Dance Recital

The girls worked really hard this year at their dance lessons. Shelby and Amelia took Jazz and Tap, and Audry took Tap and Ballet. We went to their recital today, they all did a wonderful job. The recital was 3 hours long, Matt and I didn't know how much more we could take. It is really fun to watch our girls do their dances, but after three hours we had had enough!

Is this really my life?

I don't want to complain because usually I have a fabulous life. My mom would be the first to tell you that I was spoiled as a child and I think I continue to be spoiled as an adult. I have a great husband and amazingly cute, sweet, smart children. I really have the life I have always wanted..........except maybe today!!!

Never in my entire life have I had a day quite like this one. Maybe some of you have had days similar to mine. It was horrible, actually I don't know if that word is bad enough. I don't even know any words bad enough to explain just what my day was like.

It didn't start out too bad, I got the two older girls off to school without too much drama. The drama started around 1pm when I decided to drive into Covington to try to find some ballet shoes for Audry. We have ordered several pairs but she has extremely wide feet and we haven't been able to get any that fit. We have their recital on Sunday and today was the dress rehearsal so I really needed to find some. I was half way to Covington with Audry and Sophia in the car, I was talking to Matt on my cell phone because my IPod stopped working and I was seeking his expert techy advice. Half the screen is pink and the other half is yellow and the music sounds really weird. He didn't have any idea what might be wrong with it, but while I was on the phone with him the temperature gage on the van shot all the way up to the H. I pulled over right away and turned on the heater trying to get it to go back down. I told Matt I was going to call around and see if someone would come give me a ride home because I had to get back to get the girls from school. I called some friends but couldn't get a hold of anyone so I called Matt back. Luckily for me our friend Adam took the day off work today and was home so Matt called him and he drove over and helped me fix my car( he put some water in the radiator). I am not automotively inclined obviously!!! By this point the kids were drenched in sweat and really upset but I needed ballet shoes so we continued on to the store, they didn't have any shoes that would work but recommended that we go to the hardware store next door and look. I thought the lady was insane but she was right, the hardware store has a little section of dance clothes for little girls (totally weird I know) but they had some that are a couple inches too long but they fit on her feet so we got them. By this point Sophia's diaper was so full and saggy and beginning to leak but I didn't bring the diaper bag so into her car seat she went, wet diaper and all! We made it home just in time to get the other two girls off the bus. I walked halfway to the bus stop and heard Amelia crying really hard, I thought for sure she was hurt so I hurried up to her and asked what was wrong. She told me she was sad that school was over and she was going to miss her teachers. Sad but seriously? Do you have to cry that loud while walking home from the bus?

So next I pulled out the costumes for the dress rehearsal and looked them over, I noticed that the straps on Audry's costume still needed to be sewn on, I pulled out my sewing machine and began to sew them but it didn't work quite right, I pulled it apart and realized there was no bobbin in it. I had to tear out all the crazy knotted up thread stuck on the costume and try again. I got the kids ready to go and noticed we were running late, we should have left about 5 minutes earlier. I ran upstairs to get Sophia up from her nap and as soon as I walked in her room I could smell that there was a problem. She had taken off all of her clothes and her diaper. There was poop all over crib and all the bedding. It was also smeared all over her from head to toe. I noticed that she had thrown some of the bigger pieces all over her floor too. I grabbed a trash bag and threw all the bedding and clothes into it, then used about a billion wipes and picked up all the pieces from the floor. That is when I noticed she had some in her mouth........eeeeeewwwwwwww!!!
I threw her into the tub and scrubbed her down. By this point we were really running late. I got her dressed, left the bag full of nasty dirty laundry in her room and headed out to the dress rehearsal. Of course we got stuck in traffic on the way.

We got to the rehearsal and Sophie still smelled bad so I was searching her all over to try to find the source of the odor. I realized it was underneath all of her finger nails too. I was so grossed out!!! So I am holding a smelly, wiggly baby that doesn't want to sit still and the girls are on stage doing their routines. Matt showed up at the school and took Sophie from me, he was walking around with her and trying to keep her entertained. I was trying to run back stage to give the girls costumes for their next dance and somehow shut my side in the door to the auditorium....don't even ask me how I did it, I have no idea but it really hurt, I have an awesome bruise on my side now :D

We decided to take the kids to dinner when we were done because it was 7:00 and Audry hadn't even had lunch yet.....I know mother of the year! I had to stop by Walmart and get some new clothes for the girls because I knew if we ate in the costumes they would be ruined. I got some 4th of July dresses that looked cute on the hanger, too bad when the girls put them on they were way too short and way too low cut, Shelby about died of embarrassment when she put hers on and new she had to go out in public wearing it....oh well! We got our dinner then Audry started crying and saying her stomach really really hurt. We made it home got the girls in bed and so far she hasn't thrown up......the way my day has gone Im sure it will happen as soon as I fall asleep.

oh yeah and my phone is all messed up today too! Thank heavens for my blog, it is my own personal type of therapy. I didn't even dare drive my Beemer today for fear it would break if I touched it! Tomorrow has to be better right?

How cute is she?

I know I am biased, but seriously is this not the cutest thing you have ever seen? :D

Code Yellow

The girls came home from school today talking about the code yellow. Code yellow means that there is some danger or violence and the school goes into lock down. So basically very scary. It happened during the 5th grade graduation. Some parents were fighting over a seat. Yep that's right, adults got into a physical altercation over a seat in the cafeteria at a 5th grade graduation. It was apparently so bad that the faculty decided to issue a code yellow and the police came and took the parents involved away in handcuffs. Can you imagine if those were your parents? How embarassing. I can not believe that parents would act like that at their child's school. It is outrageous. The principal of the school sent out a recorded voice message to all the parents explaining what happened and saying how proud she was of all the students. She said they all handled it well and it is good to know that they followed procedure and were all kept safe during this "incident".

I am seriously thinking about private school for the future!!!

more from our trip to MN

We stayed with Matt's sister Jill and her family when we were in MN for the wedding. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and for the girls to play with their cousins. Audry really loves her cousin Reagan and they had a great time playing together. I have decided however that maybe I shouldn't let my kids out of the house. They don't seem to be able to handle all the excitement of playing with their cousins without getting hurt over and over and over. I don't know how many times one of them came running up to me crying because they fell down or got a scratch or something like that. At one point they were all playing Red Rover. We looked over and all the kids were running towards Audry and Josh. The next thing I knew Audry was laying on the ground crying, I went to pick her up and see if she was ok and she passed out. No need to be alarmed, she does this quite frequently. I think she has probably passed out about 9 times so far in her life, maybe a little less. The dr. said he thinks she just hyperventilates when she gets upset. So after a few minutes she was fine and out jumping on the trampoline again. Then a few minutes later Amelia started crying, she had jumped up and landed in the splits on the trampoline and kind of hyper extended her legs. She ended up with a pulled muscle but you know how kids are, by the next morning she didn't even hurt at all. So things like this kept happening, it was kind of embarrassing like yeah my kids don't know how to play without getting hurt.
I think the kids had a lot of fun though, they played and got to stay up late and have smores. I know Audry wishes we lived closer to Reagan!

Wedding in MN

We went to our nephew's wedding last weekend. It was great to spend time with family!

Preschool Graduation

Audry finished preschool at Grace Covenant. Our three older girls have all gone to this preschool. It is awesome, we totally love it. She got to have an end of the year program where they sang a bunch of songs and got a diploma.

Karaoke on the Cruise

Onboard the ship they had several activities in addition to all the crazy NKOTB stuff. One of them was Karaoke every night. There weren't a lot of people that did the karaoke, most spent their time on the lido deck hoping to catch a glimpse of their fave New Kid. We went every night, it was so much fun. There were probably 5 people there each night. We actually met a lot of really nice people doing karaoke. Matt was of course the star of the show since there weren't any other men in there.

Kindergarten Graduation

Amelia had a graduation program today at school. They got diplomas and sang some songs. They also gave out some awards.....Here is where I go off on my rant. Ok so in years past they have given out awards too, not all kids receive awards and so there has been some debate about whether or not they should keep doing awards. Their fear is that the kids who don't receive awards will feel sad and left out. My feeling is that those kids who don't receive an award will see that other kids did and they will work harder next year if they want an award. They will also develop coping mechanisms. OK so anyway they gave out some awards this year, they gave out the perfect attendance award, the citizenship award, and the most improved reader award. They completely left out the awards for academic excellence. In previous years there have also been, art, music, academics, and best reader awards. They left these out because they were only given to one kid per class. The child who showed the most skill in that area. This was deemed unfair and harmful to the children's self esteem.......What a load of crap!!! So now instead the kids who are smart and excell at academics have absolutely no incentive to do well. Our society spends so much time trying to make everyone feel equal that we no longer encourage excellence in anything. We are going to end up with an entire generation of people who have never been told no, never been encouraged to push themselves, never been let down, never had to try, and that don't know how to cope with dissapointment. The first time these kids meet rejection they will not know what to do and will go totally crazy and shoot up a school or something. Ok well back to my origional post, here are some pics of Amelia's graduation program.

NKOTB Cruise

We just got back from our cruise to the Bahamas. We had a great time. We flew down to Miami the day before so that we could make sure we got there in time to catch our cruise. They had a special deal at the Marriot if you were going on the cruise so we stayed there and saw a lot of groups of giggling girls sporting NKOTB tshirts. We took a taxi over to south beach and played in the ocean all day, it was great!




In the morning there were a lot of really overly excited girls waiting to take a shuttle to the port of Miami to board the ship. We made friends with some people on the shuttle ride over and then it was fun to see them again from time to time on the ship and kind of feel like we knew someone. The first day there was a party on the Lido deck and the New Kids on the Block came out and sang and talked to us. It was a lot of fun and kind of exciting to realize we were actually on the cruise with the New Kids.




We will have a lot more pics to post on here of the rest of the trip later, but I gotta go get the girls from the bus stop :D

Nikon D40

I got my Mother's Day present early. Matt and the girls got me a new camera. It is really fancy and I am sure that even after years and years of use there will still be things about it that I don't know how to do. I totally love it though. I spent most of the day today taking pictures of the kids outside and trying to figure out how to work it. So here are my first attempts at using my new camera, I think they turned out pretty good :D

new dress

I was bored the other day so I decided to make Amelia a dress. I made her a matching hair bow too (Thanks DeLynne for teaching me how to make bows).

"I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"

Shelby was baptized today! I can not believe my daughter is old enough to get baptized. She was so sweet. She looked so cute dressed all in white! I am proud of her and her decision to be baptized!