School Dance Festival

My dad and I went to the school dance festival today.  A lot of the elementary schools around here do it.  And everyone acts like you should know what the dance festival is.  So this was my first experience.  Maybe its a Utah thing.  My mom said her school had a dance festival like this when she was a kid growing up in Salt Lake.  No explanation was given as to what it was.  The kids told me their grade had been preparing a dance and someone mentioned off hand to me that you should bring a lawn chair.  Hmm.  So basically it was a school wide dance performance where each grade does one song that they have prepared a big dance to.  They perform outside.  So you need to bring a lawn chair.  Now I know...

So here are John and I on our lawn chairs.  Some people had come several hours early (with their lawn chairs) to reserve seats.  We came about 10 minutes before show time and sat a few rows back.  No biggie.

Here we are waiting for the big show to start.

Grant (or the preschoolers) performed first.  They did an activity song medley with the Chicken Dance as the main theme.  Grant did a good job remembering the moves.  I think he was dressed as a dog or a bear here.

The kids perform in a big rectangle on the blacktop and parents sit on all four sides.  So you have to know where your kids class is going to face to get the best seat.  All three of my kids ended up facing different directions so we had to walk around to the different sides of the big rectangle to see them.  A lot of other parents were doing the same thing.

Anna's grade danced to the Katy Perry song Firework.  So they all dressed in red, white and blue and did a cute firework inspired dance.  Here is Anna dancing by her friend and classmate.

There was a little cordoned off walkway for the students to get into the big rectangle to perform.  Here is Matthew with the rest of the third grade walking onto the stage.

Matthew's grade did a version of Old MacDonald that broke into What Does the Fox Say? part way through the song.  They did a great job too.  I was impressed that they all remembered the moves so well.  They all had drawn on fox noses and whiskers.  I did my best to draw his on before school.

John was kind of done by the end of the show.  He was tired from walking all around to watch people.  He's not asleep here.  Just conscientiously objecting to standing up.  He also removed his shoes and didn't want to wear them again.  We got to go in to Grant's preschool classroom after that and have snacks so John liked that.  So now I know what a dance festival is.  We've lived in lots of military communities where the schools have high turnover each year and there are lots of new people.  In this community there is not a lot of turnover and everyone kind of assumes you know how things are done.  The school staff and families here are as nice as they can be but there is never any explanation of what anything is to the parents...'cause, you know, its just like how we did it last year!  

But the dance festival was cute and the kids all did a great job.  The kindergarteners danced to ABC by the Jackson Five which seemed apropos and one of the older grades dressed as zombies and did a dance to Thriller which was fun.  So now I've had the "dance festival" experience.  :)  And I know to bring a lawn chair!!

Haircuts

Cutting little boy hair is a bit tricky.  I cut my boys hair a lot, but I don't feel like I'm very good at it yet.  Scott gives me lots of tips (since he's gotten so many haircuts in his life).  Grant's hair was getting very shaggy so we decided to cut some hair!  Scott cut Grant's hair (he usually just gives me tips while I do it).  He did a great job!  Here is Grant's after hair.  I helped a little on the top. Grant got a lollipop after his hair cut and Emma wanted to take it from him.  Grant looked even more blond after his haircut.  

Here is Grant's before hair (a few weeks ago).  Getting pretty shaggy.

You can also sort of see John's before hair.

I cut John's hair.  His wasn't quite as long, but still needed some touching up.  He did great sitting still for his haircut, but didn't want to hold still for an after photo.

So busy!

Here's John's before hair (he's the one on the right).  Hard to see but it was getting kind of long.

And Emma also got a hair cut.  She doesn't have much hair but she has this one long strand - much longer than the rest.  So Scott and I thought maybe we should trim it a little.  She wasn't happy about it.  Here she is before her trim.

And after.  Not sure it was better - now she's even more sparse on top.  But now its done.  You can't undo it.  It'll grow more.  I hope.  You can see she wasn't that happy after her haircut either.  She got a lollipop out of it and that made her feel a little better.

Emma's Angry Face

Emma is 18 months old now!  She started going to the nursery at church last week and did great (no crying, no apparent nervousness).  She is growing up and likes to try to do new things.  She wants to sit at the table and feed herself.  She has so many new words.  She can kick a soccer ball very well and is very enterprising when it comes to getting things from high places.  She usually has a great, can-do attitude about things.  But she does not like being reprimanded.  I guess nobody really likes that.  When we tell her no or try to correct something she is doing (like screaming in a restaurant) she often gives us her mad face.  Here it is.

She eventually gets over it but has to scowl at us for a while.

I'll take the scowls over a big tantrum any day.

Anna's Dance Recital

Anna took a dance class this spring.  She wanted to take gymnastics but I couldn't get her in - youth programs are severely impacted in this area.  We've lived a lot of different places, many of them with lots of children living in the community and I've never had so much trouble getting my kids enrolled in youth activities.  But there was one dance class available for her age.  So I signed her up for dance.  I think she had fun.  This past week was her end of year recital.  Her class was ballet inspired and they danced to the song When Somebody Loves You from Toy Story 2.     Here she is in her costume getting ready for her dress rehearsal.  I think she liked wearing the costume.

And showing us one of the poses from her performance.

We were supposed to curl her hair for the performance.  My mom helped.

Anna on the stage during her dress rehearsal.

The girls in her class were 6 and 7.

And here's the program from the performance.  Each little dance class did a performance.  Most of the classes did some kind of modern or hip hop kind of dance.  Anna's was more of a ballet type of dance.  I liked that style the best.

And on the night of the big performance.  Anna is on the right.  She got to be the "line leader" for their big dance move across the stage.  So that was exciting for her.

And here's Anna after the performance with her dance instructor.  She did a good job at the performance and she seemed to have fun.  I asked her if she would like to take dance again and she said, "No. I'd like to take gymnastics."  So, we should have an easier time getting her into a gymnastics class after we move.  At least I think so.  We'll see.

Tulip Festival Half Marathon

Last weekend Scott and I ran the Tulip Festival Half Marathon at Thanksgiving Point.  We had been training for it for a couple months - doing progressively longer runs every Saturday plus running 4 or 5 other days during the week.  Scott, who has been working very long hours at his job was even able to fit in the training.  All week the forecast called for rain and thunder during the run, but on the morning of we ended up with great weather.  It got stormy later in the day (the race was at 7am) but stayed nice in the morning.  Here we are at the finish line.

Here we are the day before, carbo loading at Olive Garden. The week of a long race (in general) you taper off on your running.  And many people find it helpful to load up on carbs the day before, so you have lots of stored energy on the day of the race.  Spaghetti is a common day before a race meal.  Grant loaded up on carbs too.  :)

Here I am on the morning of eating my power bar breakfast.  I prefer the old "classic" power bars for a pre-race boost.  But they can be hard to find now.  Glad I found one.  It was a little cold when we started running (37F?).  I wore gloves for a large part of the race, but it warmed up.

And at the finish line.  Tapering and carbo loading did the trick and I felt great the morning of the race and had plenty of energy.  The extra energy didn't make me run any faster than usual :)  just feel good (and not depleted) during the run.  And we ran the whole thing.  No walk breaks, baby!  I have run this distance many times, but never in a race, so that was kind of interesting.  Running a half marathon is more than half as easy as running a full marathon.  Because its not just running two half marathons.  It's running two half marathons back to back.  So each new mile is right after running all those other miles.  It's a calculus problem if you think about it.  Don't think about it too much.  See my marathon HERE, Scott's marathon HERE.  This was the longest race I've run since that marathon in 2009.  But I've been pregnant a lot since then, so I've been otherwise engaged.

Anyway, we had a nice time on the run.  My feet didn't hurt at the end (unlike the full marathon).  I ate several bananas (pieces) during and only had to choke down one goo pack (I hate those things, but still use them since they are so convenient and quick to consume).  And I wasn't even that sore after (unlike the marathon where I could barely walk the next day).  So half marathons are pretty great.  At the last week of training I was ready to swear off running farther than 7 miles at a time forever...or at least for a long time.  But now a week or so later, it doesn't seem so bad.  :)

You can see me eating a nice glazed donut from the finish line!  I only made it through half of the donut (half for a half marathon) before I had to give up.  What a missed opportunity!

Scott ran with me at my slower pace.  He's faster than me (with those long legs) but it was fun running together.  It would have been ok if he ran his own pace, but it was nice to be together.

When we ran the marathon he didn't get to participate in the actual race at the end (he ran on a treadmill at a gym in Afghanistan), so he thought it was cool there was swag at the end and a medal!  Fun!

The run was very pretty.  The first quarter of the race (3.25 miles or so) was on roads around Thanksgiving Point (some of them construction zones or right by the freeway.  The second quarter was through the Thanksgiving Point Gardens, chock full of tulips.  It was so beautiful and lots of the runners near us were stopping to take pictures.  We didn't stop, just soaked it up.  The last half of the marathon was through the golf course around Thanksgiving Point.  It was beautiful but had a lot of gradual ups and downs (little golf course hills).  For the most part they weren't that bad, but some of the steeper ones slowed me down a little.  By the last mile I was ready to get off that golf course.  :)

So I like the kinder gentler world of half marathons.  Cause full marathons are ROUGH!!  :)  During the training I kept commenting on how this was not nearly as hard or intense as marathon training.  I  think Scott agreed with me.  Glad I got to run with Scott and the weather cooperated.  Now I will go back to running shorter distances.  At least for a while.  Nice short distances like 6 miles.  :)

Daddy Daughter Dance

This past weekend Scott took Anna to the Daddy Daughter Dance at her school.  Anna was very excited that he was going to be in town for it and told him just what she wanted him to wear.

Walking over to the school

Walking into the school

Anna had a lot of fun at the dance and saw some of her friends there.  This was during a girls only dance I think.

That's Anna in the center front dancing

Here are Scott and Anna at the dance.  Anna has a very loose front tooth that she's been wiggling a lot so her gums were a little red there.  It looks like Scott lost his tie.  I hope Anna approved that wardrobe change.  Anna said it was lots of fun and said Daddy had a great time and that she had never seen him so happy.  :)  So it sounds like it was a great party.  Glad they got a chance to go together.

Warmer Weather

The weather is getting warmer.  Ever so slowly.  And we've actually backslid this week into rain and dreary coldness.  But we did have some warmer days recently.  Warm enough to play in this little inflatable pool.  Emma is semi-obsessed with sunglasses.  Here's a pair from the dollar bin at target.

Everyone had to fight over them.

On another day Emma had fun throwing things in the water.

She's learning about gravity

Carting my pals around to run errands.  I think we were at Papa Murphy's getting a pizza here.  These two like to play and wrestle and fight and be wild and silly together.  They are quite a pair!

I took Grant and John to Matthew's soccer game (the girls stayed at home with Grandma and Grandpa).  It was still a little chilly, but warm enough for some outdoor exploration.  The soccer field was at a park on the north side of Utah lake and there was a lot of wild areas to explore.  Grant picked a bunch of dandelions and John helped.

I think I want to have a little more unstructured free time to explore in the future.  

They had so much fun!

Grant and John discovered this concrete holding pond and thought it was the best thing ever!  Grant gathered his dandelions and sat by it for a while.  He told me it was a "beautiful view."

John brushing his teeth.

I just liked this picture.  He is getting more grown up and taking more responsibility for himself.

Grant being goofy with a magnifying glass.

Breaking out the shorts!!  After months of sharing a room with the wild John and Grant, I finally moved Anna up to share with Matthew.  They have shared a room lots in the past, including most recently in Illinois.  They are only 17 months apart so up to a lot of the same tricks.  Other times we've tried to let them share while here in Utah, they fought and teased each other.  But I decided to try again because Anna is in such a different place, maturity wise, than her roommates Grant and John.  Anna wants to read a book or do a craft at night while John and Grant want to jump on everything, scream and throw things.  Anna would put in her ear plugs (donated by mom) and try to ignore it by burying her head in a pillow.  So we tried again to move her in with Matthew.  So far its been working great.  Grant and John did miss her after she moved away, but they are surviving.  Now I read to the two boys (who are still somewhat wild and silly at bedtime) then I go up to read Matthew and Anna their chapter book (without any distractions from screaming brothers).  Most nights Anna and Matthew are quietly reading or doing Legos or working on some quiet project at bed time.  So I think its working out and definitely better for Anna.  She did feel like she needed to dress up in Matthew's clothes one day and pretend to be him.  Matthew was a good sport about it though.

In California they won't be sharing a room, so this will just be temporary.  We're hoping to move in the next month and a half.

And we're always happy when Daddy comes to see us.  He and John took a nap on the couch.  Only four more weeks of school and hopefully our house will be done soon!