Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rainbow Luau

For Jillian's last day as a Rainbow, their class had a Luau!  She was so excited for her end of the year party!  


 She loved all the cute Hawaii stuff!
 Love that Limbo face!



Jillian was so excited about this ring toss game!  She got one on and was convinced that meant that she "won." She told EVERYONE we saw for weeks that she won the game (and then also told everyone that Landry won the Limbo).  I didn't have the heart to tell her that one on didn't actually make her win!

 Jillian and her friend Landry
Her two sweet teachers, Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Melear

Friday, May 24, 2013

Kindergarten awards and party

As cliche as it sounds, how did we already get to Kindergarten awards time?  How is this little girl ready to end her first year in big kid school? This has been an amazing year and her awards and end of the year party were just icing on the cake!
Waiting for the awards and posing with her buddy, Abby

Jillian took the waiting time as an opportunity to be silly with Daddy!
Can you tell this girl is proud to be recognized? She got to stand up as an AR reader, for her Reflections contest entry, and for participating in the Six Flags Reading challenge

Her teacher, Mrs. Hoelscher, announced each kindergartner and told what they want to be when they grow up.  Meredith wants to be a Hawaiian Hula girl because she loves to tell stories with her hands!
Shaking Mr. Day's hand - he even tried to do a Hula dance with her!

 Look at that happy girl!

Wow. Class of 2025!


 After the ceremony, it was time for fun at their party!  Each class had a fun activity set up - I only have pictures from the one that I was in charge of, but they had tons of fun doing them all!




Eating a powdered donut can be kind of challenging!

And a little messy, but oh-so-tasty!
 The kids also got in a little time at the park before it started to storm - we made it inside just in time and the kids loved spending the rest of their party time watching a movie!


Sunday, May 19, 2013

WAM singers

To finish up the year of WAM (Worship and Missions) at church, the girls took part in a musical called The Three Friends.  I loved getting to hear about this musical week-to-week as Jillian tried to confirm the three friends names.  It would usually include her mumbling a couple "shacks" and then the third, most popular, "Aminuteago" (or you might know him as Abednego).  These musical also had them learning the 10 Commandments.  They have learned so much - in case you can't tell, we love our church!  

Unexplainably, the week before the performance, Jillian got really nervous and started crying and she had a tough time every time we went to church after.  We had lots of talks about not being upset that night - luckily the teachers were super sweet and facilitated the lineup so Jillian could hold her Sissy's hand when she got a little scared.

 Jillian takes "putting a bubble in your mouth" to keep from talking seriously!
 Sisters holding hands
 The Ten Commandments



Daisy End of the Year

We got to celebrate a great end of the year with Daisy's at the Mall - first with a fun trip to Build-a-Bear - Meredith picked out the Thin Mint bear and dressed him in Ranger's clothes!  Then the girls got to go to the pinning ceremony before a ride on the carousel
 Getting her pin from Miss Jill

Showing off all of her loot!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Hill Kindergarten Singers

May means that the end of the year is approaching with so many activities!  Meredith was excited to kick off that season with a little performance up at the Hill Cafeteria!  Singing kindergartners are pretty cute!


Sunday, May 12, 2013

Mother's Day 2013

We had a fun day celebrating Mother's Day.  First up, Neal made me bacon stuffed french toast for breakfast and it was amazing!  We went to church, then to Gigi's and then home for a little family fun!  Sure love being a mama to these girls!

 4 generations!



Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Meet Piper

After missing having a four-legged friend around our house terribly and lots of research, Neal and I finally decided to get a dog back in February.  We found out about a litter of the breed of dog we were looking for through a friend and started setting it all up!  The mama was due soon, so we waited for news of the pups arrival!  We heard from them in late February that they had 10 sweet puppies and one of them was ours!  The next week, we shared the news with the girls, who counted down the days!  We picked out toys and started making lists of names we liked.  We eventually had a ranking system to pick our family's favorite name - Piper!  The wait for her to be 8 weeks was so long, but finally on the 20th, we were able to meet our sweet pup.  She was in Lubbock, so we started our drive right after getting Meredith from school (the drive was a little long with a still recovering Jillian, but we all survived!)  We stayed the night in Lubbock, and got up early Saturday to go meet Piper!  Then we headed straight back home to introduce her to her new house.

A picture of the 5 of us at Piper's first family's house
Piper did awesome the whole car ride home.  She pretty much just snuggled in my lap for the whole 5 hour drive. Such a sweet puppy!
We are just loving sweet Piper - the girls adore her (although sometimes her excitement is a little too much for Jillian!) We are working hard to keep toys out of her reach.  But all in all, this little girls just loves to snuggle and love on us.  The girls have never laughed so much as they have this past week with Piper.  We are so happy she is at home with us!  Here are some pics of us during her first week!

 Look - Piper fits in Jillian's new Doc McStuffins wagon.  Poor Piper!
Meredith is definitely the most smitten with Piper.  She writes about her at school and talks about her constantly and just can't wait to spend every minute with her. 

 It has been unseasonably cold and Vizslas don't deal well with cold, so we pulled out a coat of Coki's for a walk.  



Snuggling on the couch is her favorite pastime! 
She sleeps with her tongue out! :)

Sweet Piper helped Jillian with her breathing treatments
A proud Hill Student of the Week and puppy owner!  Meredith loves me to bring Piper to pick her up from school.  Piper was a little apprehensive the first time, but now she is loving all of the little hands that love on her while we wait on Meredith! Piper has quite the fan club now.

The girls are doing great helping with Piper, too - they actually are excited to help with the poop scooping!  And they fight over who gets to feed her.  Plus, Meredith is always up early so she can walk Piper in the morning.

We've taken Piper to the park several times this week.  She has fun but is always exhausted from the walk.  Here is also tuckered out from digging in the sand box!
Piper is also helping me to get the girls awake if they sleep too late.  She is always more than happy to lick their cheeks to get them to giggle and wake up.  Here she helped me with Jillian, only to collapse asleep on the bed seconds later!

 Here are a few pictures we got from her family to introduce us to Piper...
 Piper and her brothers and sisters at 1 week old!
Our first shot of Piper.  We got to choose her through email which was a little stressful.  This was the face I first fell in love with, but we waited to hear about temperment to choose her.  I was really happy when I learned that the one we felt fit best with our family matched with this sweet face!  I think she was 5 weeks here.

Here she is cuddling with the family at 6 weeks old.