Kate's Dance Recital

This week has been all about dance. Kate had practices Monday night and Tuesday night. Last night was her first performance, and tonight she will perform one more time. She did great. I saw a lot of improvement in her this year. She knew exactly what to do, and wasn't watching the other girls in her class. She danced to 8 days a week by the Beatles. At first I thought it was an unusual selection for ballet, but it looked really cute on stage. I'm going tonight to watch her again, Dan has opted to stay home and watch the boys. He thought it was a little long to sit through twice. I love dance, so I don't mind watching the recital all over again. I'm so proud of Kate she is growing into such a beautiful girl.

I did Kate's hair three different ways over the past four nights. I decided I like the barrel curl bun the best. It actually was the easiest way too, since her hair is different lengths and pokes out of a braided bun.

Here is a picture of Kate in the lobby just before she's about to perform.

Kirk's sleepy haircut!

Kirk hates to do two things with his hair, one is to wash it and two is to cut it. I have had to resort to trimming it with the hair scissors while he sleeps. This is a very tricky thing to do. I put it off for as long as I possibly can. His hair was starting to look pretty shaggy, so I decided to try the new buzzer on him this time. I thought it would be along shot for him to sleep through the buzzers; they vibrate, and make a loud noise. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kirk is an extremely deep sleeper. He slept through the whole process. I even repositioned him on either side to get the back and sides of his head. He woke up and thought it was so funny that he had a hair cut while he was sleeping. Here are the hillarious photo's

First I did the front and sides. I think it looks pretty good!

The back was the trickiest part. Maybe this is how Mohawks were invented!
This isn't what it looks like now, I was just showing the positioning

I know this seems crazy, most Mom's would just make their kids get their haircut. I just don't like to battle with my kids unless I absolutely have to. Hopefully he'll out grow his fear of the hair trimmers soon!

Another tough Sunday for Benjain

Sunday's are always tough for kids. We have 9:00 church which happens to also be right during Benjamin's nap schedule. He's not quite old enough to go to nursery yet which means I end up pacing the halls with him during the last hour or so of church. This week however was different. He was so good during relief society. I've discovered a new favorite toy. The Crayon Box. He dumps the crayons out of the box, and I pick them up. The did this over and over again during relief society. I guess it wore him out because when we got home I glanced over at him while I was making the kids lunch and found this:

He had fallen asleep in his high chair. It was so cute.

Swim Lesson Time!

It's that time of year again, time for the joys and sorrow's of swim lessons. It seems to be a love hate relationship with my kids. They love swimming, but they have this phobia of getting their face, and ears, and nose wet. Kate has really made HUGE progress this year. I think a lot of it is that she's a little be older, and more confident in the water. She's able to go under to fetch pool rings, and swim with her face down into the water for a few strokes. We are working on her beathing as she swims her strokes. She's learning so much this year, but I think the reason behind it is due to having an AMAZING teacher. Haley is Dan's brother's fiance. I think she's the best instructor I've ever seen, and we've been doing swim lessons for a few years. Kirk is making progress too, but on his own terms. He usually ends up playing half of the time, but I don't mind because it's still a big improvement from sitting on the steps of the pool. I really want our kids to be strong swimmers. Thanks Haley for making swim lesson's fun, and a positive experience for the kids!

Even Benjamin enjoyed the swim. It was nice to have Haley working with one of the older kids so that I wasn't out numbered in the pool three to one. Since I only have two arms it makes me nervous to be with all three kids in the pool by myself. Benjamin loved the water. His new word that he says all of the time is uh oh, as he's dropping something into the pool.

We have a swing set!

I really should have blogged about this before our cruise, because Dan worked like crazy to get this set up just before we left on our trip. He is such a hard worker. He wanted the kids to have a place to play outside while my parents were babysitting. We opted to set up the playground ourselves to save a little money. I think Dan ended up spending about fifteen hours getting it set up. He was setting it up before and after work, rain or shine. One evening it started to rain, I wish I would have taken a snap shot of him out there in his rain jacket with the hood up trying to get a little bit more finished. Thank you so much hon, all of your hard work has really paid off. The kids love their new swing set. It has been a long awaited day. Ever since we moved about a year ago the kids have been asking when we would be getting a swing set. Our backyard had a lot of prep work to be done before hand. It use to be a hill covered with weeds and trees. Now it is terraced with a play area, fire pit, and soon to be grass ( I'll post pictures as soon as we sod on Saturday). Dan also worked incredibly hard hauling rubber mulch up our steep driveway, and into the backyard under the swing set. The kids love the rubber mulch, it's so soft on their feet that they can play barefoot. I love how safe it makes the swing set. So here's a shout of to Dan, I love you, and appreciate all of your hard work. These pics are for you babe!

Dan's Lifetime Sales Confrence

I've been back for a few days now and I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and blog. Our cruise was so much fun. The company Dan works for always does a sale's conference every year. In the past it's been in Zion's, Midway, and other places around Utah. This year the company's travel agent found a great deal on a cruise, so they arranged the conference on the cruise. I was lucky enough to be able to go with Dan. We paid my fare of course but it was really reasonable. Dan's Mom, his sister Wendy, his sister in-law AnnieLaurie, and his Mom's close friend Bev Nye (all are wife's of lifetime employee's) who along with their husbands were able to go as well. Cruise's are truly a worry free vacation. I enjoyed not having to worry about "what are we going to do for dinner tonight" on the back of my mind. I also love getting room service. I felt so pampered when when I didn't have to make make my bed in the morning. So here's the summary of our trip. Last Monday we flew into LAX airport and then took a bus to the cruise port. We had lunch on the boat first thing because I was hungry after our flight. That was probably the last time I was really hungry the rest of the trip! The rest of the day was filled with meeting's and napping in our cabin. I can't tell you how nice it was to lay down and nap with out worrying about what time Benjamin should be waking up. When your entire world revolves around your kid's schedule it's amazing to feel totally free to sleep in as long as you want. Tuesday was our first port. We headed off the boat to explore Catalina Island. I was expecting a mini Sandiego after all Catalina is part of California. I was really surprised at how tiny this Island was. We're talking really tiny, you could bike the whole town in just a couple of hours. There's hardly any cars on the Island. Everyone rides golf carts around. It seemed like a total tourist town, it was quaint. Also an interesting fact about Catalina is that that weather there is more mild than the rest of California. Because it's an island it's always ten degrees warmer in the winter, and ten degrees cooler in the summer. That sounded pretty nice to me. We rented mountain bikes, it was really fun. The island is very hilly, so it was slow going for a good part of the ride. It was worth the view though. You can see in this picture we got a great shot of the cruise ship from the top of the mountain we biked up. We also did a little bit of shopping and then headed back to the boat. Once we were back on the boat we had time to relax in the hot tub, and lay out for a little while. That night was the formal night of the cruise. I had picked up a new top for Mother's day that I wore with some black pants. We got our picture taken by a photographer and yes that is a fake sunset backdrop, but I think the picture turned out really cute.

In the evening it was time for more meetings. The next day we went to Ensenada. We did a Kayaking and snorkeling excursion with many of Dan's coworkers and also Dan's parents went as well. Can you tell were in Mexico from the looks of our tour bus?

We drove for probably close to an hour before we made it to the the beach were we were kayaking. It was a beautiful cove, the beach was a bit rocky but it was still really nice. First we Kayaked. I had never been kayaking in the ocean before. Lifetime has partnered with a kayak company Dan recruited called Dragonfly. Lifetime actually liked the product so well they recently bought them out. They arranged to ship two of the lifetime kayak's out to Ensenada so we could try them on this excursion. I was lucky enough to end up with one of the two lifetime kayaks. The Lifetime kayaks are much more stable than other kayak's on the market. I never even came close to tipping. Dan however wasn't as fortunate. He was in different brand and it tipped over into the sixty degree water. We saw several seals while we were kayaking. I wish I had taken my camera, it would have been a great photo opportunity. The seals would just pop their heads up out of the water and look right at you. It made me wonder what other types of sea life were beneath us. It was really neat to see the new product. Dan was one of the main guys working on this kyack buy out. It seemed like he was working constantly on this deal for the past year, so it was neat to see the results of all of his hard work. After our kayaking Dan suited up to go snorkeling. Since the water was so cold he had to were a wet suit. I didn't think that snorkeling in freezing cold water crowded with kelp seemed worth it to me, so I opted out and just sat on the beach. Dan snorkeled clear up until the end of the excursion. Then we piled back into the truck and made our way back to the ship. We barely had enough time to hit a few souvenir shops right outside of the ship. We picked up some things for the kids. We bought Kate a Mexican doll, Kirk got a wooden snake, and Benjamin got some maracas. That night we were pretty tired so we just watched a movie in our cabin. Thursday was a sea day. Dan had a lot of meetings that day, and I didn't want to just sit around by myself on the boat so I went with him to those. It was a lot, but I was interested to learn about the company. I feel like it was really beneficial for me to know what Dan's company is all about, and it helped me to realize how complicated the whole business was. It's amazing how smoothly the whole process runs considering how many different variables that play into the manufacturing process. That night after dinner we went and watched karaoke. Annie Laurie has a great voice and we were able to see her sing. Then I dragged Dan to a show. He was really hesitant to go to it, he hates to see costumes. I promised if it was edgy we'd leave. Much to our surprise it was a really classy show. Then we headed to bed to enjoy our last night sleep on the boat. Friday we headed home from California. This cruise seemed perfect. It was just a short plane ride from home, and only five days long. By the time we started to miss the kids it was almost time to go home. I think it's time that I stop blogging and be off to bed. I'm going to be tired tomorrow.