Luci's latest accomplishment...

Julie: "Is there ANYTHING she can't do?!"

Me: "Apparently not!"

I know she's not the youngest child to ever accomplish this, and I don't know why I'm so surprised, but she continues to amaze us all! I never thought my 4 year old would be riding a bicycle WITHOUT training wheels! We don't even have any pavement at our house which makes it even more amazing! The first time I saw this feat, she was peddaling across the lawn! Way to go, Super Luci!

Celebration weekend!

This past week, Luci had her Kindergarten screening. When Luci entered her Pre-kindergarten class last fall, I had decided that I would probably enroll her in Developmental kindergarten for a year before actual kindergarten, simply because of her age. She just made the cut-off by 5 days! So she is of the youngest in her class. But I also left the door open...maybe she would surprise us and have a stellar UPK year! That's exactly what happened! In the fall, she seemed very immature, her speaking ability was less than impressive and I felt she would probably need the D-K. We had her tested for speech and they found only one incident during the testing of stuttering and labeled her advanced in her fine motor skills! In the end they did NOT recommend extra help for her speech and thought she would most likely outgrow any remaining speech issues. I was happy to hear that! Getting back to Kindergarten screening...she did phenomenally well! I sat down after the screening with the principal and she went over the results with me. She was amazed at how well a 4.5 year old could do! She scored a 97%!! Now, her only downfall was counting...due to her speech. Luci cannot yet annunciate the soft "TH" sound, so when she said 13, it actually sounded like 14, so they stopped her there. In reality, she can count to 30 and beyond if you remind of her of the tens! She is truly a smart cookie and my friend Julie said it best, "She's got the whole package...beauty, brains and personality!" I couldn't agree more! Now...on the other hand, her ability to pick out clothes and dress herself...well, just see below!

Yesterday was Julie's daughter Hannah's 8th birthday party! She had a tea party at a local children's museum. The guests got to decorate their own tea party hat. Luci waits while Mary hot glues her flowers on.

Here's the whole group in the gardens at the museum.

Drew and her new American Girl doll, Daphne. She bought this one with her own money! She'll get her other AG doll, Eva, on the day of her party...this coming Sunday.

Luci and her "American Girl" doll, Daisy. No, Daisy is another brand of doll, but Luci doesn't know nor does she care. I just couldn't justify spending that amount of money on a doll for a 4 year old!

They were treated to tea (aka lemonade and fruit punch), finger sandwiches, truffles and petit fours!

I just loved this shot of Hannah opening one of the gifts we got her...a doll for her American Girl doll Felicity. I think she liked it!

Luci gets bored with watching the presents being opened when she's not the one doing the opening! Ha ha! She and Brynn wander away to play with the miniature horse stable.

Luci with a horse hat on. She has a real affinity for all things equine...we may have to spring for riding lessons when she gets a little older!

Here, the girls listen to Matt the Moose, a talking animated moose head!

And last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my Mother's Day today! Last night, I planned a Margarita night with my good friend and cousin, Heather. Unfortunately, as I was making them, I got the recipe mixed up and made the drinks very strong! They were still pretty good and we had plenty of them...too many for me! Anyway, I woke up with a mother of a hangover and spent a good portion of today in bed! Eventually, I made my way downstairs to find my Mother's Day gift. Dean and the girls painted this sign which is placed above a measuring board in my kitchen. In my old kitchen, I had a measuring board that I kept track of how tall the girls were getting. I saved the board when we demolished the old kitchen and kept meaning to transfer the markings to a new board and continue measuring the girls. Well, life gets in the way and it never got done. But apparently I mentioned it enough times that Dean thought it would be a nice surprise and indeed it was! The sign is the icing on the cake! I love it! Another happy little surprise is when I mentioned how nice it was that he had left space to add another name or two. Then he said, "No, I left enough space for up to 4 more names! We've got a big house now, so we need to fill it up!" with a big smile on his face! I told him not to tease me and he got a little chuckle from that! He never ceases to amaze me!

Here's a close-up of the markings. If you look closely, you'll see that Luci's marks are on the right and Drew's are on the left. I measured them today and found that Luci is about an inch or so taller than her 2.5 year older sister! We keep reminding Drew that SOMEDAY she'll really appreciate being small!! Anyway, despite the large hangover, I had a wonderful Mother's Day!

Busy, busy, busy!

Life's been pretty hectic since my last post. May is definitely my busy month! We have 3 birthdays, Sara, Hannah and Drew, that means presents for 3 girls (which I made American Girl stuff for all three), and 3 parties. Here is one of the things Sara got from us. This bunk bed was given to Drew, but she has another, so she graciously gave it to Sara for her new American Girl doll, seen below with the bed. It needed better bedding, so I dug out some girly fabric and voila! It turned out really cute! I think she liked it!

This week, Luci's class planned a Mother's Day get-together in the classroom. Here's Luci's entire class lined up to sing a couple of songs!

After they presented presents, I snapped this cute photo. She's such a snuggler!

Just a cute shot of Luci at dance class.

Drew is my budding photographer :-) and wanted to take some shots with my new camera. Did I mention my new camera? It's AWESOME! It's a point and shoot, Olympus Stylus Tough 8000. You can take is scuba diving down to 33 feet, you can drop it from a height of 6.5 feet without damage, it is crush-proof to 220 pounds and it is freeze-proof so you can take winter shots outdoors! Oh, and it's 12 megapixels!! That's bigger than both of my business DSLRs!! Anyway, it makes it really easy to hand over to a child to take pictures since it won't matter if she drops it! So here's my little photographer snapping a few... Drew tries to take a picture of her American Girl, Daphne on the right and Luci's fake American Girl on the left, Daisy. Luci jumped into the shot at the last minute! I don't think I mentioned Drew's doll, either. We bought Drew an American Girl doll for her birthday. We bought it at the beginning of April and her birthday isn't until the end of May. She has talked non-stop about this doll and the fact that she wants to get more dolls. I told her that if she wanted another one, she'd have to break into her piggy and get it herself! So she insisted that we count her piggy! She ended up having nearly enough for another doll, so I threw in some extra change I had laying around and she picked this one out. She loves her! We got Luci the fake one to see how well she'd take care of it...I refuse to spend $100 on a doll for a 4 year old when she probably won't take care of it! Well, she's doing a pretty good job, but not so well that I'm thinking of buying her the real thing just yet! Maybe for her birthday if she proves herself capable!

Luci poses for another shot taken by her sister. What a goof-ball!

Now let's ALL pose for her!

Luci wanted a turn, too, so at least Drew gets to get in one of the shots!

This week also saw my chorus' annual dinner. It was a fun time as usual. We got 5th place small chorus at our competition, which was a little disappointing since we had worked so hard throughout the year. But we kept our score up and actually got part of our score into the B- category, one of our goals this year! They were also 2 brand new songs, so that usually counts against you as well. Considering all of that, we actually did quite well and we are proud of our performance, so I guess that's all that counts! Top row L to R, Melanie, Michele, Michelle, Angela. 3rd row, Pat, Cate, Roberta, Judy, Jewel. 2nd row, Genine(kneeling), Clara, me, Carol, Mary Jo, Doris, Donna (kneeling). 1st row, Lauri, Rebecca, Leah, JoAnn.

What's new...

Saturday night, we invited Julie over for a rousing game of dominoes and she brought Hannah and Jordyn with her and all the girls colored Easter eggs.

Of course, the next day was Easter, and since we were having 3 girls, the bunny brought 3 baskets...complete with FAO Schwarz bears!

Hey! The bunny hid our eggs!

Now, on to my...uh, I mean DREW's latest obsession! A couple of posts ago, I showed you the bunkbed with the bedding I made. Here is my latest creation...livingroom furniture! It turned out so cute! Very shabby chic!

We have Sara for the week again as it is Easter break from school. To keep them busy, I have planned a few things. I bought a bunch of projects from Jo-Ann's and those have proven successful, so far. Tonight I'll be bringing them to my Sweet Adeline's rehearsal so they can listen to us sing. I wasn't intending to bring Luci, but I just don't think she'll let me out the door with the other two and not her! Hopefully they'll all behave...famous last words! Sometime during the week, I'd like to bring them to the theater to watch the Hannah Montana movie. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know!

These vagabond shoes....

Cabin fever never had it so good! We're back from our 3-day jaunt to New York City! We brought the girls and Julie, Hannah and Ben came with us. It was wonderful! The girls were so well behaved...we asked a lot of them with all that walking, but they were troopers and enjoyed themselves immensely, as did we! Below, Drew and Daddy at the start of our journey, on the train from Albany to NYC.



The train ride was 2.5 hours long and the girls played with each other and snacked. When we arrived, we dropped our luggage off at a storage facility and began walking uptown towards Times Square. On the agenda for the first day was a downtown bus tour. Below is a shot of the Empire State Building from just across the road.

There really is something for everyone in the city! Check out this interesting museum! We chose to pass on this one! Hee hee!

The famous Flatiron building seen in many movies.

Luci takes a snooze on the bus.

Flowers on the trees! I can't wait until we can see some of that here at home!

Some of the architecture on the buildings is so intricate and beautiful!

A stroll through Chinatown triggers de ja vu! These really are some of the things you'll see in China! Daddy and Drew pose in front of a store selling whole cooked ducks, heads and all!

Luci was brave enough to pose next to a live crab.

The sidewalk someplace downtown near City Hall.

We nixed actually going to the site of the World Trade Center disaster as we didn't think the girls would really be all that impressed with a big construction zone. They're also a bit young to really grasp the whole idea behind Ground Zero. When they're older, we'll check out the site, which will probably have a new building or two to replace the towers by then. Below, you can see a crane at the site.

The Peking, now a floating museum, docked at the South Street Seaport.

Funny some of the things you see in the city!

A Bhuddist temple in Chinatown.

Drew at the Rockefeller Center ice rink.

You didn't think we could go to NYC without hitting the American Girl Place, now did you???

Some dolls getting their hair done.

Hannah begs for a treat and promises to be good for the rest of her life!! Ha ha!

The wallet groaned a little, but the girls had a great time in this store! Four floors of nothing but American Girl stuff! They were in heaven!

These girls were dancing an Irish step dance on camera. The interviewer took one look at my hair and nabbed me for the next interview. Thankfully, it was only a morale boost film for CBS's sales marketing team, so it won't be aired!

We saw a few of these characters!

A few scenes from Times Square.

This was outside the Ripley's Believe it or Not musuem on 42nd Street.

At the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Outside our hotel.

There was an actual ferris wheel in the Toys R Us store!

The ball still marks 2009! They must leave it up all year??

The Ebony Hillbillies playing some music down in the subway. They were really good!

The girls danced to their music!

The girls' first ride on a subway! They really liked it!

Who goes to NY and doesn't get a hotdog from a street vendor???

We intended to take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, climb up and look out....until we saw the lines! So instead, we took the Staten Island Ferry which drove by the statue. Here's Drew checking out the scene.

The statue. Kind of anticlimactic really...

And Luci on the boat.

Ben takes a snooze on the ferry.

And Luci and Dean napped, too!

The famous Nathan's Hotdog stand in Coney Island. We ate here and it was delicious!!

The girls get their very first glimpse of the ocean! The minute we stepped onto the beach, all I could smell was salty beach air...it was wonderful! Here's a long pier.

Surprisingly, the rides at Coney Island were running! I thought they didn't open until late April.

I actually got Luci to pose for this shot, she was obsessed with finding seashells, of which there were many.

At one of the entrances to Central Park, Artisan's Gate.

We chose to save the $34 it would have cost to take a horse drawn carriage ride through Central Park, but they posed with the horse anyway.

There was a husker in the park playing a bongo drum and other percussion instruments with a huge pile of hula hoops for anyone who wanted to hula. He was quite funny and the kids enjoyed themselves. Drew impressed all with her skills and the husker awarded her with a free hula hoop to take home! Drew shows Hannah how it's done.

Now she's just showing off! She had the biggest grin on her face because everyone was making such a fuss over her! She later claimed to be embarrassed, but we know better! She was loving every minute of it!

Luci gave it her best shot!

There were so many huge rocks in the park, the girls loved climbing on them!

The ice rink in the park...slowly melting.

Julie talked this guy down from $30 to $20 for this ride!

FAO Schwarz...we made it here at closing time, so we had to wait until the next day to go in!

Dean and the girls in front of the Trump Tower.

Ben with his big bad Shirley Temple at the Dallas BBQ which was awesome! Make sure you're hungry because the portions are humongous!

Hannah shows off her foot-long!

The next day, we went back to FAO Schwarz. Here the girls are mesmerized by the Barbie fashion show! The dolls were on a motorized track that brought them to the end of the catwalk and twirled them around like the models do in real life!

Dean snuggles three FAO Schwarz bears. One each for the girls and shhhhhh, one for Sara for her Easter basket tomorrow!

The girls pose with the soldier out front!

This fountain was in front of the store as well.

Below is a video taken of the girls playing on the floor piano in FAO Shcwarz, the same piano made famous in the movie, Big, with Tom Hanks!

And here is a short video of Luci at the hula hoop stop in Central Park.


Drew hula hooping!

This trip was so great! I wish we could have stayed longer...there are just so many things to do there! But, now we have an excuse to go back! I loved the diversity! It is my sincerest wish that my girls leave this armpit of a little town and see better places than this when they're done with school! I will miss them, yes, but I want them to experience a little more life than I did. The furthest I've lived is Rochester, while bigger than home, is not exactly the fast life! I want them to see different races, little people, drag queens, homosexuals, huskers, homeless people, etc! I want them to see that there's more to life than this small impoverished community and farms. I hope they don't get married until their thirties at least! I want them to travel and see the world before they settle down. To have so many resources at your beck and call would be a dream come true! To have a multitude of choices to tackle boredom...it boggles the mind! I felt all of this for the brief time we were there! Anyway, we all really enjoyed our short trip and hope to go back again in the future. Ahhhhhhh!