Daddy Daughter Dance(s)

Ellie's elementary school had a Daddy Daughter dance right before Valentine's day.  It was fun, she got all dressed up and Joe got her a corsage. 

 They went with some friends to dinner beforehand and then to the dance.

 They had a really good time.  Fast forward a couple of months, and the activity day girls had a n 80's Daddy/ daughter dance.  It was super fun.  They had colorful lights and a limbo contest, also a moonwalk contest, which Joe hands down won!

 Ellie especially loved the 80's dance because all of her best friends were there and she could dance with them!

Ellie's Purple and Gold Competition and Girl's Trip

Ellie had 2 competitions at level 4 this season.  The first was in San Antonio, and we all went to it.  The second was in Louisiana at LSU, and we made it into a girls trip with Ellie and her friend Sydney and me and Sydney's mom, Sylvia. We went out to Baton Rouge first thing on Friday morning. The traffic was horrid.  We went shopping in the afternoon, caught some dinner and then went to the LSU vs. Alabama gymnastics meet.  I had never been to a gymnastics meet and it was quite exhilarating to watch, especially since Alabama was ranked 2nd and LSU was 4th and it was their last meet of the season.  We had nosebleed seats, but  we still could see the girls do their routines and the rest of the team cheer them on.  It was fun.

 I had never been to LSU before, but right next to the stadium is Mike the tiger.  He has a huge habitat there and so we went back in the morning to see him again.  It appears he is more active at night.

Ellie's competition went ok.  She had just moved up a level, so her coaches would only let her compete on bars beam and floor.  She had a couple of parts of her beam routine that were missing, so she didn't score well on bar.  She did get a 9.000 on beam and a 8.925 on floor, which we were very happy with.

 After the meet, we went and got lunch and got our nails done, then drove home.  We had a great time.

The next week at gymnastics, Ellie had a hard time.  She didn't want to go to any extra practices and she didn't want to go on the day when she was with the special team coach.  She clearly was struggling.  Her coaches had talked about having her test out of level 4 and move up to level 5 for the fall, but she was miserable working so hard and for so many hours.  We decided to let her stay in level 4 and compete in the fall at that level.  Level  4 is a bit more difficult than level 3, but we hope she can have a great season again in the fall like she did last year at level 3.

Robotics, DI and Percussion

Adam chose to do robotics again this year for his advanced science class.  He and Joe built a robot.  Since they had made one last year, it was a lot less difficult and time consuming to figure out how to do it this year.  Unfortunately, the day of the robotics competition, the connection to the power source fell apart and so they weren't able to win the competition.

 Michael did percussion again this year.  The same day that Adam had his robotics competition, Michael partcipated in a superband that consisted of band students from all of the feeder schools that feed into our nearby High School.  They sounded really great, and it was fun to be right next to Michael to watch him play.

 Another activity that Michael tried out this year was Destination Imagination, or DI.  This is a group project in which the kids are given an objective and they have to work alone to figure out how to accomplish that goal.  In this case, they had to have a machine that would move a person across the stage without using a motor.  They designed the machine and added a skit to go with it.  On the day of the competition, they were also given a challenge that they had to complete as a team in a certain time.  At the beginning of the year, Michael loved going to DI and working with the group, but by the end he felt like there were some members that were too bossy and he didn't like the amount of time that was required.  Overall, however, it was a great experience.

San Francisco Girls Trip

We try to do a girls trip to the outlet mall every spring.  My bestie, Kim, moved to California in December, so we mixed up the girls trip and went to San Francisco instead of the outlets.  Kim had been there before, but none of the rest of us had, so it was a fun destination.  Julia, Beca and I got there before Kim and our hotel was on Lombard Street, and so we walked up and up and up to the top of the steepest street in the world.  Here it is behind us.

Kim came in that evening and we walked over to Ghiradelli Square.  We had a lot of fun (really the whole trip) trying to get the selfie stick to work.  Clearly, we are not teenage girls, so we have a lot of selfie stick ineptness.

 The next day, we went on hop on/hop off bus to tour the city.  It was nice in the morning, so we took the top deck

 Our first stop was alcatraz.  It was fascinating to hear the history and tour of the prison.

#alcatrazcellfie

The view from alcatraz island.

 After alcatraz, we went to Chinatown.We went to a fortune cookie factory, which was really a one room shop with a fortune cookie machine. We made personalized fortune cookies and then we went shopping.  It was fun, there were so many interesting things to see.

 Saturday morning, we decided to go up to a nearby forest that has giant redwoods growing it.  We used uber to get a car up to it.  It was pretty rainy, but it was a beautiful drive.  Once we got there and our driver had driven away, we quickly realized we didn't have cell service, so we didn't have any way to get back.

 The trees were quite amazing.

  Tree hugger...but look how big the tree is!

We did find that we had a cell signal on one of the paths. We were able to request an uber driver, then we hurried out to the front of the visitor's parking lot to wait for him.  Unfortunately, he never showed.  We finally figured out that there is a bus that goes back to the city, so we jumped on that.  When we got back to the city, we rode our hop on/ hop off bus.  Unfortunately, since it was so rainy the bottom deck of the bus was full and we had to sit on the top deck.   It was so cold and windy as we crossed over the bridge 3X.  Here is a selfie of one of the trips across.

 Later that night, we went on the night tour of the same bus.  This was the bus we rode.

 After the tour, we hit up Madame Tussards wax museum.  It was surprisingly fun.  Here are some of the fun selfies we took.  This first one is Al Capone.

The last morning, we stopped by the "painted ladies" on the way to the airport.

 Overall, it was a fantastic trip.  We saw some fun things and enjoyed spending time together.