Isabel created this little sign that I hung on our sliding glass door.
Melina made this cute little turkey at school. Kindergarten November 2014
Created by Isabel
Lia created this one and the letters to the right are supposed to say Happy Thanksgiving!
I am so thankful for this incredible life, my husband, my family and these amazing little girls who are forever creating something!!!! I could not ask for anything more! This life is my heaven on earth!
Happy Thanksgiving!
These little girls just love to have fun! From the minute they wake up until their very last minute before bedtime, these girls are just loving life and Im just so lucky to be witnessing it. They live in a world of fun. Sometimes I feel like we live in a children’s museum where the fun never ends. Every single one of them adds such joy and life into my life. I love how they dress up and play pretend. How they head over to the playroom in the morning and start writing on their white board pretending to be teachers. How they collect every book in the house and set up a bookstore. How they take clothes from their closets and make little price tags and pretend to have a boutique. How they create little menus and play restaurant. How they go into my closet and put on my high heels. How they take anything in my house and turn it into something fun. Yes, EVERYTHING they do causes a HUGE mess, and yes sometimes I have to yell and scream for them to clean it up but they are making so many memories together and I’m so happy to be their mom. I’m so happy to be the mom that cleans up after them. That I’m the one who gets to clean up after another incredible memory that they have made. I love you girls!
Will this little lady ever know how much I love her? This is Isabel, my beautiful, smart, caring, compassionate 7 year old. She is the oldest of my three beautiful daughters. She is funny, fierce and sometimes sassy. She is a thinker, she is an observer. She is the one who gets to make me a cup of coffee. She is the one that dad asks for help when he needs to measure something. She is the one who walks her sisters to the bathroom when they are too scared to go by themselves. She is the one who has learned to do homework while her younger sisters sing and scream and cause chaos. She is the one who has had to wait for my attention because I was busy changing or feeding or cleaning up someone or something. She is also my little helper and the one who sometimes gets blamed for the things her little sisters do. The one who has had to deal with her stuff getting ruined by a three year old. The one who has lost story time because her toddler sibling wasn’t cooperating. The one who doesn’t remember that before her sisters came we would sit and lay with her for hours. We played and read books. Went for walks and long car rides. We sat and played with playdough and painted and sang songs, collected leaves and sat outside on a blanket just looking at the sky. I’d hold her in my arms for hours. If she didn’t want to walk, I’d carry her. I Carried her around while she would rest her leg over my 9 month pregnant belly when I was pregnant with my second child. Does she remember that I carried her even if my back was killing me just so she felt safe? Does she remember us making a big fuss over every little thing she learned? I notice now that when we make a big deal about her little sisters learning to read or skip or snap their fingers that she doesn’t realize we also made a big deal about her little and big accomplishments. Does she remember that she too got away with a lot of the same stuff her younger sisters get away with. As the older child she will remember less about her earlier years and more about her life with two sisters. Her sisters are her best friends. I know there are times she would love to have me all to herself, but my God she misses her sisters when they are not around. Having three children so close in age makes it more challenging to have special time with each one but I do make sure everyday to kiss and hug them, read and play with them and make sure they know how much I love them! Each and everyone of them!
This past weekend, my girls along with my husband and I enjoyed an afternoon of visiting local antique shops. Our favorite place is the Barntique Village in Moriches. With over 18 shops on a historic 19th century farm, you can spend a whole day in and out of each one looking at all different types of treasures and trinkets. While my husband was looking through old tools and furniture the girls and I were having a blast trying on old vintage hats and clothes. The girls went crazy over the shoes, hats and purses at this one shop. When they were done trying everything on I told the woman behind the counter she should host little girls birthday parties as they would definitely have a timeless time! So many great photo opportunities missed because I forgot my camera and my phone takes awful pictures. But I did manage to get these!
Here is the butterfly that emerged from our cocoon several weeks ago. I believe it’s called a Black Swallowtail. We have never raised this type of butterfly, so it was very exciting to all of us when we peeked into our butterfly house and discovered that the enormous caterpillar we found in our garden turned into this beautiful creature!
When my daughter Isabel turned four she received a lovely butterfly house from one of our friends. Every year since, we have been experiencing the beauty of raising a butterfly from a little tiny caterpillar (this year it was two huge caterpillars). Watching a caterpillar change into a chrysalis and than into a beautiful butterfly is a great way to experience insect metamorphosis. All you need is a caterpillar (in the years past we have ordered our caterpillars from www.insectlore.com, but this year we found our very own right in our vegetable garden), add some of its favorite food such as leaves and flowers and drops of water, and a suitable container, or store bought butterfly house. You can find caterpillars on most plants during the spring and early summer. Put the caterpillar and a few fresh leaves in a wide mouth jar or plastic shoebox. Cover the jar mouth with netting or a piece of nylon. Every day change the leaves and provide dry paper towels to help prevent mold. You can put in little twigs upon which the caterpillar can attach its chrysalis or silken coc oon (with the pupa inside). The insect will hatch in 10-14 days. Don’t forget to take pictures of each beautiful stage.
Can you see the chrysalis through the plastic?
This picture is from our first year raising butterflies about 3 years ago!
We are still waiting for our Butterflies to hatch, in the meantime we’ve enjoyed reading this lovely story titled Butterfly House written by Eve Bunting.
A tight sister squeeze, strawberry picking in a light warm breeze, a little teeter tottering, a secret hiding space for a sweet little darling, an outdoor bake, followed by a yummy Nutella cake and a little outdoor sprinkle under a sun settings twinkle.
It seems as the school year comes to an end, my girls realize how much they love and will miss their teachers. My daughter Melina asked me the other night, “Mom?, can I take Miss. Christine and all my teachers to Kindergarten with me?” The fact that they get so close to these teachers only to have to say goodbye to them breaks their hearts and mine too! My girls take a while to warm up to someone, so by the time they have warmed up it’s time to say goodbye! They both really love their teachers and are very sad about the change that will come. I told them, “In life, there are going to be lots of wonderful people that will come into your lives, sometimes they stay for a while and sometimes they leave sooner than we are prepared for, so treasure them while they are in your life and know that they will always have a special place in your heart.”
I will never forget the wonderful teachers who taught me. Miss Ladhie, Miss Murphy, Miss Lane, Miss Thornton and so many more. I loved them all so much. Everyone of them helped to create the person I have become. I wish I could say thank you to them today!
Now that school is about to end I wanted my girls to have a special way to thank their own teachers. I couldn’t think of anything special enough so I asked a friend who happens to be a teacher and she said she loves getting a plant especially a plant that’s in a pot decorated by the child. I instantly loved the idea and so did the girls!! I went out the next day and bought some inexpensive pots from Target and Family Dollar and had the girls pick out flowers at a local nursery. I was going to have them paint the pots but instead decided to have them use permanent markers. This made decorating them much easier and allowed them to work on the pots throughout the week without making a big mess and I don’t have to worry about their drawings getting washed off by the rain! They had a good 2 weeks to work on the pots before we planted the flowers. This also makes a great Get Well gift, Mothers Day gift or any kind of occasion gift!
As the kids are growing I realize there are more and more things they can help me with. This time it was wrapping birthday presents. They were so excited when I asked them and honestly I wasn’t expecting a perfect job. But they wrapped these presents more beautifully than I ever could. I don’t know why but my kids turn everything into a project (I’m sure my constant project prompting has something to do with it). After they were done with wrapping the gifts they asked me if they could decorate over the wrapping paper and I said sure why not. I actually have a bin where I put all of the trinkets they collect from parties, Easter baskets, Halloween, and school prizes such as, stickers, tattoos, balloons, play necklaces, bracelets and many other little things. I gave them the bin and told them they could put whatever they were willing to get rid of onto the presents. My kids have a hard time giving anything away, but they found such joy in adding these trinkets onto their little cousins presents. After they were done they wanted more presents to wrap. They are officially my present wrappers and I love how they got rid of some stuff at the same time.
No matter where we go, my daughters are always finding treasures. They love looking for someones lost trinkets at the park, or cool rocks and bottle caps. My daughter Isabel is my biggest treasure hunter! She loves her cool finds and is never willing to part with them. One day we went to a near by working farm (Yaphank Farm) and they found marbles, pine cones, shells and rocks and several little trinkets. I couldn’t bare the thought of where all of these little things would end up so as soon as we came home I looked to see if we had shoe boxes and to my surprise we had three! I got out my craft bin, some colorful duct tape (I love duct tape and make sure I always have some in stock) and helped the girls to create a Treasure Box. I covered the boxes with colorful duct tape and I had them do the rest. The Boxes are stored in their closet and every time they find something they add it to their collection.
