It’s been a whole year since your wings carried you straight to heaven. I got to carry you for 18 weeks, and get to love you for the rest of my life.
We think of you
dream of you
wonder about you
celebrate you
laugh with you
cry for you
wish for you
hope for you
get inspired by you
love you
every single day.
There was a time when all three of my girls had some type of floating device on when getting into our pool. Getting them ready was an exhausting feat…. bathing suits on, apply sunblock, put on life vests, arm floats, tubes, noodles around the tubes, etc. Only for them to get into the pool and declare that they wanted to be held. So envision one child with arm floats sitting on the pool ladder, and the two little ones hanging on to either me or my husband, screaming to not let go of them. There was definitely no swimming in sight for either my husband or I, just floating three kids around the pool. It was definitely a delight to see them splash and move their little legs around, and watch their little faces get startled when water would splash on them, but it just felt like my husband and I would never, ever have a relaxing pool day again! But fast forward and now we have three little Mermaids, a bin filled with arm floats that are no longer needed. Now, they run and get their own bathing suits on, spray each other with sunblock, put on their goggles and jump right into the pool. I was actually sad when I took out the stash of arm floats and vests and even my littlest said she didn’t need them! For me, it meant no more water babies and that made me a little nostalgic, but that was quickly replaced by loud giggles and splashes, and now instead of “hold me,” “hold me,” “hold me,” it’s “watch me flip,” “watch me jump,” “watch me do a hand stand.” It’s nice to sit back and watch and take pictures! Sometimes I can even sip a smoothie or even make a phone call while floating in the pool!
Where would we all be without teachers? Some of us are blessed to be surrounded by teachers, not just at school but outside of school too. Regular people who take the time to stop and teach us something new, like cooking or sewing or how to play a game of chess. How to skip a rock or cut and paste a collage. We all have the opportunity to be great teachers, to make an impact on others.
Thank god for the teachers who chose to go to work in our schools everyday to teach our children. It takes great patience, preparation, love, dedication and great care to teach an entire classroom of children. A classroom filled with different backgrounds, ideas, rules, home foundations. Every year a teacher starts first by becoming familiar with new personalities, new challenges, and getting the attention of a classroom 25 plus kids. By the time the year ends they’ve created a new family only to have to say goodbye and start all over again. That’s got to be difficult!
At the end of the day, a great teacher gets carried into our children’s hearts. They become the main discussion at the dinner table. They get introduced to siblings and families. A great teacher can influence a child to try Turkey at Thanksgiving dinner even if you tried convincing them for years. A great teacher gently encourages a cautious child to stand in front of a classroom to do calendar until they finally get the courage to do it. A great teacher creates a timeline of when mommy comes back for the preschool-er who cries everyday. A great teacher brings out the best in the restless child, courage in the shy child, and a voice in the quiet child. A great teacher does more than just teach our children math and reading skills, they inspire, they mold and help our children grow. They add layers to the sometimes bumpy foundation we’ve laid down for them at home. They become part of our life, our story, our family. They inspire us to be teachers.
To all of our teachers, past and present…Thank You!
Thanks to our dad, who made our house a home, built the beds we sleep on, the bathroom we bathe in, the patio we sit on, the nook we read in, the desks we study on, the floors we took our first steps on. Thank you dad, for building our foundation, for fixing our world when things start to break down, for being our pillar, our strength, our safety net, our man! Happy father’s day dad!
I love living on long Island, particularly because we are surrounded by plenty and plenty of farms. Berry farms, peach farms, tomato, pumpkin, Christmas tree, grapes, and sunflower farms. Everything farms! Animal farms! It’s so lovely to be able to drive a few minutes away and literally pick fresh strawberry’s! My kids eat so many strawberry’s, I literally bought containers of them this week and then my friend (who had recently taken her daughter) reminded me that it was strawberry picking time so instead of making another trip to the store, Lia and I went to go pick them ourselves. This was the first time we went with out my other two girls so I have a great excuse to go back!
Our library hosted an hour of strawberry picking at Glover’s Farm this week where each family that registered got to pick one quart of strawberry’s for free, but unfortunately we missed it by a couple of days!
Glover’s farm is definitely a fun place to pick Strawberry’s. There was so many to pick from. We filled a 2 Quart container a lot faster than I thought we would. We paid $1 for the container and $4 per quart. The strawberry’s were very sweet and Lia couldn’t resist eating them as she picked. One for Lia, one for the container, one for Lia, one for the container. There’s also a nice playground for the kids to play at and there’s a few animals that you can feed with purchased food. I always bring a lunch and we eat on one of their many picnic tables. It’s a great place to spend a couple of hours on a nice summers day!
Glover’s Farm is located at 633 Victory Ave. Brookhaven, NY. 631-286-7876, 631-332-2012. I believe they are open every day from 10 am- 6pm. They take credit cards! (I never carry cash so I was thrilled about that!)
Whether it’s a beautiful bloom from your garden, a special rose or sunflower from a certain someone, or a beautiful flower you found on a nature trail, flower pressing is such a great way to preserve that special flower. They also make great sentimental gifts!
We were each given roses to throw onto my fathers casket at his funeral. Something made me take an extra one. When we got home, my husband took the rose, separated the petals and pressed them in between a book, put a piece of wax paper over the petals and closed the book. He then placed a huge change jar over it and left it there for a couple of weeks. You can find exact instructions from here. The days after my fathers funeral I couldn’t help but notice a cardinal coming to visit my feeder every single day! They say that a visit from a Cardinal is a visitor from heaven. So whenever I see the Cardinal I yell out “Hi dad!.”
I wanted to make something special with the flower, at first I was just going to frame each petal, but then my daughter Melina said “mom you should cut them!” As soon as she said “cut”, it gave me the idea to cut them into the shape of little cardinals. Since my brother and sister have also experienced a cardinal visit as well, I thought this would be a great little gift to share with them. So, I carefully cut each rose into the shape of a cardinal and used a felt tip black marker to add little bird legs and a beak. I bought small little frames from Michael’s Craft store for like a dollar each and framed each little bird.
Last year, my husband noticed a sunflower in our garden with 14 petals. That number was his moms favorite number. So we took the flower, pressed it and framed it. It’s a beautiful reminder of his mom. This is also a great idea if you’re moving and you want to have a piece of your garden with you, or a family or friend is moving, this makes a great little gift!
We have about 4 huge Mason jars filled with shells! Living on Long Island it’s impossible to not collect shells! My girls literally collect buckets of them throughout the summer and of course every single one of them is special so how dare I ask them to leave some behind! Well, the other day I was very thankful that we did have many on hand as Mothers day and my fathers birthday was approaching and I wanted to leave something thoughtful on their graves to let them know we were there visiting. Every time we visit my mother- in- law the kids love leaving little rocks so this time they were excited to make something special to leave with her. I of course enjoyed painting some myself! My dad passed away very recently and his birthday was a perfect reason to decorate one for him too. Since his passing, a cardinal family visits us every day! And we know in our hearts that the male one represents my father, the female represents my mother-in-law and the baby male cardinal represents our little Gabriel. You gotta have some kind of hope that it’s true! And I smile and say hello every day that I see them! Of course you can decorate these shells and place in your garden, or give it away as a gift. You can use them as a paper weight, or display them on a shell or in a jar.
Here’s what I used to make them:
When the shells were all painted, the kids wrote on them with permanent black markers. On the sunflower shell I wrote all of my mother- in- laws 9 grand children! As soon as we got to her grave the clouds opened and the sun stood over us!
I take my job as a stay at home mom very seriously. You gotta be kinda like a teacher! My dad always told me that I should have been a teacher, and in a way I think I did become one. Aren’t we all our children’s first teacher? In order for a teacher to have a successful year he/she needs to have a curriculum, a plan, more than just an idea about what they will be doing with their class for an entire 9 months. Any plan for success requires lots of advanced preparation. Preparation for anything you do in life is always the most important step. After the preparation is done, everything else goes smoothly, maybe a little bumpy but at least you know where you are going and you don’t have to waste time figuring it out last minute. Since the girls were babies I always had a plan, I think working part time with the older girls helped me stick to a morning routine of having everyone dressed and ready to go in the early morning. I’ve stuck to that routine soon after I had my third and retired (as my husband would put it) to be a stay at home mom. Part of my job is being ready for it every single day! My girls are used to our morning routine and they too have had an easy time getting ready for school, early outings, etc. So above all things, I believe encouraging everyone to be ready by a certain time each day will make life so, so, so much easier and I’d say stick to that during the summer too. It’s KEY for enjoying every single day of the short summer months! Below I’ve listed three more helpful tips to having a successful summer with your kids. This helps to organize part of the days and you can fill the rest with whatever your heart desires!
1.WORKBOOKS: The summer time is not just for lazy days in the sun and floating around in the pool! We want our children to remember the skills they worked so hard to learn all year long. We want to feed their brains and challenge them so that when September comes around again they are ready! Here’s an incredibly simple way to keep our children’s mind stimulated every morning and it doesn’t take more that 10-20 minutes each day. If you start preparing now, I promise it will be something you and your kids will follow through on all summer long. First, think about what you would like for each child to practice or review. Is it reading comprehension, telling time, learning money, math or is it a little bit of everything? You can keep it simple and purchase a workbook geared for each child’s level. Or you can spend some time online searching different activities, dittos that you can print out. There are so many FREE resources out there and I will list some of my favorites at the end of this post. After you’ve collected your dittos for morning work, separate them for each child. I keep a binder divided into three for each child, hole punch each ditto and that first morning of summer vacation after breakfast and a little morning TV they all get one sheet to work on. That’s all! If they ask for more go ahead and go into your prepared dittos and give them more work! I keep a pencil case in each binder with pencils, dry erase markers, etc. so they have everything they need. Below is a glimpse of what you’d find in their binders. I’m also going to add dittos into their binders from work books. For my youngest entering Kindergarten I purchased scholastic 100 words kids need to read by 1st grade
If the kids do 50 Minutes of work or more a week, you can reward them with a little treat, trinket or special outing!
2. PROJECTS: I have created a list of projects/crafts I’d like to actually do with the girls this summer. So, if I want that to happen I need to start planning them now. My goal is to have one to two projects prepared each week. Of course aside from these projects they can always paint, play with play-dough, make a collage etc. You can also find more ideas here. And links to fun projects below. You can come up with a list of your own as well, the sooner you make the list the better. This will help you to gather all the materials you will need for each project.
3. TRIPS: Of course lazy days and floating around in the pool are a big part of summer, I like to plan at least two outing a week. My girls are home bodies, they love playing at home and they never run out of things to do, but I like going on adventures and seeing new things so we compromise. Some days at home and some days out and about! If you’re a long island local or are visiting for the summer I’ve listed some of our favorite places to visit (in no particular order). There’s so much to discover here, tons of hiking trails, old estates, I wish I could list them all! You could spend the whole summer discovering Sound Ave (Take the LIE to Exit 68N to WIlliam FLoyd Parkway. Go North about seven miles to Route 25A. Go right (east) on 25A for about three miles to the beginning of Sound Avenue. This road continues for about 17 miles before becoming Main Road in Mattituck.) There’s so much to discover along this route. Farms, Museums, Fruit stands, Wineries, beautiful scenery, winding roads, and so much more!
Martha Clara’s Vinyard (Wine for adults and little fury animals for the kids) there’s a whole bunch of wineries, you can’t go wrong with whichever one you choose.
Visit back as I will continue to add more places to visit and FREE activity resources as well.
My favorite resources for kids Activities and printouts
Add this to your list of fun things to do this summer! My kids never get tired of shaving cream! Shaving cream is always a part of our summer activities! I always stock up on a few extra cans so that they can play with it several times throughout the summer. I love how they use all of their little kitchen tools, plates and bowls to pretend that they are cooking. It starts off with a little dab in the bowls and then explodes into their hair and bodies. They just can’t help it! It does make their hair so soft so that’s a treat! They always get rinsed off with the hose and then jump straight into the pool so clean up is always easy. I would just make sure that you test the surface you’ll be using before you begin playing with the shaving cream. This summer I think we’ll add some food coloring and glitter to spice things up! I’m sure they will love that!
We’ve been taking trips to LICM (Long Island Childen’s Museum, Garden City, NY) since our oldest was about two. My sister in law used to take her kids here before I had my little ones and I couldn’t wait to explore it with my own children! It’s a bit of a hike from where we live but it’s a great place to spend the day when you have little ones. I used to have a membership until I realized our library gave free passes for up to four people. We can check them out once a month which is great. Check your local library to see what kind of museum passes are available in your area! The LICM museum has about 15 hands on exhibits. If you had all the time in the world you can definitely spend at least an hour at each exhibit. There’s just so much to do, lots of creativity to be had! Bubbles to blow, sand to play with, wood and blocks to build with, instruments to make music with. The creativity is endless! My kids love the big lunch room! They have plenty of tables and vending machines with drinks, snacks, ice cream and I believe they have sandwiches, I’m not sure though because we always bring our own lunch. I do love getting a cup of coffee there and we usually let the kids pick out a little snack.
There’s a cute Backyard exhibit right outside near the entrance to the museum. I believe they open it in the summer time. They have plants and sand and water play so be sure to bring a change of clothes for the little ones.
Awww, I found a picture of them when they were little LITTLE!! Oh how I miss those days! We definitely have made many memories here!
