Dance Festival

Every year, the elementary school has a Dance Festival on the last day of school. Each grade performs a dance and all of the parents come and watch. It's a lot of fun, and a great way to end the school year.

This year, Benjamin and the first graders performed the Mexican Hat Dance. I went to take pictures of it, and the camera got mad and told me its batteries were too low. Oops. Well you'll just have to take my word that he did a great job!

I did get this picture of Elizabeth dancing along with the 6th graders -- they danced first, so my camera had enough juice for one picture before it died. Elizabeth loved dancing along to many of the dances, and tried several times to run out on the field with the first graders!

She holds her hands out like this, then tilts from one side to the other; back and forth . . . so cute!

Nathan and the third graders did a Surfing Medley. Nathan was pretty much front and center. I know I'm biased, but I think his teachers arranged that on purpose because he was really into the dance and did a fantastic job with it! I'm kicking myself that I hadn't charged the camera!

Each of the third graders had to make a cardboard surf board the week before. They could decorate it any way they wanted, and Nathan chose to show off his inner Cougar (no coaxing from Uncle Brett required!):


As a side note, the PTA had a booth at the Dance Festival so we can get everyone signing up to help for next year's activities now. I always have fun doing things like that because I get to talk to so many wonderful people and get to know more people. But between the Spring Festival wrap-up, the PTA state convention, preparing materials for next year's new board and having a training meeting, and getting ready for this booth I am feeling tired . . . I love volunteering for PTA but I am so excited to have a little break!

Let's Play Ball . . . maybe

Nathan is in his first year of regular Little League and Benjamin is doing Coach Pitch baseball. I love that they are so excited for it.

Nathan had 2 days of skills clinics near the end of April, followed by several practice games. Those went well and he was so excited to start playing for real. Then the rain started and has had a hard time stopping! Yesterday -- about 3 weeks later -- Nathan actually got to play. It was supposed to be game #6 of the official season, and yet it was the first!


Nathan did not see a lot of action in the field, and only got to bat once in the game. I thought I'd hear complaining about it. But his team, the Twins, won the game and so Nathan was happy as could be! He's already dreaming about moving on to the state championship! After a sad week with the Pinewood Derby and with not being chosen in the school's drawing for prizes, it's great to see him so excited and looking at the positive!

Benjamin plays on different days than Nathan and has been lucky so far that he's played his games. I will have to remember to take a camera and get his picture soon.

Pinewood Derby

Yesterday Nathan participated in the Pinewood Derby. The inspiration for his car was the Bullet Bill from Mario Kart. He had a lot of fun the last few weeks getting his car ready!



Ryan took Nathan to scouts while the rest of us stayed at home. When Nathan came home, he was so upset . . . our competitive child was not happy about never placing 1st in any of his heats. We'll have to have Ryan study up on all the tricks of the trade for next year!

Nathan is in the very middle of the back row

(Thanks to Andrea -- I swiped this great pic off your blog!)

May Days

It has been an unusually cold and wet May this year. But we have enjoyed the times when it has been nice enough to go outside. I introduced Elizabeth to sunglasses, and she was LOVING them! I thought she looked so cute and silly in the glasses and hat, that I couldn't stop taking pictures.




Here is a video of Elizabeth enjoying the swings:




The kids love playing in the new basement -- big open space with no furniture = great place to run around and to spread out lots of toys. And let's be honest: Mom and Dad love having a place to send the kids where they can play and have fun and we don't have to hear it all! Reading time is a lot more enjoyable in the basement, too.



Joshua and Benjamin love to help me when I bake (Elizabeth enjoys it too, for that matter). We made rolls today (yes, another Our Best Bites recipe, and yes I totally recommend them) and everyone wanted to help roll them out and form the balls. Elizabeth enjoyed eating the dough! And Nathan loved gobbling up the finished product.

Growing Up

I can't believe how quickly our little sweetie is turning into a big girl. She will be 2 in just a couple of months! She has surprised me with some of the things she has been saying lately:



*Yesterday I was sitting in a chair at the desk, and Elizabeth wanted to get past me on to the exciting things she saw on the desk. As she tried to squeeze past, she said, "Scooze me, scooze me!" Excuse me? Where did she learn that and how did she know how to perfectly use that in context?! How old are you?

*Today I was stirring a pot for dinner. I happened to be holding Elizabeth because she wanted to see what was going on. As soon as I reached for the spoon to stir with, she said, "elp you, peeze! elp you peeze!" She reached for the spoon and was insistent on doing the stirring!

*For a while she's been saying, "uh huh" and nodding her head when she wants to say yes about something. Now instead she'll pause and think and then say, "ses". It is SO cute!

*She wants to help say prayers now, and does a great job repeating what we tell her to say. Often she will even start into the prayer before we've officially called on anyone to say it!

*I'll ask, "Who is my sweet little girl?" She'll smile and say her name, "Bizbith." Love it!

Drum Roll, Please . . .

Our basement is done! The kids had so much fun running around down there today after the carpet was laid. We are looking forward to the extra space, and we welcome visitors to stay with us (as long as you don't mind sleeping bags until we get some furniture down there!)

Check out this video of all the fun:

Sneak Peek

Here's a glimpse at my current sewing project . . .


Aren't these flowers fun? I can't wait to finish the whole project!

Mother's Day

It was a great Mother's Day weekend this year!

On Friday, Elizabeth and I went to Joshua's preschool Mother's Day program. He sang 2 songs with his class and then handed me a pink rose and a card he had made.

card on left is from preschool; card on right is from church

On Saturday we had Brett and Stephanie's family over for a BBQ and enjoyed being outside in the nice weather.

On Sunday I got a nice nap, and we ate one of my favorite dinners: taco salad a la Our Best Bites. Benjamin presented me with a note and pencil cup that he made at school. Nathan performed a song that he had written just for me!

"I love you a lot. Thank you for making very good lunches and diners. Thanks for letting us play the wii and lting us play till 5:00! Thanks for getting a basement and flat screen tv."

(just to clarify, the flat screen tv won't happen for a while . . . he's a little early in his thanks!)

"Hey Mother, Hey Mother, it's Mother's day and I've got something to say;
I love you, I love you, with all my heart, I love you much more than I art."

The presents I received looked amazingly similar to the baskets we had purchased recently at the Spring Festival basket auction :) We got a Blend-Tec blender, and Ryan got it out for the first time -- yum!

Bee Still

Today Joshua went outside to play. I assumed he had found his friends and was having a great time. When I looked out the window to check on him, I saw this:



He was standing completely still, staring down the road. I thought, "What a silly boy!" and continued on with the things I was working on inside.

About 10 minutes later, I looked for him again and saw this:



He hadn't moved at all! Weird. He gets in silly moods and so I figured this was how he wanted to entertain himself when his friends weren't available to play with.

A few minutes later I took out the trash and started to walk up to him (still in the same spot).

"What are you doing, silly guy?" I asked as I walked over to him.

Immediately he started crying, but he didn't move. I quickly realized that I had totally read the whole situation wrong. I hurried over and started to give him a hug when I realized that he was saying something about a bee through his tears. It turns out that a bee had flown past him. Joshua held still so he wouldn't get stung. But he is pretty paranoid about the bees, and so he didn't move at all after the bee left because he was still worried it would come back and get him if he did!

I scooped him up and reassured him. We went inside and he went to play in his room. I was not surprised to find a rare occurrence when I went up there a few minutes later: he was taking a nap!

Poor guy. He's already afraid to go play outside because of the bees. We really don't have that many around, but he is so scared of them. I'm sure this incident today just made his fears worse. It's going to be a long summer!

A Beautiful Day

Now that the Spring-turned-Winter Festival is over, the weather has been so nice! Today the kids were having a great time outside, so we decided to eat a picnic lunch in the front yard. Some of the neighbors joined in as well.



In other news, the basement is coming along. The moldings and trim are installed, along with the closet shelving. I got to customize the closets, which I am so excited about! I had them put in extra shelves since at least one of the bedrooms will be more of a workroom/guest room and we don't need a ton of hanging space.

this closet is for the back bedroom -- this may be a room for 1 or 2 boys someday

this is the closet for the guest room -- I plan on putting all of my tulle/ribbon in there, along with office supplies and Mary Kay products. I am SO excited for all of that shelving!

look at the beautiful paint :)

And the paint is on, which makes it look so much more like a home! Our general contractor told me today that they will probably finish 2 weeks early, which would mean that there's only about a week and a half to go -- yippee!

Spring Festival 2011

Wow -- after months of anticipating and planning and working, the Spring Festival has come and gone!


What was meant to be a SPRING festival, outside in the courtyard, became the WINTER festival, in the school. Although we didn't make the final decision until the day of, we had known for a few days that the forecast was calling for cold and snow. The morning of was sunny, so I was starting to waffle if we should try to do it outside. What if the weatherman was wrong for our local area? But I just kept feeling right about having it indoors. It's a good thing -- about an hour into the Festival I looked out the window and saw dark skies and HUGE flakes of snow!

the view from our yard the morning after the Festival;
is it really the last day of April?!

There were definitely some glitches. The biggest one being that a business had committed 10-13 volunteers for the entire time. I confirmed with them 2 days before. They ended up getting there 15 minutes late, and there were only TWO!! One more person from that business came a little later. Luckily, we had some great teachers and parents who just jumped in and filled booths when they saw there was a need.

But it looked like the kids and their families had a great time! I would say that despite the glitches, we had a very successful Festival!

duck pond -- one of about 10 carnival game booths

look at all of those people waiting to play games and get balloon animals!

food in the cafeteria -- we had about 8 food booths

my cute nephew and Red from Red Robin; Andy the Armadillo from Texas Roadhouse was also in attendance

The auction went well. This is what I had chosen to spend the most time on in the months leading up to the Festival. We ended up with probably too many baskets, thanks to all of the generous donations we were able to get! The families were able to go home with a lot of great deals. I was a little discouraged that a lot of the baskets went for a lesser percentage of their value than I had hoped, but in the end since we had a lot of baskets we came out very close to the dollar amount we brought in last year (which was our best year). Thanks, Ryan, for making sure that our family got some good items from the auction!

the auctioneer with his back to the camera; the bidders sat on the stairs of the stage

A huge thank you to everyone who helped me in preparing for the Festival, and to those who helped at the Festival! And thanks to everyone who came and supported our fundraiser! Thank you, Stephanie, for the pictures . . . Ryan and I were too occupied to take any! I also appreciate my family, who definitely were supportive and understanding of where I've been spending my time the last few months! Was this a lot of work? Yes. Was it worth it? Totally! Would I do it again? Something so fulfilling is enjoyable despite the work, so yes!