It's Birthday Time again.

 Yep!  It's that time of year.  Once again......Birthday Time!  I have been blessed with three children and we are so lucky that all three kids have their birthday in the same week.  Sometimes it gets a little crazy in the month of May, but we make it through.  Actually, it seems as they get older, it gets easier.  I can't believe how time flies.  Megan, Emilee and Hunter all celebrated another year older.  That makes Megan 13, Emilee 11 and Hunter 9.  It is just crazy.  So here it goes.  This is what we did in the month of May.

             

 CRAZY!  I now officially have a teenager.  Oh my GOSH!  That is just nuts.  When I sit and have time to think about it, it just blows my mind.  How could this happen?  This year on her birthday, Megan was in Knoxville, TN.  She was there for Destination Imagination Global Competition.  Her and her team were competing against teams from all over the world.  A few days before she left, we took her out to dinner and ice cream with a present from her family.  I am so mad at myself.  I usually take pictures of these great moments, but it just slipped my mind.  Just know that it was a wonderful night.  We went to Famous Joe's Pizzaria for dinner and Baskin Robins for ice cream.

               

I happened to be in Pigeon Forge with Hunter at this time, but through the various texts I got, she mentioned that it had been the best birthday ever.  Her and her team mates designed dresses out of duct tape to attend a Duct Tape Ball and then after the dance, they went for milkshakes.  The picture above shows the team and their creativity with duct tape.  I am so glad that she had a wonderful birthday.

Emilee had a slumber party this year.  As you can see, it was ice cream theme with lots and lots of fun activities.  From what I could tell, it was a hit.

            

 

So many activities for the night.  They started the night with Tie Dyeing t-shirts and then they made their own pizzas for dinner.  While their pizzas were cooking they did Karaoke and then Emilee blew the candles out and opened some presents.

             

Then because it was an ice cream themed party we had to have an ice cream sundae bar and let's just say they went a little nuts with the whip cream.  They burned off the ice cream by dancing to Dance Dance Dance Revolution on the X-box and jumping on the trampoline.

Finally it was time to quiet down and get some sleep.  Whew!  That is what I call a party.  We had waffles in the morning and they all took home an ice cream container full of goodies, a tie dyed t-shirt and an ice cream sundae glass.  

Because all three kids are usually the same week as Memorial Day, if they have a birthday party, we have to do them a couple of weeks before.(To many people go out of town)  I would say Emilee had a  great day on her real birthday day.  She invited a friend to join her and she got her ears pierced and we all went and pampered ourselves with pedicures.  What a day!  By the way, Emilee is 11 now and that floors me just as much as Megan being 13.  

Hunter had a huge surprise.  On the last day of school, as soon as he got off the bus, I took him over to his friends house.  There he learned that we were picking up his friend and his friend's mom and going to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge right then and there.  He didn't believe me cause he didn't have anything packed. Of course I packed the car while he was at school.  Finally when they were packing the car he got clued in that we were indeed leaving right then for Dollywood.  What a great birthday for him.  This is his suprised but I don't believe it is today face.  HA!  I love it!

It was a very fun day.  Though I have to laugh at the two of them.  They were to nervous to go on the big rides, but they had a blast anyway.

            

  

The next day we tortured the boys while the moms shopped at the outlet mall.  So not cool.  Don't worry.  They did something fun after lunch.  They wanted so much to go to this Magic Quest place, but the moms weren't to big on that idea since it was too expensive.  We finally convinced them(like they really had a choice), to go to Wonderworks.  They had a blast there.  It is quite the place with tons to do.  I strongly suggest going there if you are in the area.  They did things like a ropes course, rock climbing, laser tag and even laid on a real bed of nails.

Happy Birthday to all my children!  You are the best kids and I hope you all have a wonderful year.  Until next year........

Some catching up to do.....

   What can I say, I use to be really good at keeping up the blog.  In fact, I found enjoyment in coming up with things that I could put up, taking pictures when I could and praising my kids whenever I wanted to.  Let's just say that I have been pretty busy and finding the time is a lot harder then it use to be.  Many things that I usually have had tons of time for has not happened.  Anyway, I had a few minutes today and so I thought I would sit down and try very hard to catch up without boring everyone too much.

First up is Megan.  A few months back, like right after Christmas, I received a phone call from Megan's art teacher at Discovery.  She said that Megan would be receiving an award she sent in to the Reflections program for some drawings that she had entered.  Her drawings would be going on to compete against the whole state of Alabama.  Megan loves to draw.  She always has, but she has a definite style of her own.  She is probably influenced most by the Anime world, but what she does is quite nice.  I try to encourage her to branch out and maybe someday she will, but for now she does very well and is very creative in the style that she has.

Emilee has been taking Taekwondo for some time now.  It started with Hunter, then Megan and Emilee soon joined not long after.  Megan was the first to quit, then Hunter, but Emilee has stayed with it and seems to love it.  She does really well and many times I am quite impressed with what kind of kicks she produces.  Well, she has had her yellow belt for a very long time.  Mostly because the class seems to do more of their testing on Saturday morning and Emilee's mom can't quite always get there.  Though many times we do have things on Saturday morning that we have to do as well.  

Well, we were there.  Emilee had two green stripes and usually you need three green stripes to promote, but she was hoping so much to go up the belt because of how much time she spent on yellow belt.  Woo-Hoo!  Congrats Emilee you made it!  Green belt it is.

Next up for Emilee in the Taekwondo world is a tournament in June.  It is the Alabama Sports Festival that takes place in Birmingham.   It is like going to the olympics and opening ceremonies is even televised through out Alabama. Last year Emilee placed third in forms and sparring.  I am so excited what she does this year.  I am sure she will do fabulous.

On to DI News.  Destination Imagination.  It has been a fun year.  This year they called their team Creativity Creators.  I am still the team manager over her team.  I think I am stuck.  As long as Emilee wants to do it.  I am probably still always going to be the manager.  They have improved tons this year.  Emilee's team this year chose the improv challenge.  It was very competitive.  When we went to Regionals there were nine teams competing.  Emilee's team got first and were moving on to State.  

Megan is now at Discovery Middle School, but her team is pretty much the same as well.  Their team this year goes by DMS Disco Divas. They did the challenge that we did last year.  Challenge B which usually has to do with some science energy thing , creating a device that goes with that and creating a skit around it.  They also got first and went to State as well.  

Next up:  EASTER

 We have been here now in Alabama for five years.  It has been awesome.  Awesome people, most the time some good weather and I would call this home.  Jeremy thinks he is putting in for a position in Atlanta.  Though I want to support him and hope for the best with him, if he gets it, it will be very sad to leave.  I went through all the Easter pics I took while we have been hear and put them together.  My beautiful children are growing up so fast.

Megan is almost 13 now.  Can you believe it.  Next month she will be 13 years old.  I swear it went by so fast.  She is so beautiful and has so many wonderful qualities.  I know now that the next 5 years will go fast and that scares me.  I suppose this is why I don't mind taking and picking her up from school these days, instead of the bus.  More time for me to talk to her.

Emilee looks very retro to me here.  She is so funny and so easy to tease.  She makes me laugh all of the time.  She has some good friends and they seem to love her so much.  Again, she is going to be in sixth grade soon.  Unbelievable!  I have always said that Emilee has the best qualities of my other two kids.  She kind of is like a little of both of them.  And she loves to shop so me and her together are a little dangerous.

Hunter is my baby and will always be my baby.  He is very lovable and he loves to trick me all of the time.  He is going to be nine soon and going into the fourth grade.  WOW!  I mean, how can that be!  It is not possible.  He is so goofy all of the time, which makes me laugh and he is the one of mine kids that is always on my side first.

 On to DI again.  Since it has been so long since I have blogged anything, our DI team was due to go to state at University of Alabama Huntsville.  Since Emilee's team came in first at the last competition, they had high hopes of coming in first this time and going to Globals in Knoxville TN to compete against the whole world like last year.  They came in third this time.  They were very upset, but they have a lot to be proud of . It was the most competitive challenge this year and they do so well.  In fact they had one score (Instant Challenge Score) that was the highest of 100.  So, no globals for Emilee this year.

Megan on the other hand will be going to Globals.  Her team came in first this year.  (They only take first place winners to Globals)  It has been a long time coming for this time.  Though Megan has only been with the team for two years, the team has been together for four years and this is the first time they get to go to Globals.  Hooray Disco Divas!!  I watched their challenge/skit.  It was Hilarious.  They did awesome!!

(I know that some of you may not know what Destination Imagination is.  I have talked about it in other posts from last year.  It is a creative problem solving competition that runs through out the world.  First you compete against your area, then state, then against the world.  If you want to know more about it, just google it and the Destination Imagination site will come up)

I think that is it for now.  I will try and not wait so long to post next time, so it won't be such a long post.  Until then........