Family Valentine's Day Dance

On Saturday night our ward had a Family Valentine's Day Dance Fundraiser to help the Young Women raise money for girl's camp. There was a dessert auction, cookie decorating, valentines making, snacks, and lots of fun music for dancing. Our kids kicked off the dancing since they were some of the first kiddos there. No shyness at all.

They had the best time. Andrew was cracking us up the whole time with his dance moves and Catie and Ryan did pretty well too. Andrew also just ran around with his buddies the whole time and got lots of energy out. I'll have to post some videos here later when I have more time.

Catie managed to collide with a bigger kid within the first 20 minutes so that soured the evening a bit, but the arrival of two of her buds helped her shake it off and get her dancing groove back. My favorite was when all the kids were dancing and singing around to the Frozen soundtrack.

Ryan only wanted to steal other people's cups and decorate cookies at the cookie station.

He made at least three, never ate them, and then proceeded to roam to try and steal other cookies he found.

At one point I saw him stealing entire handfuls of sprinkles (see the giant cup in front of him... I didn't notice that) and big pieces of licorice. He was in heaven.

Here in this album are a few more photos of the decorations that I got to help with as well as the amazing desserts that got auctioned off. Kevin made peanut butter bars for our auction entry. He also watched the kiddos practically all afternoon Saturday while I helped set up at the church. He is a rock star!

The Young Women made almost 4,000 dollars which means that each girl will only have to pay for half of camp out of pocket now. So exciting! The idea for a ward dance was such a great inspired idea from our Young women's president and everyone had such a fabulous time. I hope we'll get to do it again next year!

I am so exhausted after being on my feet from setting up and then dancing and then chasing after Ryan all night, but it was totally worth it. What a great night!

We have another Sunbeam!

This one did not go into Sunbeams kicking and screaming (unlike Andrew). She was a little nervous, but so excited to see her friends and be in primary. Hooray! We made it through the first day. Who knows how next week will go... but for today, we're good. 

Catie sits right in front of Andrew in junior primary, so she loved having a buddy in there. When I picked her up at the end of the two hours she told me that she was a really good singer in primary!

We celebrated by having her favorite food for lunch and letting her watch a special movie after church. 

The day was bittersweet. My kids are really painful when they move into nursery and take a long time to get acclimated. They spend a lot of time hugging their leaders and getting lots of special attention in class. Because they have such a hard time getting used to nursery, they become really attached to their nursery leaders. Catie loves loves loves her nursery leaders and I was really worried today would be a hard transition. I was also sad to have her leave such a safe and happy place where I knew everyone loved her... despite how hard she could be. 

Normally we host a Christmas caroling event in December to thank the nursery leaders, but December was too crazy and sickness filled this year, so instead we made treats today and took them around to her nursery leaders tonight. I thought it was a sweet way to transition into her next class.

She skipped up to each door with Kevin and was so excited to hug each nursery leader (she had 5 different ones), give them the special card and treat we made, and she even spontaneously told a few of them how much she loved them. If you know Catie well, you know that she can be very particular with who she will hug, which makes them all the more special. She came back to the car after each delivery with the cutest smile and was so happy that she'd made her teachers happy.

I sure love her! What a great way to end the day! I am so proud of her.