Jungle Beat

Micah's going to be helping me get some videos of this up on here but for now pictures will have to do. Alyssa was in a Musical at her school for all of second grade. She did fantastic!!! I'm so proud of her. They did a dress rehearsal for the school and she told me, "Mommy, I messed up." I said, "That's okay, what happened?" She said, "I was supposed to be mad and sad and scared when I was swallowed by the boa constricter but I smiled the whole time!" haha... my daughter is precious!

All of the second graders!

Alyssa standing by the poster announcing her Musical.

There she is in her Jungle Beat get up.
She was one of the smallest in her grade so she was 1 out of 5 that got a part being swallowed by a boa constricter.

After being swallowed. I have the whole video of this and like I said before if my husband will help me I will post it. It's ADORABLE!

Singing away!

There are 7 classes at the school and 23 kids in each class. THAT'S A LOT OF KIDS!!! They really did a great job!

Alyssa is 8

Alyssa had a birthday yesterday and is now 8 years old. She is so beautiful. I can't believe she is getting so big so fast. I have enjoyed every second of her life. Even the bad times because they have made her and me stronger. We had a party at the park. She only invited girls to her party because she didn't want any boys there. There were a few boys that came and one that was okayed. She was so worried that nobody was going to come but she really had a perfect turn out, at least for her mama! Not a LOT of kids but enough to satisfy her. Here are some pictures of the fun that we had throughout the day.

My three beautiful girls before the party started. Alyssa was so cute. She kept asking, "When are my guests going to arrive?" What 8 year old talks like that? I guess my daughter does! We got there an hour before the party was supposed to start so I would be ready before everybody got there. Well, that was a little much because it took me about a half hour to set up and the girls said they were done playing by then, so we had to sit around for 30 minutes. It was okay though, they got all hyped back up when the party started.
My beautiful birthday girl!

Her butterfly cake that Mommy made.

Following the leader... the oldest in this case is the leader. Normally Samara takes over the leader position but it was Syssa's birthday. We've been talking about how EVERYONE gets a turn to be the leader but Mara likes to be the boss. Gotta watch out for that one.

Alyssa normally likes her hair down but I told her since we were going to the park and since it was going to be really hot outside that she would have to have her hair up. She told me that she wanted pig tails in buns. This is how it turned out.

Building a sand hill.

One of the activities that we did, along with playing at the park, was to make necklaces and bracelets. This is Mara modeling her necklace.

Syssa modeling her necklace and bracelet.

I didn't get a picture of Nattie since she wanted to go play so bad.

I got a parachute a while ago when I taught at the Mother's Day Out at our church. I love it. I decided it would be a perfect activity for our birthday at the park. Here are all the kids playing with it.

Alyssa had so much fun, actually the one that had the most fun was probably Nattie. She was hilarious and did such a good job.

Lift it up and go under.

Blowing out the birthday candles. I didn't know whether or not they would light since the wind was blowing, not too bad, but enough to where it kept blowing out the candles. Thank you Meems for holding up the lid to the cake so that Alyssa had candles to blow out.

I didn't post any pictures of this but before blowing out the candles on the cake I had all the kids decorate their own ice cream cone cupcakes. No ice cream involved. You take an ice cream cone and put candies in it. They don't have to go up to the top. We put 10 skittles in each. Then you frost the top of a regular sized cupcake. Then, you flip it upside down and put it on the ice cream cone. Next you frost the other side of the regular sized cupcake and put a mini cupcake upside down on top of the regular sized one. Then you frost all around all of the cupcakes on the outside and the top. Then you can put sprinkles on it. We put melon rings on top, like the cherry on top. I told them not to eat them until after we sang happy birthday and the kids listened very well. We sang happy birthday and they dug right in. I got the idea off howdini.com if anyone is interested. That's where I got the idea for the butterfly cake too.

Nattie eating her ice cream cone minus the ice cream.

Syssa chowing down with one of her friends.

Mara and a few more people at the party eating their cake.

Meemo embroidered a shirt for Syssa and she LOVES it. It has a fairy on it and it says "Raindrops are like Fairy Whispers". It's so cute. Thank you Meems!!!

She got really good birthday gifts and lot of love! Thank you everyone who made this party a success. Especially Meems and Micah. Love you Alyssa so glad you have been entrusted to our family! I love having you with us and can't wait to see how you learn and grow this next year.

EASTER

I've been posting so much about my gardening, which is going on right now and has been on my mind a lot lately, that I almost forgot to blog about Easter. So here are the pictures. It was great!!! Meems and Old Grandpa are here and were here for Easter! Yeah! The girls loved it!

The three girls with their Easter buckets.
The three in their beautiful dresses.

Dying Easter eggs after church while Mommy cooks dinner.

We had roasted chicken, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and a bunny cake for dessert. It was really yummy!

Easter egg hunt. The girls love finding the Easter eggs. We hid them a little too well. Our kids aren't THAT big yet I've got to remember that.

Nattie finding an egg.

Mara running for an egg.

Syssa thinking about where an egg might be.

Starting the Easter egg hunt. They had so much fun!

I'm so happy that our Savior died on the cross for our sins but I'm so glad that He didn't stay in the grave but that He overcame that so we could live with Him and be more than conquerors through Christ!!! YEAH GOD!!! It's such an awesome thing knowing that we get to see those that have gone to be with Jesus before us. Thinking of Grandpa Al and the WONDERFUL things that he has done for so many people. I'm excited to be able to see Grandpa Al again someday!

The Girl's Flowers

We've been going to the Farmer's Markets lately, to buy good wholesome fresh foods, and lately there have been people selling vegetable plants as well as a ton of flowers. Every time we go the girls, especially Mara, and I usually have said no because I wanted to get my vegetable garden up and going. But today there were so many beautiful flowers and the girls kept asking so I decided that they could each get one that they would be able to plant and take care of themselves.

This plant was bought by accident. It's called Bee's Balm. It attracts humingbirds and butterflies, and bees (which I'm not too fond of). I love humingbirds and butterflies though and it's supposed to be a nice red flower that comes out of it so I decided I'd keep it. I was trying to by the chocolate mint; they were close together and I guess I just grabbed the wrong one.
This is Mara's flower it's called a Penta. It also attracts humingbirds and butterflies.

This is called rue. It also attracts butterflies. I hope I'm going to have a lot of humingbirds and butterflies in my yard. I LOVE them!

Alyssa's flower, the Zenia.

The flower that I picked out. It's called a Rock Rose.

Nattie's flower a Celosia.

The girls each got to pick out their own. They are all so different than I have seen. Not Petunia's or something else that is extremely common. I was so glad. I love all of them. Hopefully we can keep them going as well as our garden. I will update on my garden maybe tomorrow.

TREES!!!

With all the gardening that we were doing we decided that trees should be planted as well. We decided, of course, on getting two pear and two peach trees. We love fruit and we have a vegetable garden so the next thing was fruit. Micah did such a good job! He was so tired... I've plum worn him out lately! He loves it though I'm sure!

This is Micah hitting one of the stakes in so we could tie the tree to them so the wind wouldn't blow over. It gets a little windy here.
Here's a picture of all four trees in the yard. Well, 5 if you count the one that was already there. The trampoline is to the right. You can't see it in this picture though.

Pear tree number 1.

Pear tree number 2.

Peach tree number 1.

Peach tree number 2.

I'm praying great things come out of these trees! My husband did great with getting them in the ground, now I have to water it enough so it doesn't die.

More Gardening Pictures

I would've posted this earlier but I had the whole post ready to go and I hit Publish and it didn't go through. The page said hit the back button so I did and my post was gone! I went to edit posts since it's ALWAYS saved there. IT WASN'T. Anyways, at least I'm getting this posted now. This post is on my gardening that I've been keeping busy with. But first I decided to post a picture of my front yard.

Meems is on the right side of the picture letting the girls go down the driveway in the wagon. They have so much fun doing that. I'll post pictures later if I have time.

The green beans coming up, when they first started.

The green beans... these have been my favorite because I can SEE them growing the best!

Micah came home from work the other day with another garden box for me so I decided to go ahead and fill it up too. Here is my garden thus far.

This is the new box. I ended up moving that middle plant (squash) to the middle so it would have more room to grow. There's another picture of it towards the bottom of this post.

This is my purple tomato plant. The girls got a little carried away with the water the other day on the tomatoes in the pots so this one doesn't look too good. Hopefully it will turn around and do better.

This is the yellow pear tomato plant. It's got 5 little tomatoes on it. It's doing pretty well except that the leaves look kind of funny sometimes.

These are my green beans!!! They are getting so BIG! So excited about these... and Samara said last night that she likes green beans now... hopefully that's not just talk but that she's actually going to start eating them.

Oregano, Basil, and Parsley that the kids started growing.

Natalie has been a huge help with watering the garden, she loves it!

Carrots (I've been told that carrots, onions, and regular spinach are out of season so we'll see how they go. But vine spinach is okay.) You may have to click on the picture in order to see them. Same for the onions.

Onions

Peas

Green Beans coming up in my second garden box.

Bottom right, Elite Squash; Middle, Sweet Dumpling Squash; Top, Vine Spinach (I need a treillis for that!)

Baby Butter Lettuce

Red Bell Pepper

Green Bell Pepper