Mille is 10!!! How is this possible?

My BABY is 10!!!  I can't believe that she is double digits, breaks my heart.  We had her bday the first weekend of May, it was a pretty day but fairly warm.  Her theme was Carnival and I think it was a great party.

Mille's actual bday, she requested banana pancakes!

Twingle made an appearance!  Mille was so excited she hoped he'd come.

After we ate at B.J's we had carrot birthday cake!

I only decorated outside, made clean up super easy!  Luckily I had majority of the decorations from other parties!! 

Mac was putting a tattoo on Mille and painting her face.

Props for the photo booth

My helpers(Mac and her besties)

Playing a game of volleyball

Sweet girls!!!

Cake time

I made goldfish in a bag soap, super easy and fun!!!

My Wednesday girls!!!  Love them like they're my own!

Photo booth back drop

well the day has come

So my sweet "baby" who isn't my baby she's my oldest and she's 12!!!  She has her friends over tonight and they are in their room "hanging out."  I was making cookies and saw that her phone was almost out of battery.  I plugged it in and about 5 minutes later it started making a noise.  I say noise b/c to me it sounded like an alarm or something.  I went over to click it off and when i was 1/2 through the swipe I saw that it was an incoming call from a boy.  I backed off and jumped back like it was going to come to life! I called Mac in and told her that she had a call.  About that time it said there was a message. To which she and her friends giggled with delight.  It was right then that I realized these precious girls are in fact growing up.  I can remember that feeling and the giggling that went along with it.  So now I can hear them in the other room talking to this sweet boy and his friend.  Oh my where has the time gone?  Of course it helps that it's Mac's first boy       friend.  I put a space b/c they were always the best of friends.  To which they also always had a thing for each other too.  Sadly he doesn't live here anymore but thank goodness for iPhones. :o)
   She is going to kill me for putting this on my blog but i have to remember this.  This is the stuff that you want to remember.  Her first giggle session with her friends about a boy that has called on the phone.  ****I was just informed that while talking to him she asked him about the message that his friend left.  (which i figured he either knew about and freaked out that his friend left a message saying "I love you Mac...." or he had no idea that his friend called Mac) He said "what message? to which Mac told him a couple of things that were said. Then he said he'd call back b/c he has to figure out what his friend did!! Ooops, whatever happened I just enjoyed hearing the giggles.

Being a Mom is Hard Work

Oh my sweet Mille!  She is competing today for Ready Writing in UIL today.  I'm praying(been praying) that she does such a great job.  Of course every parent wants their child to be successful and do a good job on their activities but I'm praying Mille will do go more for Mille.  Sometimes my sweet girl doubts herself.  She doesn't believe that she can do things and stresses out about them.  When you do Ready Writing it's a personal narrative style of writing.  In class they've switched gears and are doing expository writing. This my friends is throwing her for a loop.  I think she feels like she has "mastered" the style of personal narrative and now right when she has gotten comfortable the style is completely different. My baby is like her mama, doesn't do well with change.  She's really struggling right now with Reading, I honestly think it is more mental than actually not "getting it."  She gets so stressed out and has major anxiety when she's about to take a reading test.  We had a major "Come to Jesus" talk, as Craig likes to put it, about believing in yourself and working hard.  I told her that I wanted her to come home from school tired because she had worked so hard at school that day.  Days (and nights!) like this are days when I realize how HARD being a parent is.  I told Mille yesterday that there are times I just want to grab her and shake her and tell her that she is an incredible person and that if she would just believe in herself and show everybody else how "shiny" she is her life would be butterflies and roses!  She thought this was funny but I am serious, it's so frustrating to see special gifts in your child but only to see that they don't realize they have them.  I sit and wonder why she is like this.  Did I do something when she was little to make her 2nd guess herself? Did I not build her up enough?Maybe I did or maybe that's just how she's wired.  What I do know is that my job as her mama is to help show her what an amazing young lady she is and help her share that gift with everybody else.  I might not get paid for my job, is there a price tag on molding and teaching beautiful creatures like the ones God blessed me with? Maybe not in the form of money but when I see my girls smile or do something kind for somebody else those are my proudest moments and that is when I see all the hard work as a mama paying off.  I pray that my sweet girl goes into this test this afternoon and remembers all the kind words I told her yesterday.  I hope she gets an inkling of the master piece I see.  I love my baby to the moon and back a million times!

Snow delay means pancake breakfast!

In Waco the weather can be kind of silly at times.  The past week the weather has been beautiful(a little warm for January but I won't complain) then yesterday temps dropped by about 30 degrees and it started sleeting and snowing!!!  So this morning school was delayed 2 hours.  I was hoping the munchkins would sleep in but they were too excited!  So I made chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate!  

Silly girls!  This by the way is Mac's funny face, she claims I will laugh when I look back at it.  She said "Mom seriously you'll look back at this picture and think, Mac is so funny how she's just looking away." Ummm yeah, I don't think so.

Mac has her 4th UIL Music Memory meet tomorrow.  I made this for her and for her friends, about to go deliver them.  She has worked so hard and really enjoys the music.  She's such a hard worker and such a good kid, I'm blessed beyond words.

Praying she'll get a perfect score again.  She has made a perfect score each year except last year. She misspelled one word!!!!  They have to be able to spell the song, composer and selection correctly.  I can guarantee at 11 and 12 I had no idea who Tchaikovsky was let alone spell his name correctly!!!  

Wish it was Easier!

Oh it's that time again!!!Time for the kids to go back to school.  I wish I was one of those parents that was counting down for the kids to go back to school but sadly I am not.  You would think after doing this for about 7 years (more if you count mothers day out) I would either get used to it or appreciate my time with out kids.  I don't, don't get me wrong I do know that I'm a better parent when I have "my time" to grocery shop, run errands and clean the house but oh how I love my babies.  Especially lately, they are so fun to be with.  Sure it probably has something to do with the fact that they are growing up and you can actually have good conversations with them but I think it's also because they ARE growing up.  I keep hearing that when kids turn 13 and 14 they are pains in the butt.  I've seen it happen to sweet kids that never talked mean to their parents but it happened just the same.  God knows I did it!!!  Oh I think of how I treated my parents or the things I thought when I was that age....not looking forward to that stage.  You think you're so smart and that your parents don't have a clue.  Oh how I wish I could call my mama up and tell her how sorry I am.  Hopefully she can hear me and forgives me for my stage of brattiness. :o)  Both of my babies value my thoughts, value how I look at things.  When I talk they not only listen but they strive to be like me, that is something that amazes me and I have to try to watch what I do and say b/c I have 2 precious girls watching and learning from me. They both actually argue over who is more like me.  What????  They want to be like me?  Is there a compliment better than that?  Oh how I wish they knew how much I could be like them.  I learn from both of them daily.  My girls are so different but both possess some of the most amazing qualities.  Mac is ALWAYS a glass 1/2 full kind of girl.  I have taken note of that and try to look at life in the same way.  This is just one of her many glorious characteristics.  Mille amazes me in the way that she views life.  At times I think she is kind of naive but then I realize that it's because she believes she can do anything.  Sometimes she might think she's entitled to do things, another quality(figuring out if it's a good or bad one) of hers but non the less she has a can do attitude.  She also doesn't have much of a filter.  Mac and I on the other hand are very analytical, we think of our words our actions.  Mille just blurts what she is thinking.  This is a trait that scared me when she was younger and she has actually learned when things aren't maybe appropriate and maybe she needs to hold on to them and ask in private.  She cracks me up when she just tells somebody exactly what she is thinking.  Oh how I wish I could do that.  We were at the store the other day and she was pushing the cart.  This woman kept coming up the same aisle as us and she would park her cart in the middle of the aisle.  I kind of stood there waiting as patiently as possible for her to notice us but not Mille.  She looked at me like, "I've got this and I'm taking care of it." She just politely walked up to the lady and her cart and kind of pushed our cart through, when she couldn't go any further Mille just moved the lady's cart over.  It really made me laugh b/c she didn't ask me what to do she just took care of it.  Now I will admit for a second I did worry that she was going to tell the lady she had cut us off about 4 times but thankfully she took care of the situation with grace.  

Tomorrow they will go to school and get smarter than they were today.  They will go and visit with friends and learn that mom doesn't know as much as they thought I did today.  All of those things are great but for now I am going to soak up every ounce of them that I can.  I'm going to listen to all their stories about their day and I'll be there if they have any problems or questions.  I love them to the moon and back and they are 2 of my very favorite people.