Ella's First Day of Ballet

This is the day Ella's been waiting her whole life for -- ballet.  Of course she and Lily have pretend ballet classes at home all the time, but this time she actually got to go to the studio.

Her dance class name cracks me up.  It's a new class called "Pretty Princess Creative Movement," created only for 3 and 4 year-olds.  I asked Ella if she wanted to take that or a regular ballet class.  "Um, the Princess one, Mommy."  Of course.  Why did I even ask???

Ella always comes to Lily's ballet classes and loves watching through the one-way mirror.  This time it was reversed.  Lily loved watching Ella and the other tiny dancers.  It's a really fun girl bonding thing we share each week.

The traditional "dance train" going into class.  Precious.

I loved watching.  Ella has been looking forward to this for so long that it came as no surprise that when the other girls were acting crazy and rolling all over the floor and doing who knows what else, Ella took ballet completely seriously and danced her little heart out.  She cracks me up.  I loved every second of it.

Random Summer Happenings

Our neighborhood is across the street from a farm that holds regular events.  We love this farm so much.  They have all sorts of animals and the kids love seeing them.  They recently had a barbecue with a bouncy house and face painting and all of it was free!  It happened on an otherwise blue day, and so it couldn't have come at a better time.

A friend made me aware that a local large company sponsors a free science camp in each local city each summer.  This year's theme was magnetism.  I was fortunate enough to get both Lily and Skyler enrolled because the sign up was online and filled within a minute or two.  Skyler was on a waiting list and made it in!  They had a blast doing science for a whole week and I had a blast counting it as school with no effort on my part.  :)

"James wouldn't fit on my name tag."

On the final day we got to see what the kids had been learning all week and I was seriously impressed.  Most of them knew more than me about magnetism.  Lily and Skyler had a presentation on electromagnetism and were super cute.  Hopefully we can get them enrolled next year too!

Family Olympics

I ma slightly obsessed with the Olympics and was so excited to watch them this year.  The kids wanted to know why on earth I was spending so much time watching TV and finally they got glued to the Olympics as well.  I'm not sure whether I should be proud or not....  Anyhoo, for FHE we had our own family Olympics  complete with several different events.  Each of us received our dessert afterward in the order of how many events we won.

Ella and Skyler's birthdays

This year I told the kids that no one would be having a birthday party.  We would be taking the year off and just do simple family birthday celebrations.  I'm so grateful we did because July turned out to be a very stressful and busy month.  We did promise Lily and Skyler that now that they were big enough and strong enough swimmers, that we would take them to Emerald Point -- a really fun water park -- for their birthdays.  We had a ton of fun there.

Ella turned 4 and requested birthday brownies with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on top.  It was very specific.  :)  Her major birthday activity was going to get her ears pierced, but then I looked online and remembered that you can't go swimming for a few weeks after you get your ears pierced so we decided we would get that done when the pool closes in September.

Skyler turned 7 and requested a chocolate ice cream cake with mint oreo ice cream.  It was easy enough to make.  He ended up with tons of Legos for his birthday -- 3 of which were Star Wars lego sets.  He got a tie fighter, an x-wing, and a sith transporter which was a big deal because he loves Darth Maul.