Day 4 - Spring Break

Tuesday: Botanical Gardens with Haley and Carlie! The sprinklers are officially open for the season so we enjoyed another day outside! Addie and another one of Sophia's girl friends, Tommy, showed up too. A fun time was had by all.

Lilly ran her little heart out today. She was running full speed through the sprinklers all day. Sophia led us on a few fun adventures through the park so we could explore and hunt for animals.

And...they both fell asleep in the car on the way home. TWO DAYS IN A ROW!!!!

Day 3 - Spring Break

BEACH BEACH BEACH ! ! !

I took the girls to the beach for the wonderful day in the sunshine. The weather was beautiful. The water was pretty cold, but Sophia didn't care. She jumped and splashed in the ocean for hours. She even made a couple of new friends...and built some sandcastles and a splash pool. She even ran into one of her classmates and got to play with her for a while too.

Lilly hung out with me while I lounged on a towel and watched Sophia playing. Lilly ate all of the snacks and then enjoyed taking some pictures (including this one of me). About a half hour before we left Lilly started to enjoy the sand and began digging and filling her bucket. I think I'll take them back to the beach on Friday.

They both fell asleep in the car on the way home!

See how much fun they had:

Spring Break - Day 2

Sunday: Palm Sunday...Sophia sang in the cherub choir at both services AND the annual Easter egg hunt took place after the 2nd service so we were there ALL morning.

Here's a picture of Lilly and Avery (a boy in her Sunday school class) practicing their walk down the center aisle of church for the palm procession at the beginning of the 11:00 service. When the real moment came, Lilly was so cute. She waved her palm high in the air and smiled the entire time. It was precious.

The girls were separated into two different corrals at church for the Easter egg hunt. Will was with Lilly and I was with Sophia. They only found a few eggs each, but traded them in for a few pieces of candy. After the hunt Will took a few pictures of us. I wish I could morph the last two photos together.

Saturday

We had a super busy Saturday. I ran an Easter egg decorating fundraiser at church from 10 - 12. When I host these events I leave the house at 7:30 to set up and decorate and Will brings the girls to the event when it begins. All the kids had a great time. They each received an Easter basket to carry home their loot. They decorated Easter eggs, played games and made a few crafts.

The girls stayed with me after the event to clean up and then we rushed home, ate lunch and headed out to Addie's church for their Easter party. We've gone for the past three years and each year we bring home as much candy as we usually get at Halloween! It's insane. They girls loved the egg hunt and Lilly especially loved decorating the edibles (cupcakes, cookies and rice crispy treats).

Haley and Carlie went to both events too so the funky foursome (Sophia, Haley, Carlie and Lilly) basically had an all-day play date with each other. Even though they were in sugar overload mode they were really tired at the end of the day.

This day marked the beginning of 9-day off from school break for the girls and there is something for them to look forward to each day....fun fun!

Lilly @ dance class

I only had my phone with me at dance class this week, so I don't have very good footage, but it was one of the first classes in a long time when Lilly participated completely on her own...without me standing right beside her. She did amazing! She's wearing red. Carlie is wearing dark purple.

Here she is doing Thumper, Thumper, Where did you go?



Here she is doing her ballerina walk (she goes last).



Then we went into Sophia's class and watched her tap dance performance. They are preparing for their recital in June. This is The Bear Went Over the Mountain. (She's wearing red too).

Lilly's Easter party at school

I was invited to Lilly's class Easter party today at 11:15. As usual, I was the first mom to arrive. She was thrilled when I walked into the room. She was sitting with two of her friends -
Sophia and Maddie - waiting for their turn to go up to the snack table.

Including Lilly there are only 8 kids in her class. Ms. Brenda asked the class to recite the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme and I'm proud to admit that Lilly was the only one who spouted it out.

Earlier in the day they had an egg hunt outside...which I'm guessing was the highlight of the day. We have two more egg hunts this weekend too.

This was the last day of school for Lilly before spring break. (Sophia's last day is on Friday and her class is having an egg hunt that day. They dyed eggs today.) Will and I are trying to coordinate an overnight trip to Great Wolf Lodge at some point next week as a surprise for the girls.

Taken the same day we saw the "Easter"

Instead of calling him the Easter Bunny, Lilly can't stop calling him just Easter. Too funny. We arrived at the mall to visit him when he was on his carrot break so we had some time to kill and I decided to take a few pictures.

Two more birthday parties

We had a really busy Saturday. The girls went to Haley and Carlie's birthday party on Saturday from 1 - 2:30 and then Sophia had another one from 2:30 - 4:00 for her friend Charlotte. Then we had our neighbors over for dinner at 6.

Haley turns 5 on Tuesday and Carlie turns 3 on Wednesday. They had a joint "Diva/Princess party at the place where Sophia gets her hair cut. All the girls got to wear a costume and have their nails painted and their hair styled in an up-do. Sophia chose a pink princess dress and wanted her nails to be pink. Lilly picked a really puffy gold and white sequenced dress and had her nails painted blue.

Charlotte had a Stars War theme party at her Grandma's house. For the most part it was an outdoor party. They had a mini basketball hoop set up (Sophia didn't feel like shooting any baskets). She also didn't jump in the bounce house (but it was really really small and there were lots of kids in it that she didn't know). She loved the egg hunt and the time spent blowing bubbles.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from both parties.

Bumble Bee

Sophia had her spring concert at school this morning. As you can see, her class was dressed in bumble bee costumes. She looked really cute.

If you have time - watch the videos. They're not very long, but I will warn that it's almost impossible to understand what they are "singing/shouting/speaking". Sophia was one of the loudest (and clearest) ones during her class performance.

Las Vegas

Will and I spent the weekend in Las Vegas celebrating my brother's wedding! Daniel and Meg got married on Friday, April 1 in a charming little chapel called Little Chapel of the Flowers. It was a gorgeous day (91 degrees). They both looked amazing. I can't wait to see all the professional photographs. There should be a lot to review since there were 2 photographers. If you would like to view the ceremony or take a look at all of their photos...here's the link:

We dropped the girls off at Will's parent's house on Wednesday evening. Sophia and Lilly were thrilled to be spending the weekend with Grancy and Big Daddy. Grancy took them to the National Zoo and they saw a blue headed motmot bird, which was the highlight of the day according to Sophia. In fact, it was so awesome, the girls decided to have a blue-headed motmot party and literally emptied every single one of their drawers onto the floor in Lilly's room - creating an enormous mound of clothes - and then they added pillows, puzzles, books, shoes and blankets to the mess! Grancy also took the girls to see the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History. WOW!

Will and I had a whirlwind trip. Because of the tornados in Florida our flight was delayed for over 6 hours and when we finally did catch a flight (a different flight) - it was to San Francisco (2 hours beyond where we needed to go) and then had to backtrack to Vegas. We missed the cirque du soleil show we had tickets for at the Mirage. The casino hotel we called home for the weekend was the Sahara...which is closing at some point this month. We did NOT ride the roller coaster on the top of the hotel, but we did gamble a bit in the casino and ate in the restaurant - which was decked out in Nascar-themed decor.

When the wedding was over we all had a wonderful meal at a Brazilian steak house in the Hard Rock Cafe Building. The wedding cake was delicious! After dinner a few of us went on a walking tour of the Las Vegas strip. It was really fun to people watch. We got to see a water fountain show in front of the Bellagio Hotel and then headed over to check out the dealer/impersonators at a different casino. I found a Wizard of Oz penny slot machine and planted myself down. Will played some electronic poker, but neither of us had any luck! Oh well.

We left on Saturday at 1 so we really didn't have much time to explore before we had to head home. Meg and Daniel went to explore the Grand Canyon on Sunday. I wish we would have been able to make the trek too, but we'll just have to go back one day with the girls. Boy, did I miss them!

More from dance class

March art

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but Sophia's class studies a different theme each month. They studied the Wild Wild West in March and in April she will begin to learn about Beatrix Potter and all kinds of bunnies (Easter included). On Friday Sophia came home with this awesome "wanted" photo - taken earlier in the month. Her teacher is so creative!

They had a party this past Friday to wrap up the unit. Sophia wore her light denim blue shirt, jeans and her lavender bandana around her neck. She looked so cute! Mrs. Peeler sent home this class photo today...it was taken during their party (Sophia is on the right side)...at this point the class was having a marshmallow roast around a camp fire.

Lilly brought home two "green" things this month - a glittered shamrock and a tin foil finger painting in honor of St. Patrick's Day! Plus, I saw some construction paper kites hung on the wall in her classroom today when I picked her up so I guess they got to do some fun decorating today.

My lovely dancers

The girls are really enjoying their dance classes. Sometimes they just look so darned cute I have to take their picture on the way out the door.

Will's birthday

Will celebrated his 35th birthday on Friday. It was an extremely low key celebration. He asked for pizza for dinner...easy! We skipped the presents this year, but did manage to produce a home-made card (a la Sophia) and a cake after the pizza dinner. Sophia was in one of her moods and refused to join us for singing or a even a slice of cake. Instead she sat upstairs by herself and cried.

Because we wanted her to be part of the celebration, but didn't have time to wait for her to cooperate (because the girls and I had tickets to see Annie, the musical, that evening and needed to leave the house by 6:15) we plopped her photograph beside Will and pretended she was there. Lilly, of course, couldn't wait to devour a piece of cake. She helped Will blow the candles out on his cake and then enjoyed a big slice.

Oh my gosh....

Sophia has an adult tooth! And a second one about to break through the gums. Both are behind the two bottom front baby teeth.

I noticed the tooth about a week ago and took her to the dentist today for her 6-month check-up. [A side note: The last two times I took her for a check-up she cried and wouldn't let the dental assistant even look inside her mouth. This appointment was a success. She had a cleaning, flossed and even let them paint on a vitamin.]

Will and I were both paranoid that this tooth was abnormal, but the dentist assured me that everything looks "ok". This strange occurance has a name. It's called having shark teeth (because sharks have multiple sets of teeth and they all appear behind the existing sets). Normally kids loose their first tooth at age 6. She won't be 5 until May so it's pretty early. Luckily the bottom two teeth are a little bit loose so the dentist said that if she wiggles them they should fall out naturally. I would hate to have to have them pulled.

With this all said, Sophia now thinks she's an adult. She's been using the " but I'm an adult" answer for a number of her recent behaviors (like using the scissors which I have cleverly hidden).

Getting wet

Well, water play is still one of the favorite activities in our household. It was in the mid-70's today and the girls spent some time on the deck with the hose. They were filling up Tupperware bowls and watering some dead plants from last summer. They both came inside soaking wet, but they had a great time!

Lately Lilly has been really fascinated with water. She's been filling tons of plastic dishes and cups up with water and "cleaning" with toilet paper. She'll clean anything: books, the fancy couch, her baby dolls, the play kitchen, etc. You can imagine the mess because the toilet paper disintegrates immediately when it gets wet! I've learned that waiting until it dries is best. Then I can use the vacuum to really clean up the mess.

Make-up

Since the girls are constantly going into my make-up and perfume I figured we'd have a beauty hour today. Sophia did Lilly's make-up...and she actually looks really pretty. Lilly did Sophia's make-up. They both "worked" on my face...and I looked good at first until Sophia decided to get carried away and covered my face in eye shadow. They also did my hair.

I hope nobody comes over tonight.

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the popsicle queens!

I love this picture.

Lilly's school conference

In addition to running the entire book fair at Lilly's school last week (which seriously sucked about 20 hours of my time) I also attended her spring parent/teacher conference.

Here's another strike against her school. The front cover of her "report card" had her name spelled wrong. Instead of Lilly, the teacher wrote Lily. At the beginning of the year they called her Lillian, so they DO know how to spell her name. It's never been wrong before...but come on!

She's doing well. Ms. Brenda told me that Lilly is a really caring little girl, she likes to play pretend and she absolutely loves books.

She did it again

She has to climb up on a stool to reach the scissors, but that didn't stop Sophia from cutting her hair again! She definitely got an earful this time, but I honestly thought I had gotten through to her the last time she cut her hair. Once again, she hid the hair (in her stuffed animal bin). She really did a botch job this time. One side is cut back to the ear...too far to actually try to make bangs out of the snip. The other side is a little bit more blended in, but it still looks really bad. I have yet to get a photo of her new style. Every time I look at her I just can't believe it.

Pretty Nails

The girls asked me to paint their nails the other day. They picked one of my bottles - bright pink. I put the lightest coat on that I could...it's still there.