Photoshoot by Tiffani

In an effort to take photos for Reef and Kaia's birthday invitations... this was the result....

Guess I'll try again tomorrow.  {I better figure out this photo shop thing, I may need it!}

Found a little treasure...

Just found a couple photos that were taken Easter morning.  LOVE these faces!! 

One more month until the BIG 1!!

Eleven months old, that's our baby KAIA. 

And one month until it's cake smashin', sugar overloadin' party day!!  Admittedly I'm a little sad that Kaia will be one so soon.  She dared stand independently the other day, so I just pushed her down.  Ok, I didn't really push her, but thought about it... you know they stand and then they walk and then they move out.  I love this baby stage and once she turns one I might as well hand her car keys and plan the wedding. It's all too much!  Oh dear me!

Well, here she is in her 11 month old glory:

Enjoying a tea party with big sister Mekena

After eating her favorite food... an avocado

A story about a bird...

There once was a mom who wanted so much to make her daughter Kirra's birthday wish come true.  Kirra was wishing with all her might for a rainbow bird for her 5th birthday.  So Kirra's mom convinced Kirra's dad (a very dapper man) to go along to the bird store.  You see Kirra's mom had secretly dreamt of being a bird owner some day herself, so there was a little extra excitement in fulfilling Kirra's wish.  Kirra's dad figured what they heck, a little $10 parakeet, a little cage, a little food... the bird lives a year, the kid looses interest, the parents look like birthday hero's... sounded like the right thing to do.  Off to buy a bird the birthday hero's went.  And then as they stood at the parakeets for sale, out of the corner of their eye's... a rainbow bird.  Seriously a rainbow bird!  Who knew they even existed outside of Rio de Janeiro??!! 

You know where the story is a goin'.  Yep, the wish of the birthday girl was granted.  Rainbow bird, taj mahal style cage, cool toys... this mom and dad don't mess around when it comes to rainbow birds. 

Kirra woke up on her birthday morning, heard a squawk, and there in a birds most colorful splendor sat LULU, (short for Honolulu of course), the rainbow bird.  She snuggled, flew around, drank OJ from a cup, danced when Justin Bieber sang, gave sweet kisses... It was love at first site.  We all fell in love.  For a while...

And then the bird owning bliss wore off.  Lulu squawked like, um, can't even explain it, enough to ring everything in between the ears.  Wow, it was loud.  Luckily it was only a couple times a day, but seemed to always be the wrong couple of times.  Oh and cleaning up bird poop, not exactly a dream come true.  The bird had a thing for the baby - any chance possible the bird would find the baby and bite the baby's fingers.  And then to find out this type of bird lives 30 years.  Kids don't even live in the coop for 30 years, let alone a bird.  Any two somewhat brilliant bird buyers could'a, should'a, wished they would'a done this research before the purchase...but then Lulu never would've been and to have owned a bird for 6 months is better to have loved and lost a bird than to have never loved a bird at all.  {somethin' like that.}

So now Lulu has a new home.  The mom feels a little guilty, the dad feels relieved, the "I once owned a bird when I was five" girl is fine and has gone on to lizard catching. 

Here's to LULU, THE RAINBOW BIRD {rumor has it Lulu has a boyfriend at her new house}!

Yesterday... Not my favorite day

I am typically positive, I don't usually complain - but this is my blog and I can cry if I want to.  And I will someday read this post and call myself a big baby.  But that's ok.  Here's how my not so favorite day started... I was determined to tackle a mess I had created for myself, the mess is called my office.  It was one of those messes that actually had layers, some of them as tall as me.  Couldn't get from one side to the other kind of mess.  It was bad, really bad, worse than the bad it's been many times before.  This mess had been carefully created over the past few months.  As I've cleaned and organized other messes, this became the "dumping" spot, the King of all messes.

I was tempted to not even clean it all out the day prior when Kirra proudly pulled me into the office to show me how she could get from one side of the office to the other by carefully scaling the edge of towering containers and piles.  She was in need of some craft supplies and my creation was not going to stop her!  She said "mommy now you don't have to clean this office because I can just go and get for you whatever you need".  Tempting... very tempting.  But for fear of her getting sucked into the mess one day, never to come out again, I figured I had only one option... the unbearable.  I started the day bright and early, pulling everything out onto our newly paved patio, layer by layer.  Wishing I could just dump each thing into a big heavy duty trash bag.  Now that would be an easy solution for sure.  But what about the cute drawings, the photos, the adorable ribbons, the scrapbooking supplies, the magazines, my super fabulous sewing machine I spoiled myself with last year, and 82 million other THINGS!  And how I would LOVE to get rid of all the dreaded receipts and statements that by law I'm supposed to keep for 7 years.  (Dang business laws!!)  So I continued my task until everything was out of the room!  Then I cleaned up the "guts" - dusted the desk, cleaned the washer, vacuumed the walls (a few spider webs had taken residence), mopped the floors.  Now I was ready to bring it all back in... but this time it would go in different, it would be organized and fabulous ONCE AND FOR ALL! 

But then the side tracking began (or should I say continued because to think the above happened without 5,000 interruptions would just not be my life).

The first was a phone call - a call we had been awaiting and dreading.  It was the call from Cathy - she wanted something we were selling.  Lulu.  Lulu is Kirra's bird, I'll share all about Lulu in my next blog entry.  We had decided it was the best decision for the family to find Lulu a new home.  Kirra and I cleaned out Lulu's cage and spent lots of time working out some sad feelings.  We cried, we took more pictures, we held Lulu lots, we got pooped on - all part of our final bird bonding.  And then we waited for Cathy.  Luckily by the time Cathy came, Kirra although tender hearted, was anxious to go buy her new pink Cadillac Escalade that we had agreed she could buy with the Lulu money.  Cathy was sweet, a prior bird owner, and ready for all that Lulu could offer.  So away Lulu went.  Of course a little more coddling but all in all Kirra was a tough cookie.

The second - a decision to have lunch with Mekena.  It's the last week of school and I felt I should head over to meet her at school for lunch.  A fun surprise for her and something to settle my "last week she'll ever be a first grader" feelings. 

The third - the fact that I was moving as slow as molasses.  Actually slower.  Fighting a fever and really just wanting to put my feet up... I was determined.  Mind over matter!!  So I felt sick, I knew I'd feel all better if my office was just clean.  This was not the day to feel anything but super-powers.  Super Office Cleaning Powers.

The fourth - Rand, the keeper of the lawn, had some extra time to mow the lawn.  In so doing, a nice fine layer of dirt placed itself on top of EV.VER.RE.THING!  So now I would need to wipe it all down before taking it back into my oh-so-clean new and improved office.  I started with the box of 500 envelopes.  Shaking each handful of envelopes.  And then on to the rain boots.  And then the toys that had snuck their way into the messy piles.  Oh dear, this was going to take some time.

And the final - a little girl getting sad about Lulu and a mom (me) feeling guilty about encouraging the little girl to sell her pet.  I was wishing I could go get Lulu back.  Who cares if I'm the only one who cleaned the cage, fed the bird, played with the bird, cleaned up random poop spots, picked up food and snack pieces.  {Lulu was only expected to live another 30 years, what else do I need to really do over the next thirty years??}  Before the guilt got too cozy in my soul I figured it be best to go spend some hard earned bird-day money and get us all out of the house.  The office mess could wait... there's lights out on the patio, the task can be finished when the kids go to bed.  So off we went to Outback and Toy's R Us.  Kirra was thrilled to buy her first car and she was so sweet to buy Reef Buzz Lightyear and Mekena some squinkies (don't ask).  Everyone was happy!!  {Lulu, who's Lulu?}

On our way home, I'm noticing that the roads are looking pretty wet around our area.  It was not suppose to rain in the evening hours.  I'm thinking maybe just maybe the roads will get drier as we get closer.  Um, not so much, they're actually more wet - big ol' puddles and all.  Wow, maybe just maybe the rains missed our house - you know like how you see a house completely ok after a tornado and all of the houses around it have been devastated.  Ya, maybe that would be our house.  Dry and un-wet.  Um...not so much.  I actually think it rained harder on our house, especially the back patio.  Complete devastation.  

I looked across the patio, I had previously wished for this...  and now whether I really wanted the wish to come true or not, I was without option.  This wish was not so good.  Now I was sad.  Cute little drawings, looked like water colors smeared.  Neatly paper clipped and categorized receipts floating within their containers.  Enough scrapbook paper to stock a paper store... mush.  My new laminating machine... my sewing machine picked 'em up and it was like a little faucet pouring water.  All of the kids clothes for storage and bags of donatable items, soaked. 

No one to blame but me.  And the rain.

It was late, I went inside, shed some tears for a couple of minutes and then reminded myself it was all STUFF.  Mekena came in and asked if I had been crying and I told her I was sad that all of my things were wet, most of them ruined, but that they are just things.  And that all was well and I would be just fine.  The bright side, this did make clean up easier.  The dirt from the earlier lawn mowing - I was hoping for an easy way to get all of that off.  I guess that was gone now.  I took the blow dryer to my fantastic sewing machine, hung up the blessing gown and said a prayer.  It'd been a long day and all in all I was grateful for the reminder of what really matters - and what really matters ain't stuff!!

And for the IRS, maybe I'll take a picture so when they handcuff me and take me to jail I can show them that the rain really did ruin all of the paperwork.

Clearly now instead of cleaning up my stuff, I'm blogging about my stuff.  Maybe it'll rain so hard today it will all wash out into the lake and I won't even have to throw it away.  {I guess I better be careful what I secretly wish for, because I really don't want to pollute our lake.}  Maybe the sun will dry it all up and it'll be like it never even rained.  That's better.  Off to my stuff I go...

Florida State Fair

We count down the days to this February Family Favorite.  Um...funnel cake, chicken gyro's, popcorn, skirt steak, warm doughnuts, sausage and peppers...all consumed within moments of being on the fair grounds.  How could you not LOVE that?!?!  {At least we haven't added the fried butter to our list of must haves.}

As tradition has held, we took our big ol' bellies full of sweets and treats and headed to the big yellow slide!  I stayed at the bottom with baby Kaia and sir dad headed up the long flight of stairs with Mekena, Kirra and Reef.  I looked as they made their way and there at the top of the stairs stood Mekena, clinging on to the pole refusing to go down what once seemed like the coolest slide ever - so down the stairs she came with a couple stranger moms as her chauffeur.  She's pumpin' herself up to go for it next year.  

Here's some photos from our fun day:

Sorry buddy!  Don't worry you'll reach that 42" mark in no time. 

Lovin' these!!  They flip up for clear glasses when the sun goes down. 

Promise we didn't let Kaia partake in the fried dough!

Reef throwing the "one more time" sign to the slide attendant.  This little guy seems to get whatever he wants.  Statistics show that when your name is Reef and you have blond curly hair and big blue eyes and a smile that makes everyone else smile you're determined to be spoiled! 

Above photo of complete stranger bringing Kirra down the slide, when you have so many kids you have to share them with others.  Thank goodness our little loves are all willing to "let" us share.  Oh if only you grew a new arm with each child you had.  Who cares what it looks like, it would sure come in hand (literally).

When asked, Mekena and Kirra will both tell you they plan to be Musketeers when they are older.  We've yet to tell them this is not an actual profession.  They promised us that these hats and swords were a must for their future success.

Mekena braved out the floating water balls.  I'm thinking I'd feel safer down the big yellow slide, but hey whatever she's good with works for us.

249 Days, 13 Hours, 56 Minutes, 36 Seconds Until the 2012 Florida State Fair!! 

{fo' real... I looked it up}

8 months of KAIA KAY

Kaia's favorite thing to do...

...suck her thumb entangled with moms hair, while the other hand grabs another handful of hair. 

And she does this in the most gentle way.  Really so sweet!  Our little bundle is loving all sorts of new food, rolling, sitting, army crawling and putting anything in site straight to her mouth.  That's where Super Mekena comes in... last week I set Kaia down and then I heard the "I'm really mad" cry.  I came into the room to find Mekena sitting by Kaia's side with a peanut in her hand.  "MOM, I got this out of Kaia's mouth, I had this feeling to go and check on her and saw her chewing on something,
so I reached inside her mouth and out came this peanut". 

Thanks Mekena for listening to "the feeling", you are a super hero!!  Kaia, we're sorry you don't recognize her heroic efforts yet and instead think your life savin' sis ruins all your fun.

{And a not so thankful thanks to Reef for eating all the chocolate off of his M&M
and throwing the peanut across the room.  :) }

Here's a couple pics of our growing gal...