90 months

J had a really great year in school, once again she had an awesome teacher and grew by leaps and bounds, academically, socially and in height! Her last few days of school were fun, they had ice cream and popsicles, got to watch the 5th grade field day, had movie/popcorn day, made s'mores, went on a scavenger hunt, and made friendship bracelets to remember 1st grade by. Her teacher even made them all end of year awards, J got  the "Sweet as Sugar" award. This year really flew by and I loved being able to help in her class as much as I did. Hoping second grade is just as great!

We picked J up early on her last day of school to get one last Disney trip in before our passes blacked out for the summer. J had been asking to go and see the butterflies, we didn't make it up as many times as we had hoped while the tent was up, but did get to see them one last time before the festival was over. We got to Epcot by 4pm, it was HOT and we didn't last long, not sure what we were thinking! We did get a lot into the two hours we were there, we rode Nemo and saw the dolphins, rode Soarin, went on the Land, went in the big ball and chased butterflies around the butterfly garden (J was obcessed about catching one of her butterflies, she never got one, they are too fast) before we decided to call it a night and head to Disney Springs for dinner, shopping and dessert (we found cute Aladdin cake pops). The next morning we hit the Magic Kingdom with our friends and somehow managed to stay until almost 5pm (taking it pretty slow after the morning got us and we had to recharge at lunch time). We rode rides, saw bits of the parade, sang with the bears, forced the kids to take pictures in their cute shirts and got to meet birthday Mickey and Minnie. I think all the kids favorite part of the day was getting to ride Thunder Mountain, by far J's favorite ride! We all had a good time, Disney with friends is more magical and surprisingly again we had no meltdowns and everyone got along well for the 36 hours we were together. They were a little upset this time that our suite was not as big as it was last time, spoiled kids!

You can take a girl out of Texas but you can't take Texas out of a girl! J still has her Texas twang and it was in full force on our trip! We had a great week visiting the Lone Star state, taking the girls to where they were born and reminiscing on our years there. J's favorite part of the trip was going to American Girl Doll and having her doll Willa's ears pierced and her hair done. She wasn't into the tea party food but loved the cupcakes and cookies! Her favorite thing she ate was ribs at Hard 8 BBQ with her daddy, she is a true Texan and loves her ribs! She is already talking about our next trip to Dallas, what all she wants to do and asking if we can have the suite again! Sorry to tell you we aren't going to Dallas again anytime soon but hopefully we can go somewhere fun for Spring Break!

When we were in town this month (all together) we laid low and hung out mostly at home. We did check out the Thursday morning program at our mall on what was cooking day. The girls got to decorate chefs hats and aprons, decorate cookies (they skipped the build your own yogurt parfait) and had cupcakes painted on their faces, for a free event it's not a bad way to kill some time! We celebrated Father's Day with a BBQ at G&G's house, would there have been another option? J is back to wanting the rib bone again now that she has teeth and no super wiggly ones, well for now!

The girls spent a little over a week with G&G while mommy and daddy took a much needed vacation with Aunt Fonz and Uncle Dew, it was the first big trip we had been on since we went to Europe before J was born (we've had 4-5 day get-a-ways but 10 days without kids was magical!). The girls had a great time with G&G and spent lots of time swimming and eating steak, that is what you do at G&G's house (and they played lots of Barbies)! They went to the movies and saw Secret Life of Pets 2, went shopping and to dinner at Kona Grill and of course they had to go to Wolveshead (and probably more than once). They helped Grandma make diaper cakes for Auntie V's baby shower and helped make dosinos for the shower too, they got to roll them in the pink sprinkles and help decorate them, I wonder how many they actually ate while they did this! They were happy to see us when we got home, I'm still not sure if they were more excited for us or their surprises we brought them back!

We've been doing lots of swimming and jigsaw puzzles around here. J  loves to swim, however she would rather do hand stands, somersaults and dive for stuff than practice her strokes. I have had her to our community pool a few times to swim some laps, she has done pretty well and has worked herself up to swimming the 25 yards eight times, with a small break after each length, in total that is 200 yards, not bad for a kid her age! She was excited when we were shopping one day and she found a Sleeping Beauty 750 piece puzzle, of course she asked for it, of course I said no and in three days it was done! She is my puzzle master and will sit for over an hour and work on a puzzle. We need to work on framing it so that we can hang it in her room.

Here are the pictures from the month, Disney and Dallas.