Dance

Yea! A new year is upon us. I know that this is going to be a year full of change for our family. As I think back on the holidays, events, and activities and all of the pics I took but didn't post, I'm kind of sorry for that. I'm not sure that this year of blog writing will be any better than last year. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the break. Here we are already on the 7th day of January, and I'm just now posting. Oh well....

I was going through my camera today uploading pics onto the computer as well as a couple of videos. I thought I'd go ahead and post the ones regarding Lauren's dance team. In June she went through a month of training at the NorthWest YMCA and in July tried out for the competitive dance team. She made it! This year was the first year for teams under the age of 10. She was one of 4 girls on her team for the ages of 8-10. There is also another team ages 5-7, and then of course the older girls team that has been around for a few years. However, after a month of team practices, the other 3 girls on Lauren's team were blatantly ignoring her and not being friendly. I couldn't believe that I was witnessing these mean girls treating my daughter like this. I brought the subject up to the head coach and she wrote me back saying one of her pet peeves was mean girl behavior and she would change it. However, by this time it was too late for Lauren and she was ready to leave. Besides the mean girls, the head coach was also the head coach for cheer and you could tell that is where her heart was. She rarely came and worked with our girls, or got to know their names. Also, she was very pregnant, so I think between pregnancy, two new dance teams, and the responsibility of cheer and dance, she was overwhelmed herself. We pulled Lauren off the team in September, and thought about putting her in the Y advanced dance academy classes. This would support her love of dancing, hopefully she would be around nicer girls; she just wouldn't compete and Lauren was good with that. The next thing I knew, a friend of mine whose daughter is the same age as Lauren and had been dancing on the competitive team for the South Y contacted their head coach without my knowledge and told me her coach wanted to talk with me about the possibility of Lauren having a private audition and joining their team. I called the coach and we chatted about Lauren's experience and set up an audition. The coach kept telling me this group of 5 girls had been together for a few years and were advanced. I wasn't sure what that meant for Lauren, but she had a great audition. About halfway through the audition, the coach came out to talk to me and I was holding my breath as to what she thought of Lauren's abilities. I told her Lauren was a more outgoing then what she was showing, and the coach said she could tell and she could also tell Lauren was a little nervous, but was still doing well. I also told her Lauren's weakness was ballet because she hadn't had a lot of practice, and the coach said all of her girls on the team were the same way. She said she was impressed with Lauren and could see the potential she had and said invited Lauren to join the team! I was so happy for my daughter!

The South Y team has been so welcoming to her. The girls are not mean and Lauren has especially bonded with 3 of the girls. I really like the coach. She is only 21 years old, and has been the coach since she was 17. She is young, but talks very nice to the girls, but yet disciplines when she has to. All that being said, I'm not sure what next year with this group holds. I don't like the 25 minute drive one way to the practices, especially since the NW Y is only 7 minutes away. Also, some of the dance moves in the routines seem a little too mature. I'm not the only one who feels that way either. Roger has noticed it and so have some of the other moms. Also, Lauren thinks she might want to take acting lessons and a break from dance, so next year remains to be seen. I'm kind of hoping that things might work out at the NW Y some how, or she might be able to dance for the place she is thinking about taking acting lessons from, Christian Youth Theater. In the meantime practices continue in preparation for 6 competitions between the end of February and April. Two will be out of town and the rest in town.

The pics are from the Haysville parade the girls walked in October representing the South Y. She looks so cute and had a great time with her new friends. The two videos are from December when they danced two of their routines at Breakfast With Santa. The girls weren't at their best, but they've gotten better in the little bit of time since then. I wish I was computer savvy and could pop up an arrow on the screen above Lauren's head that would follow her around the screen as she dances, but since I can't, enjoy the girls dancing, and if you can spot Lauren then enjoy her performance.

Just Dance

Last week one of the money saving sites I follow on facebook posted that amazon.com had Just Dance 4 for Wii on sale for $22.99! This game is $50 usually. We don't own any Just Dance games but I have heard they are so much fun, so when I saw the price on this one, I had to get it. Not only that, but I had about $16 of swagbucks money in my amazon account, so that took the cost down to around $6. On top of all of that, we have an amazon prime membership, so I got 2 day shipping for free. So, with tax, I bought this $50 game for a grand total of $7.75! Oh yeah! Anyways, once we got it, we started playing it. We have discovered some songs we don't feel are appropriate in the lyrics as well as dance moves, so we won't be doing those, but others are just fine. We are having so much fun and what a great way to exercise.

Sometimes you just gotta not be afraid to be fun in front of other people, so I told my kids they could video tape me dancing to Call Me Maybe and I would post it. You can't tell in the video but on the TV there is a dancer and I am supposed to mirror her. Don't be afraid to try it adults. This was my second time doing this song and I got 4 out of 5 stars, but the first time I tried it my kids were cracking up at my expense, and that's okay. I was surprised they weren't laughing for the video, but Evan was telling his sister to be quiet for the sake of the video. One night Hubby tried it, and boy did that make all of us laugh--including himself.

Busy Tuesday Night

Last Tuesday night was busy. It was parent watch night for Lauren's dance classes. She is in ballet and tap, and parents only get to observe once a semester. Evan and I made it to ballet, then Roger made it for tap. She has enjoyed it very much. Their recitals will be in May and we got to see their pretty costumes they will be wearing. The theme this year is movies, and for ballet they will be dancing to a theme from Harry Potter in a velvety nutmeg colored ballet dress. For tap it's a song called Cuban Pete from The Mask in a red almost flapper-like style dress. That's not exactly the right description for it, but it's close. Lauren is in love with her tap dress. I didn't think the dresses were bad at all. The teacher did make a point of pointing out that the dresses do cover up the girls nicely because at their age they still like to be covered up. What?! Does this mean as she matures into a teenager they may have some costumes that may be kind of questionable? I sure hope not! I don't have any pics to show, so you'll have to wait until May.

About 15 minutes into tap class, Evan and I had to leave so I could take him to the ice skating rink where he met up with some of the youth group from church. Since the rink is downtown and there was really no where for me to go, I stayed and chatted with some other moms from church and watched the kids skate. The rink has an observation floor upstairs so we can get a really good view of everything sitting in some chairs and don't have to be in the cold rink itself freezing in the bleachers.

An Unexpected Soccer Spectator

Evan's last soccer game was Saturday. We were sitting on the sidelines, and at one point Roger is telling me to look at the ground right in front of us. This little groundhog is popping up out of the hole. He kept doing this for a while, not afraid of anyone or anything. His hole was right on the field! At halftime, Roger went and told the referee about it, who didn't do anything, not even come look. So, Roger covered up the hole with dirt, and it was a good thing too. As soon as the second half started, two boys were chasing the ball and ran right over that hole. One of the boys' foot would've definitely fallen into that hole and he could have been injured. Thankful that didn't happen.

Rock Climbing

This week in homeschool PE, Lauren climbed to the top of a rock wall for the first time! I also took a video of Evan, (although this was not his first time).

Calli the Butterfly

Diamond the Tadpole

A month ago Lauren brought home a tadpole from her co-op biology class. She decided it was a girl and named her Diamond because it looked like the markings on the tadpole were diamonds. We have really enjoyed watching the metamorphosis of growing from a tadpole to a frog. Today, the tail is now a tiny stub, and Diamond was hopping pretty high--enough to possibly jump out of her container--so we decided to release her into our backyard pond. This was very emotional for Lauren. She was sad and teary, but insisted she be the one to do the releasing. I think Diamond is going to have a great life in the pond! Take a look at the pictures we took of her transformation, and then the video is of the releasing. I know it's kind of long, but you'll see her hopping, and at the end you'll see her swimming in the pond.

Lauren bringing Diamond home.

Definitely doesn't look like a frog right now--more like a fish.

Close up of her face.

We bought a shoe box for her to live in. Adding some rocks from our pond.

Swimming around in her new home.

We went on a week of vacation and some friends watched her for us. When we left Diamond had her back legs. When we returned, she had her front legs!

Still has a tail.

Look at that face. Eyes higher up on head, wide mouth.

Tail is pretty much gone now. Time to release her.

Lauren carrying her to the pond.

Ballet and Tap

From the ages of 3-7 Lauren was with a dance group called Jazz For Jesus. It was awesome! That company closed in May of 2011 and Lauren decided to try gymnastics and taekwondo. She didn't care for either of those, although she was doing well with them. She decided she missed dance, and so we visited 3 dance companies and chose one pretty close to home. They offer jazz and pom, but Lauren has always wanted to try ballet and tap. She is loving both, but especially tap! For the first semester they teach basic moves, and then come January they will begin routines and have a recital in May. Here are some pics of her in her dance clothes (she is so happy to be in a tutu), as well as a video of her showing some moves she learned in week 1, and just having fun.

She's decided the railing between the dining room and living room will make for a good ballet bar.

The classic ballet hair bun

Tap shoes

She wanted you to see her silver taps on the bottom of the shoes :)

A Right of Passage

For many months now Evan has wanted to be able to mow the lawn, but we have a riding lawn mower and he just hasn't been able to safely sit on the seat and reach the brake. He begged me on Sunday to let him try again and Roger agreed. Well, he can do it now, but it's kind of funny. He has to lean his weight back against the seat (some kind of safety feature) and reach his foot just a tad for the brake. The video shows him just driving around on the machine without actually mowing, but once dad saw that he could do it, he let Evan mow a lot of the yard. You could hear the mower sputter a few times like it was about to quit and back fire a little and Roger said that's because he keeps moving around too much on the seat? I kind of do that too, so I guess now Son and I need to just try to be more still or Dad says we will ruin the engine. I'm super excited for him!

Slip N Sliding Away

I bought a two-laned slip n slide for the kids to start enjoying their summer water fun. Even though they said the water was freezing and our ground isn't all that smooth, they enjoyed it for about an hour. I kept hearing a lot of "OWs" and I felt bad for them and told them to stop if they were getting hurt. But, of course they weren't going to do that--I guess the fun of it outweighed the bruises they might get on their knees or other body parts. I wonder if I bought them one of those body-sized floating-raft-type-thingies and they used it as a body board if that would help? I have hope that our new house's lawns are a lot smoother and I know they definitely are more padded with grass, so the slip n slide will work better there. Oh, to be a kid again.

Look Ma, No Training Wheels!

We went to take a walk around our lake last night and Lauren wanted to try to ride her bike without training wheels. The ONLY other time we have tried no training wheels was last August just on our cul-de-sac and yard and it didn't go very well. We agreed, so dad took off the training wheels. There was a lot of swerving at first, and learning how to use her bike's brakes, we had to keep reminding her to look ahead at the road not down at her bike wheels, and big brother would ride ahead of her and encourage her to follow him. There were also a few times of her saying she couldn't do it, and stopping for breath, but we told her she had to keep trying. It takes us about 30 minutes to walk around our lake, so she had plenty of time to keep practicing and in the end she did it--successfully! Today she wanted to get back on her bike and try again, so I was able to videotape her. She is so proud of herself, and the rest of us are very proud of her also! (Remember to pause my playlist above so that you can hear the video).

WWHM Closing Program Spring 2012

At our homeschool co-op's closing program, Lauren and I played handbells. I was the teacher's aide for both her handbells class and the older students' class. The older class needed extra people for their song, so myself and the teacher played with them. It was a lot of fun. Make sure you go to my playlist and pause it so you can hear the videos. After you watch these, if you'd like to see Lauren reciting Psalm 150 with her classmates click here.

Music

Evan has been taking drum lessons since the end of January and is loving it! I have always wanted him to do this because ever since I was pregnant with him, once the drums at church started playing he would start kicking me and to the beat--true story! His teacher is one of the drummers at our church and seems to be a really good teacher. Evan is learning quickly and having fun. After about 3 weeks of waiting due to a back order, his drums arrived today and he immediately went to work putting them together. He did it all about 98% by himself, and then wanted to have some fun playing from his lesson book.

Lauren loves to sing. She is always singing, dancing, or humming. She is quite the dancer and was in dance from the age of 3 to when she just turned 7. We decided to stop that for a while because her dance company decided to close and she wanted to try gymnastics. I would love to put her back into dance again and am thinking about finding something in the fall. She also wants to take voice lessons, and one of the singers at our church does that, so that may be an option in the future.

Here are two videos showing Evan practicing a little from his book, and Lauren singing a song about the month of March. Here are the words to the song in case you can't quite make it out:

Let's celebrate the month of March.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The year's third month, the month of March. (This line trips up the tongue as you will witness in the video)
Hurrah! Hurrah!
Though the winds of March may blow (You will hear Evan providing a wind sound)
Soon you'll see the melting snow.
Like a lion it comes and a lamb it goes (You will Evan providing a lamb sound)
The lovely month of March.

Make sure you pause my playlist at the top of the blog page so you can hear the videos.

Rock Climbing

The kids' homeschool phys ed class is doing rock climbing again this month. Evan can still make it up those walls with no problem and has gotten faster. Lauren has gotten a lot higher up the wall and faster than when they first tried it last year in January, and even when they did it again in October. Here are some videos showing the two of them climbing. In Lauren's video, I don't know if you can hear what's going on, but she stops, we encourage her to go higher, and this happens about 2 or 3 times before she wants to come down. While she's on the wall, she's saying, "This is torture!" and "You're killing me!" It was quite funny. I'm hoping by the end of this month she'll make it to the top, but for now we are so excited she's getting as high as she is now.

 

Gymnastics

Lauren's last gymnastics class was this week. She's just grown tired of it and wants to start karate with dad. I hadn't gotten any pics of her all of these months except on the first day in September, I think, when she was awarded a ribbon for perfect backward rolls.

Now, 6 months later and she has improved so much in so many things. She was once scared to even kick her legs up into the air to attempt a handstand, or even climb onto the balance beam. Now, it's like she has no fear. For her last day they only did tricks on the floor, so I don't have any pics of her on the vaults, uneven bars, or balance beam. I hate it when I forget to take pics! :( Anyways, enjoy the following pics and the really short videos.

Here she is putting her nose to her knees and then to the floor. Looks painful to me, but maybe that's because I have NEVER been flexible like this. In the fourth pic, notice that she can grab her toes without bending her knees, and if you look really close you will see she is lifting her toes off of the mat. I have never been able to touch my toes without bending my knees. Her flexibility amazes me!!

The following pic will be a little more difficult to see since she is blocked by another little girl, but can you see her back leg? She is trying to do a split. Ow, ow, ow!

 

Busy Holiday Weekend

Thursday night I went to one of Roger's work parties. I usually dread these because I don't know anybody, and they usually talk about nothing but work. However, this party was really fun. It was held at the Hilton by the airport. They started off the party by doing a wife swap. They would call a man's name, and then a woman's name and they had to pair up and be a team to play the games that were there. There was billiards, basketball hoops, darts, ping pong, video games, and a laser shooting game. My name was the first woman's name called, and I was paired up with someone that was sitting at our table that I was already getting to know as he and his wife chatted with Roger and I. He was very competitive, but so am I, so it was fun. We didn't get to play all the games. I stunk at the shooting game. Did not bad at darts. And the only other game we got to was billiards and I am happy to say that I shot in 4 of our striped balls, and sunk the 8 ball to win the game for us! The food was delicious--I had mahi mahi. At the end of the night everyone got to choose gift cards starting with the team that won the most games. My team only won 2 games. The most someone won was 9, so they got to choose a gift card first. Roger chose a Lowe's card and I chose an Olive Garden card. Both of these will definitely be used by our family.

Friday night was another work party. This time we met at a country club close to Roger's work, or about 45 minutes away from our house. Again, the food was delicious--I had a pork chop. I got to meet more people Roger worked with, and this party was only talking with people at our table. At both of these parties I saw a real difference between the people Roger used to work with and the people he works with now. The people he works with now are a lot friendlier, and like to talk about other things than just work. They seem to be more down to earth. I really had a couple of nice evenings.

Saturday we took the kids to see the lights at Botanica. I've heard really good things about this event. It started at 5:30 and we decided to be there around 5:00 so we could get there early and get it over with quickly before the temperatures got too chilly after the sun went down. Although the lights were pretty, we weren't that impressed. First of all, even though we have a membership to Botanica, we only saved $1 per adult for the admission price. One garden only had lights shaped in poinsettia flowers. One garden only had lights shaped like butterflies flapping their wings. One garden only had tree trunks wrapped in white lights with a couple of lighted deer within the trees. There were two displays where the lights moved in time to music, but to be honest, we have seen better displays like this in neighborhood homes. We did take a few pics of things, and even though it all looks pretty, overall, we felt it was something we can say we have done, but really don't have the desire to do again--at least not for several years or until they create more variety of lights in the gardens.

Santa was in the cottage that you can enter after going through the butterfly house. Lauren absolutely did not want to see him and kept hiding behind me and Roger. We told her she didn't have to see him, but once we got up to him, Santa talked her into getting a pic taken with him.

There were several chimineas along the paths we could stop at and get warmed up.

In the barn in the children's garden we bought some hot chocolate. It really does keep you warm as you walk around the outside chilly air drinking it.

They had the little house in the children's garden decorated really cute.

There is just something about a train that attract kids. This display was by the greenhouse.

This was the garden with the poinsettia light displays. The fountain was really pretty. You can see the luminaries dotting the path.

 A huge wreath in the butterfly house.

These lighted trees were really tall, even though it looks like from this pic that it is just a small display we are standing in front of. This area was roped off, so we couldn't get closer to it.

 

Then, last night we took a free 1 hour bus tour to see some neighborhood lights. We saw some pretty impressive house displays. But, really didn't get any good opportunities to take pics. It was a busy weekend, but a fun one.

Paris

After lunch on Thursday, we left for Paris. I think it was maybe a 3 hour drive? I don't exactly remember. We drove through the Champagne region of France and stopped at a convenience store for snacks and fuel. I found a great kids sticker French language book for the kids there I picked up as a souvenir for them. Also, there was a section of the store that sold Champagne.

I know we checked into our hotel rooms, and then headed to downtown Paris. Traffic was horrendous and it took us a while to get there. By the time we drove past the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower it was dark, but that was okay. It was so cool to see those monuments lit up!

Blurry because I was trying to take the pic while we were driving in the round about.

The next day we set out to do some sightseeing. We drove past a huge stadium devoted to football--or as Americans would call it, soccer. Just as popular as these stadiums are in America for baseball and football, soccer is that popular in Europe.

Our first stop was the Eiffel Tower. I had told myself from the very beginning of this trip that if we didn't make it to Paris, that would be okay. But, if we did make it and all I got to see was the Eiffel Tower, I would be thrilled. We found an awesome parking spot and didn't have to walk far to the Tower. There are two levels of the tower guests can go to and you can get there through each Tower pillar/leg by elevators. Or, you can walk up and down stairs to get to the first level. We chose the elevators. There was a very long line (think Disney World lines) because there was only one pillar open. I think we were in line for about 20 minutes, and as we were nearing the East Pillar, it opened up! We were some of the first people to get our tickets from that pillar!

Taken looking down the pillar from the elevator.

People walking the stairs down from the first level.

The architecture really is quite amazing.

The next pics are just some of the views taken from both levels of the Tower.

I was pretty impressed that my camera could zoom in so nicely for this pic of the Arc de Triomphe.

The Seine River

The second level was caged in.

We were constantly reminded all over Europe to beware of pickpockets.

The building across the street from the Tower was a military academy that Napoleon attended.

As we walked back to the vans, there was a very unfortunate thing waiting for us. One of the back windows of one of the vans had been smashed and some very valuable things belonging to some of our team members were stolen. After finding a police officer, we were told to go to the police station which ended up being difficult to find. It took a couple of hours to get everything squared away with the robbery. But, even after all of that, our hosts were gracious enough to still want to take us to see Notre Dame. So, that's where we headed. This church was incredible. I can just picture Quasi Moto living there. Signs were all around saying no picture taking, but it seemed like nobody was paying attention and there were flashes going off everywhere, so I took some myself. We did not take the tour that would have taken us to the top of the church. So, Roger and I quickly toured the church and then went down the street shopping for some souvenirs. 

Joan of Arc

After this, we headed to the Champs Elysees for dinner. Some of the group wanted to hoof it down to the Arc de Triomphe and go inside it and climb to the top. I think they were given 30 minutes to accomplish this feat, and let me tell you they had to rush and it showed when they returned--out of breath and sweaty. Roger and I had opted out of that and instead got some ice cream with some other team members. The next series of pics show the Arc as we drove towards it. 

Our day in Paris ended in a perfect way--dinner outside. I shared in my last post that I had been wanting this to happen our entire trip. I even posted the pics from that dinner in my last post but I'll go ahead and post them again in case you didn't see them. Do you ever find that after you have been on a special trip or to a special event, there are just certain pics that you keep looking back at because when you do a flood of memories and smiles come pouring into your heart? Well, these next pics do that for me. They just remind me of special people, the rewarding work we did on this trip, the sights we got to see, and they make me still feel how gorgeous and perfect the weather was, and how amazing it was to be in Paris!

The experienced missions trip team members told me I will never forget my first missions trip--it will always have a special place in my heart, and I bet they are correct because this is how it was when I was a public school teacher. My first class I had which was my student teaching class still holds very fond memories for me--even more so than my first class in which I was the teacher, not a student teacher. This trip was amazing and I feel so blessed that I could go. I would like to go on other missions trips in the future and I hope I can. I also hope that someday when my kids are teenagers that
Roger and I will be able to bring them on trips like this with us. It was amazing!