End of the School Year

My goal was to have caught up on the blog by the time the girls start school next week. I better finish up last school year before starting on the new school year. The girls had an end of year Program and graduation for the 4 year old classes. My girls tend to get shy in large groups and if you remember the post from the Christmas program, Audrey freezes up and won't look at anyone but me. We decided we were going to work on that before the program. We asked the girls to sing the songs from school to us and then Tom kept encouraging them to sing it louder. During the program when the 2 year old class came out Audrey took it to heart and screamed out her songs. We couldn't stop laughing. She stumbled over words and kept singing even if the song was done. Of course her two little buddies, Katherine and Brayden just kept going right along with her. We have a video from the school made and I wish I could upload it but it is too large to upload. A couple of my other favorite parts were after a song Audrey would shake her bum and then one time after everyone started clapping she beamed, gave a fist pump and said "YES!" loud enough for all the audience to hear. Ella was pretty tame in comparison. She sang great and loved being up "performing" and trying to be SLY and wave at me. Audrey is standing next to her best buddy Katherine and Ella is posing with her best buddy Alexandria. Both are going to different schools next year and I hope the girls adjust. They had such a great year and such amazing teachers.

Dog Rulez

Today our neighbor's dog, Lucy, got out. We saw her wandering and so we put her in the backyard with Daisy until the neighbor could come home and get her which was about 1/2 hour later. The dogs got along great, running around, both eating and drinking out of Daisy's dishes. When they decided to stay inside Ella decided there better be some dog rules.

1. No peeing in the house

2. No jumping on people

3. Do not let the dogs get the markers and use them on the walls.

Audrey also had me copy these rules down but she added one more.

4. Do not eat animals.

All in all, very good rules.

Mixing Business and Pleasure

Tom and I rarely take trips unless they are somehow related to visiting family or combined with work. In May both NC and SC have their dental conventions at Myrtle Beach. We decided to take the girls with us to the SC show. I had to be there a day early to help train some supply reps so while I was working Tom spent the day with the girls at the beach. Our hotel was right on the beach so they just walked down.

The girls running to the water.

Running away from the waves.

Playing in the waves and Audrey in the mud. Their favorite game is when Tom and I would lift them up and into the crashing waves.

We took the girls to Broadway at the Beach, which has a bunch of stores, food and rides. We thought since we were taking the girls to Disneyland later in the summer we would see how they did on these ride first. They LOVED them. The car ride seems tame from the pictures but they go in an oval and at the turns it whips the car around really fast. The girls couldn't stop giggling. I have also yet to meet a carousel the girls don't like.

The big conference center in Myrtle Beach is at the Kingston Plantation which is a Hilton Property. The conference center is part of the Embassy Suites. Adjacent to Embassy are Hampton Inn, Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort, and Hilton Timeshare Properties. All the hotels have their own pools and beach access since they are beachfront properties. When you stay at any of the Hilton's you get access to any of the hotel pools. Each of them have fun pools to play at and a boardwalk that connects all the hotels together. The Embassy has an amazing water park type pool and includes a kiddie pool and lazy river. My girls love the water park even though they don't love going on the slides and getting water dumped on them. The lazy river was their favorite. Our hotel has the pool with the rock and waterfall and sandbar in the pool (yes the sandbar is meant to be there). Besides being a little windy and a chance of a tornado that never came to fruition, we had a great vacation and the girls got their first tan lines of the season.

The Boy Cousins

In April, I took the girls and headed out to AZ. My brother Tim was opening his dental practice and asked me to come out to help set it up. I spend most the day in his office training his staff and getting his software setup. While I was working, the girls spend the day with Cindy, Ethan and Janae. They know Tom's brothers kids as the girl cousins and since Tim has 4 boys and just one girl they just called them "The Boy Cousins". On Friday we took the kids to the Pheonix Zoo. The zoo has this water area for the kids to play and everyone loved it.

The girls don't get to spend much time with Tim's family so it was good for them to have some one on one bonding time with them. And I think Janae loved having more girls around too.

This and That

We had our friends, the Hansen's kids one night and the girls were having a ball with them because they even out the odd number they usually play with. Earlier that day Audrey was using a chair as a slide and she ended up getting rug burn on her face...not fun.

This year for General Conference, I tried to get the girls more involved in watching and listening. We made candy buckets and since the girls can't read I printed pictures of things like a Temple, Prophet, Family, etc. Whenever they heard that word, they got to have a piece of that candy. We had to start limit it to once a talk. The girls had fun and they actually listened.......somewhat.

We started our first garden this year. So far tomatoes have been great, the peas were divine. Even the neighbors liked them.

80's Prom

Our friends that always host the Christmas party decided this year to hold an 80's Prom. It was a ton of fun to get dressed up and boogie on down!

Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we did some of our traditional things, like go to see the Bears at Birkdale, but I didn't get any pictures of that this year. This year one of our friends, the Boles invited us to their house to make Gingerbread houses. Travis had made all the walls/roofs homemade and put them together before we got there so all we needed to do was decorate. The kids had a great time. We came home and let the girls open one present, their PJs. They LOVED them.

That night after the girls were asleep Santa brought us a super special gift. Grandma and Gramps! We got them settled in and went to bed. In the morning the girls got up and woke up me and Tom. Before we let the girls leave Tom snuck a knock on the spare bedroom door. As we were almost to the stairs with the girls the spare room door opened. Ella backed up about half a foot pretty nervous because you couldn't see anyone. The she heard "Hey Punky-Poos" and ran into the room knowing it was Gramps. They were so surprised! The girls loved all their gifts but just having Grandma and Gramps here really was the BEST present we could ask for. We even made THEM breakfast this year.

We ended up having a late day White Christmas! It snowed and actually stuck for a few days. We let the girls go out and play in it. Grandma and Gramps even helped us make a snowman. We had to cut the fun short when we realized Daisy had enjoyed our fun too and took off on her own adventure. A neighbor called to tell us she was in the adjoining neighborhood. We found her and she didn't get to go out with us again for a while.

While Grandma was here, she fixed some of the girls costumes they had torn. I LOVE this picture. If you want to know what it is like when Grandma visits, here it is. Wherever Grandma is you will find my girls pretty much attached.

Not sure how this video will turn out. This is the first time I have tried to attach a video to the blog. On Christmas Eve Tom decide to learn a few Christmas songs and the girls were enjoying every minute of it.