Birthday Bonanza

Wow! So many birthdays! Yesterday was GiJus real birthday and we celebrated Callie and Diegos birthdays with a huge party! I could never do this without a lot of help from a lot of family. So to each of you who spent so much time contributing and helping make this day happen for these lucky kids Thank You!

The kids had so much fun jumping, playing, making necklaces and crowns, and pretending to be Elsa or Kristoff. They ate way too much sugar but enjoyed every minute. Happy happy Birthday Callie and Diego, love you guys so much! And Happy Birthday GiJu too, we were so glad you could be here with us.

The kids opened tons of presents and cards with money for their playground and we told them they had enough for the playground! Super exciting!! And Callie got one big surprise gift from Tia Eliana and Sean.... A Barbie dream house!

GiJu is here!

The birthday weekend is almost here and GiJu flew in today to be here for their party. It's been crazy busy, but we are just about ready. We squeezed in some time to play at the playground and we picked our first veggies from our garden! We had snap peas and a big cucumber. Callie ate both of them which already makes this garden a success as she is trying and eating new veggies.

Lemon lovers

This weekend we picked a few lemons off the tree we planted two years ago. It's finally producing some usable lemons :)

The kids wanted to put them in a bucket and carry it together. Teamwork!

Celebrating Julia

A former client passed away a little over three years ago. She was really special to me and her mom also had a special place in my heart. Her family throws her a birthday party every year in her memory and just to get everyone together to remember her. Julia truly was one of a kind and despite a pretty horrible 6 years of battling a mitochondrial disorder she was a positive child and rarely complained (about life at least, she complained a lot about my singing and choice of activities in therapy). Anyways this year I brought Callie and Diego to the party. Callie and I have talked about Julia a lot. She helped create the bags for the homeless when her mom was doing the giving back on the anniversary of her death. Callie says funny things like well we shouldn't bring her a present because she is in heaven and can't get it. Right Callie. Then we'll why do we have cake if Julia doesn't get to eat it? I tell her that Hulia gets her own cake in heaven and she just enjoys watching us all get together hVe fun and talk about Julie. We had lots of fun at her party Saturday and Callie had her first water balloon fight. She loves it, D was terrified because his shoes got wet. The kids played on the playground for hours and CLlie was so brave doing the bigger kid climbing tasks. Happy birthday Julia we love you and miss you!

Earrings!!!!

Callie has asked about real earrings for a long time. I told her they used a needle and it hurts so when she is ready and can take care to clean them I would take her. Last year she said no I'll wait I don't want it to hurt. But then this week she turned 4 and she says I'm big I'm ready for earrings. I asked her a bunch of times and reiterated that it hurts but she insisted she wanted them. So today we took her! I tried to take her to a real piercing place that uses needles in a sterile environment but no tattoo parlor or body piercing place would take a 4 year old. So I took her to the mall. They did a good job. She was so brave and didn't even cry. She's growing up fast. She's so excited about her earrings. She picked blue like Elsa and we got white gold for her sensitive skin. What do you think?

Pump it up

Callie wanted to go to Pump It Up the jumpy house place for her special day after her birthday. Diego wasn't too fond of the jumpers. The video is the most jumping he did. We had the entire place to ourselves which was good but then Callie wanted me to climb and slide with her every time.