This has been an absolutely crazy month!  I am actually really glad it is almost over, I am ready to go back to a "normal" sense of life.  Ha is there such a thing?

We are now just a week and half away from moving into our new beautiful home!  Our walk through is Thursday and then we close the following Wednesday.  We are all so excited and cannot wait, but as excited as I know I am, the kids are a million times more excited!  This new neighborhood is amazing!  There are so many kids for Andrew and Maiya to play with, in fact we have already had several play dates with some of our new neighbors (and we haven't even moved in yet!)  Everyone is so friendly and nice and it is going to be a great new beginning for our family!

Andrew is doing great in kindergarten.  We have curriculum night tomorrow at his school so I am looking forward to going to that.  He is really coming into his own this year, I can already see how much he has grown in the first month of school.

Maiya starts her first day of preschool next week and I cannot believe it.  She is only going 2 days a week but I know she will love.  We got to meet her teacher last week and she is super nice and sweet.  I am the room mom so that should be interesting considering I have never done it before.  Maiya is LOVING ballet.  She gets so excited when Tuesday rolls around. 

My mom's chemo treatments have been canceled indefinitely because her heart cannot take anymore. The doctor said that she has a 50/50 chance of it coming back since she was not able to complete the remaining 9 months of treatment so I am going to pray that we are on the side of it not coming back.  She of course she is worried but going to just focus on the good things and do her best to stay positive. 

Andy and I are doing great!  We are excited about this new chapter in our lives and are excited for the future!

Maiya was born to be a star!  This week she had her first ballet class and I don't think she ever stopped smiling. From the time we bought her outfit on Monday until she took it off after class on Tuesday she smiled.  She absolutely loved every minute of it! My face hurt when we left because just watching her I couldn't stop smiling either.

In just a week my son will start kindergarten.  He will get on the bus at 7:30 and get home at 3:30.  A whole day without his mommy.  A whole day without my boy.  How will he cope?  How will I cope?  The funny thing is I know he will do amazingly well and the truth is I am not really all that worried about him...I am worried about me.  I am and always have been a very emotional person especially when it comes to my kids.  I would be very content if they stayed little forever and never left me, but since I know that won't happen I just cry with each major milestone.  

Don't get me wrong I am so excited for Andrew and I have been great at cheering him on.  It isn't until I check on him after he is asleep that I wonder "when did he get so big?"    When did my first born become a kindergartner?   Well if you are a first time parent or about to become one let me tell you the answer...it feels like overnight!  So hug them and love them and when the time comes for them to get on that bus cheer for them because it will be hard for them, but it will be harder for you to let them go!

Below is a great story a friend shared with me!  Enjoy!

In the months leading up to Maiya turning three to two months after she turned three my baby girl is showing me that there is not much baby left in her.  She decided to hit all these grown up stages close together and I am not prepared to say goodbye to my baby just yet.  In the last four months she has transitioned to a big girl bed, potty trained (which only took a day and half), takes a shower and now she writes her name!  She knows how to write just about every letter in the alphabet and loves learning.  She amazes me everyday!  I can't wait to see how much she learns when she actually starts preschool in September.

Every year we rent a house and we go to the beach with my husband's family.  We used to go in September after everyone went back to school and things were a little less crazy.  However this year with Andrew starting Kindergarten we had to go in May, so that meant that Maiya's birthday would be celebrated at the beach!  What a lucky girl if you ask me. 

She decided she wanted her theme to be Little Mermaid so we made it a beach Little Mermaid theme and we all had a great time.  She was so excited and loved every second of her party.  I think it was by far the best party she has ever had...not to mention the best guests...FAMILY!

Okay so I am really far behind on posts.  I am working on getting caught up but it is going to take me a while.

Since Andrew's preschool graduation was May 12th I thought that would be a good place to start...not to mention it was the cutest thing I had ever seen.  Watching all these little kids walk down the isle to Pomp and Circumstance in their caps and gowns was absolutely adorable.   They all were smiling ear to ear with pride and it was awesome!  I am so proud of Andrew.  When I think back to the start of this preschool year and all the problems we had at the old school to where he was on this day it brings tears to my eyes.  He has grown so much in a short time and I couldn't be more proud of him.  I still can't believe he will be in kindergarten in six weeks but I know that he is going to LOVE it!

After the graduation ceremony several of us met at the fountain to let the kids play.  We had a wonderful time and I met some really amazing people!

Another Easter has passed us and what a wonderful weekend it was!  We started the weekend with a double header baseball game on Saturday for Andrew and then had a wonderful warm sunny day on Sunday.  It was perfect!

Here are some picture from the festivities!

St. Patrick's Day has just been another holiday that kind of came and went in our household without much notice by us until a friend shared with me and idea she read on another person's blog.  The idea is having a very mischievous leprechaun come in the middle of the night and turn the house upside down and green.  So there are a ton of things you can do but I decided to start small this year because I know with each passing year it will have to get bigger.

So this year our leprechaun came and turned my kids hair green, left leprechaun dust (green confetti) all over the floor in every room he had been, hung shamrocks from the ceiling on the stairs, put our kitchen table in our living room, put the chair on the floor the wrong way, silly stringed the kids rooms and hallway and left a tattoo on each kid.

Andrew is five and he never wakes up in the middle of the night well that night of course he did to get a drink and he saw the string and confetti all over the floor and at 4:30 in the morning comes running in my room at full force and volume screaming "the leprechaun came, he made a huge mess in my room!"  That was the end of Andrew sleeping.   So we came downstairs and Andrew couldn't believe what he saw.  He has already started talking about building a trap next year to try and catch him.  :)  Next year I will do more like turn the milk green, tie shoes together, and other little crazy things.  :)  We had such a good time and all though there was a huge mess to clean up after the day was over, it was so worth it to see the kids have so much fun with it.

WOW, I am so glad October is over!  October was filled with poop and puke and no Disney so I am very grateful that it is over and now we can look ahead to November. 

November will be a month with no puke, no poop and DISNEY!!!  After both my kids had the stomach bug we had to cancel our Disney trip and reschedule.  Thankfully the airlines and Disney have been very accommodating and understanding which has made this whole thing a lot easier to deal with.  Don't get me wrong telling Andrew was by far the hardest thing we have had to do but the boy took it like a champ.  He is almost five, but I really thought there would be more tears than there were.  He was sad and shed a few tears but overall he truly understood and had no resentment toward his sister or anything.  The greatest thing was we had it rescheduled within the week so he could see that we were still going and there was an actual date he could see on the calendar. 

So our family countdown begins again and we are all looking forward to our 1st Disney trip in a few weeks.  YAY!!!!

This time next week I will be waking up in the most magical place on earth?  Where you ask?  Walt Disney world of course!  I am so excited because I have never been and neither have my kids.  This will be our first trip and we get to take it together.    We leave next Thursday and provided I can keep my family healthy it will be an amazing trip.

Now on to keeping the kids healthy.  Last Friday about 4pm Andrew looked at me burped and threw up all over the place.  That lasted for 24 hours and I thought to myself okay well at least we are getting this out of the way and everyone will get it and we will be better by Disney.  Well all week has gone by and no one else got sick so I have been so relieved.  The this morning we are sitting here and Maiya is next to me on the couch.  She does that same burp, my eyes widened and I looked over at her...not 2 seconds later she has vomit coming out of her mouth and nose.  All of her milk from this morning all over her and the couch.  Nothing worse then milk that comes back up. 

Now I am just praying that she was just overheated and not really sick, but my guess is she has the same thing Andrew had, but I am going to hold out hope that she will be okay and is not sick.  She has no fever but neither did Andrew when he was throwing up.

My son Andrew is very shy, which regrettably he gets from me.  Last year when he started preschool he was so upset and scared and his biggest fear was making a friend.  So his teacher last year bent down and said "Andrew I want you to meet Nate!  Nate will you be Andrew's friend?"  Nate said yes and gave Andrew a big hug and the two of them were best friends all year.  The teacher always sat them next to each other and when I would pick Andrew up he was always next to Nate or playing with him on the playground.  It was so cute and Andrew talked about him all the time.

After I went to the parent meeting on Monday to meet Andrew's teacher I got to find out who was in Andrew's class so that when I got home I could tell him all about it.  The first thing out of his mouth was "Is Nate in my class?  I looked at him with sad eyes and I told him that no, Nate was not in his class this year.  Instantly Andrew buried his head and started to cry.  He was embarrassed that he was crying so I took his hand and held it and I said "Buddy it is okay to be sad and it is okay to cry.  Nate is your best friend in school and it is sad that he is not in your class, but you will make some new friends and who knows maybe you will see Nate on the playground."  Our talk lasted a very very long time.  He cried for about 15 minutes and when he stopped I asked him what he was thinking and again his biggest fear was not making friends.  I promised him that I would introduce him to someone so that they could be friends just like he and Nate are and that seemed to help. 

Yesterday Andrew got to go to the school and see his classroom and he meet his teacher and that went great.  I never really got the opportunity to introduce Andrew because right away he went off to play.  He reminded me later that I didn't do it but then said it was okay because he had two little girls from last year that he would play with.  :)  I would be lying if I didn't say I am a little nervous about today.  I have shed a few secret tears because although we did this last year after watching him be so worried about friends and knowing personally how hard it can be I feel for him.

I did find out though that he will have the same playground time as Nate so they will still get to see each other on nice days.  That I am very happy about and so is Andrew!

I will update after his day today to let everyone (family) know how his first day went.  Wish us luck!  lol.

I want to thank everyone who helped us celebrate our baby girl's 2nd birthday.  It was such a special day for us and Maiya had such a good time with her family and friends.  I will say she had the party blues once everyone left and it was time for her to go to bed for the night.  She was not ready for her party to be over and it was a very hard concept for her that after all that it was over.  Nonetheless she had a great time and so did mommy and daddy.

I say it all the time how hard it is to believe that my kids are yet another year older and Maiya turning two is no exception.  I can remember the day she was born like it was yesterday and to think it was really two years ago blows my mind.  What a joy Maiya brings to my life!  Watching her grow from a little baby into a little girl has been so much fun.  I look forward to the next year and what new joys this sweet girl will bring me.

I want to say a special thanks to Shana for making Maiya's cookies.  They turned out awesome and I loved them and so did Maiya.  Shana has her own cookie business called Sugarcoated Cookies so make sure you give her a call if you ever need party favors.  :)

I can hardly believe that tomorrow is Andrew's last day of preschool.  Honestly where did the time go?  When I think back to orientation and the first week of school I would have thought the year would have dragged on forever.  Instead Andrew ended up loving school and loving his teachers.  He truly looks forward to going to school everyday and I owe it to the teachers and staff for making it such a wonderful experience for him.

As I walked into the school today I wasn't feeling sad or emotional just kind of thinking it was another day only we were bringing them their gifts because I knew that tomorrow would be a crazy day and didn't want them to be overwhelmed.  Andrew handed Ms. Kathy her gift and all of a sudden it hit me and the tears came, which I was totally not expecting.  I mean it isn't like he is going to Kindergarten next year so really why would I be crying.  The reason is because of how far Andrew has come since the first day.  The first week of holding on for dear life to my leg not wanting to let go and then now saying "bye mom, I love you" and waving to me out the window (our morning ritual, even forgetting every now and then). 

I am so proud of Andrew for being a big boy.  I am amazed at how grown up he is now and I am looking forward to a great summer with him and Maiya.

Okay everyone, I am in desperate need of gift ideas.  Andrew has only 3 weeks left of school which means I need gift ideas for his teachers and the staff.   I am not sure what my budget is, but I welcome any and all ideas.

Can anyone help me?