Report Cards, books, guitars, cowgirls and pumpkins!!

Here is last week in a nut shell :)

I want to start with saying what a GREAT job I think Mikayla is doing. Of course her studies are very important, really, that's what we're paying for as far as her education goes, but it is equally important to me that Mikayla is doing well socially and knows what is appropriate and not appropriate and to gain her self confidence for the trials ahead in life.


We got her report card the other day and she is doing FANTASTIC with her school work. She got a lot of excellents and everything else was an S for satisfactory, since the beginning of school she's had only 7 to 8 mistakes on any/all of her work - which I don't think is a lot. So I'm very very very proud of her!! She even received a ribbon for Excellent conduct!!!

Every Wednesday when my dad comes over (or we go to his house) for dinner, he will sit and read a book with Mikayla. Such special times and such good memories!! I know they both love it as much as we do. (It's funny how even during "their" story time, Michael and I both sure are listening to see what happens).

Mikayla insisted that they were singing at the assembly on Friday - so I had to trust her and believe that it really was ok for her to bring her guitar to school to play during their song. They were singing "Old McDonald had a Rock Band".... and each eee i eeee i ohhhh was a different instrument. So here's our little musician on her way to school. I did send a quick note to her teacher explaining why she brought her guitar (the story how I knew it) and low and behold..... Mikayla was right, she just took it a day early.

(I love the goofy face pictures)

She LOVES to dress up....I mean seriously.... a different character/person every single day. Here's one of my favorites (well they all are, so this was my favorite of the day). Our little cowgirl. Today alone for school, she dressed up as a clown (for Halloween- the whole school is going to be dressed up as clown), she brought her pink Cinderella outfit for dance class, and then tonight she'll be a different princess for Trick or Treating....) (does this mean she is going through an identity crises?).

Pumpkin time!!! What is fall without a pumpkin carving. This is the first year she would go in the pumpkin - at first she wanted gloves but I said...no.... it's all hands this year!!! We had so much fun!!!! I love doing things like this with her.

The finished product. She LOVES her pumpkin...I'm sure it will have to be rotting before she'll let me get rid of it.... ;)

Fun kid food!

We started out with some hot dogs that we cut into 1 inch pieces. Then we added spaghetti noodles right in the middle of them.

I went ahead and made enough for dinner and then again for her to take for lunch the next day.

Of course she was in the action too!

Cook them just like this.

Here is the end result. Served with broccoli and dip...YUM ;) Mikayla calls them Hot Diggity Dogs!

She really liked them! I love finding fun stuff - this came from Pinterest...awesome site for fresh ideas!!!

Weekend fun

We have been working HARD with our projects around the house and elsewhere ;) so on Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party...I didn't get any good pictures these are cell phone pictures (I'm 100% certain my camera is wondering what on earth is going on, it might even be collecting dust at this point)

The dad that came.... he found his own project to do, break out the shimmy and a bottle of car wax and proceed to wax the car while the kids play... hee hee

I found a product called "spin pin" I had never seen them before but I had a hard time actually keeping her hair in a bun (and she didn't like all the bobby pins necessary to make it happen) but WOW these are the greatest invention ever...2 spin pins and viola - bun that stays in ALL day!!!

Here are a few Mikayla room updates...... I have one (ish) big project to do (before I get to the smaller ones) and I think her (my) dream room is all set! I will show pictures again when it's done (and if you're going to be picky there are technically seven more projects for me to do in there...) ;)

Plenty of friends have moved in.

Loving the lanterns, almost like the Tangled ones :)

Swinging doll :) She is soooo pretty in real!

Here is acanvas art work project I did. I printed the images, mounted to canvas with mod podge (love that stuff) round one of background didn't work out, so this is round two, I took the wall color, painted around the edges of the canvas, and then inked it. Also added some bling on the pictures.

Here she is setting up one of her tea parties (I can't even say how many she's had up there already). She loves it in her new room. She has started playing dress up in my clothes and setting out a picnic tea party for all her new friends :)

I'm not kidding when I say I want to live in that room!!! :)

Tired!!!

Well I don't have a seriously exciting update this week, I missed a fabulous photo opportunity that hopefully will re-materialize one day :)

Here's little Miss.... I guess she was tired from working so hard on her coloring book page, she all but passed out mid color...

(several things to point out - 1st one being that I took off the back of her booster seat...YIKES she's really growing up on me and 2nd one being her cowgirl boots! she loves them!!! every girl needs pink boots for sure!!!)

The beginnings of a remodel....

Here is the room when we started (except we had started clearing some stuff out already before I remembered to take pictures).







Little miss took the opportunity for a tea party with Betsy using a picnic basket we got for our wedding LOL.

Let the painting party begin - the dogs were in a constant state of observing and fear that they were being left behind or something - they were constantly underfoot .... they were exhausted by the end of the weekend! LOL

It's starting to come together. Mikayla was organizing/playing as we moved in.

Getting closer......

Here's the closet :) I love the big closets we have, it holds all the clutter! Even the market fits in there!

I highly recommend the stuffed animal chain if you have a lot of animals or "parts"... they have a place to hang where they can be seen and up off the floor and out of a bin.

here are my clearance Target bins :)

Her little library..

She calls her porcelain dolls her "important" dolls, here are some of them. These were all my sisters dolls that she had collected and I have some more to add to Mikaylas stash of dolls too. :)

Here's her old room.... :( I'm sad to take her nursery apart

I wasn't going to show this...but seriously - why does cleaning up/painting make such a mess!!!! The huge mess in this room is driving me seriously insane but it doesn't really make sense to move it back into the room it will go in, just to move it out again to paint...just to move it back in again...ya know!

I then took this little table.....

and revamped it to look like this..... (fun bedside table, right?)

Here we are so far... there are still some fun things to do in there, I have a shelf to hang, pictures to make, flowers to put back up, a ballet bar to add in... and don't forget some tea sets :) when it's all done, I'll take some new pictures.

oh....and the final verdict.... Mikayla LOVE LOVE LOVES her new room.... I do too, I can't wait to get it done and make it a little girls dream come true :)

Little Flower Girls Club

What fun we had at our little club meeting. This is a mother/daughter club at church where we (the kids) craft/learn/sing and there is a list of qualifications to meet each month to earn "petals" for their flower patches. We went to our first meeting on Friday and had a blast. There are about 25 little girls (and their mom's) participating.

Here she is all ready to get going on her first assignment.

She worked very hard. The virtue for this month is Friendliness :) here she is making a special card for someone who means a lot to her.

Here they're singing and learning the moves to the song.

It really was fun. I'm looking forward to getting to know the ladies and their beautiful daughters :)

Howdy Pardner!

Good Morning (says our little cow girl). She has decided that since it's fall now...it's cool outside so she needs to wear her jeans/boots.... (usually a sweater/sweatshirt too) I guess that's what happens when you get used to 100+ degree weather and drop into the 80s.... LOL

We did a small tour and ended up going here for dinner.....

Isn't that hysterical - we weren't going to go in but then there were soooo many people that we decided to give it a try and boy are we glad we did. It was fantastic!! We will go back for sure.

Sunday we had our friend come over to play for awhile (all the guys went to the football game)!!

Here are the two girls, what fun they had!!! I hope D had fun too becuase I know that M did.

Here was snack time and a movie ;) they played and played and played. It was sooo great and you wouldn't believe the amount of work I got done too. My "helper" was otherwise occupied so I was able to get some much needed jobs done :)

They loved the idea of being twins....so naturally they got to have matching shirts...and seriously - I couldn't help myself!!! Little girls are a lot of fun!!

Next weekend - home remodel (well just painting but doesn't remodel sound awesome!) ;) Have a great week!