ballerina elsa

Elsa finished up her ballet class last month. She loved going every week. And the best part about this 12-week class was no big recital with expensive costumes at the end! I completely missed the parent observation day when they let parents sit in on the class. But on her last day her teachers let me sit in and watch. Simon was with me and I've never seen him sit still for so long. He loved to watch her dance around.

january happenings.

It was hard to see my mom go after having her around for nearly 3 weeks. I'm so glad she got to spend so much time with us and especially with the kids. Even though she was around to witness some of the usual daily chaos and mayhem around here, she also got a real glimpse of the kids' personalities, something that is hard to do when you only get to visit a few times each year. Simon loved seeing Grandma in the mornings or when she would finish working each day. He would run to her and give her a hug and then go about his business. Sometimes it's really hard to live so far from family.

Some random pictures from January...

Chatbooks! Ben gave me my whole instagram series for Christmas, 23 volumes in all. They are so fun to look at. In fact, the kids can't keep their hands off them and I think they're going to need their own set so they don't ruin mine! I'm still working on printing my blog and keeping up with my blog because it's a much more detailed family photo album, but I'm really far behind (just finished printing 2010) so these chatbooks at least give us something in print, with no extra work involved. I'll probably make one custom book for each of the kids every year that they can keep as their own scrapbook. (If you use instagram, I highly recommend checking out Chatbooks.)

Staying warm by the heater one cold morning.

A hot cocoa stop at Sheetz with Amelia after Activity Days one night. School was delayed the next morning because of a freezing rain forecast so she got to stay up late.

These boys love to "read" books together.

While Ben was working at home one afternoon, I took Oliver out for a special date while Simon napped at home. We went to the discount theater and saw The Boxtrolls. We had the entire theater to ourselves which was fun. He was a little scared of the movie though.

Elsa started a ballet class on Saturday mornings. She loves it. All the other girls and parents were standing around on the first day and the teacher asked me what Elsa's name was so she could find her name tag. When I said "Elsa" everyone in the room gasped. The girls were pretty excited to have an Elsa in their class.

Amelia started a gymnastics class and so far she is loving it.

 We noticed a really horrible smell coming from Oliver's nose. We took him to the doctor and the doctor managed to find the source. Oliver had shoved something up his nose. It was unidentifiable when it came out (we think it had been in there over a week) but my guess was a red berry from the bushes in our yard. Ben's guess was a black bean. The important thing is that it's out and the smell is gone! And hopefully he learned his lesson.

 Another cozy reading spot.

 Not a great picture, but these biscuits were delicious. Caramelized onion and gruyere biscuits (recipe from Smitten Kitchen), like french onion soup in biscuit form. And I love butternut squash so I made a butternut squash and goat cheese frittata to go with them. Good dinner for a gray January day.

ballet recital + a farewell

Amelia finished up another year of ballet. The recital theme this year was "Let's Take a Trip." Amelia's dance represented a trip to England and Amelia was thrilled when she found out they would be wearing tiaras. I took a video from my seat during the recital and you really can't tell which child is Amelia. (She's second from the left at the beginning and disappears behind the curtain a few times. She eventually moves to the front row.) My friend Jessica was kind enough to watch Oliver during the recital since there was no way he was going to sit through an hour of ballet.

Ben's parents finished up their church mission in Maryland (D.C. North Mission) and started their drive back to Utah a few hours before the recital. They stopped by on their way out of town to say goodbye. It was so fun for the kids to have them nearby and get to spend a lot of time with them this past year. We will miss them but I know they are anxious to see their family and friends back home.

ballet.

For some reason I never got around to posting pictures and video from Amelia's ballet recital back in June. We tried out a different studio this past year and really loved it. It's smaller and much less crazy/competitive than the first place we tried. And the dance recital wasn't such a production (no long rehearsals and expensive costumes and make-up). The teacher is remarkably good with children and Amelia had a lot of fun in class. She learned a lot more in this studio and really enjoyed herself. She just started again a few weeks ago.

The dance recital theme was "Headlines in History" and Amelia's class did a dance based on the 100th anniversary this past spring of the gift of the cherry trees from Japan to D.C. Her costume was really pretty and her dance was very fitting of the "headline." She enjoyed performing and was excited to celebrate at Krispy Kreme after the performance. My amateur video of the dance is at the end of the post. We were sitting pretty far back and I'm still cursing the man who just had to return to his seat 5 seconds before the dance ended and block my view.

These pictures were taken during the middle of the year when parents were allowed to observe one of the classes.

The cherry blossom dance (Amelia is third from the left):

the cherry blossom dance.

Amelia has been going to a new dance studio this year and we absolutely love it. Her teacher is fantastic. Amelia just started learning her ballet dance for the end-of-year recital. Her class is doing a dance based on the 100th anniversary of the gift of the cherry trees from Japan. (Um...waaaaay better than last year's "Some day I'll be Miss America" pink feather fest.)

Amelia really wanted to perform her dance (well, the first 30 seconds that she's learned) by all of the cherry trees when we were at the Tidal Basin. She tried to teach Elsa as well. (You will see in the first few seconds how that ended.)