The Extras

Here are a few pictures of what we do in our extra time.  Brielle started dance this year.  She loves it! They are learning a tap dance to the music "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast which is really cute and for their ballet dance they get to hold a Teddy Bear so that will be fun.  Emma didn't want to do dance this year, so she started another year of soccer. She has improved so much from last year! I'm also glad that they play for two seasons because I think she has been able to keep up her skills between fall and spring. We also signed her up for basketball. She wasn't thrilled about it, but Nick was willing to coach and two of her friends wanted to play if they knew someone playing.  Their team actually went undefeated! (They had some awesome 3rd graders on the team!) I think the girls were just excited to keep getting treats at the end of the games! Emma liked it, but maybe not as much as soccer, so we'll see what she decides to do next year.

State Fair 2011

Our girls know that when it's my birthday, it also means it's time for the State Fair. They love this tradition! It is one of the rare times they get to ride a horse. Brielle had a rough experience getting on this year, so I got to follow her and her horse around, but they gave her an extra ride! We also did the giant yellow slide which is my favorite part of the fair! The girls also like the Little Hands on the Farm exhibit because they get a treat at the end. On our way out, they had Big and Rich doing a concert that sounded really fun so maybe we will have to try that out when the girls get older. Oh! And the best part was that Emma found a ticket on the ground on the way in, so she got free admission (plus we had a coupon)! I love saving money!

My Birthday + St George

I love my birthday. LOVE IT.(Besides getting older). This summer I really wanted to go to Tuachan to see the Little Mermaid. But our summer was packed. So I proposed to Nick that we go down on my birthday. What we didn't know was that every Friday night was sold out through the rest of the season. So I became a KSL stalker looking for tickets. Finally, the day before my birthday weekend, someone listed one adult and one child ticket for Friday night. We jumped on it and headed down. Emma and I saw the show which was amazing! Emma was mesmerized through the whole thing. We bought Brielle the Little Mermaid on DVD since she didn't get to go, but they announced that night that they are doing Aladdin next summer so we will definitely all go see that show.  It was a quick trip with a long ride (we realized that we have a impatient Dad and 7-yr-old when it comes to road trips), but we still had fun. We walked around the St George Temple and went through the Visitor Center, saw Smurfs, cooled down at a splash pad, and just relaxed. It was a great birthday trip!

Emma's First Day

I will catch up. Really.  Emma's first day as a 2nd grader was great. She has a lot of friends from her 1st grade class in her class again along with one of her BFF's who was in a different class last year. She has a really fun teacher who is having her first baby in the next few weeks, but she will be back after Spring Break so we are happy about that. She chases boys at recess and is getting perfect grades. The first few weeks were tough to get back into a routine and during one meltdown she cried out "2nd grade is a lot harder than 1st grade!" How rough it is to progress to the next grade! She's so funny.

Brielle's First Day

The first day of school came so quick this year! Brielle started the day before Emma this year and she was pretty excited. She's attending the same preschool she did last year except this year she is going 3 times a week instead of two. The drop-off was also a lot easier this year because Brielle's two cousins, Ike and Isabelle, are going to be in her class again! I can't believe only one more year until Kindergarten!

Our Dash of Summer

Brielle's two sleeping pictures just make me laugh. She looks completely comfortable and exhausted. That was what our summer felt like. We worked so hard in our yard, but we played hard as well. When we had a free night we went to Lagoon with our season passes (even though I didn't bring my camera when we went there) or we went to the Treehouse museum, or went swimming, or painted our toenails, or went to a kids' movie, or had friends/cousins come over, or had a BBQ, or go to the fireworks, etc. Each night Nick and I would collapse into bed completely wiped out from the day.  There were so many times we complained about how tired we were, but we also realized that we were having so much fun with our kids and hopefully creating a lot of good memories as a family.
We also participated in the "YES! Utah Dash for Donation". It is a walk/run at Weber State University that promotes organ donation. I ran the 5K with my brother-in-law two years ago, and I wanted to do it again to see if I could beat my time. I persuaded my friend Melanie to run with me and warned her that it was a tough one. We put a team together called the "Liver Lovers" and Nick, our girls, his mom, our brother-in-law, Melanie's husband's and toddler did the 2k walk while Melanie and I did the 5K run. It was much more fun with a big group of people. Unfortunately, we didn't win any raffle prizes, but I did beat my time by about 2 minutes! After the race, they had some fruit and pastries to snack on and then went to Great Harvest for our "real" breakfast. Nick was excited to be able to participate this time, so I think it will become a yearly tradition.

Just Keep Swimming

Right after our get-a-way, the girls started swimming lessons for two weeks straight. It was amazing to see the progress that they made during this period. For instance, before swimming lessons, Emma would scream/cry/freak out if she got water in her eyes during bath time! But on the first day of swimming, Emma's class had to bob up and down under the water! I don't know if she felt some peer pressure because everyone else was doing it, but we were amazed! By mid-week, Emma's class had jumped off the deep end which stressed me out because I was sure that Emma was under the water too long. Emma also was incredible with the back-float and eventually held her breath under water as long as the other kids. Brielle's class was at the same time and it was so cute to see these tiny kids learning how to swim. There were a few boys in Brielle's class that were fearless and were constantly jumping off the edge even though their teacher told them not to.  It drove me crazy because I didn't want them to knock Brielle off the edge, too. Am I over-protective or what? Anyway, Brielle learned how to blow bubbles in the water, how to jump off the edge (holding her teacher's hand), back-float and front-float. By the end of the two weeks, my girls thought they were pretty hot stuff! Luckily, Nick's aunt Margo has a pool so we got to go swimming there and practice their skills a few more times before the summer ended!