More of Life Lately

Summers are tough on me.  Before I had children, they were just like any other day of the year, just much hotter.  Now, I that I have children, I want to be home with my children on their summer break but I can't.  I must be at work making the bacon to take home.  I have vacation scheduled later in July for the beach house and I've been taking a day here and there for other stuff but I just want to be home.  Poolside would be nice too.  ha!

Bella is my shadow.  Always has been really, but lately she does not like being away from mommy at all.  She loves to help in the kitchen, work on craft projects with me, help in the yard, do laundry, take naps, watch shows, read, draw, color, shop, run errands.  You name it, she is 199% in it with me.  I say 199% because that is the magic number with her lately and I love it.  Her daddy recently let her bring home the bike he got for her a couple years ago that was sitting at his house.  She loves to ride so if we're home, I try to take her out to ride in the evenings.  She loves it....

She needs bigger bike so I'm working on that.  :)

If we're not riding, we're taking a walk....

One day last week, we had a baby shower at work for one of the girls expecting her first baby.  The girls asked me to make my strawberry bites. Bella wanted to help but her room needed cleaning.  I told her if she picked up her room, she could help mommy in the kitchen.  She did and her brother even helped a little.  After she was done, she wanted to rest but was a little afraid so she asked Chris to put all her stuffed animals around her.  Chris sent me this picture.  Can you find her in the bunch?  

And later.....our strawberry bites in the making....

My boo loves to get her nails done.  My issue with this is that her polish never lasts long at all, especially on her fingernails so its a real treat when mommy takes her to the salon to get a mani/pedi.  We went a couple weeks ago and got our 4th of July nails.  She was excited because I let her get "diamonds" on her toes.  Love this girl! 

Our cousin and his wife had a Father's Day pool party the Saturday before Father's Day and invited all the aunts, uncles and cousins over to enjoy their new pool.  It was sooooo nice.  I've always said hot days should be spent inside with the A/C, poolside or somewhere near water.  My opinion anyway.    

My view...

Some of the cousins...

L to R: Ashley (hostess), Veronica, Paige, Donna, Diane, Me & Dina

A day spent with family is a great day for me, especially when I get to spend it with some of mom's sisters because its like having mom around again.  Gosh I miss her. 

The other night, this was happening in my living room...a real life nerf gunfight.

Cute vs. Cuter

Bella would shoot and when she'd run out of bullets, she'd call time so she could reload and not get attached at the same time.  It was hilarious.  There were nerf bullets flying everywhere.

On Friday, I left work early to meet a roofing service to get an estimate on replacing my roof.  Back in April, we had a hailstorm hit.  I haven't seen any noticeable problems nor have I had any leaking but I've been paranoid and after talking to a few people, I'd opted to have my roof checked out.  Rather be safe than sorry. Turns out, our trees did protect a lot but there were still areas heavily damaged so the inspector recommended a full roof replacement.  He came out, gave me an estimate and will actually get started on it next week!  I expected to be on a waiting list but since my house but a small one, they can get to them pretty quick.  Win for me.  After that meeting, I was off to get the gray (or most of it ) covered up.  I opted for more blonde this go round.  Back in the day, I didn't have to get these highlights, my hair was naturally this blonde. I was feeling pretty sassy & refreshed.  

Too bad I didn't have a hot date that night :(....

This past weekend while Chris was cutting grass (or attempting to), Bella and I ran a few errands.  We were on the hunt for a belated Father's Day gift for Pop and new tops for me for work.  Bella's favorite store is Justice.  After asking a minimum of 199 times to go there I finally told that if she were good while we went to all the others places we needed to go and didn't ask me again, we would go.  That hushed her up, she behaved and much to my delight, no whining.  She was thrilled to find a "B" purse, and the added bonus is that it was on sale!!  An even bigger bonus is mommy gave her some change to put in it.  #bestmomever

  

Sunday, since we were already getting rain showers and Chris couldn't cut grass again, we went to one of our favorite happy places.  Promise not to get too jealous now...

Gosh we love that place...oh the money I could spend.  

That about sums up our life lately, well what I capture in pictures.  July 4th is this weekend and we are hoping to catch some fireworks and help celebrate a 50th birthday on Sunday.  I am looking forward to an extra day off as is my daughter.  And believe me, she is counting the days until beach house and the week mommy gets to stay home too!  20 days....

Y'all have a good one and I hope every now and then you get sweet little notes from a sweet little girl like I do...

  

Life Lately

To say that life lately has been happy, sweet and grand would be somewhat of a lie.  There have been moments like those, but there have been some struggles too.

Let's start with some happy stuff!  Miss Bella officially kicked her kindergarten year in the butt!  Sweet girl received a perfect attendance medal for the year as well as a certificate for A-B Honor Roll for the year.

Here she is accepting her certificate from her teacher, Mrs. Johnson and getting a hug :)

After all the awards were handed out, the kids performed a chant and my girl assisted on stage with the letter "T".   Each letter represented something they had learned during their kindergarten year.  It ended with them all screaming, "look out 1st grade, here we come!"  It was awesome.

Don't let this smiling face fool you.  That sweet smiling face right there below quickly faded to tears when somebody realized she wasn't going home like some of the other children were able to do, which by the way, really ticked me off.  So instead of fun smiling pictures of my girl with her awards, friends and teacher, I was explaining to my crying 6 year old who was holding on to me for dear life why she had to stay at school and mommy had to go to work.  It was awful (thanks parents).  I had to peel this sweet girl off of me and pass her to another teacher to help get her the rest of the way down the hall to her classroom.  What I found almost funny is, that is exactly what happened on the first day school back in August.  She ended up having a good day and all was right in the world again.

Another picture opportunity I missed out on was Bella giving her teacher the gift we made for her.  I really wanted to get a picture of them together with this but it didn't happen.  Thank you Pinterest for the cool year end teacher gift idea.  Isn't it cute?!?  We had a lot of fun making this.  Christopher even helped with this little project.

Speaking of Christopher.  Oh this child.  He made it to his sophomore year, but he will have to take Spanish again in the Fall.  Don't get me started.  He was struggling with English and Algebra as well but improved the latter part of the year.  It was all equal parts of not studying, not trying and just not understanding.  I've had several conversations with his counselor at school.  He is making improvements and using his resources for his 504 modifications but its gradually.  He wants very much to figure it all out on his own and not use the resources/modifications he has access to but doing it on his own is not working well for him.  We have been encouraging him to use the resources.  He saw an improvement in both Algebra and English once he utilized his resources so we are hoping he will continue this into next year and kick butt.  I am hoping and praying and praying some more that this next year will be the year that it all snaps for him and he gets it together. He also wants very much to show a goat at the fair through FFA.  He has to make improvements with his grades before I will allow that to happen.  I support him in wanting to do this.  I think it would be great for him, but this momma is not about to fork out the money for an animal he may or may not be eligible to show come fair time.  I want a better guarantee.  He asked for this animal late in the year.  I asked him to kick ass and take names with his grades.  He failed.  He will not get an animal for this next year.  I'm not going to reward him for failing.  I just can't do it. And believe me, it absolutely kills me to say no but he needs to show me he can be responsible and make the grades happen.  I know he can do it.  Just has to find his groove....

I will end on a good, happy note...

Look who graduated last week, Cori Ashley Rubio!!!!!  So stinkin' proud of this girl!!

And that's life lately....full of year end stuff!!

Y'all have a good one and I hope your summer is off to a great start!!