Holiday Dance Recital

Riley had a lot of fun in a dance class with her friend Rylee this fall. There were only four girls in their class, so I'm sure it was a little confusing that half of them had the same name.

The whole group, probably about 80 girls, performed in a holiday recital. It was complete chaos, but also really cute.

Fun & Games

There were a few planned activities for the kids to fill some of the downtime. My mom did a "treasure hunt" for the kids that we happened to do on Asher's half-birthday. Jess pointed it out while the kids were eating their last treasure: pudding cups. We all sang "Happy Half-Birthday" to him, and he thought it was the greatest thing ever. In fact, he just asked me today, "Mom, remember when Grandma brought pudding on my half-birthday? That was fun."

Jess did a music time for the little ones. At eight-and-a-half, Cole is the oldest grandkid in the group. He was definitely too old for the songs, but he was a good sport and helped some of the little ones. The kids had a great time rolling down the grassy hill, playing ring-around-the-rosies, and pretending they were airplanes. But it's no surprise that the best photos were taken during Tootie-Ta.

I brought supplies for a cheese-ball toss. I paired all the kids up, bigs with littles, then gave one person on each team a shower cap to wear, topped it with shaving cream, and then gave their teammate a pile of cheese-ball snacks. Technically it was supposed to be timed, and the team with the most cheese-ball on the cap won. We, however, had teams with "tossers" who were more interested in eating the snacks than throwing them, and a fairly hefty disparity in ages and abilities. So we just let them play until they were bored, or until they wanted to stop to eat cheese-balls.

Farewell Summer

Officially, autumn begins on September 22nd this year. With an early beginning of school however, we observed the last day of summer on Tuesday.

Riley went to her ballet class:

Asher swam:

And poor little Tyson slept:

He had a high fever nearly the entire day. Fortunately the Walmart sticker on his forehead didn't last as long.

Still Here...Or There

I think we can now say that we're all moved in. We still have a few projects that we want to take care of over upcoming weekends. But all the boxes are unpacked and we have pictures hung on the walls, so I'm counting it.

I have more photos to share, but I wanted to get a couple of things posted before I forget.

We were running errands this morning and Tyson dozed off in his car seat. Riley had just pointed out that he was asleep and I told her to let him be, when a upbeat kid's song came on the iPod. Tyson's head instantly popped up and he started doing his goofy little elbow/wrist dance.

Asher was teasing me earlier so I jumped out of my chair and started chasing him. He squealed and ran down the hall toward the kitchen. He hadn't gone far when his socks slipped on the wood floor. He went down and I quickly followed when I tripped over him. For a split second I thought he could have been hurt. But then he started laughing like crazy. When he could finally talk between peels of laughter he told me, "I gotcha, Mommy. I gotcha."

Petite Ballerina

Riley is still loving ballet. Her teacher suggested I enroll her in the 5 & 6-year-old class this time, but it ended up being cancelled because there weren't enough kids enrolled. Maybe next time. But for now, she continues to excel, and she is often used as the example when the teachers want to show the younger girls how to do something.

Wedding Festivities

We had such a fun time hanging out with family and making new friends while we were in Florida. The wedding was like icing on the cake. The bride co-owns a wedding planning company, so as you can imagine, the whole affair was amazing.

Girls Trip: Washington, D.C.

Three of my favorite women have been living in Washington, D.C, so I've wanted to take a trip to visit them for a while now. When I found out that two of the three had plans to move this summer, I knew it was time to make plans. In April, Riley and I took a girls trip out there, and had such a great time!

Alicia took us to some fantastic places to eat. As she put it recently, "we are connected through food." We ate Texas barbeque more authentic than anything I've had since leaving that state. We had cupcakes and awesome burgers, and breakfast at a great diner. And it reminded us both of the roadtrip we took to Las Vegas once, just so we could eat at the Motown Cafe.

In addition to restaurants, Alicia also took us to the Air and Space Museum.

Alicia doesn't have a car, so aside from the taxi ride from the airport, we rode the Metro or walked everywhere we went with her. Riley loved riding the trains, and walking allowed us to enjoy the beauty of the area from a closer vantage point. Plus it allowed us to work off a fraction of the food we ate.

Brenna and James joined us to see the sites.

With them we saw (in order) the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, The World War II Memorial, lots of ducks, Ford's Theater, the Natural History Museum, and the American History Museum. All in one day! I was so impressed with James and Riley. They kept up with us (pretty well), and didn't complain (much) about all the walking.

Riley impressed me with how interested she was in the historical things we saw. I recently finished a book about John Wilkes Boothe's last days after he assassinated Lincoln. After looking at some of the photos in the book, Riley became very interested in both men and the story of the assassination. She was fascinated by the museum collection in the basement of Ford's Theater. And she just couldn't get enough of the theater itself, and being able to see exactly where "Lincoln got shot." Her other favorite part of all the site-seeing was the exhibit of the First Ladies' gowns. She took pictures with my iPod of all her favorites. Unfortunately most were pretty blurry, but above you can see Michelle Obama's inaugural gown. Some of her other favorite gowns were worn by Sarah Polk and Grace Coolidge. (I pulled these two photos from the Smithsonian's website.)

Two days later, we joined Brenna, James, and the rest of their family at church. Riley and James got along wonderfully both days, and we're so glad they are living closer now. One of these days we'll get together with them in Denver.

After church we took the train to visit the Mease's. Camille took us to the National Zoo and the Washington DC LDS temple.

We also had some time to play and to relax with Eliza and Everett.

Don't you love their matching "dancing skirts?" Each girl received hers as a gift from her grandmother, Camille's mom and mine. Those two women met and became friends with each other about 30 years ago. I think the fact that Riley insisted on throwing her skirt in our suitcase at the last minute (before we knew Eliza had its twin) just shows how in sync all three generations of friends are.

I offer a belated thanks to Alicia, Brenna, Camille, and their families. We had a wonderful time and so appreciated your hospitality and generosity.

Ballet Recital

Riley has been taking a class called Petite Ballerinas through the city. She absolutely loves the class, and we both think her teacher is fantastic. This class is all 3 and 4 year olds, so Mrs. Jensen focuses on making it fun for the kids, rather than teaching them technique. I'm sure that will come soon enough, assuming Riley wants to stick with ballet.

Pirouettes & Spotting

I think this is her inspiration:

Old Town

One of the things I love about Fort Collins (it's a long list) is Old Town. FC is small enough that Old Town is immediately next to downtown. And it seems like there is always something going on there, especially during the summer.

We never fail to stop at Old Town Square to play on the bear and the fish, and occasionally have a hot dog from the New York transplanted vendor.Every time we stop, Riley makes a new friend. Usually it's another child, but last time she met the sweetest dog who couldn't get enough of Riley's ear scratches.

BTW, that's Riley's birthmom riding the rodeo fish with her. So you can see where our daughter gets her silly sense of humor.

My favorite activity in Fort Collins this summer (and my kids seem to agree) were the weekly Noontime Notes concerts at Oak Street Plaza. We packed a lunch, enjoyed free music by local bands, and Riley got wet in the splash park. This place was made for us!

The day these photos were taken, we ran into the grandmother of one of Riley's friends. She commented that Riley is "quite the little jitterbug."

Asher was usually content to sit on my lap, eat, and wiggle to the music. But occasionally he would wander over to the water. The sudden sprays never ceased to surprise and delight him.

I'm starting to miss summer already!