Maria turned 5 on May 18th.  Incredible!   I can’t believe the girl that she has become. She makes us soooo proud.  Right now she is all about figuring out reading and writing.  She loves when we read her chapter books at night. Her favorite is Beezus and Ramona. She loves Charlie dearly, whether she admits it or not, he’s her bestest bud.    She is going to preschool 3 days/week and will continue through the summer.  She starts Kindergarten in September and will go all day, every day.  Something our district is switching to starting next year.  I have no hesitations about her being one of the younger ones in her class.  I completely feel like she is ready!

Maria is also quite the talker. In fact, if she isn’t around, we’re always surprised how much Charlie talks!  She has questions about everything.  Well that isn’t completely true, she has answers for a lot of things too.  Her own made up answers.  She asks a question and then responds with the “answer”.  Sometimes it drives my crazy, but other times it’s cute and other times her answers are down-right funny.

We started the birthday celebration at school on the 17th.  The next day, we all stayed home from work/daycare. I took the kids to the zoo. It was a warm day, so we took swimsuits to play in the sprinklers. We saw a lot of the animals up pretty close. One of the best days I have been there.  After the zoo, we came home so Charlie could nap.  Maria played on her new LeapPad.  Late afternoon, we headed to her friend party at a nearby Community Center.  I think all the kids had a great time!

Saturday morning, both kids were up early, but luckily both went down for naps before the party with the families.  We had an Olivia themed party.  Maria wore a red dress (Olivia’s favorite color) and I ordered a cake from Target that we put some Olivia characters on.  We had a pinata and the weather was beautiful so all the kids got to play outside.

It was a great weekend and we had so much fun celebrating!

with her friends

with her cousins

pulling the pinata strings (with her “Rapunzel” hair)