My last tiny sweet little baby just turned 7.

 Whoa.  I'm usually the LAST person to have sad type feelings about my kids getting older.  Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of the little kid stage.  I mean, I adore my kids.  But I'm much more able to ENJOY them the older they get.

 That being said, I'm having a little twinge of MYBABYSNOTABABYANYMORE! sadness ... I'm not used to that.  There's a part of me that misses the sweet the little girl in the sweet little girly dresses :( I don't miss all the baby/toddler stuff, but I kinda miss my LITTLE girl ... I'm sure that makes absolutely NO sense, it doesn't to me either ;)

It's a tradition to get donuts for breakfast on birthdays so that was our first stop on Lil Miss's birthday extravaganza :)  Next we dropped my oldest 2 off at their dad's house since it was his day. 

As her big birthday treat, we took her to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom ... better known to old school Cali folks as Marine World :)  DH was able to take the day off of work so we got to go, just the 3 of us!  It's rare when things work out that we get to go places with our little family so we really enjoy them!

Discovery Kingdom is SO much fun!  They have huge roller coasters, 2 great big small kid areas, one with Looney Tunes characters (which I LOVE), splash parks, TONS of animal shows and exhibits like killer whales and dolphins!

 She loves running around hugging and meeting all the characters!

 Riding the rides ...


 snackin on snacks ...

 watching the shows ...

 riding MORE rides ...

 riding rides with daddy cause mommy has the stomach of a seasick 80 year old ...

 meeting MORE characters ...

 Oh and her FAVORITE PART ... squirting people on water rides in the face with water cannons ;)

 LOL

 Yeah that was her FAVORITE part ;)

 We love watching the animal shows and chilling in the shade with a snack :)

 We went 7 times to the park last year, 2 times this year already and this was the first time we got to see the sea lion show! It's my favorite from when I was a little girl :)

 There is SO much to do that even if it looks like it will be crowded, it never really is. I LOVE that.

Her one snack to pick for the day was cotton candy ... oh how I love the sticky residue left over lol

Then we found another water ride and more water cannons :D  That kept us busy for awhile ;)

Then we came to the dreaded ROUNDY ROUND ride ... this ride made me so sick the last time I rode on it that I threw up all the way home.  So now Daddy or her sister can take her on it ;)

The guy running the ride seemed like a cool guy so I had DH tell him that it was Lil Miss's birthday and when they all sat down, he went on the loud speaker and had everyone on the ride/in line say Happy Birthday to her and then they all SANG to her!!  She LOVED it!

 After the rides we went into the animal area where the habitats are, she was having the best day and just skipping everywhere :) I love to see her so happy!

 We went through all the habitats and it took a little while since she is now in the habit of reading every single sign we see ;)

 We had the best day together :) I can't believe she's getting so old!

On the way out we let her pick a souvenier since it was her birthday, usually I tell the kids "PICTURES are your sovenier" lol but this was a special occasion.  She picked out a super cute princess dolly house :)

And we topped off the night with a trip to Applebees for dinner and a special sundae for the birthday girl :)

And FINALLY the day came when those tutus that filled my every waking hour were put to good use :)

Monday the 13th was their first performance and it worked out that Flower Child's dad was able to attend and the Boy was out of school so he could too! Usually these types of fun things happen when he's at his mom's house so he misses out. He was REALLY excited to get to go to this one!

The girls looked ADORABLE!!

This was Flower Child's first RUN on stage lol. Her first part was Mercury (the planet) and she runs on stage, speeds through her lines (because she's the fastest spinning planet) and runs back off. A total of 22.5 seconds I think ;)

OH BOY was this play science-y. There was so much science jammed into this HOUR LONG PLAY that it was practically OOZING with nerdness. lol It's a GATE play and so I guess I should have expected it but OH MAMA was it JAM PACKED WITH THE SCIENCE.

Then for her second part she was a Venette. Which is the back up singer for Venus who sings about how hot she is ;) LOL Oh how my camera sucks at the action shots >:-/

The final dance number a sweet forever later ...

And the group shop of all the players :) Note the SWEET space ship to the right ;)

Their budget, it's limited lol


After an all to short minimum day, I had the kids all sit down and do some fun Valentine's stuff :)

While I worked on the teacher's gifts, they worked on some cards for each other.

I found this super cute set at Walmart of 24 foam cards with foam stickers to decorate with. They had so much fun decorating cards and filling them out with what they love about each other :)

Teen decided she wanted to make some goodies to take to her friends so she busted out her brownie/mini cupcake maker and used this AWESOME recipe I found on Pinterest. They tasted JUST LIKE the box mix only WAY better!

And then because my plans for a perfectly lovely Valentines Dinner didn't exactly work out, we had pizza with Valentines plates ;)

We were together though, and that's what counts :)

After the kids went off to bed I brought down a few things I got for them.

We don't do a LOT for Valentines Day, but I did get them a little something. I found these adorable mail boxes at Target in the dollar aisle and had totally planned on decorating them but time was against me. Something to do for next year! I got them each a card, pencil, sucker, candy, and then they had each others cards to read too :)

I had planned on making something for breakfast too buuuuuut ... well you know ;)

So I picked up some raspberry and orange scones and strawberries and they were pretty excited about it :)

Then they got to go through their mailboxes and were so cute reading all of the little love notes :)

My girlies on the way out the door :)

That night we had Flower Child's evening performance! I was just barely able to get this picture since my camera hates movement of any kind.

DH made it JUST in the nick of time. He'd been working about a month straight with no day off, had just come off of 3 days straight of 20 hours EACH. He was headed home and he could have gone straight home and taken a shower, had dinner or just gone to bed - but he went straight from his 3 hour drive home to his step daughters play, and was happy to be there :)

If that's not love, I don't know what is.


Flower Child and her bestie :)

The players

The next day was tough. It started with a LOT of attitude from a few of the kids that didn't end til they were pushed out of the car to school, and didn't improve much through the day.

The hubs has been dealing with some pretty horrible conditions with his work and they were BEYOND stressing him out. Which of course, stresses ME out. And he was off again for another few days to work.

He knew things were getting to me and messaged me throughout the day to see how *I* was doing. I usually try to be strong and not let him know how much this all gets to me, but he can tell.

So he sent me these :) Not for Valentine's Day, but just because I was having a REALLY bad day. Love that man of mine :)