A Perfect Mother's Day!!!

 We spent the morning and early afternoon at Treasure Island Sailing Center - the little ones are finishing up their 8 week beginning sailing series!  It was a gorgeous day...

 Ma-lak needs some sunglasses!!!!

I did a lot of lounging around....

 Still lounging...

 Yep, haven't moved.

 And back to lounging!

 They've allowed Ya'shar to tag along and learn, even though he can't get into the little bugs yet.  He'll be all caught and ready to go with his brother and sisters this fall!

 Ma-lak and Rea, looking like pros!

 Ya'shar got to ride with Annie, the instructor

 This was the only not-so-great thing about the day.....  Burnt tootsies!!!  Thank goodness this was the worst of it, but I'll be slathering on the goo next week!

Happy 39th Birthday Love!!

 Friday was my birthday!  I love birthdays, and every year I feel like I have even more to celebrate!!  I usually take off work over all the kids' birthdays (and mine, too!) because who wants to work on their birthday??  But this year I worked the night before and the night of, and I woke up to this beautiful surprise!  TWO cakes and lots of cards and art work from my sweet family!  Daryle and David picked the little ones up from school and off they went to go "cake hunting"!  They did good....  :)

 This picture cracks me up! I'm barely awake and pleasantly surprised!!

Happy 8th Birthday to Our Ni'ke!!

 We had a little party for Ni'ke last night for her birthday! I love her big floppy flower, which she wore all day, along with her party hat that her teacher, Mrs. Walker gave her.  What a big smile!!

 Rea  and the boys helped me decorate her "birthday table".

 Ni'ke's cake - what a story!  She originally wanted a very unique and unusual cake for her birthday - chocolate cake with Harriet Tubman on it!  She's been studying about civil rights in school and many of the people who played key roles, and she has become quite fond of Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King as well.  While I love that she wanted a "political history" cake, as she called it, I thought that might be a little "deep" for a birthday party - but hey what do I know?!  Maybe next year?!  Might be fun!  So I went instead to my favorite cake shop, Nancy's Fancy's, and found the perfect cake pan for a little girl who loves fashion and would gussy up and wear dresses to school everyday, if I let her.   I've been wanting to try my hand at fondant, too, so hooray for new endeavors.

Ni'ke had to give every single one of us a hug to thank us for her fun birthday.  She's cool like that.

I got confetti poppers, but it was hard to capture all that fun with a camera, mid-pop!!

Well we didn't do a Harriet Tubman cake, but she did get some pretty neat biographies to read!

 A new dress!

This little designer needed a sketch pad for her drawings

A fashion form jewelry hanger!

This was such a fun little project.  (Thank you, Pinterest!)  Snack pack butterflies!!  (No more cookies or cupcakes or unhealthy sweets at school, so it was cheese sticks and goldfish crackers!)

Backyard Clean Up!

 I wish I had a before and after picture of our huge tree in the backyard!  It got a not so little trim last weekend!  (Note the huge piles of limbs laying around.)  I loved the shade, but it was just too big and was eating our neighbor's yard...  We are sprucing up our little space back there for the summer and I'm super excited - gonna plant some flowers with my mama in a couple weeks.  Aaaahhh, now that's a good day!

Neptunes Swim Meet

 We haven't done too many swim meets lately, though these guys are still swimming up a storm!  After sailing is over in  a few weeks, we'll get back to our favorite weekend pastime!  Our team hosted a Racing Series swim meet with just Neptunes swimmers where the kids just swam against each other.  They did fantastic, and Rea and Ya'shar both won all of their heats and races!!

Rea looks so tall in this picture!!

Ya'shar with his ribbons!

Me and little man.