The Jones Girls

I had a meeting with Maryssa’s speech therapist, special ed preschool teacher, and the school psychologist about seeing if Maryssa should be in the special ed preschool for speech therapy.   She is doing pretty well and they said that she is too advanced and doesn’t quality.  That is music to my ears.

They did recommend that I put her in regular preschool so I am going to do that starting in January for a couple mornings a week. 

Maryssa will continue to go to speech therapy twice a week for 1/2 hour each day.  

Maryssa had a bad couple of weeks with meltdowns and general bad behavior.  She is over it now.   I guess it must have been a phase for her.

Today I took the girls to get Christmas Holiday portraits done.   Our appointment was at 3:00pm at JCPenney’s Photography studio.    It took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready…hair up in pin curls and dressed in their beautiful Christmas dresses with tights and new dressy shoes.

I made this appointment almost 2 weeks ago and the photographers have called me twice this week to verify we wanted the Christmas Holiday background and to confirm our appointment.    I reserved an hour appointment for photography.

We arrive and the photographer said she wasn’t ready for us.   She did not have the background put together yet and could I please turn their TV on and play a Disney movie for the girls while she sets up the studio.    So I did that.  She asked if I could come help her put the background together.  She had no idea how it was supposed to be put together.   So I helped as best as I could.   In the meantime, my girls have been intently watching the Disney movie for over 20 minutes.

We finished doing the background and then I had to get the girls unglued from the TV.  That was difficult.  Of course they didn’t want to go get pictures now because I interrupted them watching their Disney movie. 

Needless to say, the girls didn’t cooperate with the photo shoot.  It went horrible.   Not one good shot!!   Everyone was crying and protesting.  I was frustrated.  The photographer didn’t know what to do, so she pulled out a baby rattle to try to appease them.  Ummm, a baby rattle?   Give me  a break!!   She didn’t know how to position the girls and asked me to give her some ideas.   I was not impressed and very annoyed.

I cut the photo shoot short and told her this was going really bad.  We didn’t get one good shot.    I packed up the girls and headed out.  The photographer took me to the register and offered me a free photo sheet and appologized saying that she wasn’t ready for us.   I told her I was frustrated because it took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready and now I would have to reschedule and do it all over again.    I asked to speak to her manager.  Then the bomb drop…she said she was the manager!!    My mouth hung open in disbelief.    Not good at all.

When I got home, I called the manager at JCPenney’s and she had the district manager of photography call me.  I spoke to Nicole Medina and she apologized for the whole experience.  She said the photographer was very good and had 3 years experience being a photographer for JCPenney’s and that she became manager of photography for our JCPenney’s just a couple of weeks ago.    She offered me a few free photo sheets.

I had to reschedule our photo shoot for this Saturday.  We will also do a family portrait also.   Hopefully it will go much better than today…

I have to say the city of La Habra had the cutest bugs for Halloween!!  Savannah was the queen bee, Amanda was a butterfly, Miranda was a bumble bee and Maryssa was a lady bug.  I made all of their costumes.  They had cute too too’s.   They looked so cute!!

We took them trick or treating in the neighborhood at about 6:00pm.    I went with them for about 20 minutes than I ran home to give out candy.  They were with daddy and got back at about 7:30.   They came back with boat loads of candy!!

I would say we had about 120 trick or treaters visit our house.    There were some awesome costumes.  Some teenagers came to the door and one of the girls was a pick and was holding a shot.  She said she was “Swine Flu”.  I cracked up and had to take a picture of her.  Too funny!!

Today was Savannah’s costume parade at school. She was so excited to wear her costume to school.   The school parade started at 10:30am, just 20 minutes after I dropped her off to school.  

I didn’t have time to dress up the triplets so I dressed them up in the car the 20 minutes before the costume parade started.

The Farina’s parked beside us.  They were their to see their 2nd grade twins in the costume parade, they were Fairy and the Frog characters.

I think the triplets got more attention than the costume parade did.   No one at our school have seen triplets before so it was fun!!   Thanksfully everyone moved their attention to their kids in their costumes.    Savannah’s Kindy class was the first class in the parade.  All of us waived and said Hi to Savannah.  She had so much fun.  I took lots of pictures of the parade and  of  Savannah with her classmates.   I also took pictures of my girls with the Farina girls in their costumes. 

It was a lot of fun!!

Today we attended the La Habra Moms Club Children’s Halloween and costume party at Vista Del Valle park.  I did most of the planning for the party.   My friend Angela did the decorations and my friend Corrie helped me plan the party as well as do some of the activities during the party.

The girls dressed in the bug costumes.  They were so cute, but Miranda kept tripping on her tutu and at the end of the party it was ripped, so I will have to fix that.  Poor Maryssa skirt was drooping so I will have to tighten the waist in her tutu.   Maryssa had a tough time during the whole party.  She cried during most of it.   She has been having a lot of meltdowns lately.

My friend Julie was hanging up the ghost pinata for us.    What a lifesaver Julie was!!

The first game we played was a age appropriate scavenger hunt.   WE had treat bags filled with goodies for the kids as their prizes.   The kids had to find certain things and then bring it back and trade it in for a treat bag.    We started with the 1-2 year olds.  They just had to find a little plastic pumpkin.  then we did the 3 year olds.  They had to find a little plastic pumpkin and a crayon.  then we did one for the 4-6 year olds.   They had to find a plastic pumpkin, a pencil,  and a crayon.  The older kids 7 and up had to find 2 plastic pumpkins, 2 pencils and 2 crayons.    All of the kids had a blast!!

We had lots of yummy snacks.  Angela made an incredible haunted cake!  I didn’t have time to eat it but my girls gobbled it down.   I made rice crispy treats with candy corn on top and I made homemade pumpkin pudding and brought whipping cream for the mommies to eat.  They loved that!

We did a pin the nose on the pumpkin.  The prize winner won a gift certificate at Red Robin for a free kids meal and a free sundae.  Corrie’s daughter Madeline won that.

Then the kids lined up and did a costumer parade around the park. All of us moms had candy and the kids accepted candy from all of us.   It was so cute.

They we all gathered around the pinata and the kids whacked away at the pinata.    It took all of the kids and then a couple of moms to finally break open the pinata.    We had about 40 kids there!!

What a fun Halloween party we had!!

If anyone knows Savannah, they should know that Savannah’s show and tell will be Fish.    She HAD to bring her most prized and favorite Nemo.

I wanted her to also think of something else to bring for F.   I suggested flowers.   I took her out with me and we picked flowers from our neighborhood.  I made a beautiful flower bouquet.  

During the show Savannah gave the flower arrangement to her teacher.  Very sweet….

Savannah’s upper right front tooth has been loose for a while now.   Today she announced that it HAD to come out today.   So, she went to Daddy and asked him to help her and watch her pull it out.   A few minutes later she came to me with her toothless grin.   I was so proud of her.

As I gazed down at her tooth, I got an aching feeling in my stomach that this was one more reminder that my baby is no longer a baby anymore.  

We took some pictures of her. She kept telling me that she tasted the blood and it tasted salty…LOL!