Piano Recital, Christmas 2010

Joey had his Christmas piano recital last Sunday. He played wonderfully!!! He was asked to play first and that made him a little nervous, so you can see he gets flustered...but he picks right back up and plays wonderfully!! So proud of him for handling himself so well, kids MUCH older than him messed up and just quit! He was also the ONLY kid younger than 8 that was playing chords (multiple keys played at the same time) in his songs, VERY proud of my boy!!!

On the beach we will build a snowman

Joey's 5th Bday Trip & Day

Every year we go on a trip for Joey's birthday and this year for his 5th bday he asked to go to Longboat Key, Florida. It was a great trip!!! (Pls forgive the format, blogger is uploading funny tonight)

Here he is with the Pirate Ship birthday cake he asked me to make. It was a fun cake to make ; )

Here he is the morning of his birthday. He wanted to make a list of things that he wanted to do and here he is first thing checking out hist list! He had things like...boogie board, play Mini-golf, eat ice cream, go to the aquarium. etc.....

First on his list was eat belgium waffles, YUM!!

Next, of course was open a present!

Then go boogie boarding down at the beach! Joey is an awesome boarder!!

Then off to the Mote Aquarium to see the Hammerheads!! Joey LOVES Hammerhead sharks!!

Here he is in front of the actual Hammerhead tank....seemed like we stood there for hours ; )




With his Da searching the fossil bed for Sharks Teeth, he found some great ones!!!

Touching the Stingrays

Then of course, we had to play mini-golf ; )

At the end of the night Joey opened his "big" gift, the Lego Police Station (little did he know that Mom and Da had a bigger gift waiting at home ; )

Of course, being us....we HAD to stop at Disney World on the way home. The Conducter on the Disney Train let Joey say "ALL ABOARD" he was so super exited!!!







Joey and Da made a stop at the Downtown Disney Toy store and constructed a new custom Lightsaber!!

Of course, we could not go to Disney and not go to the Lego store, we all loved this Lego Woody!

When we got home, Joey found one more birthday gift in the living room ; )

His Da had made him a custom lego play area that fits on top of his Thomas the Train table.

My beautiful 5 year old boy!!!!

Joey's 5th Bday Party

Joey had an awesome 5th birthday party. He wanted a Bakugan theme (even though me and his Da TRIED to sway him to a theme we understood ; ) there were tons of kids and a gigantic water slide!!

We decorated the house like crazy so Joey would see it when he got up!!! Here is the foyer...

The living room

The gift table, Joey made out like a bandit

His cake, designed per his specifications. Bill and I do not "get" the Bakugans...but Joey LOVES them!!

Blowing out the candles

The cake and ice cream line ; ) Bill made his famous homemade Ice Cream

Waiting in line to go down the slide with his pals

Slip sliding away

We even got to slide the next day

Sliding with his Da

Even with a water slide....most of the boys moved upstairs to play ; ) Boys will be boys!!

First Day of Kindergarten

Well, here it is folks, the BIG DAY... the first day of Kindergarten. Joey was up and ready to go. I, on the other hand was a little more than stressed, sad, and well absolutely terrified. I was not sure how in Gods green earth I was going to take my son, the child I hardly ever am away from, the baby who I held for each nap the first year of his life and drop him off for 6 hours at a school where I don't know anyone. I was petrified of many things, him not eating his lunch and being hungry or even worse with 100 degree temps, not drinking enough and getting heat stroke (Don't even say it, I know, totally silly) worst of all I was terrified of bullies and mean teachers. As many of you know and saw, I was pressuring Joey to be home schooled and we DID try it over the summer, and although he did and has always excelled at schoolwork... Bill and I both could see something was missing... Joey is just a highly social child. And the first day of school and every day since is proof of that, he comes home very happy, content and excited. He just LOVES being around all kinds of people.

With this said, my fears were realized and Joey has what I will call a "mean" Music Teacher. For starters let me say, how can you be mean to MY SON in MUSIC, a five year old who has memorized over 280 measures this summer alone (only the 12 yr olds have memorized more in his Piano school) and can sit down and play such beautiful music. However, knowing him, I have no doubt he WAS talking and he admitted to me that he was. But, Time Out for A 5 yr old on his first day EVER of school may be a little harsh and humiliating. I had a nasty letter all ready to go to him (to be quite honest I was so mad I could have been very mean), but I talked to Bill and Joey, together we all agreed to give it one more week. More importantly I thought it through and as much as I would like to, I cannot protect Joey from mean people and doing so would be a handicap for him later in life. Part of school is learning to deal with different personalities. If I step in too quickly now, how will he ever deal with that horrible Boss he is bound to have in the future. So only time will tell...as I write this Joey should be headed to Music, I pray that the Teacher is kind (God help him if he is not, my Zen attitude may change very quickly) and that Joey follows all the rules, as he should. Okay, now onto my beautiful boy ; )

All ready to go with his rhino shirt and cool flame chucks

Walking with all the big kids

He needed both hands for his lunchbox...I have since let-up on the five course lunches, teehee

Here we go, at his classroom

At his table and ready for Mom to stop with the pics already!!

BTW, Joey was chosen as the first student of the week, we spent this weekend making an "All About Me" poster and he got to take in his favorite things ; )

Turtle Talk

Joey and Da rescued a Turtle, so we let Joey play with him in the backyard for a while. We fed him some of my grape tomatoes and he ate them all up; )

Chasing him around the yard

What a cutie pie!!! After a while we all walked him into the woods and released him into a stream.

Spring Piano Recital

I am catching up, sorry to still be so behind ; P

Joey's Piano Recital was in May and he did AWESOME! Some people brought a baby sibling and it cried a lot during his performance and threw him a little off (of course) you can hear it whaling in the background of the video below...what drove me double nutso was it screamed during EVERY performance and when it was time for their son to play the people took the baby out of the room....so rude. Anywho, he still did so great and was still the youngest to play by 2 1/2 years. So PROUD of my boy!!!

With Mrs Holmesly, the BEST piano teacher in the world!!!!!!

Here he is playing his songs

Jedi Camp - Disney Hollywood Studio's

Not long ago, we took our last trip to Disney before our yearly passes expired. Joey had been wanting to participate in Jedi Training Camp. So we waited over an hour for the opportunity. It is VERY popular!! Here is the video of him taking the Jedi Oath and then fighting Darth Vader. More pics of this coming soon!

Frogs and Butterflies

When Target ran their Christmas toys on sale, they had a butterfly habitat on 75% off clearance, so I snagged it and we ordered our caterpillars.... it was only a week or so and we had 3 nice cocoons.


They were soon 3 beautiful butterflies. We fed them flowers, oranges and watermelon

Pretty from the side, such an awesome thing to get to watch them transform from ugly little caterpillars

Here is Joey letting the butterflies land on his hand before we released them. You are only supposed to keep them for 7-10 days, after that they can no longer lay eggs and will die.

One of the butterflies on Joey's hand for release ; O)

We have been hearing lots of loud barking on the front porch and thought it was our neighbors yappy dogs...but turns out our culprit is much smaller. A tree frog living in our front garden...and it loves loves loves crawling on Joey...In fact it was hard to get it off

what a cutie

big green eyes and big green frog

We thought he may jump off if we left the porch

Nope, he loved Joey!!