The Jones Girls

Today is our 10th annual Arabic Dinner Family Reunion.    I was up late last night and got up at 6am this morning to get a good head start.     Everyone would start showing up at 3pm.

Our friend, Nadia, has triplets that are turning 2 and today is their birthday party at La Habra Heights Park.   So at 9:00am I began getting the girls ready for the birthday party.  Cliff left at 10am to take the girls to the party.  

This gave me an advantage to get a lot of work done.    My brother, Rob, helped me so much (thank you my dear brother!).

The girls came home at 12pm noon.  They played their video games and I continued to prepare the food and the house for the party.   I took a quick shower.

Everything was ready and my family began coming over at 3pm.    We had lots of good food, wine and most importantly the grandest time catching up with each other.  We took a lovely family group photograph.

What a wonderful evening!!

Tonight Cliff and I took the girls to Summerfest in Brea.   It is the world’s largest Catholic private school carnival.    It is an annual event going on over 25 years now and it is organized by the student’s parents.   They have top notch entertainment such as Peter Frampton and all sorts of different and awesome performers. 

Tonight Pat Benatar was performing!!   It is a free concert so I wanted to go and see her.  So when we arrived there, it was 6:30pm.  She was scheduled to appear at 7:30pm.    After many ice creams later, no Pat Benatar. It was past 7:30pm by now.  Our poor girls were having melt downs.

So we left our wonderful point of view spot and headed over to the rides.   We got some tickets and the girls did a really fun roller coaster ride. They screamed so loud and it was hilarious!  Then we went on the horse carousel.   It was now 8:15pm and Cliff was about done.  He wanted to go home.

So we went over to my friend, Wendy Rice, booth. She was volunteering to do the 50/50 raffle.    I asked if I could stay with her at the booth and watch Pat Benatar and if she would drive me home afterwards so that Cliff could come home with the girls.  She said sure…and then she suprised me with a wristband…on the wristband it said “VIP”.    Hmmmm….what was this?  So she walked me over to where Cliff and I had originally been to watch Pat Benatar which was adequate enought to watch.   She kept walking past that spot and then walked over to the VIP section.  We showed our wrist bands and they let us in.   She escorted me to where she has reserved two seats that morning…in the SIXTH ISLE,,,,FRONT AND CENTER!!   OMG!!    

So we chatted for a bit as we sat excitedly waiting for Pat Benatar to make her appearance.   Finally, at 9:30pm, Pat entered the stage.   I tell you, we were so close I could see every detail.    It was so amazing.    Wendy and I sang all of the songs along with Pat Benatar.    Her husband, the guitarist, would through out his guitar pick every 15 minutes to the audience for someone to get.  It was so neat!!

She performed beautifully.  She explained some of the songs and what they were about.   Then she got a standing ovation and performed a few more songs.  Things wrapped up at about 11pm.   

Wendy, thank you so much for giving me such a wonderful gift!!     I had the most incredible time with you my dear friend!!

Today Cliff had to visit one of his customers who owns an airport in Perris.    This customer built an indoor skydiving simulator.   Cliff wanted all of us to go with him to see the airport and check out the sky diving simulator.

So we headed out at 8am and it took about an hour to get there.  The weather was chilly and the clouds were getting dark and the wind gusty.   Cliff met with his customer for about an hour while I took the girls and we ventured around the airport.    There were all sorts of private planes and jets.  There were many Sky Diving shops.  We saw a lot of sky divers with their equipment getting ready to take a flight up that morning. 

We rain into an 85 year old WWII veteran who flew planes during the war.  He was fascinating to talk to.  He lives in La Puente.  I got a picture of him with the girls.  He said he hoped to fly another 15 years and then retire.    I really enjoyed his zest for life!!

We met some skydivers and the girls ran around on the grass and kicked a socker ball around with some boys.  Then raindrops started coming down then a huge downpour.  We headed into the restaurant where Cliff was having his meeting.  He was wrapping up his meeting just as we arrived.

We had a bite to eat.  Dave, the manager, and Bob, the owner invited Savannah to try out the Sky diving simulator.  She was beyond excited.     They had a slot for her at 12:30pm!!    So we ventured over to this 4 story building that contained the flight simulator.   There were loud engine noises to pump the huge amounts of air into the simulator.  It looked just like a rocket ship!!

We watched with fascination at the instructors teaching people who signed up to try out the skydiving simulation.   Savannah was called in to take a class on what to do and learn certain hand signals.  Then she got to put on a really cool flight suit, goggles and a flight helmet.  She looked so cute!!

She was so brave as she walked confidently into the flight simulator.  She laid on the ground and followed the instructions on what to do.   She floated and flew around.   I was in amazement and so proud of my baby!!   I couldn’t believe how good Savannah did!   When she finished, the first thing out of her mouth was….when can I go again!!

After the Mother & Daughter Tea, we drove home to change and then we went to the La Habra Heights Avocado Festival.   Savannah wanted to stay and play at her friend Madeline’s house and Madeline’s sister, Analiese, wanted to come with us to the Festival.  We sort of did a kid swap thing…LOL!

We saw so many cute little animals, watched a weaver make homemade wool, petted little critters.  We visited a Dog Greyhound rescue booth.  I am going to have her be a guest speaker this summer for our La Habra Moms club and she will bring the dogs for the kids to meet and pet.  

We then went over to the Bee Keeper.  That was so neat!   They had a live exhibit of bees in a bee hive making honey.   I purchased some honey sticks filled with different flavored honeys.  They girls LOVED them.   I am going to ask Lynne the Bee Keeper to be a guest speaker this summer for La Habra Moms club also.  I referred the Bee Keeper to the school principal, Kim Likert, at Savannah’s school.   She really liked the idea and they are going to incorporate an event next year at school.  How cool is that?

Then we went over to the bouncy houses and the girls spent what seemed to be forever having a blast there.   Afterwards we did a little shopping and I got the girls beautiful butterflies. 

It was a fun day…and tiring too!!

Today I took all of the girls to a Mother & Daughter Tea that I organized with both of my moms clubs.   The girls wore beautiful and adorable dresses with Pet shop material, made by Grandma.   We had 26 people there.   I made cute Pet shop packages for the kids.   I made hair bows that sported Pet shop characters and were very time consuming to make.   But well worth it..the girls loved them!!

It was the first Tea for the triplets and for the most part they behaved.   We had some challenging moments for THREE 3 year old triplets!!    They munched on their lunch of chicken nuggets, fishie crackers, tea sandwiches and a blueberry scone.  They had lemonade as their tea in little porcelain tea cups.

We had some a fun game of pulling numbers….everyone one a prize.    I had made beautiful decorated sugar cookies in the shape of teapots and teacups. I had gotten the cookie cutters at East Poultney General Store last summer with the intention of using them for the Mother & Daughter Tea.  I also gave out beautiful gift baskets to each mom with baked goods and chocolates inside.   Then I gave each girl a rice crispy treat. 

Everyone had a wonderful time.  I can’t believe this was the 3rd annual tea!!     We look forward to doing it again next year…

Today we went on a tour of Armstrong Garden Center that I organized with my La Habra Moms Club.   At first, they forgot about our tour, but then a really nice man came to give us the tour.

There were beautiful zen-like koi ponds with water fountains, bamboo and banzai trees.   He showed the kids lemon trees with little flowers and budding lemons.    Then we went over to the flowers and vegetable plants.    He then surprised the kids and let them each pick out a 4 inch flowering pot!!    What a pleasant surprise.  The girls picked out the most beautiful flowers that we will plant in our front yard garden.  We also picked out a strawberry plant and , a cherry tomato plant, and a squash plant.  Savannah wanted to pick out some seeds and she got sunflower seeds and I got some cucmber and eggplant seeds.

It was a beautiful sunny day and perfect for our tour!!

The triplets preschool had their open house tonight.   They had a bake sale fundraiser and I donated rice crispy treats with cute Nemo rings on them.   They were also serving tacos and quesadillas for dinner as a fundraiser.

We visited the classroom at about 7pm.   The room was decorated with all of the kids’ artwork in the theme of a carnival.   It was so fun to see the triplets crafts and artwork all around the room.  There were 2 other sets of twins, their mothers are friends of mine.   One of the twins’ mommies gave birth to her twins the day before I gave birth to the triplets and her room was next door to my room in the hospital.   So her twins birthday is August 10th.  She remembers me giving birth on August 11th because her dr., Dr. Rocca could not release her because he was in the OR doing my C-Section!!

I bought some yummy goodies from the bake sale and some tacos and quesedillas for all of us.   It was a cold night and perfect for the baked goods to comfort everyone.