Today was Scout and Grace's play, Alice in Wonderland.

It was exciting to see their personalities on the stage. Grace eats the attention up! She tries to act like she is embarrassed by the attention, but you can tell she loves it. She is so eager to get to her spot, to be where she is supposed to be and does everything with excitement.

Scout likes the attention too, but is way to "cool" to show it. She struts across the stage, taking her time to get into position. All of her movements are given with an air of "whatever, it's all the same to me."

The girls had a lot of fun doing the play. They are already talking about wanting to be in Rapunzel next year. We'll have to see. I honestly wasn't very impressed with the whole thing. I thought the show was very poorly done. They didn't even do the little things, like closing the back curtain so you don't see people running across the stage. I have to think there are some better acting classes to pay to have my kids in. The script didn't even make sense! I loved watching my kids in the play, but I thought the the show was really boring when they weren't in a main part.

Abi liked the show ok, but only made it through because she had 5 adults to talk to. (She just can't be normal for a picture, even her smiles are camera smiles and don't look anything like her real one. At least in her goofy pictures you can see her gorgeous, big brown eyes!)

Max only liked the songs. Those, he would sing all the words to and be loud enough we worried about him disrupting the people sitting by us. Then he would keep singing the songs after they were over till Jared made him stop. Cute little stink, isn't he?

Turns out, it wasn't his singing that disrupted the neighbors. He made his own game up where he would throw his shoe under the person's chair in front of us and then crawl under their legs to go get it out. At least he tried to be polite about it and kept loudly telling them "Sorry, sorry," over and over.

Eventually, he ended up running up and down the aisle in the back with his grandparents following him. It's a good thing we have Jared's parents at our kids recitals so we can actually get some pictures. I honestly don't know what we would do without them!

The Princess Festival! ~ June 14-17, 2010

This year I went to the Princess Festival three times. I had planned on taking Abi there for her parent daughter date but then Grace wanted to go for her parent daughter date. Then after both the other girls went, Scout felt left out and wanted to go, too. So on Monday I went with Grace. It was great! She loved everything. She got her hair done, she bought her own soap, and the Prince himself fitted her for a slipper. The cast were out playing games with the kids and putting on tea parties and skits.

Wednesday I took Abi to the Princess Festival, but it was so windy they were cancelling our session, so they put us in the one starting right as we showed up and then told us to come back a different day to do all the extra stuff. Even the vendors were all packed up and gone when we got there. It was actually kind of nice, because they had all the characters come into the room at the end of the adventure and Abi was able to get to meet all of them without having to run all over the park looking at them.

Since Abi didn't get to do all of the activities on her day, the whole family went back to the Princess Festival on Thursday. After getting their faces painted and doing some crafts, Jared took Scout on her adventure and we all did the activities together.

Max enjoyed the little of the festival that he experienced, which was playing at the park and eating a candy necklace.

We all had a great time and are looking forward to being able to go again next year, just the one time though, with everyone.

Trip to Washington! ~ June 18-27, 2010

We had so much fun in Washington. We have really missed Angela and her family, and it was nice visiting with Aunt Susan also. Here's the picture highlights!

Scout and Jared got in this big fight on the drive up because Scout fell asleep and leaned on Abi. Abi didn't want her to lean on her so she freaked out and Scout woke up. Scout then insisted that she never fell asleep and would never lean on Abi. Jared told her she did and she got angry, and Jared couldn't just drop it so it lasted forever. Consequently, when Scout fell asleep later on, we had to take her picture to prove to her that we were, in fact, telling the truth and she really did lean on Abi.

Abi and cousin Carson being the slow pokes, walking to the beach.

Me smirking at Jared, and Max thinking it's all pretty funny.

My boys, can't tell they are related can you?

I love this picture of Scout.
Our family, we took several, that's as good as it got.

All the kids, minus Max- Abi, Grace, Carson, Ewen, Jeff, Calista, and Scout.

After this I think Ewen noticed the bugs crawling up the sides and promptly came out.

On the dock.
Seattle from the ferry.

We are looking forward to our next trip out there!

Swimming

This week it seems like my girls have broken through their plateaus with swimming. Scout has been moved up to the Piranha's class at the 10 foot deep end of the pool. She has become a much better swimmer since being forced to swim or half drown.

Grace is eager to catch up to Scout and be put in the Piranha's class also so she has been trying like crazy. Jan said she needed to keep her knees together when kicking and all week has been working on it. Today she got it. She is especially good at the butterfly. Jan said it looks like that's going to be her stroke.

Abi has started swimming on her back by herself, doing chicken-airplane-soldier and moving all over the pool. Today she also started doing freestyle herself with the ball tied to her to keep her bum from sinking.

Next week the older girls are going to take the side breathing class and hopefully by the end of the week they will have that down. Then there will be nothing stopping them!

In non-swimming news, Max is completely weaned now and is much less grumpy now that I have just stopped. We are also looking forward to Jared getting back from his work trip to LA.

Benno's Bear by N. F. Zucker

It is my goal this summer to read more, both with the kids and on my own. One of the main purposes of my own reading it to find more chapter books that I think would be good for my kids. Since I am a very ordered person I couldn't just start grabbing random books and have decided to choose one book going in reverse alphabet order, because I'm a rebel like that.

The first one I have chosen in the Junior Fiction category is Benno's Bear. I really liked this book. It's about an 11 year old boy and his father who have been caught stealing. The father is sent to jail and Benno ends up staying with a police officer as his care giver. I will definitely be reading this to my kids, probably not for a couple years. I think it would be a good one for an eight or nine year old or older. I am not a crier in movies, but books get to me, and this one did it. Maybe that's only because I stayed up to late and had a migraine when reading it, but there it is.