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This afternoon, we stopped by our favorite store in the universe…if you’re willing to buy me a gift card, I’ll gladly give you the name. Anyway, the girls wanted to buy their favorite little man a new toy so we did. I mean, how can you say no when out of the blue, both of them say “can we buy Handsome a new toy today?” Uh..yes, yes you can. They make me happy!

This evening, I pulled out a toy that I’ve had for a while now and haven’t really played with it too much. But tonight, the kids were in bed, The Hunk was at a meeting and I had a fresh batch of pictures on the camera…so I decided to see what I could do. Here’s a few of the results…they make me happy too!

In the mean time, I follow this cool blog that does this thing most Mondays called “Not Me Mondays” and I love it! It was designed to admit some imperfections & share those moments you wish you could just forget….heaven knows, I have enough of those to write a book!

So, I thought I’d participate this week….here goes in bullet point format because well, it’s easier.

• I would never arrive early on a rainy day to pick up LoveBug from school and promptly fall asleep in the pick up line RIGHT IN FRONT OF WHERE THE KIDS WAIT OUTSIDE causing a huge traffic delay and awaking only when the principal and music teacher knock (bang) loudly on my car window. Nope, not me.
• I would never allow my 2 year old boy to wear his hair in a ponytail along with his sisters dress up clothes & shoes out in public. Nope, never.
• I would never fix  or even allow my children to eat cereal for breakfast & lunch followed by chocolate chip cookies because they were still hungry & then buttered pasta for dinner simply because I was too lazy to go to the grocery store. That would never happen in our health food only home especially because I am on top of the grocery shopping thing at all times. Right?!

It’s been a fun week. Especially that 1st bullet up there…wow, that’s all I’ve got to say about that!

Who do you think they belong to?

My precious LoveBug took her first big step towards independence this morning when she walked into school and I had to give her over to someone else to take care of on a daily basis. I am not excited about this at all. She’s MY baby and I’m completely unready for this part of growing up. I tried to avoid it by homeschooling…and I succeeded….for a year. But now the time has come to send my sweet precious little girl into the big unknown world of 1st grade. I know I’m going to read this in a few years and think how ridiculous it sounds…or maybe it’ll only take a week for me to realize how ridiculous it sounds but the fact remains that at this moment, I am not ready to send her to school.

Time has flown.

I remember this moment…(3 days old – first time I got to hold her!)

and this one…(1st birthday)

and this one….(2nd birthday)

and they seem like just yesterday.

And yet…this is now…

Some sweet side notes:

1. PunkinBear is completely unsure of why LoveBug is at school and she’s not…she’s not liking that at all.

2. When we were leaving school, PunkinBear realized we were leaving LoveBug and she ran across the room to give her big kisses before she left.

3. I’m home with my two little ones and we all feel like someone is missing….and she is.

4. Handsome keeps giving me kisses and looking at my teary eyes with the most quizzical look on his face.

5. I LOVE my kids!

I’ve been following this blog for a long time now and my heart is with this family. Stellan needs our prayers….

http://www.mycharmingkids.net/

Please pray for Stellan today!

First stop: a visit with our favorite killer whale – Shamu! We spent most of the day playing in the water park area and floating on the lazy river. Soooo much fun! Then we caught the Shamu show and went to visit the dolphins. It was a nice relaxing day…we did not attempt to fit the entire park into one day. Sooo much fun! And the best part was that it rained on us for a few minutes…I have missed rain!

Second stop: a heavenly bed.

And yes – it felt heavenly after a day with Shamu. Due to The Hunk’s work travel over the past few months, we had a few nights saved up so we used a couple and stayed at the Westin La Cantera Resort. Heavens. It was so nice. I could spend a week or two there and be very very happy.

A waterslide that 2 of the 3 kiddos couldn’t get enough of:

PunkinBear loves the adventure stuff! She LOVED this slide and it was steep and she went really fast! LoveBug kept trying to do the inflatable slip & slide but it was so high, all her energy went to jumping on it rather than sliding down it (plus she’s a lightweight so she didn’t have enough weight to push her forward)

The funniest moment of the trip was PunkinBear & The Hunk going down the inflatable slide together…she flew down it by herself…add Daddy and I thought they’d fly across the tennis court. It was soooo fast, I thought they were hurt when they crashed into the end…but only The Hunk tweaked his back a little. I laughed so hard…the looks on their faces was hilarious!

Poor Handsome was too small to do the other inflatables so he was stuck with the bouncehouse and he wasn’t thrilled with that. He sooo wanted to do the slide but after PunkinBear & Daddy flying down it at warp speeds, The Hunk wasn’t putting any more children on that slide! We did push/toss him down the slip & slide once. PunkinBear came in and tried to help him have fun…sweet sister!

Third stop: Maggiano’s. I love that place.  I have no pictures from our dinner splurge but it deserved a mention because it was so good!

I’m already planning our next mini-vacation! (maybe I can turn it into a “real” vacation!)

Maybe we went a little extreme but I didn’t have to cook all day, clean up the kitchen all day or wonder what I was going to feed the kids all day. It was a nice break.

We dressed up slightly different for each meal…but I only took pictures at lunch. Our friend, TAB came with us for lunch – she’s in the middle. Good food. Free food. Fun times!