Ballet Fun!!!

Megan is dabbling in ballet this year a little bit and a week ago had her first performance! We have something called Living Windows where downtown businesses have performances in their windows...everything from singing, dancing, painting, and more. Megan's teacher Alla also works with me and is such a great teacher! I took videos of each dance but I need to figure out how to download those onto here!

Here is Megan getting her makeup done by my friend Nicole! She was helpful because we missed both of the hair and makeup classes!

Here is Megan with her snowflake costume!

This one was taken before we left!

By far her favorite costume...zebra!

Flower!

And last but not least Japanese Garden! The girls were able to make their fans however they wanted and Megan chose to make a turtle one of course!

Christmas Picture Fun!

The kids have posed for a few pictures lately!

Here they are with their finished product at Grandma Dierking's house! They worked hard decorating the tree!

This is one of my favorite Christmas pictures so far!

Here is another cute one!

This is in front of our tree after everything was complete!

The girls!

We've been enjoying stories next to the fire place lately!

It took a lot of takes to get this photo!

Sue took this at her house with her Advent candles!

Super cute!

Random Fun

We signed the kids up for swimming lessons again and both Megan and Jacob have made a lot of progress and have had a blast. The plus side of winter swimming lessons is very small class sizes, the negative part is wet hair in the freezing cold outside! 

Here is Jacob with his teacher and a buddy racing to the deep end of the pool blowing bubbles! He had a great teacher who was very patient with Jacob and he is much more comfortable getting his head wet!

Megan was determined to learn to ride her bike without training wheels so after a couple of tries she was off and biking! The day this happened it was super windy outside too!

Here are the kiddos playing games. They are finally old enough to play actual games!

The kids were "helping" outside in the yard, Megan put grass seed down (wrong time of year but who knows what might happen!) Jacob was digging!

At our Thanksgiving feast there were only a few green beans left so Laura asked Luke to finish them off...definitely a fun time!

I needed a picture for Michael when he calls me so I made him pose by his last-year Christmas present (the marathon metal hanging). He finally put it up because he has 2 now and said it would have looked silly with just one!

We went to Bass Pro a few weekends ago and the kids had a blast doing all of the different activities!

Megan was the only one that would pose next to the moving Moose!

Here's the crew!

Here is a Jacob milestone...in the background you can see the cup, soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, cup soap, toothpaste, and he predicted he needed mouthwash next!

Art Project Fun

Wow! I can't believe it's been a month since we posted last. To say we've been busy is an understatement! School is finally finished for the semester so that will help! We are gearing up for Christmas and hopefully I can get more pictures added this week!

We started this project a few weeks ago and each child told me ahead of time what color of paper they wanted me to get, then we traced their bodies, they colored, and cut out the outline!

 

Emily had a blast and of course picked pink and is wearing Minnie clothing. She is completely obsessed with Minnie and Mickey.

Here she is enjoying coloring her picture!

More coloring!

She loved cutting her picture out and had a blast with this family project!

Jacob also loved this project!

He really added his own style to his picture!

More fun coloring!

Jacob's final project! He did everything except for the tracing of his body!

Megan had a plan for this project and wanted it to appear that her's was running!

Her self portrait complete with rainbow pants and a green shirt of course. Her favorites for the last year or so are blue and green!

Final project displayed on her door! The word bubble says "I love running!"

She loved every minute! Now I need to come up with another super fun art project!

Marathon Weekend!!!

We traveled to Springfield this weekend for Michael marathon! It was super fun being at Bass Pro all weekend pretty much and Megan has now declared it her favorite store! We all did our personal best (Megan and my first) and had a blast! We are already talking about where to go next!

Michael did awesome and finished at the exact time he wanted to run which was 3:45...he continues to amaze me! His pace was 8:35/mile and it was so exciting to see him reach him goal! He is now talking about maybe trying a trial run next time so who knows what he'll do next!

Megan did a great job! She blazed her own trail and ran ahead of me at the start. She had a gleam in her eyes and I couldn't help but say go go go! We had planned to stick together but she has running in her blood and I wasn't about to hold her back! She was the kid that would rather run than play at the playground! She had me worried at the end when I didn't see her at first but I was super relieved when I found her. We already have a plan in place for her next one! She was disappointed to not get a medal and we thought the 5K had medals but we were wrong. So now she's determined that next year she's running the half marathon so she can get the medal with animals on it...oh boy!

This is my first 5K and it's a great baseline for me. I had a great time and loved the competetion of jogging past people walking and jogging past people. I'm still trying to figure out how to work, go to school, be a mom, and fit in walking/jogging but I'm working on it! I am definitely looking forward to the next one!

Megan loved all of the animals on display. They had hawks, snakes, bunnies, bald eagle, and more.

Michael running to the finish line!!!

Megan posing with the big fish! She loves Bass Pro!

I stopped to take this picture because these kids were awesome! Best signs of the day!

Here she is with the bald eagle behind her!

Megan and I posing for a picture that we asked a random stranger to take!

Before the race!

The day before the race we enjoyed browsing Bass Pro Shops...such a fun store, we had to drag Megan away!

Megan and Michael had a great time swimming in the pool! Megan managed to talk Michael into going under and she said he should learn to swim before running again! He was a good sport when she was trying to dunk him...but I still saw the terror in his eyes!

Here they are posing for a picture!

Before the race! Instead of Where's Waldo, it's Where's Michael!