She's 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Faith woke up this morning as a "7" Year Old! Don't know how it is possible, but it is! Can't believe it! She woke up and shouted from her bedroom....."I'm not 6 anymore!"
We celebrated her birthday with her friends yesterday at the gymnastics center. She had a blast and I will post photos later. We are very busy today, but I just had to do a quick post for her special day!
She has 2 birthday parties to go to on "her birthday"! lol She really wants to go as they are special friends. The first is a tea party and the second is at Chuck Cheese so she will be partying all day. We let her open her gifts from us this morning and we will have a quiet little family celebration later today to sing Happy Birthday.

I tried to talk Faith into me buying her a nicely decorated cake for her party, but she insisted she wanted my home made cupcakes. She does not like store bought cake icing, only Mommy's!
I placed them in the shape of a 7 and thought they turned out really cute. Not to mention delicious!

Happy Birthday to our beautiful Birthday Girl!!!!!! Yesterday at your party I had someone come up to me and tell me what a beautiful and kind soul you have. You make me soooo proud!!!!! Love you, you 7 Year old!!!!!

Tea please......

For awhile now I have been admiring these adorable Korean inspired dresses here at Tea. That is about all I did..... admire them. Faith does not care for dresses so I could not see spending the money on something that would most likely just sit in her closet.
Recently they had a pretty good sale, along with free shipping. I decided to order a couple dresses in the hopes that just maybe Faith might, dare I say, like them.
Well, she LOVES them! I could not believe it! They are so soft and comfortable and perfect with leggings. Just her kind of dress! She also loves the style and tells me they look like kimonos. (she learned about them while studying Japan in school)
Here she is in one of her new dresses. She was not too happy about stopping to poise for me. lol
I am just so excited...it's so nice seeing her actually wear dresses and happy about it!

Black & White Wednesday

Almost 7!!!!!!!!

I can't believe in less than 2 weeks she will be turning 7!!! Yep! My baby girl will be 7! Gosh that sounds so grown-up! We have been busy planning her birthday party which will be at the gymnastics center where she takes classes. She did not have a party with friends "last year" as she only wanted to celebrate with her family. This year she has decided she wants to invite her entire class! I considered her having a pool party at home as birthday parties at home are my favorite, but after doing some visualizing of the possibility of 25 first graders in our pool I decided the gymnastics center might be a safer and less stressful way to go. She has already informed me that next year she wants a pool party for her 8th birthday and she will only invite a few friends. Whew!

i heart faces...YELLOW! (Darn! I missed the entry deadline!)

(LOL! I planned on entering this photo at "i heart faces" and when I went to post it, they already closed the contest! This is typical of my days lately.......behind on everything! Oh well, I am posting anyway! hee hee)


I am going back several years for this entry because I adore this picture! And. It has yellow in it!
I took this of my son Reed as he relaxed on a lounge chair while vacationing in Portugal. He was only 4 years old in this photo...he is now almost 13! I remember taking this photo like it was yesterday! Boy do the years fly by. For me that is what the beauty of photographs is all about........taking you back to those special moments in time......

Where did this year go?

Seriously! Where did it go? Most of the school years do fly by, but this one just seems to have disappeared! I feel like I was just preparing for the challenge of having a 1st grader, a middle schooler, and a high schooler and now we are down to the 3 week count! I guess with the challenge of keeping up with chauffeuring and volunteering with 3 in 3 different schools made the year go by in a blink!
We've been busy winding down the end of the school year. The boys each have one big project due this week they are busy working on this week-end. We've been busy with end of the year activities. Faith's class had their 1st grade music program and open house last night. It was the cutest performance with a "children around the world" theme. Some of the children wore traditional country costumes and of course Faith dressed in her Chinese best!
Here she is all dressed for her performance. She was so cute with her hair all done up in a bun. She did not want to move for fear of it falling out.

Those dimples I just love!

She would fold her hands so cute when she would stop to poise for a picture.....

Proudly showing off her school work to Daddy after the performance

Yeah! Her bun lasted through the performance!

When we got home I tried to get some photos of her out by our pool in this traditional Chinese hat. (One of our neighbors proudly gave Faith this hat she had bought from her travels in China years ago) She wasn't much in the mood for pictures.





Also this week we attended Dean's High-school high honors award ceremony. Dean completed his first year of highschool with a 4.0 average!

What a wonderful accomplishment for his first year of high school! We are so very proud!



It has been unusually cool for this time of year and I am hoping it starts warming up soon! I am so looking forward to the lazy days of summer spent in our pool! The first signs of summer are here though. Last Saturday our towns farmers market opened...........

We bought lots of fresh veggies that were delicious! I love strolling the market on Saturday mornings and can't wait to do it again tomorrow.
Happy week-end!

A very blessed Mother's Day!

"If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden"~

I have really been enjoying the roses in our back yard. We had lots of beautiful rose bushes at our old house so I am so happy our new house has them too.



We spent Mother's Day week end in Lake Tahoe. It was kind of a last minute planned get away and was the perfect way to spend Mother's Day...........

(please excuse Pearl in this photo.....she has no modesty!)

We have a favorite place to stay which is a quaint bed and breakfast type lodging with a rustic cabin feel. The best part for us is that they not only take dogs, but they welcome them as guests:) They have the best waffles for breakfast and smores over a fire every evening which the kids love. We spent the week-end enjoying the lake and taking walks in the woods.

We are so blessed to have such a breath taking place to just "get away" to less than 3 hours from our home.

Iris Farm

On Sunday we took a drive out to a local iris flower farm. The iris is not one of my favorite flowers and I do not know too much about them, but I thought it would be fun to see. The colors were amazing and they were beautiful to see in full bloom.

The amount of different vibrant colors were amazing.

They had clip boards with order forms and Faith had to have a clip board so she could write down all the different names of the flowers. It was fun to read all the different names they have for each color.

This white one was my favorite. Although the picture doesn't do it justice. The name of it is "Just Magic"

All the colorful petals remind me of butterfly wings.

I loved this one too. Almost looks like black velvet...

It was fun walking through all the different iris and I was wishing the boys would have been with us to try and get some nice photos of the 3 of them. They will be open to the public for a couple more weeks so am hoping to get back again.

With the pretty weather now and the school year coming to an end (I can't believe only 6 more weeks!) our days are in full bloom!!!