Playing Catch Up

Well here goes nothing....I've been avoiding catching up Zoe's blog since forever ago. I know....I shouldn't worry too much but really...it has been too long. So here goes nothing.

This summer....We went to visit our family in Mississippi. We not only visited relatives, but we went to the beach, and Lynn Meadows Discovery Center which is a super fun place for kids to build awesome imaginations....Here are some pictures.


























































































We spent a lot of time hanging out with Grannie and Shane when he was off work. We went to the park and the pool. Zoe learned to swim without her float this summer as well. All by herself I might add!














































































For the 4th of July we were all in for a special treat. Grannie took the whole family to The Great Wolf Lodge. It is a rockin' cool indoor water park were everything is so kid friendly. Zoe and Lani (and even the grown ups) had a blast!













































































The whole summer she attended Dance Camp at Sheena's Dance Academy. She had fun two mornings a week and I had a little free time :) Here is a picture of her after dance having a girls lunch with Grannie and I.






















She also decided to give up the violin for a while and take up Irish Dance classes.

Then before we knew it it was back to school....back to early nights and even earlier mornings. No one was happy.



































So that is pretty much that, We've been going to school, dance on the weekend and watching football on Sunday's. Life is grand, OH and did I mention she turned 5???? Well she did....More to come later (I promise).

Why didn't I think of that??

I have had trouble getting Zoe to sleep all of her life.  It has been a huge battle at our house, almost since she came home from the hospital.  The child just hates to go to sleep at night.  Only in the past year have we managed to get her out of our bed.  Tonight we had a major break through.  She has been spending a lot of time at Grannie's lately and Grannie suggested that we try her Ipod playlist for Zoe.  Shane went out and bought Zoe a stuffed animal that plays music from her Ipod (it is the white dog at the front of the picture).  We hooked it up tonight and she took it to bed.  She was only in bed for about 10 or 20 minutes before she was out.  It is amazing!  Wish we had thought about it a long time ago.  Here she is sound asleep....

Earth Day????

**Warning:  This is me getting on my "Green" Soap Box :) Sorry Y'all, I just can't help it!!

The Earth Day celebration at Zoe's school was far from what I considered Earth Day.  They had a picnic lunch...sounds good right??  BUT, the students were supposed to bring a totally disposable sack lunch, so that they didn't have to worry about keeping up with what belonged to who when they went outside to eat.  Now you need to know some background to understand why I took issue with this....

Normally, Zoe takes her lunch and aftercare snack to school everyday in a lunch bag that is specified by the school (meaning we had to buy this particular bag from her school and it is the only one we can use).  I pack an almost if not completely waste free lunch using reusable containers everyday of the year, except for Earth Day when I had to pack a lunch where everything has to be thrown away.  Make perfect sense right??? IDK

They also wore crazy socks for the occasion???  What do crazy socks have to do with the earth??  Please put me in my place and help me understand...tell me I'm overreacting!! Please ;)

So here are her adorable pictures in her crazy socks with her cute little leftover Easter gift bags (we had to have 2 - one for lunch and one for aftercare snack) that I purchased at the Walgreen's the night before Earth Day because we did not keep brown bags around for her lunch.

So, here is what Zoe learned from Earth Day....

She Loves Wearing Crazy Socks!!!  Here she is last weekend....

On a lighter note :), I did teach my kiddos about recycling/reusing things on Earth Day.  We made vessels from old magazines.  The directions are here if you are interested in how to make them.

** I am now stepping down from my "Green" Soap Box.

Tell me what you think...Was I making too big of a deal out of it??

Butterfly Day

"A butterfly lights besides us like a sunbeam. And for a brief moment its glory and beauty belongs to the world. 

But then it flies once again, and though we wish it could have stayed, we feel so lucky to have seen it."

As you release this butterfly in honor of me, know that I'm with you and will always be. Hold a hand, say a prayer, close your eyes and see me there. Although you may feel a bit torn apart, please know that I'll be forever in your heart. Now fly away butterfly as high as you can go, I'm right there with you more than you know.
By Jill Haley

Zoe's Grandpa Herb passed away the Friday after Thanksgiving last year.  My Dad works for a local hospice that had a butterfly release on April 18th to honor lost loved ones over the last year.  He invited Zoe and Shane to come out and release a butterfly in honor of Grandpa Herb.  I made a little slide show of the pictures from that day.  Shane and Zoe spent the morning with PaPaw.  They went out to breakfast and then headed to the ceremony in Dallas. Before the ceremony they had a little time to waste, so they played at the park where the ceremony was held.  That's were all the animal pictures come from.  Zoe was a little intimidated by the butterflies at first, so some of her faces in pictures are priceless.  Hope everyone enjoys the pictures.  It sure was a great way to honor Grandpa Herb's memory.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I have a Boo Boo

On Monday, April 20th I got the scare of my life. During my last class of the day Zoe's school called and said that she had been hurt at school and needed to be taken to see a doctor. She fell out of her chair and stabbed her pencil into the palm of her hand.

I left school immediately and rushed her to the doctor's office. After many tears and lots of screaming she let the doctor see her hand. He cleaned her up and decided it was going to be just fine. He did put this awesome camo band-aid on it.

Everything turned out great in the end, but she did con her Grannie into letting me draw a blue mustache on her and she got to stay home from school on Tuesday. The things we do for our kids!!!

Presentation Night

Last Thursday was Presentation Night at Tutu's school. It is a night where the students teach their parents a lesson that they have learned this year at school. Zoe was so excited about this night...she's been talking about it for weeks. Of course they have been preparing for it for weeks too. We brought Grannie and Papaw with us and went out to dinner before heading back to school. When we arrived at school, we headed down to her classroom where the entire room was set up and each student had their own little work station labelled with a name plate that they made earlier in the week.

Zoe taught us "The Grand Layout". It is a project designed to teach them about numbers and their values. The first step uses several sets of tiles of numbers. It starts with the ones place, then progresses to the tens, hundreds, and thousands. The kids layout the tiles in the correct order starting with the ones and working across the mat to the thousands place.







After all the tiles are laid out, then the kids begin adding beads next to each tile. They are to count out the beads to equal the number on the tile. As they change from the ones to the tens and so on down the line things are simplified by using what are called units. The tens are 10 beads fused together to make one unit of ten beads. When you move from the tens to the hundreds the beads become blocks with dots on them to represent the beads. It really shows them the value of each number.





At the end of the night we only did up to number three for each number place. Her teachers said that if she does the entire thing during the school day it takes her about two hours. We saw pictures of her with the whole thing done displayed on the wall. It was really impressive. The blocks on the thousands place were stacked as tall as she is.


We also learned about how things work in her classroom because we saw her taking out supplies and putting them away. She even demonstrated to us the correct way to walk from one part of the room to the other. Her teacher said we better take a picture of that, because she never does it that way with a bubble in her mouth :)



It was a blast! I learned so much and was so impressed that she is learning so much. I cannot remember when I learned about numbers with a thousand place, but I'm certain that it was not when I was in preschool. It was an amazing sight to see!!!

But, I wanna be like....

A few weeks ago they took spring pictures at Tutu's school. She wanted to wear a dress just like her friend Rhea. So we went dress shopping. One afternoon after school we headed over to Target to get a new dress. She picked out 6 dresses, took me in the dressing room, and tried on every one of them. That is an amazing feet in itself...she HATES shopping. She picked her favorite dress and then we went over and picked out some sandals to match before we headed home.  Picture day was a few days later.  We got up and dressed in our new dress...which is adorable!! After we are all dressed it is time to fix her hair.  I thought it would be cute to just pull up some of the front of it and let her curls show, but when I told her my plans she had other ideas.  She said, 

"But MOM, I wanna be like Princess Leia!"

 That was funny too, because she HATES to have her hair brushed.  It is a daily chore, and I do mean chore.  But I fixed it like she wanted through the tears and screaming so it would be just like Princess Leia...here are some pictures.  The school pictures weren't all that cute, but these are priceless!