What a mess!

I have been avoiding Maddie's room like the plague. It was such a horrible horrible mess. In her closet I have all her toys boxed up individually: Strawberry Shortcake stuff is in one clear box, My Little Pony's in another, etc. Well, she tends to get these boxes down w/ the help of SOMEONE (uh-hum, wonder who?) and plays and never cleans up her messes. I kept warning her that if she didn't clean it up, I was going to do it. So today, on my one day off this week, I cleaned the little stinker's room. It took me three hours, 2 huge black bags full of toys we're getting rid of, two white garbage bags full of junk/trash, and one huge white bag full of clothes that no longer fit her or she refuses to wear.
Here are some before and after pics. I'm SO proud of myself ...

Before ...
After ...

Now, I just need to go through Katie's room. *laughing wickedly*
Here's Katie in her new outfit (shirt & tights) Aunt Tiffany found for her at Children's Place. Looks great on her Aunt Tiff!

First Day of School

Today ... my baby ... became a Kindergartner. :( I had been doing so well in these past few weeks of NOT thinking I was losing my baby to school. Today started off great. I took her pictures in front of the house like I had done w/ Katie this year and every other year when the first day of school rolled around. I walked Madison in to the school (at this time realized I had forgotten my camera -- so much for capturing her in school!), and took her to where she was to wait in line before the teacher came out to get the class. I realized then there were only 3 girls in the class -- the rest were boys. 15 boys to be exact. Maddie's going to have a lot of boyfriends (oh dear). Then, the dreaded moment. Mrs. Griner (her teacher) came out to greet the class. I quickly gave Maddie a hug goodbye and whispered the same little words I tell Katie every single morning "Do your best, make good choices and remember that I love you". She started leaving me! All the parents are frantically taking pictures as all the little kids are being shuffled into the classroom. Finally Maddie looked back at me, with a sad puppy dog look. I tried so HARD not to start tearing up ... then she disappeared. That's when the flood started. ::WAH:: Momma had a hard day realizing her little baby was growing up to be a big girl.

Madison had a great day at school. In fact, last May when I enrolled her, I enrolled her as Madison. The teachers heard me call her Maddie, and so they labeled everything w/ her name "Maddie". Madison did not like that one bit. In fact, she writes her name as Madison. SO ... I had to ask the teacher if it was possible to change from Maddie to Madison. :) LOL

Katie is having a great time in 4th grade. She has the same teacher as she had last year, Ms. Larson. Katie LOVES Ms. Larosn! So, Katie is thrilled to be back at school. I think she was getting tired of being home all the time.

Anyways .. here's that they have a great year ahead of them! Maddie will learn her "Popcorn" words (words that "pop" out in their reading, like "a" "the" "and", etc), learn to write and start to read. Katie will learn division this year, more reading, lots of writing and I think start geography this year.

Ethnic Festival

OK .. many apologies on my part for not posting as much. Still recovering from pneumonia & pleurisy, but I'm feeling a lot better (still hurting a bit and coughing up junk now that it's allergy season) ... so I'm ready to start posting again about the girls!

Friday night was our annual Ethnic Festival showcase. Every year Kansas City puts on an Ethnic Festival that showcases countries around the world. They're represented by people who live in KC and they make crafts, food, etc that you can buy as if you were in that country. They also showcase talent also, and those are 30 minutes blocks performed over 2 days and one night. It's a BLAST to go to this festival, and we can find food for about $1-3 to sample and try.
The girls have been dancing at this festival for the past 3 years, and the Pipe Band usually performs along w/ them, so that's a neat treat to watch and listen to also.
Here are some pics of our night:

This is my mom and the girls. They're eating crab rangoons & egg rolls. How very exotic of a food for them .. they eat them almost a few times a month. SIGH


This is Katie in the front w/ the white dress. She's dancing the Highland Fling. The other girls are wearing a traditional kilt outfit while Katie is wearing a National dress outfit. She danced another dance earlier that I couldn't get a good picture of, and she had to wear a national dress with that dance.



These are the "babies" of the dance group -- ranging in age from 4-6. Maddie is the 2nd from the left (w/o a vest on). They are dancing the basic pas de basques & highcuts.

The girls next competition will be in MacPherson, Kansas on September 22nd. :)

Sick again ....

Katie & Maddie have both been down w/ a cold. Coughing and hacking and all the crap. :( Early Sunday morning (1:30 a.m.) Katie woke up w/ an earache, so I gave her some Tylenol (can't have ibuprofen yet b/c of her laceration). Then gave her the home remedy of olive oil & rubbing alcohol (which didn't help). Then finally a warm compress. Then I put her back to bed. 3:30 rolls around and it still hurts, so I rewarm her compress back up and put her back to bed. 4:00 comes around, and it still hurts. By now I'm thinking "why didn't the tylenol work?" So I gave her some codeine left over for her kidney stone pain. That knocked her out. However in the morning she was still hurting pretty bad, which is very unusual for her b/c the pain usually goes away immediately w/ meds. So I take her to Urgent Care that afternoon, and turns out she had an ear infection so bad it made a small small hole in her eardrum b/c it had to get out!! OUCH! So, she's out of the water for 4-6 weeks (we just got out of ONE restriction and now we're back on another restriction? MAN!) -- unless she wears ear plugs. Gotta love those bright orange ear plugs. :) So, she's on 2 types of antibiotics & our "oh we hate this so much" prednisone for her coughing. When she gets sick, it triggers her asthma, and she has to go on prednisone (a steroid) to help her to stop. When Katie is on this medicine she's hard to live with. :) Off the wall outbursts, uncontrollable, etc.

Last night I took the girls to a kickball game and they had a blast! Katie just now learned how to play kickball not too long ago. She made a homerun. Maddie was so cute to watch. As soon as she kicked the ball she ran to 1st base. Then when the next person kicked the ball she stood there on first base and just clapped her hands and jumped up and down until someone yelled "RUN MADDIE!" so she starts her little run to 2nd base. Usually the person is at the base by the time she starts running. This happens at every single base. LOL She doesn't understand the game just yet, but she loves kicking the ball and loves to jump the line just to kick it and run.

Today is our first day of summer vacation for the girls. Their last day of summer school was yesterday (Monday). I now have off Tuesdays & Wednesdays, so we'll start our adventure today!!

Tell Katie to stop following me!

The girls have been in summer school since May 30th, and this is a "fun" summer school they can be a part of. On top of that, they earn money for even going to school: $100 if you don't miss a day, $75 if you miss one day, etc. So far they haven't miss a day of school as they are trying so hard to earn their $100! (Maddie would love to get an American Girl doll, and Katie wants a pool -- ha ha, the money is going towards school stuff). Anyways, this is the first time the girls have gone to school together. Maddie has been able to start a Kindergarten class to help the little ones just getting ready to start school learn about school, so she'll have a head start. I had Katie take her to her classroom every morning just to make sure Maddie got to her class fine. After a week Maddie started complaining that she can do it herself and didn't need help. I still wasn't very comfortable with Maddie being alone with all the big kids in that school, so I told Katie to "hang back" and watch her go into her class. This morning Maddie proceeds to tell me to "tell Katie to stop following me!". I asked her "what do you mean?". Maddie replied "well, she always follows me to my class and I can DO IT MYSELF!" (the bold meaning she really emphasized her feelings!). I looked at Katie and said in a quiet voice in which Maddie couldn't hear me "you were supposed to stay far back so she didn't see you!". So, today Maddie is going to her class all by herself. I'm already training Katie to be a secret FBI agent, starting with the fact of following someone discreetly. Perhaps I need to work on the discreetly part? ;)

The Little Girl Who Wouldn't Get Dressed

I thought since it's so hard nowadays to keep the family up on what's happening with the girls, I would just create a blog, to where the family can keep tabs this way! I'll post pictures here of the girls, tell you the funny things they do, the CRAZY things they do (and we know they do this a lot!), and anything else we want to share! One thing I do request is that this blog is for family eye's only. Please do not give this address out to anyone who is not related to us. :)

If you want to leave a message (where the comments box is), you'll have to get an email w/ google. Just go to http://www.google.com/ and sign up for an email. Once you have an email from them (it'll be @gmail.com), then you can sign in and leave a message for us!

Our first story of the day is about Maddie Moo .... this story I'll title "the little girl who wouldn't get dressed" the little stinker didn't know I was serious about sending her to school in her jammies!! After warning her for over an hour to get dressed, she flat out ignored me. I repeated myself many time telling her that I would send her to school in her jammies. Finally it was time to leave, and I picked up her shoes, my purse, my keys and of course, Maddie. :) Who, of course, started crying and screaming when she realized that I was serious. :) After five minutes of pure sobbing and of course, a few seconds of vomiting up her yogurt from crying so hard, she pleaded w/ me that she'll listen and put her clothes on. Let me tell you that I think this little girl has learned her lesson today! She even said this afternoon that she will always listen to Momma and put her clothes on.

Until the next time ... toodle loo!