Merry Little Christmas Show 2015

Catie & Andrew have spent the last month or so practicing for the Merry Little Christmas Show! They have had dance class once each week for about an hour and after just a few weeks they got to participate in a big performance on the local high school stage. 

Catie was a jack in the box girl and she was most excited about her candy cane leggings. It was so fun to see her on stage. She is so focused and tries so hard to get every step right.

If you want to see a video of the jack in the box girl dress rehearsal you can find one HERE.

Andrew was Santa and his songs were Big Fat Man, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Can Be Heroes... plus maybe a few others. He LOVED getting to dress up like Santa.

The highlight of the night was when the Santas ripped off their costumes to reveal their superhero selves. Andrew was Spiderman!

You can watch the Santa boys dress rehearsal performance HERE.

The highlight was the actual performance when the boys ripped off their superhero suits and the entire audience started screaming. Andrew LOVED that.

Today the kids rehearsed from 3-5pm and then had performances at 5pm and 7pm. By 9pm when they got home we were all wiped out! So proud of them!

So grateful to my talented and amazing friend Marisa for pulling off such a fun show for the kids.

2014 Summer Camps for Catie & Andrew

This summer we were around for several different weeks so in an attempt to save my sanity and not have Catie & Andrew fighting endlessly, I sent Andrew to a few camps. He loved every minute of all of them! I also sent Catie to one camp. She was sad she didn't get to go to more!

Here are a few photos from camps!

First off he went to a local vacation bible school camp. It was super hero themed and they learned a bit about bible stories. He had tons of friends there and was in heaven!

I was fortunate to be invited to review Camp Galileo again on my Toddler Approved blog, so Andrew got to go to camp for a week in exchange for me writing about his week. He had a blast! You can see tons more pictures of his week here.

Andrew also went to a week of Pirate Camp at his Gymnastics studio. Here he is trying to look tough like a pirate. :) I think he looks a little creepy!

Two awesome teenage boys from the local high school lacrosse team did a free two day camp for a few boys. It was adorable and I was excited to see that Andrew actually LOVED lacrosse and got really into it. He especially liked checking :)

The week before we went to LA Catie got to go to Sofia the First Princess Dance Camp! I was really worried because she didn't know anyone going and has never done something by herself for three hours before. She has anxiety sometimes so I was picturing huge meltdowns and problems. The teacher said she was awesome every day. This was the cute face she gave me when I said goodbye the first day. No problem at all! I was FLOORED!

She loved her "leotart"

The last day they did a very simple dance show for us. Catie did a little dancing and then spent a lot of time cleaning up sparkles off the floor while the other kids danced. She sure looked cute though! She made tons of Sofia the First themed crafts too. I think this camp was the highlight of her summer! She even got a Sofia doll to bring home with her!

All in all I think the kids had an awesome summer! I still need to blog about Girls Camp and our trips to Idaho and Utah! I can't believe school starts tomorrow!! So sad!

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!