The Stick

In September Addie started taking ballet at a place in Tacoma. An actual ballet school. She really wanted to perform on a real stage. The rec. center ballet wasn't enough. So every Tuesday, I packed up all 4 kids, drove 30 minutes there, sat for a hour (in a tiny room with not enough seats and no windows to watch Addie), then drove the 30 minutes home. When we moved in November, our drive time increased to 40 minutes each way. It was just about a 3 hour trip. I dreaded Tuesdays. But, on recital day, it was all worth it. Every minute we spent driving. To see her so excited. And we were so proud!

The entire ballet was based on the book titled The Stick. It's about a little boy who finds a stick and then becomes all of these different things. One class was dressed as pirates another as flight attendants. Addie was a knight on a stead!!

Backstage right before I had to take my seat. This is how I left her and her makeup. When she got on stage I noticed 2 things. 1. Someone had pinned her head piece down weird.  2. She was wearing more eye makeup and some bright red lipstick! It was horrible! I'll have to have a talk with her next time about not letting her friends 'help' her with make up!

They had 2 performances. One on Thursday and one on Friday. Thursday night we got a babysitter for Dia and Opal and the rest of us went. It was so fun to have my mom, Melanie and Garrisyn there!

And this stud. ;)

Friday night we left everyone home with my mom and sister and we took Addie's best friend Damsel with us!

These were the seniors. The director got a little emotional when she had them come forward. They were all so good!

This is the video of her dance. I had the camera the first night and held it up recording her for the whole dance only to find out that I had forgotten to push the record button! I was sooooo happy there was going to be another performance! Daniel was in charge of recording it the next night!

We have decided she won't be going back to the same school this year. It was just too far for us to go plus the class she would be in meets on Saturday mornings! Not a good time for us. She wants to do horse riding lessons instead! Oh boy. I am trying to talk her in to one of the dance schools right here in Bonney Lake. :)

Last Day of School and Visitors!

We officially ended our school year on June 5th! I think it went pretty well. There were some really hard days and some pretty good ones! It's tough having the 2 little girls home distracting us and always fighting with each other. Always. Screaming, yelling and fighting. Even with the move 2 months in we managed to hold it together and get through the year!

***

A few days later my mom, sister and niece flew in to town to visit for 2 weeks! We did some sight seeing and lots of cousin time! I'll do a whole post on that later!

At the airport waiting for both flights to get in, Johnny found his name on a Coke bottle!

Cousins! Someone is always moving so it is hard to get a perfect shot of them all! We had to wait a little bit for my mom's plane to land so we tried to keep the littles corralled in baggage claim!

They wasted no time getting my mom on the trampoline when we got home! 

Rainier to Ruston 2015

June and July were crazy months for us!! I think we had multiple things going every weekend!

To start it all off we ran the Rainier to Ruston Relay on June 6th for the second time! It's not as fun as the Ragnar relay but trying to get 6 people to commit to this was hard enough!! We barely put a team together about a week before the race. I was starting to think it wasn't going to happen!

We weren't too great about taking pictures. I may have taken more but since my phone ordeal I still haven't found all my photos. :( 

Daniel and I ran different legs than we did last year. I started the race with leg 1. It was 5 miles! I was excited about the different legs because they were longer than I have run in the past so I had to push myself and train hard. For once I didn't have one of the easiest legs. :) We were up super early and it was a long day but worth it at the end!

My legs were giving me a hard time leading up to race day. Crazy painful. My awesome chiropractor fixed me up 2 days before. I may have looked funny walking around taped like this but it worked! I felt no pain on my 5 mile leg!

Endless bathroom line!

Starting line!

Brothers!

My second leg didn't go as well as the first. It was really hot!! I was a little disappointed with my time, but I finished!! (Thanks Daniel for trying to document our race! I don't think I have any videos of him!).

Our team running to the finish line!

Our friend Kevin's business sponsored us this year. We used his Excursion and they had shirts printed for us! Our team name was Downhill Warriors and Daniel even designed the shirts!!

This is the beginning of the race. I am one of the last people to run through the start.

***

We had been researching cars for while. Our van's transmission was ready to go any day and with the weather heating up I was scared I would be stuck on the side of the road with the kids!! Plus the A/C was acting up (again), one of the doors was finicky when it was warm, etc. The list goes on. So, a few days before we ran the relay this happened...

A huge rock flew in to the windshield! It scared me half to death!! My heart was pounding and my ears were ringing for about 5 minutes from the sound of the hit. I was so very thankful that it didn't shatter. I was very impressed at the almost perfect arc that it made. Now I could add 'needs new windshield' to the list of van problems.

So, back to car hunting. We test drove several cars from an Excursion to an Escalade. Daniel would have bought the Escalade if it was up to him but I was insisting on having 8 seats. On our way home, after our really long day of running, we drove past a car lot in Puyallup and a Yukon XL caught my eye. After we dropped everyone off and unloaded the car we loaded up the kids and took our stinky selves to go look at it. It was close to their closing time so I was trying to say we would think about it and decide on Monday. We hadn't eaten dinner yet and the kids were ready to go home but we caved. It has everything we were looking for in our price range.

So we said good bye to our faithful Ody...

And hello to the Yukon!! (and a car payment, boo!!)

We ended up grabbing dinner after we got the car at like 9pm then headed home!! It was such a long day!!

May

My poor blog is neglected again. I am behind. My phone took a beating a few weeks ago and I had to get it replaced. I tried to copy all of my photos over from the old one but for some reason not all of them made it. I have been putting off blogging hoping that some how, miraculously the photos would re appear and I could do a proper blog post. I've decided that isn't going to happen. So, here is my May wrap up, missing about the half the pictures. :/

May brought some nice weather, Mother's Day and potty training!! Pretty exciting stuff around here.

They are constantly asking to have a lemonade stand. Johnny was also selling some of his 'art'. Some very nice people in the neighborhood stopped and bought some. So grateful for nice people. :)

We went on a group date to a Go cart racing place! It was so fun! Daniel always beats me so I was trying so so so hard to at least come in second! On the very first lap my car died!! I was stopped behind a little structure so the guy running the place didn't see me and everyone kept driving right past me! I think they all did 2 or 3 laps before the guy stopped them all so he could help me. Then he gave all of them a lecture about how they were supposed to stop if someone got stuck. He was mad that they all kept going! After that my car worked fine and no one else got stuck. I almost had the second place guy but not quite. Third place out of 6 isn't too bad!

Ballet picture day!!

We have been using a chore chart around here. The kids get a quarter for every check mark they get. They get check marks for emptying the dishwasher, setting/clearing the table, taking out the trash, help cleaning the bird cage, sweeping and helping with Opal. If they don't do a chore, they don't get the check mark. We are not forcing them to do it. It seems to be working really well!! Johnny saved up enough money to buy a Razor Scooter!! He was so excited and is pretty good on it!

I know this is hard to see but I thought their drawings were cute. They were supposed to pose the skeleton then draw it. I love how different the pictures are!

Water table time!

Our little climber helping Dad!!

I got to take this little man to the Mommy Son dance! We were just sitting down on a Friday night to start a movie when it hit me that the dance was that night! I checked the clock and figured if we left right then we wouldn't be too late! I felt a little bit bad because we didn't dress up or anything! He didn't know we were going until 5 minutes before we left so there was no excitement build up. We got there a little after it started and had a good time anyway! There were still plenty of cupcakes and punch. We did a lot of dancing. They also had crafts and little things to play with on the table. I took a really funny video of him dancing but unfortunately, that was one of the things I couldn't get off my phone! This kid has moves I tell ya'!

I did get to go flying a couple times in May! A little rusty, but it all comes back.

Potty training requires no underwear out side.

Mother's Day with my munchkins!!

Addie gave me this 50 page book that she wrote and illustrated all by herself for a Mother's Day gift! I love it!! The story is really cute and says how she feels about sharing a room with Opal! :)