We walked into the house on Friday to this!!!

Amara saw it, stopped dead in her tracks, gasped, and said, "Look Mommy!" It's even better than we thought it would be with the wall gone. We're SO excited to get to this point, and can't wait to get the floor built up so we can put in hard woods.
Jon had some work to do this weekend -- he finished pulling up the rest of the tiles in the entry way. We also need to pull up the carpet in the dining room. Actually... we need to pull up the hardwood in the living room, and the carpet in the hallways and bedrooms too. But we'll get to that. For now, we're happy that the walls came a-tum-ba-lin down. Yes -- I'm singing "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho." Sing it with me! :)

We had a full weekend of parties. Amara had a birthday party for one of her friends, Malea, who turned 5. We went to a bounce house place with a bunch of her day care classmates. She wasn't too keen on the big one they're sitting on -- it was too big and too fast. But she loved the place as a whole, had a blast, and has declared that she wants her party at "Jump Stone" -- it's actually Jump Zone. You can see her in the photo below in the back left with the pink and teal striped shirt.

For Mother's Day, we didn't have wonderful weather, but the rain didn't hit too much. We were going to go outside to have a popcorn picnic -- actually, I needed to clean the van, and that's how I bribed the kids to come outside with me (they wanted to watch "Backyardigans.") Of course, at the time we were ready to start our picnic, that's when the sprinkles started. So we had a picnic in the back of the van. The highlight of our picnic is our neighbor's dog, aka Penny puppy, came back. They have been wintering in Florida until just recently, so the kids haven't seen Penny since around November. They were SO excited to see her again. She's even better than having a dog -- because we can play with her, she greets us with kisses and a big ol' wagging tail, yet we don't have to clean up after her, pay for her food or vet bills, and we can send her home at the end of the day! Dominic actually cried when we went inside because he missed Penny puppy and didn't want to leave her.

That was it for our weekend. It was definitely full! We missed our Moms and wished that we could have spent the day with them. Happy Mother's Day Moms and Grandmas! :) Love you!