Anna's Ballet

Here's Anna's dance from her actual ballet recital. Love this sweet girl!!! The quality is terrible, and I took over filming for Jared at the beginning so he could watch, so the camera gets really wobbly for a few seconds. The girl on Anna's left is the only one in the class younger than Anna, and the girl on Anna's right is that little girl's "big sister."

Dance Recital

Anna's first dance recital is done, and we all loved it! She takes a 90 minute (!) class once a week, where she does 45 minutes of tap and ballet and then 45 minutes of gymnastics.  Anna is the second youngest in her class, and the classes are pretty tough on her because they're so long.  She is a big, and I mean BIG, Mama's girl, so she pretty much cried every day when I dropped her off at dance (and school and the gym and anywhere else where Mommy isn't there).  The studio doesn't let the parents watch - at all. It's annoying because you have no idea what your kids are actually getting out of their lessons, but all of the studios around here do it that way.  My goal for her recital was for her to make it out on the stage.  I was pretty sure she would just be too shy to do anything else, and I had never really seen her doing anything around the house for it.  I am happy to say that I was WRONG. This is a short video from her dress rehearsal. My seats were right at the stage at the rehearsal, so I couldn't see her feet, but it's the shortest video I have, so it's the easiest one to upload.

This costume was so cute! 

Warming up before they went on.  She was taking this part pretty seriously!

"Animal Talk"

The flowers her Daddy and her big brothers got her. She loved them. :)

Preschool Graduation

Austin is going to be a Kindergartener! His preschool does a really cute graduation ceremony. They sang song after song (after song), showed a video slideshow of the kids throughout the year and presented each family with a big scrapbook of all of the activities they did throughout the year. My favorite picture in the scrapbook is a picture they took of Austin at the beginning of the year standing in front of a fence and then a picture of him in front of the same fence at the end of the year. Our little Austin is a weed, and he is growing so fast! He will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night crying from the growing pains he has in his legs. Jared tracks the kids growth on a wall, and Austin grew more than an inch from April to May! During the program, Austin was to come into the crowd and choose a parent to bring up to the stage to dance with him. The sweet little boy agonized over the decision because he was afraid of hurting the other parent's feelings. He has such a gentle heart underneath his rambunctiousness. In the end, he chose Mommy to get up and "Hula, Hula" with him, which I'm sure Jared was thrilled with! Next year, Austin will be in Mrs. Hines' Kindergarten class. She is perfect - sweet and huggy - exactly what you'd want for a Kindergarten teacher.

Disney!

Another wonderful Disney trip under our belts. It was such a great experience, and I am ready to start planning our next trip already! Anna is by far our best napper and will just decide she wants to sleep when she gets sleepy. Finally, we are those parents that have a kid asleep in the stroller! We've always been so jealous of those parents. As a special added treat, Grandma accompanied us on three of the days. It was so great having her with us and getting to experience all of the Disney magic with her. Since Grandpa works in Orlando now, he was able to see the kids twice also. We met Grandma and Grandpa at Downtown Disney on our first night there, and on our last night there, they joined us for a character meal at Chef Mickey's. The kids were so excited to see all of the characters, and they were delirious with having Grandma AND Grandpa there for it, so it was quite a bit of silliness. Austin was tall enough to ride almost every ride this time, so he was able to ride Space Mountain and Everest that he wasn't able to ride the last time we went. Anna was in absolute Mickey Mouse heaven, and she was so excited to get to actually MEET the "real" Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Donald and Daisy. I'm in the process of putting together a slideshow of the hundreds of pictures we took, but in the mean time, here are a few.