First Grade!

This school year was amazing. We switched schools before first grade so we were unsure what it would be like. Em is also doing the Chinese Dual Immersion program where she spends half of her day hearing and speaking nothing but Chinese and the other half of her day in English. We were unsure how THAT would be! Turns out it was all AWESOME. She had such a great year and completely rocked it. We LOVE the school, teachers, the program, everything. It's just a better fit for us and we are soooooo happy we switched!!

At each parent teacher conference her teachers would rave about her. Her Chinese teacher in particular said she uses her often as an example for pronunciation because she just "gets" it. She got 100% on every single Chinese test throughout the whole year!

Her English teacher loved her too. She was such a great teacher and really tailored the learning to each kid. She developed advanced spelling lists for some of the more advanced spellers. Some of those words Emily would bring home were crazy! But Emily ended the year with 100% on every single spelling test the whole year! Even though she was doing advanced lists. She also ended the year on a 5th grade reading level with DIBELS scores waaayyyyy off the charts. So proud of her!

Perfect report card for the entire year. (which earned her her very own iPod!)

Her teachers use this behavior tracking app called "Class Dojo" that they update several times per day and parents can view it online. The teachers issue positive points for things done well like trying your best, participating, being respectful, etc and then negative points for negative things. Not sure what negative things because Emily didn't get a single negative point all year! I was proud of her for that. Behavior is more important to me than test scores!

Emily also received every award possible throughout the year! She was the first and only one from her class to get selected for the limo lunch which is chosen by the principal. She was the first Student of the Month from her class. She was the first to win the PTA Golden Apple Leader award. I felt like every week she was bringing home a new award! At the year end awards assembly she received and award for Excellence in Language Arts and Excellence in Math. One other kid in her class got the Excellence in Language Arts and she was the only one from her class to get Excellence in Math. And she hates math. :)

She is very naturally smart and school comes quite easily for her. At least up until now. :) I'm so proud of how hard she worked and the dedication she gives to school. She also made tons of new friends. I always had to laugh when we would walk to the car after school and everyone would be shouting "Bye Emily!" and running to give her hugs. I hope my kids are good friends and kind to everyone.

I also had a good experience with first grade. I was her Chinese teachers class mom so I planned their Halloween party, Valentines party, teacher appreciation week, field day, teachers birthday party and just helped with anything her teacher needed. It ended up being way more work and stress than I thought it would but it's totally worth it to see how excited Emily was whenever I was in her class. It was also fun to get to know the kids in her class and see them all interact. I also did a lot with the PTA which was way fun. I did teacher meals during parent teacher conference, book fair, box tops for education, art show, minute to win it, parent picnic, and I can't even remember what else! I met so many awesome parents and had a great time getting involved in my kids school. I figure we have about ten years at this school so we might as well get involved!

We all had an all-around good experience in 1st grade! Hope it continues in 2nd!

First day

 Last day

Preschool Graduation

Chase finished his second year of preschool and Carly finished her first year! They had a Pete the Cat theme for their graduation. So stinkin cute.

 This little girl is so in love with Chase. It's hilarious. I think she finally convinced him that he loves her too. :) She always talks about when they get married, when they have kids, etc. Too funny.

 These three blondies were in the same class and became friends. Cutie pies!

 With their teacher.

So much fun this year! Chase's teacher gave him a book full of pictures and stories of him from his two years in her preschool. So funny and such a great keepsake. I'm so glad he had such a positive experience in preschool. Now onto kindergarten!

Carly's First Haircut

Carly is almost 4 and has never had her haircut. It was out of control long. But she loved it. I really wanted to cut it into a cute little bob but she was devastated at that thought! She informed me she must have long princess hair! You can hardly tell from the pictures but we cut off 7 inches back in May!

Before

 After

Summer Reading

Every summer we participate in the library's summer reading program and we are actually already finished with it for this summer. Well I have one more book to read but I'm waiting until tomorrow because I pre-ordered "Go Set A Watchman." I've never pre-ordered a book in my life! But I'm excited for it. Who am I? Anyway, I was getting tired of my kids always wanting to read what I call garbage books (Barbie, Disney princesses, Tinkerbell, etc). I understand the need for those types of books because it's what kids like and gets them excited to read. But after 8 years of dealing with those types of books, I'm tired of them. So I compiled a list of books I wanted to read to the kids this summer. Several of them we have read before or we own but don't read too often. We read them at night all together. It's been great! I kept it mostly picture books since the majority of our kids are young and lack the attention span for chapter books. Emily has a list of chapter books to read. All of them that we don't already own I have found at the library.

• Where The Wild Things Are
• The Monster at the End of This Book
• Love You Forever
• The Paper Bag Princess
• Corduroy
• The Light in the Attic
• The Lorax
• Harold and the Purple Crayon
• Jumanji
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Goodnight Moon
• The Giving Tree
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
• The Snowy Day
• Caps For Sale
• Madeline
• Ferdinand
• Green Eggs and Ham
• Oh the Places You'll Go
• The Little Engine That Could
• The Happy Prince
• The Rainbow Fish
• Aesop's Fables
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
• Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
• The Cat in the Hat
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit
• Stone Soup
• Make Way for Ducklings
• Where the Sidewalk Ends
• The Stinky Cheese Man
• Frog and Toad Are Friends
• Clifford the Big Red Dog
• The Story of Babar
• Lon Po Po
• This Is Not My Hat
• The Little Prince
• The Hundred Dresses
• Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel
• Winnie the Pooh
• Little Bear
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
• The Big Orange Splot
• The Velveteen Rabbit
• Curious George
• Guess How Much I Love You
• Are You My Mother?
• Good Night Gorilla
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• On the Night You Were Born
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Wherever You Are My Love Will Find You
• Mr. Tiger Goes Wild

Oh the random things in a mother's purse

I was cleaning out my purse the other day and was amused at some of the things I found in there. And I thought this is one of those small and simple daily things that I want to remember. I wish I would have documented it in some way when my kids were younger and I REALLY had bizarre stuff in my purse! My kids are growing and I just don't carry as much of their stuff as I used to. This was made clear when my cousin asked if I had diaper rash cream this weekend and I don't even carry it anymore! So here were the contents of my purse....

Sofia doll, half empty box of yogurt raisins, loose change, hand sanitizer, Harmon's stickers, sucker, arms to an Olaf doll, beaded necklace, markers, playdoh can, 3 pens, wallet, hair elastics, carrot shaped eraser, comb, rock, 6 diapers (too many!), wipes, gum drop, dance and tumbling paperwork, toy elephant, oreos, coloring book, coupons, so many receipts, crap ton of garbage, half of a pencil sharpener, Logan's immunization record, 2 checkbooks, 4 notebooks with "Carly" written on every page.

I love my kiddos so much. Even though I would love to have a clean and organized purse, I'm going to miss the days of carrying their random crap around!

Logan's Birthday!

My baby is 2 years old! I'm terrified for the terrible two's with this one. He is the cutest thing you can imagine but he can be soooo hard! He has so much personality. I can already predict that he's going to be the class clown and we're going to have a lot of trouble with him in school! He will do anything for a laugh! He idolizes his older siblings, especially Chase. I hope they are always best friends. He loves animals just like his brother and they spend all day playing animals or cars. Him and Carly on the other hand? Oil and water. They fight non-stop. Logan is absolutely obsessed with his dad. He doesn't care about me at all if dad's around. He isn't afraid of anything (except loud noises) and is a typical boy. Loves to wrestle anyone sitting on the floor.



Breakfast for the birthday boy!

 

I made Logan an Elmo cake and set it on the counter. I left to go get a few more things together and  came back to find some finger prints. Carly was the culprit. Little stinker!

We went to the zoo the afternoon of Logan's birthday. We have a zoo pass so we go to the zoo multiple times a month. We're animal lovers. :) But since it was a special occasion we let the kids ride the train and carousel.

 Sleeping otter

 The otter is awake!

We just love this kid. He is so funny and spunky and keeps us all laughing. When I was pregnant with him and at my 20 week ultrasound I had this distinct impression that he was going to be a peacemaker. I feel like that has been true in every way. We all are so smitten with him that he makes every moment better. His sense of humor breaks the tension. Don't get me wrong, he spends more time than anyone in timeout and has been our only kid who bites but we love him and his goofy personality. Love you Logan boy!

Dance Comps

This year Emily was on two different competition teams. A jazz team and a hip hop team. This was her first time ever doing hip hop. And she loved it! She asked me if she could quit her jazz team and just do hip hop. Haha.....NO. But being on two comp teams made competitions even more work than they already were! She competed four dances at each competition.

Woman's World-suuupppperrrr sassy dance to a mix of Cher's "Woman's World" and Britney Spears "Werk"
Hairspray-cute character dance to songs from Hairspray. This was a mini production combined with the team just older than hers. The younger ones were girls and the older ones were boys.
Feel Ur Beat-hip hop dance to this dang song that gets stuck in your head like no other.
Vegas-production number with all of the hip hop teams. Emily's team is the youngest and they were little Elvis'!! Adorable. She danced to "Viva Las Vegas." The other teams were magicians, tourists, showgirls, and gamblers. Finale was to "Uptown Funk."

I was also the team mom for her hip hop team which doubles MY workload but it's way fun to do. This was also the first year Emily had to do extra practices. During February and March she had dance five days a week most weeks. Comp teams really do rule your life!

Rocky Mountain Classic in St. George
Such a fun competition. This was our first comp as a new studio so everyone was really excited and nervous. But the studio (and Emily) did amazing!
Woman's World-3rd
Hairspray-1st
Feel Ur Beat-1st -these girls' first time ever doing hip hop and they went up against an amazing studio that specializes in hip hop and beat them!
Vegas-Platinum (Highest score you can get)

The studio won Beginning and Intermediate high point and Sweepstakes! (Highest scoring studio of the day)

We had two dances with wigs this year! Hairpsray and Vegas. Glad to see those go!

Aspire Dance Pro-Ogden
I was not really a fan of this comp. But whatevs. One fun thing about it was that half way through the day they had a master class from a professional dancer. So that was fun. It was waaayyyyy over Emily's head but I'm proud of her for even doing it and trying her best!
Woman's World-Ruby
Hairspray-Ruby
Vegas-1st-Grand Champions
Feel Ur Beat-3rd-Diamond
The studio won a bunch of high points and stuff but I don't remember what they were. :)

 Master class

Gotta Move
My FAV comp of the year! I just love Gotta Move. It's such a positive and uplifting competition. They raised money for pediatric cancer and we shared our dressing room with an awesome studio that was so sweet. It was just a really fun day.
Woman's World-1st and Best Showmanship (facials, projection, etc.) In this dance it should just be best sass award. One sassy dance!
Feel Ur Beat-2nd-they got 2nd by .5 points! But the next week they beat the team that beat them this week. Best Showmanship and 4th OVERALL BEGINNING HIGH POINT!!!
Hairspray-1st-Best Costume
Vegas-1st-5th OVERALL INTERMEDIATE HIGH POINT!!!
The studio also won STUDIO SWEEPSTAKES and our awesome directors won DIRECTORS OF THE YEAR! Fun day!

Diamond Classic
Ugh. This comp was rough for me. I think it was just because it was our 4th competition in 4 weeks and we were all beat. It was also a REALLY crowded competition with some really big studios so I was having some claustrophobic issues! I was glad when it was over. :) They also did not like our hip hop AT ALL. It was almost comical.
Woman's World-1st
Hairspray-2nd
Feel Ur Beat-4th
Vegas-1st

These are the only pics I took all day. I was over it. :)

Carly also took her very first dance class this year. She absolutely loved it. I told Robert we should put her in a dance class every day of the week because she was a totally different kid on days when she had dance. She was so happy and cooperative! I hated taking her to dance but the things you do for your kids! I really just hated dealing with Logan during her class time. :)

It was a very fun dance season. Some of my best friends these days are the moms of the girls Em dances with. Her best friends are girls she dances with too. It was a little  bit of a roller coaster with some things going on at the studio but we all had a great time! Looking forward to what the next year has to bring!