Dancing

Clara has had so much fun dancing with the BYU Children's dance this year. Her class did a medley from Annie. They perform in the dejong Concert hall at BYU and she thinks that is the best thing ever. She gets to have long tech rehearsals and play games int he green room.

I asked her if she wanted to do it again next year and the answer was a definite yes. I told her she could pick something else, and that she might try clogging since her dream is to be a folk dancer. That is a good skill for a folk dancer. She told me that she might try clogging sometime, just not now. She said that with clogging you just stand in one spot and don't do anything with your arms. I beg to differ but she said that she can't be boxed in like that. Her dancing has to be free. Whatever that means.






Speaking of clogging. Our team competed at Nationals at Lagoon again this year. We use it as an excuse to spend the day at Lagoon with my family. My parents and Amanda and Anna, and Melissa and her family came down. It's always a fun day. Our team did awesome too. We have the highest average age of all the teams there (Our oldest dancer is 38) and both our dances placed high enough to get a trophy in our division. One of them placed in the top 5 out of 90+ teams. The other was in the top 15. Eat that, 12 year old cloggers!

It was Collin's Birthday....2 months ago

Oh my gosh, I can't believe how unbelievably busy we have been. Collin's birthday was two months ago and still have not posted about it. I wanted to get it up before we leave. We leave in 5 days to take the kids to L.A. to my brother in law and sister in law's house. They are staying there while Mark and I go on tour with the folk dancers. Hopefully I'll get to blog while I'm there. And hopefully everybody survives while we're gone. My sister in law will have 6 kids. Good luck with that.

Anywho, back to Collin's birthday.




Hiding before the party.




Collin wavered back and forth on what theme to have for his party. A couple of weeks before he settled on Pirates so I started planning. Of course he changed his mind. The only way we convinced him that Pirates was a good theme was to tell him that Stella, my sister in laws dog, would come dressed as a pirate. It worked. Phew. Clara and Collin all dressed up for the party.

Stella. Collin didn't know quite what to think.


The cake. You know me and my lack of cake decorating ability.





We decided to do a pinata. It was the pull string kind, since it was predicted to be cold. We didn't want to be outside. Problem is, Bronson my nephew, pulled out the magic string that was supposed to open the hatch. He tugged too hard and the string came off but didn't break the pinata.
So we resorted to taking it outside and beating it with a stick. We tried hanging it off the tree but one of them hit it too hard and broke the cord that it was hanging from. So then we just beat it on the ground. Eventually it opened. Note to self: buy a better pinata next time.

I love this picture of him blowing out the candles. So enthusiastic.



So Collin has a blue Lovey that he's had since he was 3-4 months old. We were smart after Clara and her one dog. We have 3 loveys that we rotate through. When we first bought the Loveys, they had a rattle in the head. So we pulled out the inside and cut out the rattle. Collin never noticed until recently. The loveys are getting old and the stuffing is starting to come out the hole where we cut. When he discovered it, he thought it was really fun to pull out the stuffing. We were finding stuffing everywhere. He also likes to sniff the lovey when he sucks his thumb. Once the stuffing started coming out he started sniffing that instead. We would catch him with a small piece of stuffing stuck practically up his nose. We had to keep refilling the stuffing, which Collin calls Lovey fluffies. And the stuffing had to be just the right consistency. Not too soft or too hard. Soon after that he decided that he didn't like the stuffing at all and pulled all of it out of all the loveys. Now they all have flat, stuffless heads. He likes to thread his finger through the hole where the stuffing came out. Kids are so silly.