Own the Runway - Spring Dance Recital

Paige has pretty much chosen to pursue dancing for a while.  Her latest session of classes started in January and culminated in a Spring dance recital.  This time around she took a lyrical/contemporary dance class.  She is actually pretty good, one of the best dancers in her class.  She even got her right splits down.  If we were willing to invest a ton of money and time she could probably join the competition dance team but honestly, we are not willing to go that far.  So for now she is going to keep taking classes at the studio, but we aren't going "all in".

Back to the recital, the theme was "Own the Runway".  Paige's group danced to the song, "Who Says?"  It was very cute and they did a great job.  I helped backstage with her class during the show.  It  can get pretty hectic, the show was 3.5 hours long start to finish but fortunately my group was really good and easy to handle.

Here are some pictures:

Backstage pictures

Showing off, getting ready for the finale

Paige on the far left

Look How My Garden Grows

This year because Dave was home, we were able to get our garden in early.  We did it during Mother's Day Weekend and then promptly had a frost on Mother's Day.  Ughh.  Every year we have friends plant early with no problem.  I always dutifully wait and think, "I should have planted earlier too!"

So this year when Dave offered to help me get the garden ready and it was only a few days before the traditional midwestern, "don't plant before Mother's Day" I figured lets go for it.  Then three days later I was out covering my plants because of a frost warning.  In the end, a couple of my tomato plants had some frost damage on the leaves but they survived.  The bean plants fared the worse.  I lost one plant and the others were more heavily damaged, but fortunately everything seems to have bounced back.

Hooray!  The garden is growing well, and next year I'll just wait until after Mother's Day.  I learned not to press my luck.

Holy Cow! Can You Say Busy

Well, when it rains it pours.  And sometimes when you agree to do things too far in advance, you don't realize that it is all going to hit at the same time!

The past two weeks, I have pretty much bounced from one big activity or event to the next.  It has been crazy.  I can write about it now because most of it is behind me, and I have a huge sense of relief.

Ashley's school soccer season is very condensed this year.  She has three games a week, which is a lot. 

On top of it, Paige has had some big projects from school.  One was to build a medieval castle.  What?!  That's hard!  And it requires a lot of parental help.  I'm not a builder, so it took a while to figure out just how this was going to be done.  She also had to do a lot background research, but in the end, I had her paint a bunch of cardboard and we built a castle.

The day after the castle was due, was the school science fair.  This was the first ever science fair held by her elementary school and guess who was in charge of organizing it??  I'll give you a hint it starts with an "M" and ends with an "E".  Yep, ME.

On top of organizing the science fair, Paige was also participating.  Fortunately, I made her do her experiment over Spring Break, but we still had to organize the data and put her board together.  Dave also helped a lot with this because honestly, I was just stretched too thin.

Also thrown in all of this was a baby shower I helped to host, Ashley's choir recital and a math competition, epic flooding in our area due to torrential rain storms, Paige's school musical with a costume I had to make, and the plethora of church activities and meetings including a Teacher Appreciation dinner for the youth and their school teachers.  CRAZY

The Infamous Castle Black

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not a fan of homework projects that just end up being parent projects. Well, Paige had a doozy this year. In her AT (academically talented) class they read a novel about a medieval night and the enrichment project was to research medieval castles and build your own.

Okay, Paige did the research and learned all the vocabulary - she knows what ramparts, coat-of-arms, and drawbridges are. The hard part was the building. I don't build, Dave doesn't build. Honestly, I truly thought about making a castle of cake or rice Krispy treats, but that was going to be too complicated.

In the end we used cardboard boxes and paper towel rolls. She painted all the boxes black and I helped her hot glue things in place. She also painted a moat and made little pennants. It was a lot of work at a very busy time for our family but Paige was so happy with the final results. And I quote, "I love my castle SO much. I think it's going to be the best."

Definitely the best this mom could do!

I Dreamed a Dream

Ashley sang, "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables for her school choir recital solo. She has been practicing before school and during lunches for a few weeks. She has also been a little shy about singing in front us, so I was looking forward to seeing her performance at the recital.

Honestly, I do not have the vocal talent to do anything like this and I don't have the guts either. Basically, the performers go up by themselves in front of an audience and sing. There is also a clinician there who takes notes and then gives feedback to the vocalist right in front if the audience. This involves asking them to re-sing certain measures, etc. It's a great experience but it's definitely not for everyone.

Here is a video of Ashley's performance, she is a little quiet so turn it up. Dave and I are very proud of her. She would also like me to mention that her hair looks bad because she just got out of the shower. She had an away soccer game right before, so she had just enough time after to run home and shower before her recital.

Ashley's Math Competiton

Ashley competed in her school district's junior high math competition again this year and her team took 2nd place! Her school took first place overall, as they have every year for the past 6 plus years!

Way to go Brainy Bulldogs!

Sick Day Entertainment

Paige has had to stay home from school the past two days. I think she has Fifth Disease. A very mild viral illness, but communicable so I kept her home from school. Other than a runny nose and a rash on her face the second day she has been okay. So pretty much she and I have just been hanging out together.

The timing of her illness was good and bad. At school she missed two days of ISAT testing that she will need to make up, but at home she was around to help me get her room ready for the new bedroom furniture that was delivered.

I've had to change my schedule up a bit because she has been home, but I have had my fair share of entertainment:

1- One night Paige woke up with a bad dream. When I mentioned it to her the next day she said, very seriously, "Mom, I had a very bad dream about a possum." She was sleeping on her mattress on the floor because we had to move her old bed out in preparation for the new one to be delivered. Apparently in her dream a biting possum crawled up through the vent into her bedroom to get her while she was sleeping on the floor.

2- She and I were listening to the Les Mis soundtrack while in the car. When the song "Master of the House" came on Paige said, "I don't like this song, can we skip it?"

I said, "you don't like 'Master of the House'? Okay."

Paige - "Mom it's 'Master of the A __ __". (She spelled it out "A", "S", "S")

We then had a big discussion, in which I had to convince her that it was "house". I even pulled over and ejected the cd to show Paige the title! After she agreed it was house, she said, "okay, we can listen to it.".  Funny girl, at least she was trying to be good.

3- We also had a bird adventure. While driving through the neighborhood, we saw a HUGE hawk sitting in a neighbor's tree, we pulled over to watch it and take pictures. Paige rolled her window down to get a picture. Then we decided to use a bird call app on my phone to see what would happen if the bird heard another hawk call. Let just say as the hawk took flight and swooped by our van, we both had moment of thinking, "uh oh, I hope he doesn't try to fly in through the window!" More exciting than we expected, but we did get a very close up view of that huge bird.