It's About Time!

Our TV is very old. It's so old that last year I actually watched myself in a home video at age 3 dancing in front of the very TV I was watching myself dance in front of! How weird was that! I really don't remember if the TV is older, or I am. Either way, it's a little over 30 years old. We inherited it from my Grandma Carrie when we got married 12 years ago, grateful not to have to buy one. We thought it would probably go sometime and we'd buy a new one then. Well, it just keeps working, minus the remote, which broke years ago. We just got used to turning the volume up on the actual TV. Since we have satellite we could just use that remote to change the channel.

We decided over a year ago that it was time to replace it anyhow, but we wanted to wait and buy one for Jason's graduation gift. Then, we wanted to wait for the Memorial Day sales. So, on Saturday we went out and bought an LED HDTV.

Here is our lovely old TV that Victoria has now named Oldie. It will go down to the basement.

And here is our nice new one, we even bought a nice stand for it to put the blue-ray and videos in. We are still in the works with getting everything connected, but it sure does look a whole lot nicer! Victoria has named it Beauty.

Check out the difference between the two! We'll have to post more pictures with the final touches! Stay tuned...

"Mom" School

Karissa just finished her first year of preschool, or "Mom" school as we have been calling it lately, since all the moms of the preschoolers have been taking turns teaching at their homes. She has enjoyed it, but is ready to go to Plymouth Children's Nursery, the co-op where Victoria went, in the fall. Karissa will be going to a bilingual class, which we are all excited for.

Here's her last-day-of-school picture...

...compared to the first-day-of school.
Here's a mini-Olympics activity we had at the beginning.

And a nature-scavenger-hunt turned play-at-the-park at the end of the year. It's been a fun year!

Girl Scout Camp

This year Victoria has been a Daisy in girl scouts. With kindergarten being only half day, I thought she needed a little something extra that wouldn't keep her too busy or cost too much money. It has been a great experience overall for her!

Here are the patches she has earned so far on her vest: the cookie sale, food drive, police station tour, recycle, Alice in Wonderland play, and Fall Fun. She has earned almost all her petals and still has another year of Daisy's!

Yesterday she went to a camp for the whole day and had a great time. Here she is showing me a squirrel's home.
She made a little s'mores craft, after eating the real thing, of course.
And here she is with some of her buddies from her Thin Mint group at camp. They also happen to all be in her class at school.

She's excited to do girl scouts again next year!

Happy Birthday Jason!

We celebrated Jason's 35th birthday yesterday. Thank goodness he graduated before so he could enjoy his day! We had Stake Conference at church, so church was one hour shorter, which made the day that much more relaxing.

I made Monte Cristo sandwiches for breakfast (a new yummy egg recipe that we tried), Jason's favorite dinner of chicken cordon bleu, and a chocolate chip bundt cake.

He got some shirts from us and gets to buy himself a wireless router. (We're moving up in the technical world!)

Since it was about 35 degrees colder on his birthday than two days earlier, and raining, we didn't get to go for a Sunday family walk.

Here's what our front yard looks like now when the sun is shinning. We finally have everything in bloom! Last year our forsythia bush was blooming over Easter, along with our tulips, but this year was so cold our forsythia bush bloomed over Easter, a whole month later! This tree, though it bloomed later as well, at least has kept it's blossoms longer. Last year the blossoms bloomed right before a stormy week which blew them all away in a few days!

Happy Birthday Jason!

Dance

This week was the week of dance! Victoria missed her dress rehearsal last Sunday, but Karissa made hers on Monday, Victoria went to her run-through on Tuesday, Karissa's run-through was Wednesday, I made cookies for the bake sale at one of the recitals on Thursday, on Friday night Victoria danced in the recital, Karissa danced in the afternoon recital on Saturday, and they both danced Saturday night- phew! The reason it was so much is because, as I've said before, Dancin' Feet is a huge program with tons of girls up to age 18. It's a major production, with even one more show today. The high school auditorium is full each time for the 2 1/2 hours of some very good dancing with backgrounds and themes for different parts of the performance.

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to film or take pictures during the actual performance, so I have some pictures of my cuties before they went on-stage, and filmed their run-through dances, though the clarity isn't very good since they were way up on stage. For one of Victoria's dances, I'm including a practice from a couple of months ago, since the run-through for that dance was messed up. They put her in line in the wrong spot and she was doing great and smiling, until when it came time to dancing with her partner, she was not near her. So she looks a little distraught for a moment, then keeps on dancing. She took it very well.

Here's Victoria with her partner, Annie, for the Flowers ballet dance.
Here's her whole class.

Here's her in her tap costume that they borrowed. They danced to Baby Face. It was her favorite dance.

Karissa got to dance her tap dance to Going to the Circus. She was the star of the show Saturday night. At the end of her dance, the back curtains opened to reveal the rest of the circus set with all the clowns, balloons, and other dancers dressed in bright colors. Karissa ended the dance facing away from the audience, staring open-mouthed at everything around her. When the rest of her group had left the stage, she finally realized she was alone and ran off quickly with the audience laughing at her cuteness.

They both did a great job for both recitals and enjoyed watching the rest of the show as well.

As for, I'm beat! We all slept in for Mother's Day after staying up way too late, two nights in a row. Jason made me bagels and lox for brunch and we ate dinner at a friends' house, which meant another late night, but no clean-up here. They picked me flowers from our yard that are finally blooming, now that cold April is over. Along with all the cards the kids made for me, I guess there's a gift, but we'll open it tomorrow, when we're all awake again!

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's Karissa's and Victoria's dances at the run-through and Victoria's other dance at practice.

The Day We Were All Waiting For

It has happened- Jason graduated from the University of Michigan with his MBA! His parents came out to attend the ceremonies and help celebrate this momentous occasion. The festivities began on Thursday with a reception at the business school building which was put on for the night school students and their families. Since we had decided not to take the kids to the actual graduation, knowing they would be bored out of their minds, we all went and enjoyed some hors 'devours and treats. Jason even got a nice U of M pen out of it! The next evening we left the kids with a babysitter, pizza, and popcorn, and went down to Ann Arbor for the business school graduation where Jason actually got his diploma (we were way to high up to get a good shot of that).

On Saturday we left the kids with another babysitter, very early in the morning, and went out to the Big House for the graduation of the whole class of 2011. Despite the endless sitting on football bleachers, it was actually a very good program, one of the most interesting graduations I've ever been too.

When we returned we took the kids out to Ichiban Steak House (thanks Abuelo!) where we were entertained by our hibachi chef as well as enjoyed his yummy food. Austin especially enjoyed the miso soup and fried rice, Victoria her big pile of shrimp, and Karissa flirting with the chef.
Here's the cake we made for Jason and shared with our next-door neighbors who happen to be big U of M fans too.

Congratulations Jason and GO BLUE!