Book Fair Number One!

Three kids in three different schools poses challenges at times. Mainly, a lot of repeat type of events for each child's school: open houses, holiday parties, school pictures, fundraisers, and... Scholastic book fairs. Tonight we went to our first hotdog dinner and family book fair extravaganza at Avery's preschool. Ryan's elementary school has a very similar event going on next Friday complete with hotdogs and Scholastic books.

In order to keep our financial expenditures down a little, we have limited each child to one book per book fair. Ryan, of course, chose the Super Friends book, Emma selected a timely Christmas selection complete with puppies and kittens dressed in Santa costumes doing all kinds of things pets usually do: making toasts to the New Year, throwing on scarves and hats to go out in the cold and exchanging presents. Who knows, maybe that is what most people's pets do during the holidays but I can tell you Wish is lucky to have a jingle bell wrapped onto his collar. He gets so annoyed walking around with that thing on!

But I digress... Avery chose a Care Bears book. Except she didn't really select it herself. She walked around pulling books off the shelves looking through them and placing them back on the shelf. So we had to hurry her along. Every girl loves the Care Bears, right?

I'm already looking forward to our next Scholastic book fair!

Dancing Queen

So Ryan has already been active in soccer, T-ball, swim lessons and an array of other camps, bible schools and groups that seemed important at the time. Now it is finally Emma's turn. I have been looking forward to the day when she would be old enough to start dance classes and guess what...it is finally here! So she is registered at Stepping Out dance studio here in Lexington and is in a class of 3 year olds that learn ballet, tumbling and tap.

The morning before Emma was to start class I realized I needed to buy all of her dance necessities...pink tights, black leotard, ballet and tap shoes. After roaming around town hitting up Kmart and Target with no success, I realized I would need to find a dance store. After driving 30 minutes to the nearest dance store while the kids were all in school/preschool, I get there and am told that you cannot possibly buy dance shoes without the child there for proper fit. So of course being the mother that I am, I drove 30 minutes back home, picked up the girls from preschool and drove 30 minutes back to the dance store for proper measurements. $75.00 later with the perfect fitting dance shoes, we rush back home to greet Ryan off of his school bus.

That evening I take Emma (and the other two children) to her first dance class. She grudgingly walks in with the other little girls at the beginning of class, but as I look in to check in on her I notice she is standing in one place with the other little girls glancing over at her. The poor child got scared and started crying in the middle of ballet. They brought her out to the waiting room with me and I pleaded with her to give it another try. Finally I convinced her to go back in but I had to sit inside the dance room as well and watch from the side. She didn't do much during that first class but I am happy to report that she looks forward to going to dance every Thursday night and eagerly joins the others for dance instruction now. Thank goodness for that...I don't know if Michael would have let me live down the expense of a failed dance experience!

The Measure of My Days...the beginning

So I decided to try out a family blog for awhile and see how I do. Since I am horrible about taking time to actually scrapbook my children's past years and am feeling dreadfully guilty for losing all threads of my children's precious childhood...here goes. I am hoping for an opportunity to document some of their important (and maybe not so important) moments in their lives.

So here is the lowdown of where we are in our lives: Ryan just started first grade where he is in Mrs. Hubbard's class. He really loves Mrs. Hubbard and as a reward for good behavior, he even gets to sit next to his teacher during lunch. And NO, he is not a brown-noser!

Emma just started 3-year-old preschool and after a slight warm-up period is enjoying her new classroom and activities. It is not unusual to ride all the way home listening to her sing a new song. Today it was "Hello, how are you...Hello, how are you...Hello, how are you"...I'm sure you get the picture. Emma has also started dance class which is one of the highlights of my week. There is nothing as adorable as a bunch of 3-year-olds running around in tap shoes making as much noise as possible.

In an effort to gain my sanity at least a little bit, Avery is also enrolled in 18 month preschool two days a week. Yep, they offer preschool for those who can't even talk. Unfortunately, she had a very slow start where she cried off and on continually for the four hours she was there. However, she finally had a breakthrough last Tuesday and she seems to be ready to accept her fate away from Mommy.

This picture was a spur of the moment photo op for a family photo Emma had to bring to school for a class project. It wasn't until the day before the picture was due that I realized we didn't have a photo of all of us together since almost two years ago. And although I thought about it for a moment, I decided it was just too wrong to send Emma off to school with a rather dated picture. So thank goodness for Walgreens and their 4-7 hour photo service...What happened to the 1-hour deal anyway? We took this lovely family photo on Sunday afternoon and amazingly enough, all three kids are looking at the camera. No easy feat there.

While trying to remember how to set the camera timer I also managed to snap a few timeless treasures of Michael looking stupid. These photos really made my day!