Party On!

For this post you are in for a treat. Most of the pictures were taken by Beth!

Grossie's 90th birthday party was held at a community center. It's in the community she used to live in so it was familiar to her.

She can not remember who most people are so we all wore name tags to help her.

Here is the birthday girl with her two sister-in-laws, Frances, in red, and Katie, in the habit. Katie is the twin sister of Dan's dad. She is 92!

Lots of family were there.

I got to spend some time with my super-photogenic, adorable, sweet grandbabies.

We ate Grossie's favorite food: Panda Express!

And there was birthday cake, of course!

Nails (we have no idea why Mia named him this), the pig, made the rounds.

There was even some serious teaching going on.

Grossie's five children, mostly the two sisters, gave a great party!

Day at the Races

We just got in from California today! It was a great trip. The main purpose was to celebrate Dan's mom's 90th, yes you heard that right, birthday. Her name is Clara, but all the grandchildren call her Grossie.

We arrived last Friday and met Dan's family at the race track for some family fun.

The girls were great, but started to get a little bored after a couple of hours. Our niece, Stephanie, read a book to Mia on her Kindle.

My sister-in-law Karen spent some one on one time with Anna.

We got to meet Michael's (our nephew) new girlfriend, Cookie. They look great together!

Our nephew, Sean, came all the way for New York City for the big birthday!

We didn't win any money on any race, but we still had fun.

The younger crowd all stayed after the races for a concert, but us older types went home.

Preschool

I hadn't planned on sending the girls to preschool. After all, we are homeschooling! But there are a few reasons they went to their first day of preschool today!

1. Anna can now only get speech therapy through the county if she goes to preschool. Once they are close to turning three, in-home speech therapy ends.

Here she is at her last therapy session at home with Miss Amy.

She is now going to private speech therapy also. Our medical insurance pays for part of it. We want to have as much early intervention as possible for her.

2. Anna likes to play alone or be with me about 2/3 of the time. Mia like to play with someone, anyone, 2/3 of the time. And usually the only someone available is Anna! You can probably connect the rest of the dots. Mia needs a little more social contact with kiddos. Most of the homeschooling social activities don't start until age 5. So when we learned that we could enroll Mia in the same 3&4 year old class as Anna, we signed her up!

I'm not going to deny that I will enjoy having almost three hours on Monday and Wednesday morning to get things done!

Next year, Mia will be in kindergarten. We still plan on having her attend school just six hours a week again in the district homeschool program where she will learn science, Spanish and make friends. She will be in this program all the way through 8th grade.

Super Immune Systems

So another playdate is canceled due to the friend having a fever. This happens a lot, but never from our side.

Mia has a super amazing immune system. She has had one 2-day cold and one 1-week cold with a lingering cough in the four years we have had her. It really is amazing. She still talks about that time she was sick and how much she didn't like it. Her friends are sick all the time, runny noses, fevers, you name it.

Then we got Anna. We thought she will be more normal in that department. She'll probably get a lot of ear infections as cleft kids are known to get. Nope. Two days of a runny nose and mild ear infection in 14 1/2 months. That's it.

We never have to cancel playdates, field trips or anything for illness.

My older kids were sick all the time. What is up?

Diet? I definitely know a lot more about nutrition than I used to. They eat a lot of fresh fruit, some vegetables and meat. I really try to limit sugar and so called "healthy whole grains". If I could get by with it, we would be sugar and grain free. But I ramble...

Stress? I'm definitely less stressed than I was back then. Money is not an issue as it was then. Time is not much of an issue. We are more relaxed and spend a lot of time at home. But they do see other kids regularly and are exposed to illness.

Cleaner air? I would give that some credence except that all their little friends are sick a lot and live in clean air.

So I guess it will just be a wonderful mystery that I will sit back and enjoy.

Showtime!

Here's a few videos from the dress rehearsal. You can see Mia's unique personality shine through!

Here

and here and here.

Here's a little munchkin before the real thing!

The final show was today. There was a lot of waiting around backstage watching ipads.

She had so much fun with all her buddies at the cast party!

Since they all live in the same community, we have already made two playdates!

There's talk of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory next year. Mmm, we'll have to wait and see.

We're Off to See the Wizard!

We're off to see the wizard! Tonight is the play! It has been a loooonnngggg week. There are two casts, a younger and an older. The younger still don't know all of their lines. They are on tomorrow. Mia has one line as a munchkin for both nights and she has it down. We'll have to see what she does tonight! Not sure if we will do this again next year. It has turned our lives upside down. It reminds me of when I thought my kids had to be in everything to be a good mother. Now, I thinks it's just perfectly fine to spend their time with us and an extra activity once in awhile.

I won't be taking pictures tonight as I'll be doing all the props. But I took pictures at the dress rehearsal. The room is darkened because we have special effects.

I will upload some videos from the dress rehearsal later.

A New Activity

Our schedule has been very different this week as Mia is going to be in a play! A neighbor has organized a children's production of The Wizard of Oz. Anna was going to participate too, but she has decided she doesn't like the rehearsals too much and prefers to hang on my leg! Mia will be a munchkin. She will sing, dance, and have one speaking line. I am in charge of the props and that's why we have glitter and paint all over the house!

Tonight we went to free day at the children's museum again. We hit all the things we missed last month, starting with the temporary water exhibit.

They got to write with water.

And play with the force of water.

And Holy Reinforcement!! I couldn't have planned a better learning experience. They got to use what they learned at Dam Day over the weekend to build a dam! Mia knew exactly what to do. She spent a lot of time building her dam.

Inside we visited the Vet Office. All the kids take this very seriously, jabbing fake needles into the pets and locking them into all sorts of cages.

Anna spent most of her time as the receptionist.

We played outside a bit.

They were giving out emergency kits tonight.

Mia was so excited about the kits. She must have asked four or five times on the way home, "Mom, pllleeaasse get in an accident so we can use the mergency kit." I looked at her in the rear view mirror to tell her once more that, "No, I wasn't going to get in an accident," and she was wearing the face mask on her head with the whistle in her mouth. "Why is that on your head?" I asked. "It's my mergency helmet." I thought about getting an accident just so I could see what she might do.