Dance Recital 2014

Ava's third dance recital was on Sunday!  We had rehearsal in the morning, a father's day lunch and recital that evening.  It's always such a fun day.  This was Ava's last year in this 3-6 year old show. (Insert emotional mommy sniffles.)  Next year she will be in the big girl show.  
She's also taking a break from ballet and tap after 3 years.  Ava wants to try jazz and I feel pretty confident that she's going to love it given how theatrical she is! 

Her class was the oldest in the show and they were so great! Ava has danced with most of these girls the last three years. It's just amazing to see how much they have learned and how much they have grown.

Morgan & Ava

Ballet Performance to 'The Sound of Music'

Tap Dance to 'Lonely Goatherd' from The Sound of Music

After the show.....Flowers from Daddy, Nana & Gramps, Grammy & Poppy, Kara & Uncle and sweet Presley.  We are so blessed with amazing family!

A special Father's Day for this amazing Dad

We couldn't be any prouder of this sweet girl.  What a joy to watch her grow and celebrate her achievements!  And what a blessing to share it with family we love so much. 

We love you sweet Ava and we are so very thankful for you. 

Summer is Here!

Summer became official for us last Thursday!  Ava celebrated her last day of Kindergarten!

 

 She has grown up so much in 9 months!

We celebrated with a few of her school friends at the pool and had a blast.  She's made some sweet friends this year. 

So glad to have this girl home all summer!

We have a bucket list of things to do this summer.  Here's what we've been up to so far!

LEGOLAND Discovery Center with Abigail and Preston

"Car rides" with neighborhood school friends at the park.

It's so fun to see friends from school at our pools and parks.  I think we've seen a friend every time we've gone!

Trips to the Library.....

I had an idea to reward her with a prize once she read 20 books and logged them on her reading list.  But she read all 11 books that she checked out while I was at the gym one day last week!  I've decided to up the quota.  Ha!  Our sweet neighbor Sara brought Ava all of the books from her classroom to read this summer.  It was like Christmas morning to her. 

Lots of pool time!

My sweet boy

Enjoying Daddy's summer off from school SOOOOO much!

Dinner parties with church friends

Sweet Caroline time!!

Slip n Slide Trampoline Day....Sprinkler+Dish Soap = Fun

I think we are going to pull out shampoo/conditioner to go for more slip next time :-)

Ava's dance recital is this weekend and VBS starts on Monday.

Yay Summer!

May Happenings

We headed to the pool for the first time last weekend.  It was still much too cold for me but the kids have been begging for three weeks and finally wore us down.  They get SO excited about pool season!

I remember not caring about the water temp when I was a kid and these two proved to be the same.  Jeff and I watched them play for hours and Jeff even jumped in for an hour too.  It was a fun first pool day :-)

Unfortunately we were rained out on Memorial Day so we didn't get to go but we still had a very eventful weekend starting with a park day and picnic on Friday......

And Presley's first dance recital on Saturday!  She was SOOOO great :-)

The kids had a sleepover Sunday night.  We pulled out the sofa sleeper and they played flashlights until after 11:00.  LOVE these kiddos!

Ava headed back to school yesterday for her last 8 days!  She had her kinder performance/end of year celebration yesterday morning. 

This school year has just flown by!  Ava has learned so much and I am so thankful that this kindergarten year was fun and exciting for her.  This girl loves to learn.  She loves to read and write and draw and she blows me away every day with new poems and 'songs' that she writes.  She randomly pulls books off the bookshelf and reads them around the house.  She had her nose in a book the entire time we were at the library on Friday, putting it down only long enough to scan it at check out. 

Jeff took a video of Ava reading The Giving Tree the other night.  It's the sweetest sound to me.  The tiny baby I read books to five years ago is now reading to me.