Pool Party Birthday Bash

I often times forget to mention the girls birthdays.....well let's be honest I don't forget to write the post, I forget to post the post. Yes, I have two years worth of birthday posts just hanging out in my draft folder waiting for their day to shine. I know, I know it's awful. Well not this time! Nope, I'm going to post and upload all at once that way I can't miss one again. :)

Now Nanner's birthday was waaaay back in March. Beanie's was in May. I understand that the party didn't actually occur until August, that's life around here. We had a fantastic roller skating party planned for Nanners....for the second year in a row she fell and broke something right beforehand. Spunky was the beneficiary of that skating party this year, hey a non refundable party must go on!

So once again a week before the party we're rushing her off to the ER for a X-rays only to show that yes, in fact, she does have a break. This year it was a distal radial wrist fracture. She got a rockin', heavy as all get out ER specialty cast and we were on our way.

Party postponed. People called. Facebook announcement made. Nanner's in tears because she never gets to have her party around her actual birthday. Mommy feeling like crap because the dramatics aside, the kid was right.

Beanie was supposed to have a combined party with a cousin, who ended up backing out last minute. Crap! Okay, on to plan B. We have many people in our lives who we know we can always count on, and lucky for us we have a whole 'nother family that loves us and as a bonus the have a POOL! Yay! Problem solved. Back to pool party.

Nanners and Beanie agree to have a combined party - Thank GOODNESS! We set a date, we shop for decorations, we buy food. Special cake ordered (that's a story in itself, if you've never seen a 15 year old cry over cake, tell her there's no way you're buying the special made, hand crafted fondant version of the band One Direction).

The party was fun, everyone had a blast playing in the pool. We ate nachos. We had an amazing cake. We took lots of pictures. We laughed. We spent a ton on their gifts because they totally earned them. These girls are amazing when it comes to self sacrifice and they deserved something special this year for sure.

Here are a few of the favorite pictures from the party.

 Lots of people playing in the pool!

 Nanners sporting her major accessory for the day - the Dry Pro. Seriously, if you ever break something you should get one of these! They are amazing!

Uncle Justin meeting Billy the Boyfriend for the first time......awkward....

Emi playing

The final result of the cake. This was a struggle folks, but they finally agreed on something, and the taste was awesome!

Nanners is 10! Beanie is 15! WOW!!!

Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl

Present time!

Showing each other their wares

Wait for it....

wait for it...

OMG!!! SQUEAL!! It's a Nintendo 3DS!!

Beanie had 2 boxes for her big gift....she got to chose only one

dun dun dun dunnnnnn.......FAIL!! After 12 minutes she decided to take the white box and it was EMPTY!! She let me push her in the pool to open the other one.....it had her laptop. :) 

Beautiful girls. Healthy girls. Smiling faces. What more could I ask for??

Church Camp 2012

 Her first trip to camp!!! She was so excited! Since she had just had her surgery she had to take her crutches and walker with her, but she was determined to get there. So proud of her, but terrified to leave her with someone else for a week.

The whole gang! These kids worked their booties off so they could get to camp. So many fundraisers were done. It was a rough year, but they earned their trip. :)

A moment captured, a memory made.

Memory Monday

Nanners was chosen to be the Herald Angel for our annual Christmas play at church, and as you can see she took her role very seriously. She loved evey minute of it, and I love watching her blossom into the young lady she's becoming. It's amazing what a difference a year makes!

Memory Monday

Nanner's 7th birthday party. She choose a super simple design (YAY for me!!), and wanted polka dots. Seriously this couldn't have been any easier! I took a ton of construction paper, traced out different sized circles from all different colors and TA-DA instant decorations!

To keep with the theme we played Twister with all the kids, and they loved it. We served everything in round dishes, and asked the guest to wear polka dots if they could. Auntie Trina bought her a polka dotted cake.

Many people did, and it really helped to add to the atmosphere. With so many dots I figured I'd make good use of all those pictures and show them off.

We taped the pictures on the dots and hung them all over through out the house and the back yard where the party was. Everyone commented how fun it was to see the pictures of her through the years.

Everyone had a blast and it was crazy easy for Mom - WIN WIN!!

31 Day Photo and Prompt Challenge

**Linking up to It's Gravy Baby's 31 Day Photo and Prompt Challenge**

Day 8 - a birthday celebration

Since we just had to replace our hard drive finding pictures was a little bit of a challenge. These are from last year, but it was one of my favorite parties because my little girl picked it out completely on her own, and it didn't contain a character.

We were getting ready to go to Disneyland so The Boy and I gave her the option of having a big, lavish (read expensive) party at a pizza place or some other kiddie land or having a bbq at home and getting to spend some of the money we'd be saving in Disneyland. Nanner's made a very wise decision and was able to spend an extra $40 bucks on vacation. Smart girl!

We traced plates, saucers and a big can of food on contruction paper of all different colors. I literally cut out hundreds of them. The good news is that you can cut about 10-12 sheets at a time without mangling the paper. To add to her polka dot theme we taped pictures of her through the years to some of the dots. She helped pick out the pictures and tape them on. We stapled the dots all over the fence and taped them up where we could. We asked guests to wear polka dots if they had them. She chose a polka dotted cake. We got tangled up in a game of Twister. We had confetti dots sprinkled everywhere. We served polka dot burgers, or you know just regular burgers since they are round anyway. :) Most importantly she loved it!

Differences in Learning Styles

One of the (many) things I have noticed about homeschooling is that my girls have very different learning styles. Beanie is so smart, almost too smart, so she tends to procrastinate about everything. I just had to tell her three times to start her math. I think she uses my busy brain to her advantage sometimes, lol. She's the master of rote memorization. She also needs a little pushing to make sure she's putting her best effort forth, rather than just enough to get by.

Spunky Girl is much like Beanie, and catches on to things so quickly. She has an incredible number of books completely memorized and "reads" them to Baby Big Girl all the time. Show her something once and she's got it. Now if only we can get her to sit still, lol. She officially starts kindergarten this Fall. -WOW!-

Baby Big Girl is honestly too young for me to give an accurate opinion of just yet, but hey she knows most of her alphabet by sight. So what if it's because she comes from a big family and she sees those letters in our names, lol.

Nanners is a different story though. Nanners has dyslexia.

By no means does this mean that she's not smart - NOT AT ALL.

She just learns differently than the other girls. She prefers that things are introduced as a game. Flash cards and rote memorization are her enemy. I didn't understand this at all in the beginning. I just assumed that she needed more time to learn, so I slowed down the pace. The problem was that she wasn't actually learning, she was memorizing enough to get her through the week and then it would fall away like leaves in Autumn. Once I noticed that when she read things against pink paper she didn't seem to struggle as much. Completely by chance I picked out the pink paper. I was trying to make her work more fun by color coding it, now just about everything she does is on pink paper. The way she explained it to me was that on regular white paper the words are all "smooshed together". Can you imagine trying to read somethingthatlookedlikethis.Theentirepageshewasreadinghadnospaceswhatsoever.Justtypingthismakesmyheadspinalittle,lol.

Now I'm not assuming to be a doctor by any means, but what I know is that this worked for my kid. When it comes to books, we bought a pink overlay and she reads her books with the overlay covering it. Dramatic improvement in her reading skills were witnessed by not only me, but her reading teacher as well.

We don't make much of her dyslexia, because we don't want her to think that there's ever something wrong with her. We are working on finding the right way for her to learn, and it's ever changing. One week something may work perfectly and the next we both end up in tears by the end of the lesson. What we do make a big deal about is how far she's come. After reading her first paragraph written on her own, I cried. Tears of happiness. Tears showing how proud I was. Tears that my baby is growing up too fast.

Days when I want to give up, I will come back to this post and remember how proud I was of her. I will remember the "light bulb" moments that she has when she figures out a word. I will remember just how proud I am of her.

Sleeping in Class Already??

The other day Nanners was supposed to be rewriting her story. I came back to check on her about 15 minutes after she started and this is what I found. Apparently she made it about 2 sentences in and decided a nap was in order.