Kona Village, Hawaii 2010 - Day 1

Off to Hawaii today....

Here we are before we left for the airport - We're ready to go!

Meme reading to Little Miss and the kids watching their DVD player on the plane to Honolulu.























Here we are in the Honolulu airport and Little Miss and Nana walking through the airport on our way to catch our flight to Kona.






















Me and Little Miss walking through the Honolulu airport and Ryan and the kids on the plane to Kona!


Plane ride was smooth - kids loved flying! All in all a great travel day. The kids were fantastic - pretty much read, played their DSs, watched DVDs and played with the pipe cleaners that I brought.
Arrived in Kona Village at about 10pm our time. Dinner was quick - Little Man fell asleep at the table and Little Miss fell asleep waiting for the cart to take us to our Hale :) Long day!

A Girl's Day Out with my daughter

What an awesome day Little Miss and I had today!

First we met her Daisy Scout troop up at the Coppell Community Garden to learn a bit about what they did there and to help harvest some crops. We harvested potatoes (along with a couple of earthworms), a couple of random onions, and some carrots. It was hot but we all had a good time digging in the dirt!

After that Little Miss and I met my mom and sister at the nail salon to get our fingers and toes prepared for our upcoming vacation. Little Miss talked me into letting her get her nails and toes painted as well. The woman who did her nails was fabulous and painted the cutest flower designs on her toes and a little wispy design on her thumbs. She had so much fun at her first mani/pedi day!

After we had been pampered a bit we went to Costco with my mom to help her do some shopping. Little Miss ended up leaving with a handful of new books (for her and Little Man) and mom got me a new folding table. Thanks Mom!!

On the way home, we decided to stop at Half Price Books to quickly check and see if they had any books we needed. An hour later we left with some fun craft and sticker books for the plane ride and some other books just for fun. I'm a sucker for a great book.

To top it off we stopped at Sonic for a Cherry Limeade and an Orange Slushie.

Thanks for a fantastic mother/daughter day ~ Love you Little Miss!

I'm officially a student again

I've been debating for the last 3-4 years about what I'd like to do with myself once the kids are both in full time public school. Before I was a mom I was a 7th grade science teacher. I LOVED teaching middle school science. The kids are awesome and at the perfect age to really inspire them to love the study of science and all of the amazing things to learn about the earth, our bodies, space, how things move and work and how our world is held together. I truly do miss teaching but I do not think I'll go back to the classroom once my kids go to school.

Truth be told, I always wanted to work in the medical field. I thought about it while I was in college the first time but decided to pursue teaching instead. Well now that the kids are older and my youngest will be in Kindergarten in a year (unbelievable) I've really come to think about what I'd like to do with the rest of my life.

And last week I made my decision. I've been praying about it and Ryan and I have had many discussions and I decided that what I really want to do is to go to Nursing School.

I attended an informational meeting at a local community college a couple of months ago to determine what prerequisites I'd need, how long it would take me from start to finish, the cost, and what the schedule would look like.

Anyone who knows me knows that my first thought was the cost. Ryan and I subscribe to the Dave Ramsey philosophy of money ~ We are Debt Free and we don't take on debt so we had to start thinking about how we were going to cash flow nursing school. We are using some of our tax refund from this year to start the "Nursing School" fund and my parents have offered to cover all of my pre-requisite costs (Thank you so much Mom and Dad for such an awesome blessing!). So we will add it into our normal budget each month starting now and take any and all money that we can find and put it into the Nursing School fund. If we are very diligent and pay attention we should be able to swing it. I'm also going to look into any grants that are offered for the more mature student :)

As for pre-reqs, I think that the only classes I will need to take are Anatomy & Physiology I and II. As long as all of my other courses transfer from Texas Tech those will be the only pre-reqs that I'll need. Once I'm done with my pre-reqs, I plan on applying for the Nursing School's ADN program ~ hopefully in the Fall of 2011. It's a 2 year program and it's pretty competitive but I'm up for the challenge.

That being said - two weeks ago I applied to and was accepted to the local community college and Tuesday, June 1st at midnight I signed up for my first pre-req class - A&P I.
Starting at the end of August, I will be going to class once a week from 4:30-7:20pm followed by the lab from 7:30-9:30pm.

While I'm definitely a bit nervous about going back to school, I'm super excited to get started.

Little Man's Last Day in his 3 year old preschool class

Little Man's last day in his 3 year old preschool class was today.

This year has literally flown by. His teacher, Mrs. Carson, has been wonderful. She really understood Little Man and his "class clown" type personality and has really helped his to blossom this year. We had some discipline issues at the beginning of the year and a little throughout the year but overall he's had a fantastic year.

Right now we're debating about what kind of schedule we want for him for next year. We've got him registered in the 3 day a week program but are debating about moving him up to a 5 day a week program. I'm waffling on which would be better for him as this next year will be his last in the preschool program. At this moment I'm thinking that he'd be best to stay in the 3 day a week program. He loves being home with me (and I love having him to myself two days a week) and this will be his last year that he'll ever be able to be young, carefree, and crazy at home with me.

We want to say a big Thank You to Little Man's preschool. This was our first year there and it is a wonderful program with excellent, caring teachers. I loved being the room mom for Little Man's class and we are so happy that we found this preschool and look forward to his class and teacher next year.

Welcome to summer, Little Man :)

Here is Little Man at his End of the Year "God Bless America" program:

And here he is getting his end of the year award - "Deep Thinker". His teacher says that he comes out with some of the most profound observations about random things and that he really loves to listen when she reads a book and he usually answers most of the questions about the story when she's done reading.

I also find it extremely ironic that when Mrs. Carson called him up , Little Man ran over to her and landed a monkey type cartwheel in front of her to accept the award for "Deep Thinker". Classic Little Man!

Bugz

Little Miss's Kindergarten class put on a production of Bugs tonight! It was completely adorable!

We took Little Miss up to school around 6:15pm so that she could get her costume on and get ready for the play. The kiddos then went to the music room and we headed to the cafeteria to get a seat. My parents, Ryan's parents, and my sister were able to come tonight.

The play lasted about 35 minutes. There was a lot of singing, a bit of dancing, and most of the kids got to deliver a line or two.

Little Miss has been practicing her lines for months.

"You may be wondering what we are dressed up with antennas and wings. Mostly we're bugs, some spiders, and ants and other squirmy things"

She did a wonderful job delivering the lines and doing the motions to all of the songs.

Little Miss's First Piano Recital

Music's in my soul
I can hear it every day and every night
It's the one thing on my mind
Music's got control
And I'm never letting go, no, no
I just wanna play my music

~ Play My Music by the Jonas Brothers

Little Miss had her first piano recital today :) Nana, G, Meme, Ted, Vicki, Ryan, Little Man, and I were all there to cheer her on!

She put on her cute dress, tights, and shoes this morning and we headed out to the church for her recital. She played "Fuzzy Wuzzy" and "Merrily We Roll Along" by memory. She was a little nervous beforehand so Ryan and I gave her a special rock that she could take up to the piano with her. It helped :)

After the recital her piano teacher handed out trophies (and Nana, Meme, and I all brought her some flowers) and then the kiddos headed to the next room for cake and lemonade.

Family In Town from Maryland

My aunt, uncle, and cousin and her daughter are in town!

Tonight we went over to my mom's to have shish kabobs and visit with them. My Aunt Patsy (my dad's twin sister) and Uncle Bob drove in at the beginning of this week and my cousin, Jan, and her daughter, K, flew in on Thursday.

Little Miss and Little Man couldn't get enough of my 2nd cousin, K. Little Miss has actually been talking about K ALL week! She loves hanging out with older girls and the minute she saw K it was over. Little Miss didn't let her out of her site all night. They played hide and seek, chase, played with the kids toys and sat with K while watching Ice Age 3.

We had a great time getting to see Aunt Patsy and Uncle Bob. I talk to Aunt Patsy at least once a week on the phone but it's always fun getting to see them :)