Happy Birthday Alayna and Paul

This time of year gets so busy with school winding down, birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and our Anniversary that we just try to keep everyone fed and dressed and in their proper places at the proper times and if we can breathe in between, life is good! I am trying to update over the past few months. I am purposely omitting anything about the birthday I certainly did not have this year. I have decided that if I completely ignore it, it didn't happen!

However, Alayna did just recently turn SEVEN! My baby is seven whole years old. Unbelievable! We have enjoyed the addition she makes to our family and the differences she has made apparent that we had not experienced before with all the boys. She is so much fun and in so many ways such a girly girl and in so many ways very much a Tom Boy. This past year she has really grown as a student and has done very well with her studies and declares each day of school as "Awesome!" when asked about her day. She loved gymnastics this year, and fell in love with volleyball recently too. She has only one volume apparently. At school she must have to shout all the time to be heard because when she's home we are constantly getting blown out by a shouted request, reply, or announcement! She cracks us up! Her teacher told us she is a good friend to everyone in the class. High praise in my opinion. She is growing like a weed and still eats constantly and chatters nonstop...loudly. She has gotten into drawing and "arts". She won a coloring contest at a local nursery right before Easter and won a very big Easter basket with coloring books and candy. She was so pleased with herself. And she should have been because she worked on that coloring page for almost an hour being so careful to stay in the lines and to color in each figure.

For her birthday, she got to invite two of her friends to spend the day with her. They went to the pool and swam for several hours then came home and made cake balls and decorated them themselves with sprinkles and then devoured them. They also wore them, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised about that! They had fun. Here are Zoe and Mary Katelyn decorating their first ones:

Before they ate their cake balls actually we took them out to eat at the restaurant of Alayna's choice. She chose Chili's. Here are the girls trying to get warm in the sunlight while they waited for their food. The air conditioning is always too cold for me too!

We decorated the new street in front of our driveway for Paul's birthday with the glow in the dark sidewalk chalk Alayna got for her birthday. The new layer of blacktop made a great canvas.

Paul got a little cop humor going on the street as well...I was glad none of our neighbors seemed offended...at least they didn't say anything to us about it!

I know I am not including a lot of life that happened between the last post and this one, but I have let time slip by and its all forgotten now! We are looking forward to summer for the break in the school routine, and the heat is kicking up reminding us why so many people go back up north for a few months. Traffic is so much better and we can now park close to the door at the grocery store. Gotta take the good with the bad!