Anastasia graduates from prek!

Well, the last of my baby girls graduated last week from pre-kindergarten. I have mixed emotions about this whole end of  pre-kindergarten process. I am so grateful she has had a wonderful year with new teachers and new friends. But I am sad to see Ana leaving her school. Just like her older siblings, she attended Knox for a few years and has grown so much and learned so much. All the teachers are caring, loving and it's been a great Christian atmosphere for my children. I know Ana is ready for kindergarten, but man it feels weird to say that my last daughter,, my fourth child, is going to kindergarten in the fall.

Anyway, last week was the pre-k graduation/spring sing performance and it was beautiful! Ana was of course her normal jovial, sweet, endearing self. She sang her heart out with her friends and did a few songs in sign language. Here are some picture highlights! 

This was one of the songs that the kids sang and used sign language for and it was such a sweet sentimental song. It made me tear up because it talked about following Christ everyday and having him transform us.  And the kids sang so beautifully and seeing my Ana on the school stage one last time, really got the tears flowing.

After the songs, the pre-k teachers gave each child a certificate and they walked across the stage. The reception afterward was nice and in between snacking on treats we were able to take some pictures with Ana. Uncle Mark came to support Ana and brought her a lovely rose bouqet that made her smile so big. She said she had never received flowers before and her older sisters always got them for their school activities or dance recitals. 

Congratulations Anastasia on graduating pre-kindergarten. We are all so proud of you and love you so much! 

Hope you guys have a fantastic Friday and a great weekend! 

Happy Thursday Peeps!

I hope you guys are having a great day and enjoying the weather. It was so cold and rainy last week which made my kiddos upset because all they want is to go outside and play. The cold Winter had us having major cabin fever and we are anxious for warmer sunnier days.

Today on the blog I'm sharing some pics of Ava's 8th birthday! It was last month, but with the festivities of Easter, I simply forgot to add a post about my mini me.
It's hard to believe I gave birth to this 8lb 6oz baby 8 years ago! Where has the time gone? Why cant babies stay little forever? 

                                                             Ava at 1 week old.

She was my biggest baby girl and is a unique fun loving child. She is super smart, loves to laugh and smile and her passion is cheerleading, playing the violin and making arts and crafts. We call her the queen of arts and crafts, because she will take tape and any type of material and make something cool and neat out of it. She also is very blunt and is a no nonsense type of girl. Don't sugar coat things with her, tell her the truth and she will be happy.

So she woke up on her birthday with tons of presents to open. She screamed when she opened the American girl present. She is a true girly girl.

 After opening presents, she went to school and I brought her a Chik- FilA lunch and she was ecstatic to see me. But she wouldn't let me take a picture with her because she wanted to be first in line in the lunch line. #secondgradeproblems ha!


For dinner, Ava requested a pizza dinner from Cici's pizza and Portillo's chocolate cake. So once Martin got home, we headed to dinner and she ate her heart out. My girls love the macaroni and cheese pizza from CiCi's.

Ava decided to forgo a friend party this year and requested a family party. Since both sets of  grandparents were coming over the house for Easter dinner, we decided to celebrate her birthday with cousin fun, cake and tons of presents! 

She had two great day of celebrating!

Easter weekend recap

Hello sweet friends! I hope your Easter was filled with gratitude and love. It's still so profound to me that Jesus died on the cross for ME! I truly am thankful that the blood of Jesus was shed for my sins and that we are free because of his dying love for us.

 I love Easter and love when it arrives in April. Sure, it doesn't really matter if the holiday is celebrated in March or April, because let's face it, Easter is not about some bunny! I love that my kids know the real meaning of this holiday.  Martin and I like to share with them about the infinite love of God during this special time and of course we do traditional Easter activities like egg hunt, dying eggs and spending time with our family. We kicked off a fun three day weekend with so much neat activities that I just had to share. Friday night, Martin and I went out for a few hours and had a date night. We love to go on monthly date nights..it is so special to us to have alone time with each other.

Our Saturday was jammed packed with soccer class for Jacob, cleaning the house, baking and a fun helicopter Easter egg drop. One of the local churches in our neighborhood puts on this huge event every year. We try to go every year, but either the cold weather detours us, or it is so crowded we can't find parking and miss the event. But we made it this year and it didn't disappoint! There were bounce houses, face painting, arts and crafts, of course the Easter bunny appeared and tons of other cool activities for the kiddos. 

Sunday of course was Easter and we were so excited about going to church and of course opening up our Easter baskets. 

I love making sweet memories with my family. And I love how my girls still want to dress up and wear fancy dresses. 

Sunday after church, we hosted family at our new house and it was great having family over and we got a chance to celebrate Ava turning 8. Ava turned 8 last Tuesday... I will do a blog post about her special day this week. But here are a few pictures I took of our Easter lunch with family. 

 Milo was too eager to have lunch too!

Easter egg hunt with cousins!

Love my nephew and son. They always are up to something. Ha!

Hope you have a terrific Monday!

A week in review

Boy, I am glad it's Friday! I feel like this week has been non stop busy for me. We had gorgeous weather on Monday and Tuesday and the littles and I got  a chance to go to the park, and had a fun play date. But then in typical Chicago bipolar weather fashion, the temperature was freezing cold, snowing and raining... all in one day!

                                           Jude was not pleased with the changing weather!


Bella has been wanting to wear this Tommy Hilfiger dress her grandparents bought her, so she was thrilled to wear it on Monday with her favorite Birkenstock sandals. Doesn't my 13  year old look lovely? It's still hard for me to realize that I have a teenager! (cue the tears) The years fly by so fast.

Then on Tuesday, it was also a glorious sunny day, so after running to Costco to do my bi weekly grocery haul, the boys had a fun playdate with a friend. I just have to laugh at this picture, because boys never sit still and look at the camera. I think they were looking at Jude's missing shoe. Ha!

Wednesday was a tough day with the cold weather, tons of errands to run, work things to do for me, after school activities for the big girls and Martin worked out of town and didn't get home until late. So usually Martin is home from work by 4;30PM and I love it, because he helps me take the older girl to dance, cheer practice, swimming or whatever activity they have for the night. But  I was solo all day and night. I texted my sisters and mother asking them to pray for me. I love our family text group messages, because immediately they texted back and told me that God was going to give me strength and that they are praying for me. I love my family! Ava had cheer practice on Wednesday and Anastasia had kindergarten preview night, all within 30 minutes of each other. 

Kindergarten preview night was a first for our elementary school. The older girls never got a chance to preview the school before attending, they were somewhat thrown into the mix of things and surprisingly they fared well! But when the school contacted incoming kindergarten parents about this fun preview night, Anastasia was ecstatic to come and see her new school. I can't believe I won't have any more little girls at home with me come fall! I have had so much fun playing barbies, dress up and more with my sweet girls. But I am looking forward to having some quality time with my boys. I love being a mom to boys. 

Anyway, here are a few picture from our fun kindergarten preview night. Martin ended up coming at the end of the tour and it made this sweet girls night. 

Thursday included taking all four girls to school, swim lessons for Giselle 

and making treats for our school carnival this weekend. But the highlight of my day was getting a sweet picture from Ava's teacher about how well she's doing in class! I love my mini me, she is so smart and is having a great 2nd grade year. 

Hope you guys have a wonderful Friday and weekend! 

Welcome back

Hi, I'm Joy and I used to be an avid blogger, but life happened and I gave up on a passion that I truly love... Writing!! As young as I can remember, I started writing stories, plays and poems. Growing up my life revolved around reading and writing. My mom would buy notebooks and pens for me and i would daydream and pretend I was a writer. Ask my sibling, I had a Barbie, a Sweet Valley High or Babysitters Club book in my purse along with a notebook and a pen. Purple pens were my vice, they always made me feel creative and full of purpose when I wrote.

Well, it no surprise when I grew up, I majored in Communications in college and worked for major publishing companies as a proofreader and a copy editor. But working long hours and commuting 45 minutes to an hour were exhausting and I yearned for more time home with my family. I had two small daughters at home and wanted to be home with them more and wanted to be the mom who took them to dance class and preschool. So I pursued working from home and found an awesome career. Working from home for publishing companies and marketing companies allows me to be connected to my career and helped me stay engaged in the real world...but it also creates freedom for me to spend as much time as I want to with my kids.

I started this blog years ago with the intent of posting more of my daily adventures as a mother, while still doing something I loved. But after having six kid in 11 years, well you can imagine life got more busy and my blog life plummeted. But one of my 2019 goals was to start blogging again and sure it's not the beginning of the year anymore, but I am determined to keep this blog active.

So would you help me be accountable? If you are reading this, and don't see any blog post from me in awhile, just shoot me an email or comment  hey, Joy, get to it! I need new blog post from you!

What I love most about the blogging world, is that there is room for everyone! Everyone can be successful, everyone has a story to tell and believe it or not, I just love being nosey too and looking at others life and family post.