Happy Easter!

We have a day of worship, family, food, and fun planned. It will be busy but full of love!

I hope you have a wonderful Easter celebrating the joy of Christ's resurrection. 

Author Celebration

Today the 1st grade had an Author's Celebration where the parents came in and the kids got to read one of the opinion writings they had done during the year. Ellie as you know loves big words and so she has been telling us for the last few weeks that they are sharing their "opinion writings". I think saying makes her feel important!

Ruthie, JP and I went this morning to listen to her. She read her paper about her favorite weather but her other opinion writings were on her desk for us to look at. I loved reading her papers. Ellie is always so quiet and it's fun to get a little peek at her funny personality!


(It's hard to hear Ellie really well in the video so I included the words.)
"My favorite is sunny because it is pretty. The sun helps the plants grow. You can play in sunny weather. It is also very warm and hot. You never need a jacket in hot and sunny weather. The weather is just right for me. It is mostly hot and sunny in spring and summer. I don't like cold and bad weather. In May the warm weather starts. From May to August there is a lot of sunny weather. You can go to restaurants when it is sunny outside. You can play games outside in sunny weather. When it is rainy and cold outside you can not go outside. When it rains outside and the sun comes out there is a rainbow. There are also little droplets that shine on benches, chairs, and tables. The sun shines so proud and bright. She is so pretty. You can drink lemonade and munch on cookies. What is your favorite weather?"

I also took pics of her other writings.

This one was about veggies vs. fruits I think. It was a few pages long but this page made me chuckle. Ellie has a bit of a sweet tooth. :)

Easter Egg Hunt

Today I took the kids to an Easter Egg Hung at Spring Valley Pres. (where Ruthie goes to preschool).  We have a number of friends who go to church there and so they had lots of friends to hunt eggs with.

Emmie, Emmie, and Ainsley..sweet friends!

JP was funny because he doesn't really remember hunting eggs before but he picked up on what to do real quick and loved it! They had a separate section for the toddlers so that was nice.

So excited to find easter eggs!

Ruthie, Emmie and Ellie all hunted in the same area and my friend Danielle kept an eye on Ruthie. Ruthie apparently was a little overwhelmed and unsure of what to do at first but Danielle said once she figured it out she had a blast! The kids all LOADED their baskets with eggs and had such a good time.

So proud of her finds!

After they finished collecting eggs we went in the fellowship hall and had some snacks and emptied out all the eggs. Then of course they had to stuff themselves full of candy!

The Emmies!

PS. When we first got there everyone was in a room together and JP was a bit overwhelmed so he was edging toward an empty corner and this little girl, who was about 1, toddled up to him and gave him a HUGE hug. He was like "WHAT JUST HAPPEND"! I wish I had gotten a picture of his face...it was priceless.

JP hiding in the corner before we started!

Dance Theatre of Columbia 2018 - Red Riding Hood

We just wrapped up Emmie's 2nd season and Ellie's 1st season with DTC. The last month and a half have been busy and exhausting and SO much fun!

This year the show was Red Riding Hood. Ruthie's dance teacher last year and this year was Little Red Riding Hood so that made it extra fun for my girls. They just love Miss. Isabelle.

This year Ellie was a Child of Garland and Emmie was a Troll.

A few weeks ago we had the pancake character breakfast. The kids always love going and eating breakfast with their friends and taking pictures with the main characters! (Ruthie was in Summerville for her weekend with GiGi and PaPa which is why she's not in the character breakfast pictures.)

Emmie and Ellie with the Bluebird, Caterpillar, Crow, Butterfly, and Harlequin.

Emmie, Ellie, Evelyn, and the WOLF!!

Granny

Red Riding Hood

I LOVE this picture of Superman (aka JP) and Isabelle. :)

sweet friends!

Evelyn, Emmie, Ellie, and Ainsley

The Saturday that kicked off production week we had rehearsal all day so during the lunch break a big group of us went to the Children's Garden to eat and let the kids run around. We did this last year as well and it is such a fun tradition!

After a full day of rehearsal last Saturday we ended the day with the cast party. The kids had SO much fun!

I loved that Emmie was not nervous to get out their with the big girls and learn the line dances they were doing.

During production week the girls had to be at rehearsal every night at 5 and stayed until they were done for the night (or if you were Emmie and stayed until 8:30...her medicine just makes her way too tired to be able to stay up real late multiple nights in a row.) Fortunately this year none of our production week rehearsals were too long...we even got out at 7:30 one night! I actually only had to pick them up at separate times once. By the end of the week they were starting to drag though...Emmie didn't even get her jacket off after school before she was asleep on Thursday!

Unfortunately we didn't make it through production week without incident. A door ran into Ellie on Wednesday night during rehearsal. She was running down the hall and someone opened a door and it collided with her face. She looked miserable when I picked her up but kept saying it didn't hurt that bad. She was definitely hurting the next morning but by that afternoon seemed fine. Poor baby didn't really complain anymore until I had to put her makeup on Friday night and on Saturday. I barely touched it and she was in lots of pain so I know it had to have been hurting her a lot more than she was letting on!

Friday night was dress rehearsal and Saturday they had two shoes. They loved getting to finally wear their costumes and they had so much fun backstage with their friends. All the grandparents except for my dad (tax season) came to watch and Ruthie came to the show as well. (JP had a babysitter.) The girls both did a GREAT job. We were all SO proud of them! Part of what Ellie did was sit on the side of the stage and "stage chat". She was very excited about this and had talked about it for weeks. Well she was HILARIOUS. She was totally into it and so expressive. Girl needs to join a drama club! I loved seeing this other side of her personality as she is generally my calm, quieter child.

the grumpy trolls...the moms spent a good 30 minutes after the picture was texted to us trying to figure out who was who!

the other Emmie and Ellie

The girls loved every minute of their DTC experience. I am so thankful for the wonderful friends they have made through dance. I also just LOVE the sweet big girls at our dance studio. They love on my girls and look out for them. One of them really took Ellie under her wing the night she got hurt for which I am so thankful. I love these big girls that are always so kind to the little ones. They let them jump into the middle of whatever they are doing and they are always ready with a hug!

The girls had some friends that came to watch the show.

With their buddy Blair (butterfly, among other parts). 

Isabelle and the girls.

Annie (Fortune Teller, among other parts) is one of their swim team coaches!

We finished out our big, crazy weekend today by going to the Children's Theater's production of Junie B. Jones is NOT a Crook. One of Emmie's dance teachers, Ms. Bailey, was Junie B. Jones. The whole show was wonderful! I took JP, this was the first time he had been to a Children's Theater show, and he loved it too! There were quite a few of our dance friends there to see Bailey as well.

Kate is another one of the sweet girls at dance who always loves on the littles. Ellie sat in her lap through the entire show today! That's Emmie's buddy Peyton on the right...we were excited that she was there too!

Picture with Bailey!