Growing Up

Victoria completed first grade! It seems strange to me now that I will finally have a child of my own in the grade that I taught about 11years ago: second grade! I have saved many games that I made for the time when my children can play them. I broke them out this year: time games, money games, reading games. It is so fun for the teacher in me!

Theses are the things she accomplished this year:
-she can read very fluently (she's reading verses from the scriptures now)
-her writing is excellent (she was always pretty good at writing)
-she can tell time
-she knows her money (is that good or bad?)
-she can tie her shoes
-she can do her own ponytails and pigtails

She has also enjoyed her piano lessons this year and made great progress there. Here she is at her last recital playing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid and "I Just Can't Wait to be King" from The Lion King.

 Here's all the girls that took lessons this year with their gift from the teacher.

And here's Victoria with her teacher, and my good friend, Rachel Clawson.

La Escuela

Karissa graduated from her bilingual preschool class last week. I am so happy that we choose to put her in it! I loved PCN when Victoria was there, even though it's a co-op and requires extra work on my part. I loved it even better in the bilingual class, which was new last year to the school. She's definitely ready for kindergarten and she knows some Spanish- a nice bonus! Of course she doesn't speak fluently, she just knows some words and phrases and lots of songs. She understands a fair amount too. The best thing about it for me is that it helped me to see how easy it is to incorporate just a few Spamish words into our every day activities. I know we can do more and hopefully we'll be more motivated to do so. Karissa has loved learning Spanish and has taught Victoria and Austin some things as well, which they also enjoyed. My hope is that when they take Spanish classes later in school that they will pick it up easily and have good conversation skills.

Here's Karissa's last day, performing "Hola Amigo". 

Here's La Semilla (the seed). 

 Here is La Mariposa (the butterfly).

Here she is receiving her diploma with her maestra. Bien hecho, Karissa!

Birthday Boy

Austin is now three years old! Lucky for him, his birthday was on a Saturday this year. He got to open his big present in the morning- a race track that also connects with his wooden train set. It was a hit! The girls enjoyed it too. They had to get out the whole train set to complete it.

 Remember the symphony we went to a month ago? The next free concert, Dance, Swing, Sing, happened to be on his birthday, so we went to Detroit to enjoy another fabulous concert. It was mostly jazzy swing. There was some singing this time and a tap dancer. We all enjoyed it. Here's Austin waiting for it to start, sporting his "Birthday Boy" badge he got from Gramms.

 We took advantage of being in the city and went to Hockeytown for lunch.

 He even got his own special ice cream treat for his birthday, which he shared with everyone.

 Hockeytown is the most "boy" restaurant I could ever imagine. Not only were there pics of all the Red Wings hockey players and their jerseys, but the were video arcade games and motorcycles on display. Austin is still young, so I don't think he cared either way, but he did like looking at the motorcycles.

 Since we were right across the street from Comerica Park where the Tigers play, Jason wanted to get his tickets for the game he's planning on taking Victoria to later this summer. Here's a picture of the big tiger in front. You can see the people from a wedding party in black to the right. They were taking wedding photos there- not sure why, but that's cool.

 As we were leaving, we see this baby coming out of a truck to be put on display for the big race today. Austin was pretty excited, though you can't see his smile behind his cars.

 The kids relaxed when we got home and watched a video. I made this race track cake (which Victoria decided I can make for her 8th b-day, since it looks like an 8).

 We had pizza, Austin opened more presents, he loved these binoculars and a flashlight, in particular, and we had cake.

 He added his cars from his race track gift to the cake.

Austin was exhausted that night, but I think he felt special on his big day. He's so sweet and polite. We noticed how he always says "yes" never "yeah" and is much better about saying "please" and "thank you" than his sisters are. What a polite boy! He likes to hold the door open for everyone too.

He and Karissa play really well together while Victoria is at school. She will play cars with him and he will follow her around as she does her make-believe stories of princesses. He'll play "house" with her too. He loves to help me stir when I'm cooking and he likes to help water the garden. He also enjoys dancing, singing, and swinging outside. His dream for the summer is to wear his Superman pjs to the roller rink so the cape can fly out behind him. He prays about that happening.

Even though he is a 3-year-old boy, he does pretty good at shopping with me. I complain and get frustrated when we go, but I know it could be worse. He's such a great little boy.

We love you Austin!

1/2

Erik is now 1/2 a year old. It seems every time I update, I rave about how fast time has gone by, but it's true! He's 6 months old already! He tried some rice cereal a few weeks ago. It didn't go so well. He didn't scream his head off, he just wasn't thrilled about the idea. He still isn't. Nor did he like trying peas or squash. I guess he'll be like my other kids and mostly like table food, when we get to that point. I think Austin ended up liking some baby foods, so I'll keep trying. Speaking of Austin, he took these shots of Erik's first spoon feeding. Not bad, eh?

 He likes this little car in the basement, but he mostly prefers to sit on the floor. He's almost to the point where he can sit by himself, he just need a little nudge here and there to keep him from tipping over.

 Erik weighed in at 18.2 pounds at the dr. and 27 inches long. That puts him in the 62nd percentile for weight and the 71st for height. He still seems really big to me, but I guess he's more on the average end now.

 He likes to blow raspberries lately and drools like crazy! I don't see any teeth yet, but something must be coming in soon with all that drool!

We love our baby Erik!

La Granja

Even though Karissa's in a bilingual class at her school, her class still goes on all the usual field trips that the school sets up. My personal favorite is the farm, aka la granja.

The routine at Real Life Farm is to let the kids play on the playground, then wait in line to ride the horses. My experience when Victoria went on this field trip was that the kids didn't want to leave the playground and wait in line to ride horses. They're preschoolers, they're just not into horses yet. Luckily, Karissa left the playground without too much convincing, though Austin insisted on staying and playing.

 Here's Karissa riding a beautiful horse on a beautiful day.

 When we went into the barn to do our "duties", Austin was a little afraid of the goats and wanted no part with them, but he went right to the rabbits and kittens. He's a little like me in that way. When I was younger I didn't like any animals except cats and rabbits, and no bugs! He's the most like that.

 Karissa took right to the kids.

 She enjoyed feeding the piggies. (This shot is crooked since I had to snap it quick before she had to pass the bottle to another kid.)

 Austin eventually decided to feed a baby kid, though again I had to shoot quickly before he dropped the bottle. That baby goat was a forceful drinker!

 Karissa got to feed the goats from her hands. Austin just kind of tossed the feed at them.

 We loved looking at the baby chicks. We got to hold one too- so soft and sweet!

 Milking the cow is always a highlight, though I never got a shot with her looking at me.

 Before we left for lunch, Karissa had to give the kids one last hug.

 The highlight for Austin was the hayride pulled by a tractor!

 Erik and I were there too!

Special Days

Mother's Day was my special day and the girls did great at helping and wanting to make it special, despite being tired from the recital weekend. (BTW, the girls did great on their dances and I couldn't help but smile as the audience went "awwwww!" as Karissa's class appeared.) Austin was a little grumpy and Erik had his usual "no sleep Sunday", so he was a little fussy. Jason made dinner and dessert and I got to hear the lesson in Relief Society at church. The best part was just knowing how lucky I am to be a mom of such wonderful, healthy kids. They looked cute in their picture too!

 Luckily, on Saturday we went to Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Jason's favorite sandwich place, to celebrate his birthday. I say "luckily" because he was gone at work 14 hours on his birthday! The girls didn't get to see him in the morning, but we did decide to go out and meet him at Red Robin near his workplace so we could give him his presents and sing to him. The kids ate great at both places, making going out to eat much easier with the four of them. We had a good time at our short celebration, but wish we could have seen him more. Happy Birthday Jason, we love you!

Dance Recital Week

As I mentioned last year around this time, Victoria and Karissa take dance at a very large and popular studio. The week before the recital is full of different types of practices. The dress rehearsal is just like it sounds, though the dances aren't in the order they're in for the actual show. The run-through is when each dance is performed in the order it will be for the show, but without costumes, just to make sure the transitions go smoothly. Lucky for us, this year the girls had dress rehearsal on the same night and run-through the same night. With four different shows and hundreds of girls, it's not always that way. It wasn't last year for us. They also both dance the same two nights, so we're good there too. Since we're not allowed to video tape during the actual performance (this is serious show biz, but a great experience!), I taped the girls at their dress rehearsal.

They both do a ballet number and a tap. Feel free to watch all four, they're not too long, but I won't be offended if you don't!

Here's Victoria's tap to a funky "Mary Had a Little Lamb".  She's the second from the left, mostly.

Here's Karissa's ballet to "A You Are Adorable". She's on the very right. She did pretty good this night, but she rocked it during the run-through, which I didn't record, and her smile that night was the biggest smile ever! She must have liked not having on that major poofy dress, which she complains is too itchy.



Here's Victoria's ballet to "Winnie the Pooh". She's kind of in the same place as the other dance, but it's hard to tell her apart from the other yellow, long-legged, girls. She also did much better at the run-through and had a great smile too.

And here's Karissa's tap to "Fishes". She had a hard time with learning tap this year. She's still the youngest in the class, so her friends were nice to help her. She and I worked hard at practicing her dance at home and she knows it real well now. She's really distracted in this dance by the fish head she had to wear. She said it itched her face where her glasses were ( I don't know why we didn't take them off like in the first dance.) She reminds me of myself when I was her age, always itching my face and fiddling around with my glasses.

Here's some pics of my girls with their costumes on.

 This is Victoria with her friend Analee that we carpool with every week.

 Here's Karissa with her friend Becca who is her partner and helper.

 Victoria with Julia in their lamb costumes.