Kanin's Last Day as a 2nd Grader

Last Friday was Kanin's last day of 2nd grade.  I can't believe how fast this year flew by.  I guess it was because we only had 1 snow day.  I also can't believe how my little baby boy is already heading in to 3rd grade.  I need the time to S-T-O-P!

The last day is a big deal at Kanin's school.  We have an end-of-year parade and the streets are packed.  One of the dad's has attached the school mascot, the Eagle, to his truck for the last 8 years.  His last daughter is graduating over in to Middle School this year so this was his last year to do it.

The first class to come down is always the 5th graders.  This year Emily was a part of that group.  She'll be moving on over to Middle School next year :(

Each grade is assigned a color.  2nd grade's color is purple.  Look how happy Kanin looks.

Here comes the 4th graders . . .

The subdivision behind the school is shut down and the entire school loops all the way through it.  I'm telling you this parade is a BIG deal.  Firetrucks, police cars, and hundreds of parents and family members show up to watch.

Since it was the last year that Mr. O'Brien would be carrying the Eagle, we made signs and these parents held them up when he drove by.  He was really touched.

Here is Kanin's class coming back to school.

After the parade, the PTO bought enough popsicles for all of the students and their families.  Here were Kanin's best friends in 2nd grade this year, Cody and CJ.

Mrs. Saeger was a great teacher!

Kanin loves music class and I think it is because of Mrs. Wolf.  Kanin told me all year long that she was really sweet. 

Kanin's very favorite teacher was Mr. Trost, the P.E. teacher.  Mr. Trost only teaches K-2 P.E. so Kanin will have a new P.E. teacher next year and he is not happy.  LOL

Coming out of the school as a 2nd grader for the last time!

Now we are ready for a terrific summer!

Mother's Day 2012

 It always makes me happy when there is a Cardinals game on Mother's Day.  Kanin's very first Cardinals game was on Mother's Day 2005.  Here we are all these years later still carrying on the tradition of going to the ballpark for Mother's Day.

This year we met some of our friends before the game and had lunch. 

Of course, one of our favorite things to do at the Cardinals game is get our picture taken with Fredbird.  I love Fredbird!

This picture was taken in the 4th inning.  We were trying to hurry up and just get a quick picture snapped and didn't realize that Kanin was squinting so much.  Oh well, such is life with three kids.

After the game, we went to my mom's house.  She had chili and stew waiting on us and my sister and her kids were there, as well.  I am so bummed that I didn't take a picture with my mom.  I told Scott when we pulled up that I wanted to get one. 

I hope you guys had a great Mother's Day!

Muffins with Mom

Yesterday I had one of the best days ever.  I honestly don't know if I have felt that special in a long time.  Kanin's school has a tradition of the second graders celebrating Mother's Day with a little event they call Muffins with Mom.

When I got to the school, Kanin was waiting for me out in the hallway.  He led me to his desk, pulled out his chair for me, and asked me what I would like to drink.  Each little desk was decorated with a plate of muffins and donuts, napkins, and a little activity.

Kanin also made a corsage out of tissue paper and he put that around my wrist.  He gave me a card and then I got to open my present.  In art class, all of the kids had made ceramic cups.  I was already a little misty but the card and cup just pushed me right over the edge.

Kanin took this picture so it is a little blurry but I love how excited I was.  If you look right behind me, the mom behind me has her corsage on.  So sweet!

Kanin was really proud of his mug and very happy that I loved it.

Next we played a little game.  Each kid had drawn a picture of their mother and on the back there was a list of 20 things about their mom.  Mrs. Saeger, Kanin's teacher, picked 4 or 5 questions out and read them out loud and we all guessed who the Mom was.  It was very funny to hear some of the answers to these questions like "If my mom won the lottery she would . . . go crazy!"  "My mom's favorite place in the whole world is . . . Six Flags."  LOL

Here's the picture that Kanin drew of me.

Here are the questions Kanin answered about me:

1. My favorite book to read with my mom is Potty Time

2. Mom's favorite television show is Dateline

3. If my mom won the lottery she would go to Mexico without me

4. an expression or saying that my mom always uses is no backtalk

5. My mother always gets angry when I don't bring my folder home

6. My mom doesn't like to clean the playroom

7. My mother's favorite foods are popcorn, salad, and Weight Watchers

8. I like my mom to cook vegetable pizza because she does such a delicious job of it.

9. My mother's favorite restaurant is Stefanina's

10. If my mom had a ticket to any place in the world she would go to Germany with me

11. My mom has a funny habit of trying to act like LMFAO

12. My mom really looked beautiful on the day she got married

13. My mom really looked funny on the day she was doing the shuffle

14. In the good old day when Mom was little she used to play army

15. I make my mom happy when I be helpful

16. My mom doesn't know about the time I ate Nutella

17. When she has free time she likes to play sports 

18. My mom's pet name for me is baseball hero

19. My favorite thing to do with my Mom is Mom and son time

20. The best advice my mom has give me is if they are a bully that means he or she are jealous

I figured out the picture was of me when she read popcorn was my favorite food and about going to Mexico.  Ha!

By this time my heart was already full but there was more.  All of the moms were asked to go down to the gym where there was a slideshow and the kids sang three songs to us.  Oh my goodness.  I don't think there was a dry eye in the gym.  It was so sweet.

Kanin and I often butt heads and I know that we each can be difficult but yesterday he made me feel so special.  It was the best Mother's Day present that I could have gotten.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and to all mothers (aunts, grandmas, and anyone who sacrifices themselves to raise a child) reading this!

You're Beautiful To Me



My Mom

Jamaica Mon

Since starting with the travel agency (you can read about that here), I feel like time flies by.  It is definitely taking me a while to get the hang of going from home mode to work mode.  Even though I'm only working part-time, I still spend several hours a week at home working and researching and I've got to say that I am still loving it.

So last week I checked my work email from home and got an exciting offer.  I was literally jumping up and down and yelling.  Jeanne, the owner of 5 Star Travel and Cruises, offered me a fam (familiarization) trip to Jamaica!

What does this mean?  This means that this Mommy is going to Jamaica . . . on May 30!  How incredibly awesome is that?!?!

I have always wanted to go to Jamaica.  I wanted our honeymoon trip in October to be to Jamaica but at the time there were no charter flights from St. Louis and I didn't want to spend one whole day on both ends of the trip traveling and it was cheaper to go to Mexico.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the Excellence Riviera Cancun (you can read my review on Trip Advisor HERE)and would recommend it to anyone and would definitely go back but Jamaica has always been a place that I wanted to visit.

I leave St. Louis on May 30 and return on June 2.  During this time I will be visiting the following:

Montego Bay

RIU Montego Bay

 Source

Iberostar Rose Hall Beach

 Source

Secrets Montego Bay

 Source

Dolphin Cove Lucea

 Source

Negril 

Grand Palladium Jamaica

 Source

Grand Palladium Lady Hamilton

 Source

Sunset at the Palms

This photo of Sunset at the Palms is courtesy of TripAdvisor

RIU Palace Tropical Bay

  Source

Couples Negril

Source

How could I not be excited getting to visit all of these fantastic places?  

Three down sides to this trip, though:

#1 I'm going by myself.  I would have loved for Scott to be able to go with me on this trip but this one is just for agents.  

#2 I will be away from my babies from Wed-Sat

#3 That only gives me about 3 weeks to be bathing suit ready!

Gracie's Last Day of Preschool

My how the last 10 weeks have flown by.  I feel like I was just sitting down yesterday to write about her First Day of preschool and here we are already at the end of the year.

GracieAnn has really enjoyed her time at school.  She made new friends, learned a ton of new songs, and made so many cute crafts.

Everybody wore their preschool shirts yesterday.  Grace was so proud.

While I was skeptical at first, I have to say Mrs. McGwire has it together.  Not only was she in charge of a class of 15 preschoolers, she also had 10 or so high school students in the room as "helper teachers".  The preschool was actually a class option for the teenagers who are interested in going into education.  

Grace will definitely be going back to school in the fall.  I'm hoping that Caleb is potty-trained by then, as well, so he can go with her.  

Weekend Rewind

I saw that Michelle from Snapshots participated in a new blog hop this morning and I thought this would be a great way for me to tell about my weekend.  Tami is hosting this brand new hop.  Go check out her page, here.

So this weekend I had a garage sale (you can read about it HERE) that started on Friday so I had to spend a lot of time preparing for it.  I normally don't like to have garage sales because it is usually a lot of work for very little profit.  This time my goal was to make enough to pay for the kids to get their passports.  I ended up making about $270 so that was enough to pay for 2 1/2 of them.  

Saturday, once again, started off with the garage sale.  Later in the day, though, Hottie Scottie and I headed down to the Scottrade Center to watch Game 1, Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs where the Blues took on the Kings.  Unfortunately, the Blues lost (BOO!).  That wasn't the only bad thing of the night.  There were some horrible storms that came through St. Louis that actually ended in one fatality.  Thank God we were ok but our car received a lot of hail damage.  We've only had it one year THIS WEEKEND!  

We woke up Sunday morning and just kind of lazed around.  Sunday night, though, we had went to see Van Halen featuring David Lee Roth and with opening act Kool and the Gang. Obviously we didn't realize 2 months ago when we bought the tickets that the Blues would also be in the playoffs at the same time or we would not have gone to the concert.  Anyway, we went ahead and went and I thought it was OK.  We have seen Kool and the Gang before and they were great.  David Lee Roth was  . . . something??  I've got to be honest, I am not a big Van Halen fan but if I had to choose between DLR or Sammy Hagar, I definitely now know that I would pick Sammy.  I think DLR has forgotten that he isn't in his 20's or 30's anymore and it was almost embarrassing at times some of his motions and dances.  He did sound pretty good, though, and Eddie Van Halen played a great guitar solo.  Plus, they played Panama so I was happy.

Hope your weekend was more relaxing than mine!!

Bye Bye Baby Gear

This past Friday and Saturday we had our subdivision garage sale.  I'm not a huge fan of having garage sales but I had a lot of stuff to get rid of and I knew that this was the best way to do it.

Most of the stuff that I needed to get rid of was baby stuff.  All of this stuff has been down in my basement for a while now and I finally decided it was time to just get rid of it all.  I spent time cleaning, washing, and adding batteries to all of the bouncies, swings, and push toys.  I lined them all up and then . . .

I got really sad.

This was Kanin's bouncy chair when he was a baby.  The little guys on the top don't make music or light up anymore but the chair still vibrates.  I remember getting this at my baby shower for him.  All 3 of my kids sat in this chair.

We bought this swing when we had Grace.  Kanin loved his swing (it matched the bouncy) so much that it stopped working.  Both Caleb and Grace spent many days rocking in this swing.

The bassinet.  We got this for Grace so that she could sleep in it right beside my bed.  This one made me really sad.

And, the exersaucer.  Gracie and Caleb both LOVED this thing and would bounce and jump and scream and laugh whenever they played in it.

I know what you are thinking and NO I do not want another baby.  I am glad that all of these items are going to people who will actually use them.  Selling this stuff opened up a workout area for Scott and me down in the basement but it does feel like little pieces of my babies just left the house.

I am excited for the next phase with the kids, no strollers or diaper bag but I absolutely love the baby phase.  I know growing up is part of life but if it were up to me, I'd need to use all of this baby stuff forever.