Spring dance recital - Kitty

Thursday, June 16, 2011
Kitty's last ballet recital was the evening before we left town for Washington. Things were pretty crazy busy at the time. She had a dress rehearsal in the afternoon and then her recital was that same evening. Luckily her group performed towards the beginning of the program and then we hurried and left right after they were finished to get home and finish preparations for our trip. Kitty did really well and I will post some video of it when I get to it. She has seemed to enjoy the class overall but I had to fight her each week to just get her to go to the class. Right now I don't think she will be taking a class again in the fall. Plus the studio we were taking ballet and tumbling at just went out of business so we will need to find a new place to go. Kitty's teacher is now teaching at a new studio that isn't too far so I will have to look into it. The classes are cheaper then we have been paying but I will have to see if we can fit any of the classes into our schedule. I would like to keep Blondie in tumbling and I will possibly sign Kay up for a ballet class - I think she would love it! Plus it will be weird for her having Kitty gone all day long next year when she starts 1st grade.

Ballet recital - Spring 2010

Saturday was also Kitty's end of the year ballet recital. She has had fun in the class and will continue to take classes next year. I've been impressed with her ability to go up on stage and not freeze up there, but just perform with the rest of the class! I can't believe that she will start kindergarten in August!

Lining up with her class before going on stage.
On stage - Kitty is on the far left

Healthy again?

So on Wednesday I was hoping that Blondie would be feeling fine and that we could get on with our week. Well, that was not to be. At breakfast Kitty ate a few bites of cereal and then she threw up all over herself. Unfortunately she had her last ballet class that morning - a dress rehearsal for their recital this Saturday so I had to keep her home from that. She wasn't too happy about that! After that little episode though she felt and acted perfectly fine the rest of the day. Blondie on the other hand still didn't feel up to doing much and ended up spending most of the day laying around on the couch and not eating much again.

Yesterday though everyone seemed back to normal and so far no one else has come down with anything. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

Kitty's ballet class

Kitty has been taking a ballet/tap dance class on Wednesday mornings while the older kids are at school. She absolutely loves it and it is fun seeing another side of her. The teacher is really good with little kids and the dance studio is not too far from our house. They had their Christmas performance on Saturday, December 12th and the class before they wore their costumes and let the parents come in and watch their dress rehearsal. When I get a moment I will upload the video of the performance.

Busy days are here again!

Well, now that school is fully in the swing of things, so are all of the extra-curricular activities. So here is a look at the activities going on throughout the week:

• Monday - I am helping out with Luke's class twice a month from 2-3. This is the one day where we don't have anything scheduled after school...


• Tuesday - M&M has band after school until 4:30, Luke has cub scouts from 4-5, and my cub scout group meets from 7-8.


• Wednesday - Kitty just started a ballet/tap class which meets from 10:15-11:15. Luke has soccer practice from 5-6 (and I am the coach).


• Thursday - I am helping out Blondie's class twice a month in the morning. M&M has band followed immediately by soccer practice until 5:45.


• Friday - Every other Friday M&M has activity days from 2:15-3:15, Blondie just started a tumbling class from 4:30-5:30 and I finally got M&M and Luke signed up for piano lessons which will be at 4:00 and 4:30.


• Saturday - Soccer games in the morning. Thankfully the latest games this season are at 12:30 so the games don't have to take up the whole day. The downside is that there are a couple of games scheduled at the same time so I go to Luke's game to coach while DH gets to take the rest of the family to M&M's game so I don't have the distraction of having them around.

Blondie's first ballet recital

Here is the video of Blondie's class (3-4 year olds) in the ballet recital. They did a full length version of the Grinch - set to ballet. Each of the different classes did a dance to one of the songs and the older girls did some of the in-between stuff as well. The room where this took place was completely crowded with standing room only - but when you were sitting in a seat you couldn't see most of what was going on on the stage because of how the room was laid out. Blondie did a really good job though and loved that we were all there to support her. She loves watching the video of herself.

Unexpected repairs

On Friday we all piled into the van to go to the White Family Christmas Party. DH was driving and on the way there, the car was making a horrible grinding noise every time he hit the brakes. It was a painful drive there and back home again, the whole time wondering what was causing the noise and why we have never heard it before. I drive the van almost everyday and I'm sure I would have noticed that noise before (especially since it seemed to be coming more from the driver's side). We were pretty sure it had something to do with the brakes, but we were hoping that maybe there was something frozen in place since our high temperatures for the past week have been below freezing. After we got home, DH took off the front driver's side tire and sure enough, the brakes pads were completely gone and were grinding into the rotor - not a good thing. DH did some looking online and our hope was that he could figure out how to take the rotor off and find a place that could resurface it for us.

Unfortunately, this was horrible timing because we had a full day of activities planned for Saturday. M&M had her tumbling performance across the valley at 8:30 in the morning and then we were going to spend the day at my parents house decorating cookies and helping them put up their Christmas tree and then we were all going to attend Blondie's ballet performance in the evening.

So we decided to just pile everyone in our other car to make it to M&M's performance and then we drove to my parents afterwards and left the kids there while DH & I went back home to look into repairs for the van. Luckily we ran into someone at the tumbling performance from our ward that DH thought might know something about cars and so he asked him where we could go to get a rotor resurfaced. He said that Checkers does it at their store and it only costs about $10 dollars! So on our way home we stopped at Checkers, bought a repair manual for our van, bought some new brake pads and asked about getting a rotor resurfaced. They said it takes about an hour to do and said it would be about $11.

So DH & I went home and figured out how to take the brakes & rotor off and then took it to Checkers. They said it would take about 45 minutes to an hour and would be $9. So we left it with them and then went out to lunch (I must say it was nice not having the kids with us). Then we stopped at Sears and bought some halogen work lamps to give some more light in the garage and then went home to see if the store had called yet. Well, they had but unfortunately it wasn't good news. Apparently after we left the store the guy went back to start the resurfacing and realized that they were missing some of the pieces to their machine and so they couldn't do it for us. So we went back to the store, picked up the rotor and took it to another Checkers store that they had called to make sure they could do it (unfortunately we lost about an hour and a half of work time because of this delay).

After we finally got the rotor back it was pretty straight forward putting everything back together and then changing the brake pads on the other side (fortunately the rotor looked alright on the other side). Then we quickly cleaned up and drove to my parents house so I could pick up Blondie and take her to her ballet recital. Unfortunately we were late getting her there and the room was already packed so I wasn't able to get very good seats.

DH came with the rest of the family, my parents, sister M, brother D & his wife K after eating some dinner and were lucky that they made it there in time to see Blondie perform. Overall the repair on the van went pretty smoothly and it was nice not having the kids around so that I was able to be out there helping DH. It was a bitter cold day and it was nice having a garage to keep us out of the wind. I borrowed an electric heater from my parents that helped take some of the bitterness out of the air, but my hands are still suffering from the cold and dry temps. They were very red and raw on Saturday evening. Today they are finally looking a little better...

Thanks Mom & Dad and M for looking after the kids for us (& helping them decorate cookies)!

Ballet Class

Since Blondie loves princesses and anything girl related, I thought that she would love taking a ballet class. M&M took a ballet/tap class at about this same age, my only problem has been finding a class and teacher that I thought would work for our schedule. I finally found a morning class that taught ballet once a week and was at a reasonable price and distance from our house. She started taking them in September every Tuesday morning through our city rec center. I was hoping to find a combined ballet/tap class like M&M had, but they were all offered in the afternoons and I wanted to do it while the older kids were in school to simplify my life a little.

It's been a little hard on Kitty because she loves to dance and get dressed up as well, so each week I get them both dressed in ballet outfits and then I bring toys or coloring books for Kitty to play with while the class is going on (the class is for 3-4 year olds). Luckily it is only a half hour class so Kitty does just fine playing by herself during that time.

The first class was pretty interesting because I wasn't sure how Blondie would respond to being left in the room with a teacher and girls that she didn't know. There ended up only being one other girl there that week so I stayed in the class with Blondie and the teacher let Kitty participate as well. Kitty actually participated more than Blondie did - it was pretty cute to watch. The teacher would come around and help all the girls to put their arms and legs in the correct positions and Kitty would let her do it and stay in the positions. Blondie on the other hand pretty much clung on to me the whole time with her two fingers in her mouth.

The following week Blondie didn't want me to leave the room, but I didn't want to stay there because I seemed to be making things worse. So I left the room with Kitty and we watched through the windows. Blondie didn't participate too much at first and it was a little frustrating because she would be so excited the night before for her ballet class and then she would just sit there in the class. She finally loves the class now and has a good time with the other girls in it. It's been a good experience for her. They are now getting ready for their Christmas recital which will be on December 15th.