Dance Recital

Gabe had her Spring dance recital this weekend. Recital weekends are crazy busy. Friday night you have a tech rehearsal which we actually couldn't make it to. :( I felt bad cause it would have been good for another practice. Saturday morning you have a dress rehearsal and pictures. Class pictures and individual pictures are taken. They were so unorganized with these it wasn't even funny. Not sure what pics I'll get, when I'll get them, and how much I'll end up paying. :/ Then you have to be there early for call time and then the show. I am grateful her class performed 5th this time. Last time she was almost last and that was a long time for my boys to sit. This time there were 29 dances and an intermission. Phew. So it was busy. Our boys were so grumpy to have to sit there and watch. It's hard to entertain them that young with something they aren't interested in at all. Oh well. 

Gabe and Embrie (one of the girls I watched)

Brittany, Briana's mom got asked to help with some costume stuff last minute. So I helped keep and eye on her girls. So I never did get a chance for an individual picture of Gabe. I'm sad I didn't but it was hectic. 

I did snap some with her bestie and her little class 

These poor girls. Their dress rehearsal went very badly. They all forgot lots. Even their teacher was surprised cause they usually do it good. They made them do it twice. The second time went better. Gabe was super discouraged and nervous. Their actual performance went soooo much better. The only thing that went wrong was Gabe fanning her eyes during her performance. :) I think she's gonna have allergies to make up. It makes her eyes water. So I taught her to look up and fan her eyes to get her eyes to stop watering. It helps but I didn't anticipate her doing it during her performance. So at one point she was fanning her eyes like crazy. It was like a cute innocent funny thing. People I talked to thought it was part of her performance- like she was waving the other dancers over. :) 

The line up. It was confusing and nuts. Hope to go somewhere else next year for classes for dance. This place is just hectic and unorganized all the time. 

I tried taking some pics during the show but Adam was wrestling the boys so I decided to film instead. 

They had a twenty minute delay for the show to start. They had music issues. So after showing up fifteen minutes early and then sitting for twenty minutes and then waiting for her to dance- the boys were DONE! Adam left and took the boys and Gabe and I watched the rest of the show. She could watch it all day. She loves it. 

We tried everything to entertain them. They had snacks and phones to play on but it was tricky. 

So proud of our girl! She did awesome and we love watching her do what she loves. 

Father and Sons Camp Out

Gabe and I like Father and Sons as much as the boys do. It means when the boys are away, we girls get to play. We always plan our night in advance. I really do enjoy as much one on one with my girl as I can get. I hope she always looks forward to the time as much as I always will. She told me she can't wait until next year, cause Milo will be gone too, and we'll have another car so we can go to dinner and get pedicures and go shopping. Ha! She's got it all planned out. This year she settled for her choice of games to play, making some snack necklaces for our movie, and a princess movie night. Super fun. We usually paint our nails or something, but we recently just did that. So we just cuddled with Milo running circles around us. For the record I shared my necklace with Milo. 

Ollie was soooo excited to go camping with Daddy. Adam got asked to make Cobbler dessert for everyone there. So he spent a lot of the night doing that. If I could change anything, I wish he wasn't assigned that. It would have been nice to be able to focus more on Ollie, but oh well. They still got some time in. Ollie LOVED it. 

Adam forgot the pizza dough for the dutch oven pizza they were gonna make for dinner. So this nice guy let them share hot dogs and their tin foil dinners. I think it's the first time Ollie has tried hot dogs. He wasn't the biggest fan. Oh well. 

Ollie loved spending time riding his bike outdoors "mountain biking"

Student of the Month!

It was teacher appreciation week so we made a note for Gabe's teacher that she could attach to her almonds we got her. Mrs Nielson eats almonds during the day a lot according to Gabe so she wanted to get her some. So we made a "nuts about you" card and had Gabe decorate it. 

Gabe also was picked by her teacher for student of the month. They choose like six or seven kids in each grade in different categories. I was told by someone that they only get one turn throughout their elementary career, but not sure how true that is. Either way her teacher picked her, so we went to watch the assembly in the afternoon. She got to go up front and get her award. She was very excited. She also got a pencil she loved and a token for the token prize machine they keep in the office. Good job Gabe!

A Much Needed Outing

Man I'm looking forward to the summer just so things will slow down a little for us. Sometimes life is so busy it's nice when we get some time to just hang. I love that my kids are still easily entertained enough, that throwing rocks in the river makes for an enjoyable evening for all.

Turning 30

Turning 30 really wasn't as nerve racking for me as it seems to be for most people. I think I've always viewed the twenties as when you do school and starting families, and experience a lot of your "firsts". The thirties seem to be when people start to be more established in a home and start careers and start to be done having kids. It's when you start plannig more regular vacations, do more in the community, and when you get to experience sports,dance classes, music lessons and school presentations with your kids. Sounds pretty nice eh? I'm ready for my thirties and excited. Come forty I might freak a little, but I'm good at thirty.

Sure I feel older. I look older and my body is softer, but my body feels accomplished at the same time. Hey. I've had 3 wonderful babies! I did have a goal to try and look and feel my best at thirty. Even though I still have some personal goals of all kinds, when my bday came around I knew that I had done the best I could and I felt happy. And even though I didn't accomplish all of my 30 goals before 30, I did a lot of stuff I've never done. I've gone to the temple more, donated blood, sewed stuff, got Milo sleeping through the night, and bought me a pencil skirt, etc. :) There are some things I wish I had done in the last year and in my twenties, but now I get to plan out goals for my thirties. I stress a little that I'm not as accomplished in some ways or in some things as I'd like to be and look back and wonder if I should have done stuff differently, but I've done a lot in my twenties to be proud of. 

I think turning 30 was more stressful for Adam than it was for me. He felt like he needed to make it super special and that he almost had to one up me for his 30th bday. He did a wonderful job. He did a 30 days till 30 count down. Every day he'd come home from work with a gift and a new love note. He got me this picture book to put all my love notes in to keep. So I basically was spoiled the whole month of April. It definitely made turning 30 fun and exciting instead of scary. My gifts varied and I meant to take more pics. I just didn't. Mainly cause as soon as I was handed a gift I had one of the kids wanting to help me open it. It got to be just as exciting for the kids as it was for me. As soon as Adam would get home they'd rush to go get a gift from him so they could hand it to me. I got the best stuff from a wishlist and things he thought of. I got gift cards, jewelry, workout stuff, kitchen goodies, my favorite snacks, smaller things like nail polish and gum, etc. 

Day 30 on my bday he brought home a bunch of gift cards to different stores I wanted to shop at once we move into our house. With a bunch of flowers with a cute door mat tied around them with a little key that said "Home" on it. He also brought my favorite drink from swig. It's all kinda hard to explain, but he put a lot of thougt into it and making it nice, and I loved that about it. It was the best. My only regret is that we didn't take more pics of my day, but it was just too fun and busy that we didn't think about it until we were on the couch cuddling at the end of the night. 

I woke to a decorated house and breakfast made for me. Which was kinda funny cause we had two people come to look at our house to rent when we move out and it was all decorated. ;) Ollie was in charge of making my day fun while Daddy went to work and Gabe to school. He was cute and tried to make it super fun by playing with me. We then later went to dinner at my favorite place and then he took me clothes shopping. He let me choose what I wanted to do. The next day we celebrated with dessert and the kids with coconut cream pie. Mmmmmm. I'm kinda in love with it. We kinda worried my birthday neither of us would feel well. I had the flu bad Sunday night all of Monday and didn't feel half decent until Wednesday. (My bday fell on Thursday) Adam had a Chrones flare up and felt just as crappy most of the week. We also worried one of the kids might get the flu (which amazingly none of them did) and we wouldn't have left them with a babysitter. We were really blessed to have all of us feel great and I had such a nice day. Thanks for making my day/month so wonderful Ad! I love you!

This is normally what my gifts looked liked. Wrapped fun with a love note announcing the day attached. 

My awesome homemade ice cream maker- one of the gifts I got

At the end of the busy day realizing we should take atleast one picture. 

The kids helped decorate with these homemade heartfelt signs