Ellie's Spring Dance Recital

I am making blog books for the kids for Christmas, and in doing so I realized that somehow I forgot to blog the pictures from Ellie's dance recital last June.  The boys get lots of posts for football, so it is only fair that Ellie get one for dance, especially since she goes every week.

For the spring dance recital, all the classes got to buy a cute matching costume.  She did a tap dance and a ballet dance so her costume had two parts.

 

 While everyone else is on stage, the girls get to stay behind stage and color.  Look at Ellie's pretty curls.  We had to use rollers overnight to get that effect.

 While she was on stage.  We didn't have the best seats, so this was the best I could do.

S'mores

Because of the drought last year, we didn't get to have a campfire on our land.  It has been quite a while since we have roasted s-mores and had a fire.  We got a chance to do that this weekend.

 

Funny, after about one s'more, we've all had enough s'mores.  The kids, however, don't mind eating a ton of marshmallows.

Grammie and Grandpa's visit

My parents came to visit for a week.  I tried to clear as many things out of our schedule that I could for the week, but we still were really busy.  It was good to see them though, and visit with them.

They even went to the football game with us and my mom even let Ellie take a picture of us.

 When she tried to take one of Grandpa, he did this:

 But later Nate was able to get this one.

It was nice to see them, but it was a busy week (welcome to my life).  Nate was a little wild too, and kept trying to fight (i.e. wrestle, fight) with them.  Crazy boy.

Thanks for coming!  Hope we didn't scare you away for too long.

Halloween

 For the ward trunk or treat, Ellie and I were both witches.  Can you see the family resemblance?

 On Sunday, we carved pumpkins.  Joe was obviously concentrating really hard.

 Adam and Michael mostly did their own, but we really had to help with Ellie's and Nates.

 In order of who's they are: Michael's, Ellie, Adam, Nate.

 The kids were Ellie, a witch, Adam a warrior, Michael, Will Treaty, and Nate a policeman.

 

This past week, the kids had their storybook parade at their school.  Michael was a Ranger's Apprentice.

 Ellie was a fairy.

Now we can start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Michael is 9

Michael's birthday was last week.  When we asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he said, "well you aren't going to get me what I want, so I don't know what to ask for."  It's true, he really wants an Ipod Touch and I am not going to give him one for a LONG time.  He did say he wanted a Lego airplane set, so we got him that.  At least he gets to build something and we can store it on his shelves with the 500 other lego creations they have.

 For the kids birthdays, I bring them lunch at their school.  Michael chose Chic-fil-a.  He didn't want brownies or cookies or cake for his birthday, so we just did ice cream with the candles.  It is a little tricky to get 9 candles to stand upright in ice cream that is melting. We sang fast.

Michael is by far my easiest child.  He obeys, he gets good grades, he rarely complains, he isn't usually in the middle of the fights.  He LOVES to read.  I cannot find books fast enough for him to read- in the past year he has read the Harry Potter series, the Gregor the Overlander Series, the Little House on the Prairie series, the Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe series, the Percy Jackson series, as much of the Heroes of Olympus books as are out, and the Ranger's Apprentice series.  He will get a book and read through it so fast.  I do occasionally ask him follow up questions to make sure he is getting what he reads, and sure enough, he answers all of them, so I know he is.
He mostly likes school, but he HATES homework.  He also hates to write.  If anyone tries to get him to write, he will sit there until the last possible minute and then scribble something out quickly just to get it done.  He loves to walk on his hands- he can walk halfway across the room, he also can just stand on his hands for about 30 seconds, and he is starting to do pushups while doing a hand stand.  He loves Minecraft and anything electronic.  He loves to play with friends, and tries to get me to allow him to have friends over any chance he can.

I don't have a current school picture of him because when they told him to smile he showed his teeth, but not in a smile, so we are trying to get retakes taken.  We sure love our Michael.

Boys Team Gymnastics

Adam and Michael have been doing gymnastics for 2 1/2 years now.  After the first 4 months, they asked Adam to be in an invitation only class.  He was in that class for a year, and then they asked Michael to be in the same class, a class that met twice a week for 1 1/2 hours each week.  At the end of the school year last year, they asked them both to join the boys team.  As we got close to the end of last year, I got really burnt out on gymnastics and tired of hearing the boys complain every time we had to go to gymnastics, so I told them that we would take the summer off.  I then gave them the choice at the end of the summer to see if they wanted to go back to gymnastics and do the "team."  They enjoyed the break this summer, and then, to my surprise, they both wanted to join the boys team this fall.  When we went back to sign up, they made both boys try out again to join the team, but luckily, they made it.

Practices for the team are twice a week- Wednesday and Friday from 5:30pm to 8:00pm.  We committed to do it, even though our schedule was really crazy.  As soon as we started, it became really hectic in our family.  It was hard to get everyone fed and out the door in time to make it to gymnastics at 5:30 (Adam often gets home at 4:30-4:45).  There was never enough time to do homework on those nights.  That also left us home on Friday nights- we couldn't do anything else because we had to get the kids from their gymnastics.  The boys were really feeling stressed every time we went.

 I was starting to feel really overwhelmed with gymnastics, that it was causing a lot of stress on our family, and I didn't know if it was worth the stress.  The boys are good at gymnastics, but there are other boys at their gym who are better at it than them.  They are never going to be good enough to make the Olympics or to compete much more than at the local level.  I was having all these feelings, but every time the boys came home from gymnastics they told me how much they enjoyed it and how much fun they had.  They really enjoyed the coach and a few of the boys on the team.  (They also would tell me how rude some of the other boys were, and how many cuss words the boys would say).

 Because they enjoyed it so much, we kept going.  We paid for USAG numbers and for team uniforms, which totalled about $500.  Then they asked us to pay our first meet fee.  The meet would be held in January, they told us 2 days before it was due that we needed to turn it in.  Since I have never been to a gymnastics meet before, it was all new to me.  As I started talking to some of the other parents I found that they may be competing on a Saturday or a Sunday.  I explained that we wouldn't be competing on Sunday, and asked when we could find out when the schedule was posted so we could know if we should pay the meet fees (which were $75 a kid).  They told me that the schedules are not made up until a couple of weeks before the meets, but the meets fill up so we won't be able to sign up at that late a point, and the fees are non-refundable.  At this point, I finally asked the coach what we should do- since I was not willing to gamble on $150 to see if they could compete on a Saturday, and if the competition was on a Sunday, then just lose the money.  The coach then asked around to see what he thought we should do, and he told me that they sometimes make exceptions for girls to allow them to only compete on Saturdays, but never for boys.

 At this point, it seemed to me like this was the last straw we were waiting for. We decided to pull the boys out of gymnastics. They were very sad about the decision, but we figured if they could never compete, what was the point of them being on the team. 

 I actually am happy about the decision.  I was beginning to worry that the boys would be so busy with gymnastics that they might miss out on finding another sport that they would be good and enjoy playing through jr. high and high school.  We do have them in flag football, which they really love.
I also just signed them up for basketball.  They weren't so excited about that, but I want them to play one season and learn the rules so that if they have friends playing basketball at the church they will be able to play along.

 We'll see what else we end up putting them in.  We are thinking about putting everyone (except maybe Ellie) in jiu-jitsu.  The boys love wrestling with each other now and they are really strong, so I think they will like it.  They remember hating it when they were little, so they are afraid to try it again.

 They have learned a lot in gymnastics.  They are very coordinated now (well Michael still falls over his feet sometimes and runs into walls, but he can be coordinated if he is paying attention to what he is doing), and they have great core body strength.  Adam has a 4-pack of muscles and there isn't a gram of fat on their bodies.  I think this will help them in the other sports that they are in.

The nice thing about quitting gymnastics this way is that I am still friendly with the coaches and the staff at their gym.  That's good because we are still up there twice a week with Nate and Ellie going.  Ellie is progressing very well, so we may be there for many more years, Nate will probably be a short-lived thing.