Day 180

Kate was so proud of herself, she gave Ivy a new hairdo today. She made two braids and then hooked them together at the back and gave her a coordinating barrette :)


I mentioned Clickin' Moms yesterday - yes, it's a pay site. I signed up a the very beginning and got 3 months for $5, since then the price has jumped - it's 6 months for $30 and a year for $50. I had forgotten how much it was, I better start hanging out there more! It's a really nice community full of great tips and tutorials, plus you can ask any question and not feel dumb since it really has members of all levels. I really like it! :)

Day 179

back home. yea. :(

My pic for the day - Kate shakin' it. (It's funny too, whenever I take a picture of her dancing I capture this "signature" move, it seems to be a bit of a hoedown thing, lol!) I am determined to figure out how to take decent indoor pics with my Speedlite, any tips anyone? These things are so complicated! I read a settings tip at Clickin' Moms, this was the result. I don't think it's half bad.

Days 177 & 178

We stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter, what a beautiful hotel, with gorgeous grounds and such a cool New Orleans feel. (actually a hot feel! LOL!) They had this awesome greeter that gave out green lucky coins to kids to wish on and then throw in the lobby fountain. Lucy LOVED this! She kept asking to go see the "Money Man". Here she is with him and then wishing with all her might!


Here the girls are, not happy at all to be going home. If you think they look sad, you should have seen us adults!! We were stomping our feet throwing one heck of a tantrum! It was such an amazing week, we could have stayed forever. :)

Day 176

(these photos aren't edited and it's sooo bugging me! I just wanted to get them posted!)

Incredible day!! Lots of princess stuff, I can't even tell you how happy this day was for all of us!
We started at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, where the girls got royal makeovers by "Fairy Godmothers in Training".

Here's Lucy closing her eyes for eye-shadow, they kept trying go get her to not squeeze her eyes so tight, it was funny! Check out her fingernails (she wanted them off as soon as we got outside, lol!)

Two girls working on them at a time! Now that's a Princess makeover! (check out the 40 lbs of hair gel...)

Presenting Princess Kate...

And Princess Lucy!

I really want to edit this one, I may repost it later... This is my photo today... it sums up the whole trip and makes me choke up! This trip really has been magical!

Day 175

The best part of the day for me was meeting Cinderella's step mother and step sisters Drizella and Anastasia. They were sooo hilarious! They were rude, snide, sarcastic and too much fun! Check out their great smiles!

Just a few other fun pics from the day:
Lucy checking out Minnie's Fridge,

The girls with Minnie and Mickey,

The girls are getting princess make-overs and having lunch with the princesses tomorrow!! We're all really excited about that, post some pics then!

Day 174

It was "stick around the hotel day" today. What a nice and much needed break that was! We spent some time at the pool, relaxed and headed to Fort Wilderness for the cute "Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue" dinner show. It was a lot of fun too.

Our hotel has the cutest gators doing fun stuff around the pool area. This guy tricks you with his umbrella and then sprays you with water.

Adding an extra one today too - the girls are just all so cute!

Magic Kingdom tomorrow! We are so excited! Hoping to have some really great pics to post then!

Days 172 & 173

Yippee!! We're in Disney World!! We've only been here since Sunday afternoon and already it feels as though we've done so much!

We decided to get a limo to take us to the hotel and back to the airport in Orlando, that way we didn't have to rush or worry about squeezing into a tight bus and wait while they dropped a million other people at their hotels first. We felt that we could splurge a bit, but wondered if we were going too far then they upgraded us last minute when the limo we had reserved was in a fender bender...

Yup, a stretch Hummer!! We couldn't stop laughing about it! It was really fun!



We are so pooped! We had a great day at Hollywood Studios, we saw a bunch of wonderful shows and got to ride the new Toy Story ride - it was awesome!! The girls also got to meet some characters and have their autograph books signed, here they are with Leo from Little Einsteins.
Lucy was funny because she kept trying to hand her autograph book to Goliath, the lion from Jo Jo's circus. He kept shrugging and pointing at his paws that had no opposable thumbs to hold the pen!

Days 170 & 171

I sent the girls out to get in the car so we could leave for Grandma's and I found them mowing the... garage floor. Kate always dresses up when she rides the mower, lol!

Jeff had to get a work out in today, his favorite exercise: the Lucy Press (apparently it's her favorite too!)

Heading to Disney tomorrow morning, Yippee!! I'll be posting from there! :)

Day 169

They have a beautiful pond at the hospital where my mom is staying. They have more than their fair share of ducks and geese, I thought the girls would like to feed them so we saved some of their french fries from lunch. When we went down to feed the ducks Kate fed them generously while Lucy...well, fed herself. Cold fries. Yum. Lucy loves her "Fre Fries".

Thank you for the nice well wishes to my mom, she's doing really great! :) Thank you too for all the nice comments you leave! It always makes my day!

Days 166, 167 & 168

Usually it's Lucy watching Kate plate her Nintendo DS, but this time Kate is watching Lucy intently as she plays her Leapster :)

Lucy had her 3 year doctor check up, no shots (yea!) but a tiny finger poke to check her cholesterol. I told her that the nurse would poke her finger (I didn't have the heart to tell her that it might hurt...) so she volunteered her little finger up to the nurse and when she poked it, Lucy didn't even flinch! She watched her add the blood to the slide/tab thing and didn't even want the band-aid. What a tough cookie!

My mom had a knee replacement yesterday. She's really doing well, I'm so glad for her, she's been limping about on her bum knee for far too long. So I scrapped her a card with this pic and took it to her when we all visited her today! Get well soon Mom! Love you!

Days 164 & 165

We joined a pool this summer and it's been too cool to swim. The pool has a heater, but it's broken. Anyway, here are the girls posing before we headed out, brrr! The water was freezing! Hoping for a few warm night to get that pool temp up!

today was Lucy's actual birthday! She's 3! Holy cow, when did that happen? We had a great day, she's so excited about everything, she ooohed and aahhed at every card and gift. Here she is right after she blew out her candles (check out the adorable "Tinky Bell" cake that my mom made!)

Day 163

Lucy got this adorable sticker mosaic kit from our good friends for her birthday. She did so great with it and had such a wonderful time doing it. I don't think I've seen anything keep her attention this long before. She finished one and started another! :)

Days 161 & 162

This is how we do popsicles in our house... ok, maybe just Lucy, lol! Washing red popsicle out of clothes is darn near impossible! Love the look on her face in this one :)

So we are leaving for Disney in a little more than a week. I saw Kate's calendar a few days ago... she must have added 25 stickers to the date, it seriously made me laugh out loud. I think she's more than a bit excited!

Days 159 & 160

Lucy is having such a fun time going to dance class, she just loves tapping her toes. I think though, that one of her favorite parts about the experience is putting on her dance "packpack".

My mom, sister and I took the girls to a flea market today and we found these hats... tooooooo funny!

Day 158

We took the girls to see "Up" in 3D today. Couldn't resist a pic of them in the silly glasses. The movie was really cute and really sweet!

Day 157

Spent the day re-doing our flower beds in the front of our house. I love how everything looks with new mulch and how pretty the flowers all look before they've been overheated from the summer sun! Notice my dog checking it all out from the front door, lol!

Day 156

Kate got the nicest postcard from one of her Karate instructors, it made us both feel warm and fuzzy! It says, "Hi Ma'am! You did an excellent job in class on Wednesday, not only were your hook kicks looking strong, but the new blocks we worked on with our nun chucks looked awesome too. Keep up the focused work. You make an excellent blackbelt-in-training!" I though it was so nice of her to send it and to write such a thoughtful and personal note. I'm also including a recent picture that Kate drew, it just fits this post perfectly!
btw, I'm not perfectly clear on this, but it looks as though this may be a karate princess... is that a crown?...

Day 155

At school today they had an assembly for the kids to honor those that had perfect attendance. Each quarter, if a student had perfect attendance they had their name entered in a drawing for prizes. The prizes were anything from a pack of water balloons to a bike or scooter. Kate's name got drawn and I don't think she even knew why, but she won a barrel of monkeys! Remember that game? I love it, it's a classic! It was cool to see her stand up there with her prize!


My baby is done with kindergarten... boo hoo! :(

Day 154

Kate was showing me her muscles today, she loves to talk about exercise and how it makes your heart strong the she shows off by doing push-ups. Kate has gotten so much better at them even in the last few months, she is really getting stronger. Here she is with our big family joke, "Did you get your tickets?"
"To what?"
"The Gun Show"
... then she kisses her muscles... too funny. (it's from an episode of the Office, my absolute favorite show) Hilarious!

Days 151, 152 & 153

Thank you all for your nice comments (and funny ones too!) The only tips I have for action shots is try your camera on Shutter Speed Priority (it's Tv on my Canon), I bumped the ISO up to 400 and I used my flash. My shutter speed for the girls jumping was 1/800 at f 5. I took about a million pics to get one. It's tricky!

I've got some comments coming your way too! It's late tonight though and want to get some things posted and then hit the hay! I'll send some love your way tomorrow! Promise!

Here we go...
Lucy found these glasses at my mother in law's house, I must have taken 20 pics, they were so darn cute!

Lucy started dance class this Monday. Here she is pre-class showing me her moves. She was really funny in class, she did pretty well considering her short attention span! If nothing else, she was cute (but not so cute when I saw her in class lifting her skirt abover her head! LOL!)

Our last day of school is Thursday this week. I needed to get Kate a picture outside the school that we shared for a whole year. She'll go to our neighborhood school in the fall for 1st grade, I'll miss her in my building everyday! Of course I keep telling her that she's not old enough to go to first grade. Someone make this growing up thing stop!