Life lessons... hopefully learned!

My girls are in for a treat! Their first life lesson is slowly and I mean very slowly being learned.

Life lesson number 1: 

nobody wants to clean up after you

I am feeling tired, exhausted really, grumpy and emotional! 18 weeks pregnant, feeling like 30 weeks pregnant, probably due to getting every possible pregnancy complication you can count! More on that to come.
So after spending what feels like hours constantly cleaning up my kids clothes, shoes, toys, dress ups, food, barbies, crap, crap and more crap, I have decided I'm done cleaning it up! So...
I went through their closet and took out about 99% of their toys. They are now hiding in the farthest part of their closet! We had a long talk about cleaning up your own mess cuz Mom's tired of doing it all day everyday, and its practically killing me and my unborn baby to be!
Garrett's idea was great, give them 5 minutes at night before bath time to clean up, whats left on the ground gets taken away. I am not to say anything just take the toys and add them to the other toys hiding out in the closet. They will either lose all toys or they can earn toys back if they clean up REALLY well.
I sat them both down and gave them this lecture they may not have fully understood!!!, but seemed to get the jist of! And tonight, FINALLY my house is clean and totally picked up. The girls room is spotless and Ciella especially, is panicked just thinking about losing more toys! 
Hopefully this life lesson isn't forgotten by the morning!

Ciella...

My sweet Ciella started kindergarten! I can't believe she is starting to read, memorize sight words, and write sentences and we are only 2 weeks into school. I am lucky enough to be able to volunteer in her class room every Monday, so I really get a feel for how she is doing and for her class room dynamics.

She started a week behind everybody else, we had much confusion over which school she would go to. Eventually when we finally got her enrolled she ended up going to the same Elementary school I did.  She even has my first grade teacher as her kindergarten teacher!! She loves her teacher and is still trying to figure out her school routine and make friends.  She LOVES school!

Yesterday I took some engagement pictures for my sister, Ciella tagged along. I caught this picture of her and absolutely LOVE it. I feel like she doesn't look like a little kid, I mean I know she is, but I feel like it captures that she getting older and maturing! It makes me happy to see her growing and maturing and LOVING life, but sad that she isn't my baby any more.