Delaney Swims!!!!!!!

Two days before leaving for the beach I had a feeling I needed to get the girls in the pool to swim. Well Delaney went in with her usual vest on....and then decided to take it off. She than swam by herself for the first time. It was like seeing her walk for the first time...amazing.

Delaney sings her fun alphabet song after her successful first solo swim in the pool. She was just so happy with herself. Me too.

Musical Weekend

My little ballerinas dance to the Fray. This is Delaney's current song presently.

Going back in time. There was a band in high school called The Electric Company and I was friends with the members. They would play band parties and socials and stuff. Well every five years or so they like to do a reunion and they did one this weekend at Carolina Park near the stadium as a fundraiser. It was like a mini high school reunion and so much fun!!!! I went with some old buddies Jennifer and Lia and we had a blast. Stayed out too late but that was what we did in high school so there ya go.....Here are Steve and English.

Julie and Juliet a.k.a. Jules and Jules

Me and one of my oldest and most wonderful friends Jennifer

Fuzzy pic (darn) but here is little Lia in the middle and our old friend Dave Hopper who lives in Panama now. He was there with his really cool wife who we hung out with a lot.

My Two Ballerinas and some swimming cousin fun

This is one of Maya's favorite little games to play. She is good at it independently but if big sis is around she watches her every move. Heart them.

This summer both girls are able to take the dance class at their preschool. They start them as young as 2 1/2 so Maya finally can do ballet! They were sooooooo excited on their first day!

Ummm.....no words really.....bathing suited sisters after completing a puzzle practice some duo yoga.

"It's my train Mommy!" Yeah...I don't correct her on that one. I read a couple of months ago that you shouldn't correct your children's verbal errors because they will be corrected at some point, usually by the children themselves, and then lost forever. So we keep our good ones like "lesterday", "marote", "moobie", "plublicks", etc......

Morgan

Davis

Maya riding on mommy's lap

Grammy, Aunt Louisa (who is Miranda's mommy) and Uncle Dave

Randy set up the baby pool again this year for the kids to play in under the slide. Delaney and Morgan kept doing it over and over and loving it!

The four cousins

Grammy brought over these super silly noses.

Swinging while wearing princess dresses is always fun.

Maya looks like such a big girl here. Sniff. And she is riding on top of the monkey bar swing which is so daring.

Doing a little hula dance. As you can see, Delaney is dressed as Ariel and I am assuming she put Morgan in the Ursula outfit that she wore for Halloween two years ago. Yep...making her cousin be the witch while she is the princess.

Delaney is quite the soccer star in the backyard.

Maya catching Morgan at the bottom of the little slide.

The girls and their cousins play the run and jump on a ball game. Only captured a little bit but I swear they did it for hours. Delaney and Maya always jam out when they hear the Fresh Beat Band. Delaney jams a little much though and topples over in her chair. Oopsie for the accidental giggle from mommy.

Friends, Pools, and Strawberries

I don't know how we worked it out but we did. These three girls are possibly my oldest friends in the world. And oldest I don't mean in years because we are all almost the exact same age spanning across only two months. Suzannah lives in Greenville, Jennifer lives in Leesville, and Jessica lives in Charlotte and we managed to figure out a night to have dinner together in Columbia. We had a wonderful time, eating and drinking and talking for about 4 hours. I don't think the four of us have been together since high school or early college so it was wonderful to catch up. We are hoping to do this more often now!!!

Pool season is on in full force now. Delaney has graduated from arm swimmies to this little vest----thank GOD one of the swimmies had a whole in it and was no longer usable. She is already doing better this year and is not as scared.

Oh---and did I mention this was swim in underwear day? Yeah---sometimes we, I mean I, get lazy and just let the girs swim in their underwear instead of going upstairs to get bathing suits. Delaney doesn't seem to mind her little vest strap. It looks a little painful to me. Randy said he knows what kind of underwear Delaney will like when she is older. Ha.

Showing off their Lego creation.

If Delaney did good in her piano lesson I promised her a trip to Cottle Strawberry Farm to pick strawberries. Well she did great! The fam drove only about 20 minutes to get there and it was beautiful!

Randy and Nana have some bonding time at the pool.

Ouch??

A little Maya and Nutty swim time.

In case you forgot what I looked like.

Discussing and dreaming about buying a beach house. Yes...Nutty and I have big dreams.

Delaney and Nana share a snack in the shade.

Preschool Graduation!

Before the big ceremony, the little sisters of the big girls entertained themselves by jumping off of the stage. I hate that these girls won't be together after this year. I don't know if I have posted before, but Maya is also changing schools. Because of her September birthday, her current preschool wants to keep her in the twos class again. They can't move her up to threes due to spacing issues. I don't want her to be with "babies" because I think she is ready to move up. After many many months of stressing and touring possibly every preschool around, we have decided to send her to Shandon United Methodist preschool. They will allow her in threes room and hopefully keep moving up as long as she is ready. That preschool also has a private kindergarten so she will go there. My plan is to do that and then have her tested to go up to first grade in the public school at Brennen. So much stress involved about my sweet little two year olds academic career. I think we have made the right choice. Shandon is a "part-time" preschool though and have big breaks at holidays and are not open during summers. This is a big change for us. Delaney will have that same schedule though so it works out because we will have to plan for the both of them. I think that Shandon is a good mix of academics and loving which is what I wanted. A lot of the other preschools were either too academic (for me and my two year old) or didn't allow naps. Shandon does it all. Okay---now back to graduation.

Lining up before the big show. They had slides going before hand of all the kids in class. It was really rather cute. I have been very disappointed in Delaney's class all year because of the chaos and lack of structure and discipline, but the teachers stepped it up at the end. Or at least end of "school year". Delaney and her friends will be there until they leave for kindergarten in the fall.

Roper and Blake did the introduction at the beginning.

Delaney's 4K class sings their song "All Things Bright and Beautiful" at their preschool graduation ceremony.

Little clip of Delaney from preschool graduation video shown at ceremony where Delaney talks about her favorites thing from the past year.

Getting her diploma

Roper and Delaney. Delaney has quite the little crush on  Roper here. He really is a sweetie. They are two of the loudest in the class and as you can see from the videos, I think two of the best singers. The two of them together here look so much older it is like flash forwarding to a high school yearbook and seeing "Cutest Couple".

The "potentiality" song. Delaney's class does a sweet poem at the end of their graduation ceremony.

Yes this is a very blond class.

Pic of Delaney in her cap and gown that was posted in her room. Yes---fuzzy. It was "promised" that we would get copies. Yeah right. Not holding my breath. It was also promised that I would get the sheet that Delaney did for Mother's Day that the teachers asked her questions about me and then she answered them sweetly. Well apparently none of the other kids did this assignment....uhhhh....and then the teachers lost the sheet. Okay. I would love to keep it for sweet keepsake but oh well. I was pissed off for most of the year at the class and went to the director and tried my best to make it different but nothing worked. Now I can just laugh about it. Delaney has made some wonderful friends so that is good. She had a great experience at that preschool up until this year.

There was a little party after the graduation in the fours room.

These four girls are very close friends and have been since they were 10 weeks old (Sarah Beth and Libbie) and 3 (Mady). Us four moms have gotten very close as well and we do a monthly happy hour with some other moms/friends. All of the husbands have gotten involved too and we have done one couples night (tacky Christmas sweater party) and we have a couples night in July at my house. I love these girls and their moms!!!

For some reason sweet Sarah Beth starts to get sad here.

Cute Abby with her balloon headband.

Joseph and Abby.

Mom helps Maya tackle a cupcake.

Maya loves hanging out in the "big kids" room.

I know this is sideways but for some reason I couldn't fix it and it was too cute a pic of Abby, Mady, and Delaney.