We Hoe Down.

 The Family. It was a beautiful day in late April as we celebrated my wonderful Mom. We had 85 people at the party, and everything went off without a hitch. I was so relieved ~ party planning is fun, but stressful! 

 The DiLullo gang, minus Alyssa and Tessa, who stayed home with Babysitters that night.

 Pop Pop, Luke, Jake, and Mr. Bear, Luke's class mascot. It was his week to bring Mr Bear home and write all about his weekend with our family. I bet it was Bear's first time riding a mechanical bull!

 Luke and Julia enjoyed the Photobooth to the max!

 My little cowgirl. 

 Jake was pure awesome riding the bull. This kid is a character, I just don't know how else to put it. I wish I could freeze him ~ he is such a joy right now. So sweet, so much fun, so easy and compliant.

I just can't get enough of Jake's expression in this photo. 

Well, we have done it! Nate is officially done with school and we have successfully gotten through Mom's party! Now we just have the hurdle of Nate's party (June 1st, here at our house) and it will be onto the ease of summer! 

Life is good ~ the kids are in a super easy phase ~ playing together so nicely, everything just seems to be flowing without a lot of effort. I'm loving it and feel so grateful. My stress level feels lower than it has been in, well, in two years. I can't even tell you how wonderful that feels to write. The weather is beautiful and we are enjoying lots of time outside, and the school year is winding down. I'm looking forward to my Mothers Day Tea with sweet Jules this Friday, and then we have a nice weekend of a date on Friday night, planting flowers and doing some house projects on Saturday, and then I get to celebrate Mothers Day with an early round of golf at Glen Mills, and then a calm day with my family and dinner out. 

In planning ahead to our summer schedule I'm trying to keep things calm. I just don't want to spend a ton of money on camps when the truth is the kids are easy and I'm super selfishly enjoying the idea of long days to ourselves with no running around. We have a 7 day disney cruise planned for the last week of June, which we are all SUPER excited about, and a week at the beach in July and August. We are looking forward to spending Memorial day up in Stroudsburg and doing a family hike and spending some time at Quiet Valley, and then we will come home to celebrate Jake's THIRD birthday! 

All in all, I'm enjoying this hiatus of calm. The one dark spot is the basement. We had a major issue with our floor. After getting to the point of the basement being 98% done, I had another contractor in here who identified a major problem with our floor. We had a come to Jesus meeting with our builder last Friday, when he acknowledged that yes, there was a major problem and his crew had royally screwed up. They hadn't leveled the concrete floor before laying the laminate, and there were major depressions in the floor ~ our floor would give out within a very short time. Thankfully he did the right thing and said that they would redo the entire thing ~ but even that was terribly upsetting as it means that ALL of our new furniture and TV's are now displaced, wrapped up in plastic, as the ENTIRE floor had to be taken up, leveled, and redone. Massive, tear inducing headache. I'm just so sick that this project, which was supposed to be done by March 10, and has been under construction since January 4th, is still not completed. I'm so tired of dealing with construction noise and dust and inconvienance in my home. I'm sick that our playroom is still up here off of the kitchen, which has meant that the homework room has not been able to be built. None of that will be done before Nate's party, now. It means that all of the decorating that I hoped to be doing in the basement is of course on hold, also meaning that none of it will be done before Nate's party. I will say that it looks beautiful, I love the bathroom, I love the wet bar, I love the paint choices and the furniture......I just don't love it all displaced and sitting under plastic. Yes ~ i know. This isn't illness, this isn't divorce, or death, or anything like that. But I can say that it IS terribly frustrating, and draining, and the stress of this ongoing confrontation and conflict with the builder has worn on me at this point. We entered into our contract in good faith, and they simply haven't honored their side of the contract. Its frustrating. And yes, not having things "perfect" for the party really is no big deal, but man, I just wish things were different. 

So, thats where we are!