The Schoolhouse

This may come as a surprise to some, but I am not good at dealing with change. :) I know it is inevitable, but the thought of it makes me physically ill. I should also add that the issue of securing child care has always been on the top of my list of "Things Jennifer over-stresses about".
When Brenna was born, I had it in my head that a certain person was going to keep her. I never doubted it, and surprisingly enough never worried about it. After I found out that this person decided she couldn't keep her after all, I was introduced to a whole new level of stress. I was completely against day care. Not that day care is bad, because many of our friends use day care and love it. But I just didn't feel like it was right for us. After a few weeks of stressing (and crying), we found Wayne and Vada. They were an answer to prayer. They were older, friends of Nina's, and only kept 2 other little girls at their house part time (as Brenna would be). They loved our baby like we did, and took care of her in a way that only a grandparent would. (i.e. bacon and eggs for breakfast, chicken fried steak for lunch, and rocking her to sleep every day). I felt like she would spend 3 days a week with them until she started Kindergarten. But when Brenna was 18 months old and Vada broke the news to me that with her mom's deteriorating health she just couldn't do it anymore, I was crushed. I totally understood her situation and reasons, but the selfish part of me was devastated. I wondered how I could ever find another person to take care of my baby the way Vada did. How could I ever find another person that I felt comfortable trusting with my child? I was facing the "C" word again!
Once again, God's plan was better than mine. After 2 days of crying and wondering how someone could ever take the place of Wayne and Vada, I had Nikki's name and number in my hand. I knew how much Amber loved her and what great care she gave Hartleigh (because Amber talked about it all the time!), so I had hope again. After a few phone conversations and visits, I was confident that we had found our new "angel". It was the perfect place for us. Brenna LOVED her Nikki. For the first two years, I stressed that Nikki might choose to not keep kids the next year, but let's face it-I apparently love to stress over things that I have no control over and no reason to stress about! ha! But my fears were unwarranted and Brenna returned each August for 3 years. And for that 3rd year, she returned with her baby sister! :) It felt so good to know that for a year, my girls were together every day. They were able to form a bond that some siblings don't get. Brenna also made a BFF. She and Tia were connected at the hip for 3 years. They were constant companions who started out as babies who played together and became two peas in a pod. They were so much alike, you would have thought (other than their hair and skin colors) that they were sisters!  :)
So when I realized during that third year that Tia would be starting Kindergarten in August, a year ahead of Brenna, I got concerned. OK- so before I got concerned, I MAY have begged Nikki to hold her back a year for my own personal selfish reasons! haha! The last thing in the world I wanted to do was move Brenna somewhere other than Nikki's, but I also knew that things would never be the same for her there with Tia being at school every day. I knew that Brenna would be lost without her BFF. Much to my liking, I knew that it was time to put on my big girl panties and accept the fact that CHANGE was inevitable.
I started asking around about preschools (gotta love Facebook!) and narrowed it down to two- Weatherford Christian and The Schoolhouse. We finally decided on The Schoolhouse because their hours were going to work better for us, and they were open during inservice days. I was also super excited that they were literally right down the street from our house. (Little did I know that we would sell our house and move two months later! ha!)
Brenna's last day at Nikki's was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I did my best to keep from thinking about not dropping her off there anymore. It also helped that I knew we would still see each other often to re-unite these two hams who had grown to love each other like sisters. Above all, I was comforted knowing that Macie would be returning to Nikki in August. But it was still hard. A stage in Brenna's life was ending, and she was growing up. I was sad, scared and excited all at the same time.
When August rolled around, we had Brenna's uniform shirts, shorts, nap mat, lunch box and backpack all ready to go! I took great pride in picking out her nap mat and backpack and making sure they were, in true Southern Mom fashion, monogrammed!

She was super excited to go to "school", and I was thrilled to see the eagerness in her eyes. For the first few weeks, she didn't have to wear uniforms, which was nice for this fashion oriented mom! haha! But she still had to wear tennis shoes, which got old really quick. I am NOT a jeans and tennis shoes type of gal. I am pretty sure Brenna was 3 before I bought her a pair of jeans. (I only wish I was kidding here).
She got up on cloud 9 that first day! She was ready to go, but kept asking questions about if she would have any friends at her school. It broke my heart to think of her feeling all alone in that big classroom, even though I knew her personality well and knew she would have a friend in a matter of seconds!

My two babies-ready to face a whole new school year.

Showing off her backpack and nap mat



At The Schoolhouse, with her lunch box in one hand and her breakfast in the other.

How on earth did she get to be this old??

She was a big ball of energy, and went right in and sat down to eat her breakfast with the other kids. She was happy to be there, and only had a slight hesitation when she walked into the room. I smiled like a proud Mommy, hugged her goodbye, and held back the tears.....until I got to the car. All bets are off when you are alone in the car, right?! I knew she would have a good day, but I also knew that my reassurance of that would be from her at the end of the day instead of from the numerous text messages and pictures I was used to getting of my happy girl throughout the day.
By the end of my work day, I had so many butterflies in my stomach. I couldn't stand it! I was so ready to pick her up and hear all about her day, and as I expected- it was a great one! She told me all about it and was excited for day #2. I felt great relief and a lot of excitement knowing how much this experience was going to help prepare her for Kindergarten.
On the first day of actual classes, she had to start wearing her uniform. As much as I said I would hate uniforms, I have really grown to love them. They are easy, cheap, and she looks pretty darn cute in them!

Showing off her name tag that she had to have for class.

"Hurry up Mom! I might be missing something!!"

So far, Brenna has had a great experience at The Schoolhouse. She has done "programs" and parties that the family has been invited to. Her first one was a Fall Program. I was scared that I couldn't make it up there, so I lined up Daddy, MeMawMom, Memaw, and Nina to take my place. I thought I was ok with missing her first program, and knew that she was going to be in great hands with all of these people she loved, but at the last minute I realized that I was NOT ok with missing it, and started to search high and low until I found someone to cover my class while I went! I was so glad I did. She was adorable singing her songs and looking at all of us who were there for her with such pride.

She went on a field trip to Casa Manana to see Santa Claus the musical. MeMawMom got to be her guest for that one, and I think they both had a blast!

Nina was the chosen guest for her Thanksgiving feast and program. I think they both really liked that! I didn't expect to get any pictures of that one, but Nina surprised me and emailed me pictures that she took with the office camera! Yep- she took pictures AND emailed them! In my 32 years, the only camera I have ever seen her use was a Polaroid!

Performing their Thanksgiving songs

Brenna and Nina

My sweet little Indian.

Aunt Emily was her chosen guest for her Valentines party. I am not sure who was more excited about this- Brenna or Aunt Emily!

WHO KNOWS on this one! Just being Brenna Grace.

My sweet girl saying her prayer.

Game time!

LOVE LOVE that face!!!!

Brenna has learned more at The Schoolhouse than I ever expected. I honestly feel that we made the right decision on this one, and that this experience will be very beneficial to her next year. She has made many new friends that she talks about all the time. (Although none of them will ever take the place of her beloved Tia) She has learned to adapt to a classroom environment and structure. And she has grown and matured in more ways than I can count. this experience has also forced me, as a mommy, to grow. I have had to let go a lot more than I was ready to do, and it has made me a stronger person. I had to realize that her growing up is inevitable. I didn't say I had to LIKE it, I only have to REALIZE it! :) It has helped me to see that she is going to be ok without me knowing and having control of every detail about her day. It has been a great experience, and even though I didn't WANT to make this change, I am glad it worked out so well.

Galveston Vacation 2011

Josh and I talked extensively about where to go for our Summer Vacation with the girls. Brenna had been begging to go to the beach, but this Mama just wasn't keen on the idea of driving to the ocean with a 4 year old and a 1 year old. I just didn't think Macie would ever make it. So we decided on a few days at the Gaylord Texan. Josh booked our trip and we were set. But Miss Brenna had her heart set on a beach vacation, and she kept begging and insisting that is where we were going. And apparently Moms are better at ignoring their children than Dads are, because Josh called me one day from work to let me know that we now had reservations in Galveston for our Vacation! ha! So, I had to overcome my fear of driving 8 ours with a 1 year old. Luckily Daddy knew just the thing to help my anxiety....a TV in my car! So- he took it over and had it installed. (best investment EVER!!!) So we got up bright and early on July 26th and loaded the car with everything but the kitchen sink, and headed out!
Much to my surprise, the girls did GREAT!! They played with toys and watched movies until it was almost lunch time. About the time Macie got restless, we decided to stop for lunch. Luckily we found a Sonic with a play ground (go figure!). So the girls got to run around and play and get rid of some energy. It was perfect!

I never knew that Sonic had a play area! This one was really neat with an inside eating area.

The rest of the drive went fairly well. Macie fell asleep first, then we actually had about 30 minutes of BOTH girls napping! WOOHOO! They both woke up and had some snacks and got a little restless toward the end of the drive, but we were almost there and didn't want to take time to stop. Once we started to see the OCEAN, Brenna was in heaven! It did take a little convincing to make her believe it really was the ocean. Galveston isn't quite the "blue water and white sand" you see on TV! ha!
As soon as we got to our hotel and got checked in, the girls were bouncing off the walls!

The view from our room!!

Brenna was excited to bust out her new notebook and pencils and crawl up in the middle of our bed.

We headed down to the beach as quick as we could get unpacked and changed! Poor Daddy was exhausted from driving all day, but he will do anything for his girls....so he eagerly changed too!

Headed to the beach for the first time!

Over the course of 3 days, we spent many hours on the beach. The back of my Tahoe was FULL of sand, but I didn't mind one bit! These two girls played and played!

Josh and Brenna spent the majority of their time in the water "riding" the waves!

She found a sea shell!

Macie didn't care too much for the water. She was much happier up on the beach where she could run around without being held.

She would climb in the chair, and out of the chair, and in the chair, and out of the....well, you get the picture!

When we needed a break from the beach and SAND, we would go and enjoy the awesome pool at our hotel!

 We didn't get any pictures of the kids IN the pool because it took both of us in there with them. But the both LOVED the pool. It even had a water slide that Brenna rode on several times.
 Brenna discovered the swim up bar pretty quickly, and her Daddy introduced her to Virgin Strawberry Daiquiris (aka- strawberry smoothies)! Pretty sure we went broke buying strawberry smoothies that week!

Posing for a picture...Smoothie in hand!

The pool chairs made a great place for snack time!

After naps each day, we would get dressed and head out to dinner. It felt good to put on something besides a swim suit!

My sweet Macie Claire and her CHEESE face!

My Brenna Grace is getting so BIG!

Check out the size of this Strawberry Smoothie she got while we were waiting on our table at dinner!!! She was one spoiled little girl this week!

I was kind of nervous about how the girls would sleep with all of us in the same hotel room. Macie is used to sleeping in her crib in her own room by herself. The first night took a bit. She cried for a little while, but eventually laid down and went to sleep. She wasn't sure what to think about being able to see us from her portacrib. So the next day, we came up with a plan! My thought was- If she can't see us, she will be more likely to lay down and go to sleep. So here is what we did...

I moved all the furniture in the room so that she kind of had a "wall" to keep her from seeing us. And it WORKED! There was never another tear shed for the rest of the trip! Leave it to the Mama to come up with a plan like this!!
And when we were awake, their favorite place to play was on Brenna's blow up mattress. :)

Time to pile up on Daddy!

On Thursday, we headed over to Moody Gardens to check out the aquarium. It was neat to see, but not quite what we expected. The aquarium was very hard to navigate and we back-tracked a lot. When we left, we still weren't sure we saw it all. But there were a lot of neat things for the girls to see. We even got to see a 4D Dora and Diego film. I kept wondering what the 4th "D" was....right up until Dora and Diego walked up to the stream of water and the fish "splashed" us...  As luck would have it, the camera died right after we got there! But I did get these...

LOVE these two!!

"Brenna Cam"!

Cheesy pose with the Dora and Diego 4D movie poster. :)

That afternoon, after nap time of course, we headed back down to the beach for one last afternoon.

We had fun writing the girls names in the sand.

Macie could have cared less, but we had to do her name too!

I was afraid she would hate the sand being all over her, but she surprised me and had a BLAST!

We buried Brenna in the sand and as I was about to take her picture, Macie ran up to her and plopped down right on top of her and just giggled!

This little girl dug in the sand for HOURS. And that little dump truck hauled tons of dirt!

On Friday morning, we got up and got all packed to head out. We decided that since we had been so lucky with the girl's behavior on the trip down that we wouldn't chance it on the way back. So we decided to make it a two day trip. Josh wanted to go to the Shiner Brewery in Shiner, Texas and I had my heart set on some Mexican food in San Antonio! Shiner was our first stop. We were running a little behind (go figure!) and were scared we wold miss the tour. But we got there in the nick of time and got to tour the Shiner Brewery. It is a neat little town! When you go into a gas station, you can get Shiner on tap! haha! The girls were not so much thrilled about this part of the trip, but they got to get out of their car seats so they were pretty good sports.


 From Shiner, we headed up to San Antonio for dinner. I had visions of walking around the River Walk with my family and enjoying the fresh air and the girls having a blast. I was wrong. Brenna was 100% uncooperative, and Macie cried most of the time because she was so hot. This was the best picture I could get of them.

Brenna refused to even look at the camera, much less smile. They were both sweating so bad, but were so tired they wouldn't let go of their blankeys.

Our hotel was a much welcomed site that night. The girls were so ready to get out of the car and run around. We played in the room for a bit, then went down for a late night swim in the pool. The girls were both so tired that we didn't last long, but we did have a little fun.
Saturday morning we packed up and headed home. The girls were ready to be there, and so were we!! We decided to make one last vacation pit stop in Austin and eat at the Salt Lick. It was a really neat place. I am not much of a BBQ fan, but the food was ok. Josh really enjoyed his. All they had was BBQ, so our picky eater Brenna only ate a roll. But she was ONCE AGAIN a great sport while we ate. :) The scenery at the Salt Lick was beautiful, and I think it would be a great place to go with a large group of people. However- I was one happy camper because I was with this group of people...

These three are my life

Overall, I would say that Vacation 2011 was a success! The kids had a blast, and I enjoyed doing nothing but spending time with my 3 favorite people in the world.

Let's Go Rangers, Let's Go!

Yep- I am still trying to catch up on our fun Summer adventures. There were so many more than these, but I am touching the highlights so that I can get back to the every day blogging like I REALLY want to do!! I love my girls so much, and every day with them is a treat and a blessing. I just don't want to forget a second of it.
In June, Josh and I decided to take Brenna to a Rangers game. She went last year on a "daddy/daughter" date with Josh, and his friend Sean and daughter Makyla. She LOVED it and kept begging to go back. We decided that it would be WAY more fun to take a friend with her, so she chose to invite Tia (because in her mind, Tia should do EVERYTHING with us and we are OK with that!!).
After dropping Macie off to spend the evening with MeMawMom, Brenna, Tia, and I headed to Ft Worth to pick up Josh at the fire station (as he was still working 8-5 shifts). And what would a trip to a fire station be with a little photo op??

Complete with brand new shades. :)

The girls had a blast giggling in the back seat on the way to the ballpark. I am pretty sure most of their conversations revolved around what foods we were going to eat!
When we got there, our seats were still in the sun a bit, so we walked around until it cooled off (and I use the term cooled off very loosely because let's face it...it was Texas in June!!). While on our walk, we ran into some of the Rangers girls and they gave Brenna and Tia free hats! Pretty sure I was more impressed than the girls though! ha!
Before the game started, we got hot dogs and juice boxes to eat for dinner, then the topic quickly changed to SNACKS! Who knew that two 4 year olds could eat SOOO much??!! I had packed some snacks in anticipation of them loosing interest in the game (which happened about 30 seconds after the first pitch!). They munched on those, until we got peanuts. Those girls are some Peanut eating fools!!! I had no idea that 4 year olds could pack away the peanuts like that! But they were having a blast, and I figured we cold deal with the tummy aches later! (sorry Nikki!) ;)

Check out the mouth FULL of peanuts!

SERIOUS peanut concentration going on here!

I love these two little girls almost as much as they love each other!

After snacks got boring, we resorted to some Leap Frog games, Magnidoodle, and IPhones!

We even had a really nice lady in front of us that offered to take our picture! And apparently I thought she was too close and wasn't going to get us all in the picture, so I leaned WAAAAAYYYY over so that I didn't get cut off.....wonder if she realized what I was trying to do, or just thought I was a freak who liked to lay down to have my picture made? Either way, she should have informed me that I would still be in the picture if I sat up like a normal human...oh well.


 The girls got a little restless after a while, so we decided to head to the car. It was a fireworks show, and both girls insisted that they wanted to watch the show, so we decided to head to the car and watch it from there since we were going to have to walk 1/2 way around the field anyway to see it. The girls were just as happy to watch from the parking lot, and I think the look on their faces says it all!

It was a GREAT night, and we had a blast! It wasn't about watching a baseball game (because there wasn't much of that going on at all!), it was about having fun and making memories! And I am positive that these two had a blast, because they were sound asleep about 10 minutes after we got in the car....aaaahhhhh peaceful ride home. :)