I really can’t remember a week as busy as last week.  I had so much going on at work, at home, and at school, that every moment was double-booked and I had to put all of my blogging activities on hold.  It was a really hectic week and I’m glad it’s over.  On the bright side, all of the hard work paid off and we had a lovely teacher appreciation lunch, a successful school fundraiser, and a relaxing Mothers’ Day, which I will post about shortly.

So as I was saying, when I look at other peoples’ kids it feels like time is flying by.  Case in point, we just went to our friend Victoria’s first holy communion.  Aliya and Victoria have known each other since they met at day care when they were 6 and 7 months old.  It’s amazing – that was 8 years ago!

Adlani and Shane were born just over a week apart, so they’ve known each other since birth.  I will never forget driving Aliya and Vic to see Elmo or Barney in Worcester and telling Karen that I thought I was pregnant and finding out that she was too!!

Poor Sydney plays the part of the older sibling in the motley crew, and then there’s Miss Norah, who tags along with whoever’s nearby.  I think it will be so cool to see everyone grow up together and remember all the little moments of their childhoods intertwined.

Here are pics of Aliya and Vic, and Shane and Adlani in the early days:

And some from the first holy communion celebration:

Adlani’s obviously plotting an accidental frosting interaction.

Norah loves salad.

This is what happened when I said, “Act like you like each other.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIvrS00qlbM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

People (usually people with older kids) always say to enjoy every minute with your kids because they’re gone before you know it.  I’m not yet at the point where I look at my kids and think, “Wow!  That went by fast!”  (I’m usually thinking, “How much longer is this phase going to last?”)

I do notice time flying when I look at other peoples’ kids though.  If my friends’ kids are maturing, I must be getting O-L-D.  I’ve got to stop looking at my friends’ kids.

Today was a one-two punch of looking middle age right in the face.  My next post will show the other “where did the time go” event, but this post is dedicated to our friends and neighbors, Leah, Nikki, and their mom, Nancy.

Nikki is the knockout in the prom dress, and Leah is the soccer star beside her.  My kids idolize those two girls, and I can’t think of better role models for them to look up to.

Tonight was Junior Cotillion for FHS, and as I stood in the back yard listening to Nikki talking about who was going with who, and who lied to their parents because their date didn’t meet their criteria, and whose parents wouldn’t buy a dress unless their daughter went with a boy (rather than with friends), and who was sleeping over at the girl-boy sleepover tonight (Nikki’s not), I was having flash-backs to 1999, when we bought our house.     

We weren’t married and we didn’t have kids yet.  Nikki was about 6 years old and Leah was a baby.  Leah didn’t give us too much trouble the first few years, but I clearly remember Nikki standing on her deck watching us eat on our back porch (“Hi! Hi! Hi!”), and then there was the pogo stick incident.

I woke up one Saturday morning to the sound of Nikki jumping on her pogo stick in the driveway (on the same side of the house as our bedroom) and counting each jump.  When she got to 72 she fell off and ran to report the record number of jumps to her dad.  As I got ready to head back to LaLa-Land I heard her father say, “Great!  Let’s see if you can get to 100!”  boing-boing-boing-boing-boing-boing     :~0

I don’t have any photos of Nikki and Leah from when we first moved in, but here’s a flashback to the summer of 2002, when Aliya was about 9 months old.  Time flies.