Mother's Day Weekend

Phil was on call Mother's Day weekend. We only got to see him a couple of hours the entire weekend. The girls had soccer games on Saturday morning. Fortunately, Phil was able to get away and come watch part of Makena's game.

Here is Megan as goalie...

Megan is showing off her patches with Claire, Coach Jesse's daughter.

It looks like Makena was getting a pep talk from her coach. Her coach is a pretty cool cat. I always smile when I hear him call one of the girls "shorty."

Here is Makena fighting for the ball. Go Makena!

Mouth open. Tongue out. Just like her dad did when he played sports growing up.

Later Saturday afternoon, I took the kids to Raleigh to celebrate the birthday of Phil's brother Lindsey's youngest son, Ian. It was a lot of driving but we had a great time hanging out with them. Ian got a set of golf clubs for his birthday that Everett really seemed to like.

On Sunday we went to the strawberry patch. The girls and I picked and Everett got to sit in the stroller. Thank goodness there were a ton of berries and he didn't have to sit there long.

We wanted to see if we could get Everett to try a strawberry. Here he is checking it out...

That strawberry was pretty funny!

Getting some help from Makena....

And then he realizes what we've given him and throws it on the ground. I've given him cut strawberries to try a few times at home and he always throws them in the floor. Such a picky little guy!

I bought my mother's day gift a little early this year. I knew what I wanted and went and got it when I heard it was on sale. I've wanted one of the Happy Everything platters since I first saw one at a friends' house months ago. The platter comes with the birthday cake attachment but with the sale you got an additional attachment for free. I got a chalk board attachment  as my freebie. I also got a picnic tote for free and bought a stand for my platter. The attachments are $20 a piece so I'll slowly build up my collection of attachments. The girls also made me some adorable gifts at preschool.

Tiny Dancer

Makena's first dance recital is next month! The past couple of weeks they've distributed the dance costumes and just last week they took professional pictures. Since the picture prices were steep we took some pics on our own at home and opted for the cheaper (note: cheaper not cheap) professional picture package. They really get you with the costume and the pictures and the flowers and the video. Ugh! I feel sorry for the moms I see with older dancers who have multiple costumes. As with everything else we do I tell myself, "If she didn't love it, we wouldn't do it." Makena came up with all of the poses on her own. I think she was a little disappointed that she didn't get to pose however she wanted to for the professional pictures. :) This is her ballet costume. The tutu comes off and is replaced with a fringe skirt for the tap performance. I'll try to get pics of her in that later.

Working the stairs...

  Don't you just love the hydrangeas?! Straight from Costco, our family sponsor! And of course, Makena wanted pink and Megan wanted blue. ;)

Our Little Honey Bear

This picture was taken by Megan. Can you guess who or what it is?

Pooh, that's who!! Most of you know that our Megan is CRAZY about Pooh Bear. She's dressed up as Pooh the past two years for Halloween. We've accumulated so many Poohs that I wanted to get a picture of her with them while her costume still fits. Now, these were just the stuffed Pooh Bears she had in her bed. We also have Pooh pajamas, pillows, books, figurines and other toys. We found the giant Pooh Bear at a local consignment sale for $5! Megan was thrilled with that find! After having a good bath he's been sleeping in her bed along with all of her other Pooh Bears. She often uses him as a pillow. :)

Royal Tea Party & Lazy 5 Ranch

I haven't been able to blog for a while because our computer had a virus and we just got it back from the shop. But now I'm back with pictures to share!

On Friday, April 29th 2011 the world watched as these two walked down the aisle.

We did not wake up at 4am to watch the Royal Wedding. But the girls did have a royal tea party to celebrate the occasion, complete with fancy princess dresses and tiaras. We watched some of the wedding coverage while we sipped our tea. And since we're not big hot tea drinkers we sipped sweet tea. :) We are in the South after all!

HM Queen Megan Eugenia Mooreham of Winston-Salembury

 (I got this from the Royal Name Generator on E!'s website.)

 We also recently went on a wagon ride at Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville. We've been a few times before but this was the first time Phil has gotten to come with us. 

 Very excited to see the animals! 

 They have so many different animals that you can feed from the wagon. The zebras were on the "do not feed" list.

 Breiner was having a good time! 

 Makena feeding a cow...

 Megan's turn...

 Mrs. Leah got to feed quite a few animals.

 Cheese! 

 After the wagon ride, the kids had fun at the petting zoo.

 Some of our friends stayed and had a picnic at the ranch for dinner. Our friends, the Deonanans, went with us to have some good ol' Lexington bbq. I've eaten bbq in Lexington before but didn't know which was the best place to go. So I asked a friend of mine who is from Lexington and she told me to go to a place called The Monk. It was so good! There was a line going out the door the entire time we were there. My friend told me it is always that way. We got two booths back to back. There was a girl's booth and a boy's booth. :)

Here are the girls with their friend, Ella.

The Zoo & Antiques Festival

The kids didn't have preschool the Monday after Easter so we packed a lunch and headed to the zoo. It was a beautiful day!

 We just stayed on the African side this time. We love the giraffes and zebras and elephants.

 The girls were in a picture taking mood. They kept climbing up on things saying, "Take my picture!"

 We said this guy was King Julian from the Madagascar movie. He definitely looked like he was the boss.

 The birds nest on the carousel was in hot demand. They made a new friend who wanted to go super fast.

 Cheese! 

 Megan is still enjoying gymnastics with Mr. Jeff. But now while she's running around having fun I'm running around chasing Everett. He runs all over that place! Mr. Jeff grabbed him the other day and put him up on the rings. He was interested in it for about a second before he wanted down. Right now, Everett has a very short attention span!

 Makena got her second turn doing the share bag at preschool this past week. She was so excited! As soon as we got home she wanted to start picking out things to take to school. They were also reading Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar at school the next day. And we had just happened to catch a caterpillar at home so she took it to school to show her class. Megan wanted to caterpillar to come to her class, too, so it could "play with her." :) 

On Friday, my dad and I took the kids to the Liberty Antiques Festival. I follow a few diy and home blogs and they inspired me to go and check it out. I'll see people like Layla at The Lettered Cottage find something that looks like nothing and turn it into something fabulous that looks like it came from Pottery Barn where it would cost at least three times as much. So did I leave the antiques festival with lots of awesome finds? No, of course not. Partially because my eye for finding things that have potential isn't nearly as good as the girls on the home blogs and because I'm just too cheap. There were a few things there that I was interested in but then I would see the price tag and decide against it. So I left with one thing. I bought an old whiskey jug for $15. I was able to talk the guy down from $20. They had some antique face jugs there that looked like they came from Seagrove. They were a little too pricey but the kids and I thought they were super cool.

 Makena and Megan loved all of the antique baby carriages and cribs.

 They also had fair like food at the festival. Makena got a fresh squeezed lemonade, my dad and I shared a funnel cake and Megan got a frozen cheesecake dipped in chocolate. Yummo!