Foster Daughter into their home that happens to be the same age as Holly and Melissa delivered baby Lauren in June to make them a family of 4!
Over the Christmas break they drove up from PA to visit for a few days with us. This was the second time we met the girls and Holly and Allison were very excited to have Trinity over to play with their toys and have a sleep over.
The girls got along great and became fast friends.
It snowed while they were visiting so the kids had fun playing in the snow together too. It was a short but nice visit with the Laffen family and we look forward to seeing them all again hopefully soon!
