oh wow...

... look how much taller Clara is!

2011...
2012...
(I'll have to check her shoes, but I don't think the heels on this year's pair were any higher than last year's pair.)

wow.

a list...

I still have tons of photos to post from various outings, but I have some things to jot down since I haven't done a list in a while.

1. Have I mentioned that I love Alex's school? :-) Tonight I got to school a little early to pick him up from game club. I peeked in while things were still in full force. They were all at computers playing a game together (Minecraft). They were are laughing, joking, yelling back and forth, and working together. I love that his "geekiness" is not only accepted, but encouraged! There are so many kids there that are wired like he is and that has been such a find for us! Socially, Alex is having an amazing year (he is academically as well, but that's not as surprising). You know Alex is in with the right crowd for him, when he comes home and tells me (in way too much detail) all about the video game they're all going to design together (they plan and brainstorm over lunch).

2. Clara is discovering the perks of being in the "chorus" of her school musical. You don't have one role... you have many! :-) Clara operates on "the more costumes, the better" principle.

3. I'm dreading picking Clara up tonight from ballet. She turned her ankle in pointe class on Monday and it's really bothering her. It's not swollen or bruised though. Her teacher looked at it and thought it looked okay... but Clara isn't convinced. I'm bracing for a full meltdown at pick-up... wish me luck!

4. Clara joined the Battle of the Books team at school! She has become such an amazing reader! She will probably not end up on the team that actually competes though. I think 20 4th - 6th graders joined, but only 7 will end up competing. The librarian encouraged everyone to attend the meetings each week. She's enjoying being part of a book club.

5. Alex has his product that his school is beta testing! He got it yesterday and thinks it's the coolest thing ever! They are the first school outside of California to test the product.

6. Clara has solo festival for band coming up. This should be interesting. :-}

7. All went well with Clara's science fair project! Theirs isn't a contest, it's just graded. She got 4 out of 4 in all categories and her teacher noted about how well Clara did speaking about her project. That's a big one for Clara. She's also been practicing her speaking skills, by hounding friends and family for donations for her school's Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser :-)

8. In case you were wondering... the boy has NOT destroyed any articles of his school uniform lately! We're on a good roll! The only thing at all (and I'm not sure it counts) is that he trashed his shoelaces a couple of weeks ago and we had to replace them.

Okay... I'm not sure if there's more or not, but I have to go prepare myself for picking up Clara tonight!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Clara didn't have school yesterday (Lincoln's Birthday), so we spent our day getting her Valentines ready... all SIXTY of them! :-)

We walked over to Michael's to get the last of the supplies that we needed. When we got home, we sat down and assembly lined them out. Here are some of the finished treats...
(please ignore the fine dusting of sugar that I can now see on my coffee table)

They turned out really cute, but the process made my kitchen table look like this...
It was worth it though...Clara was so excited when we found these Valentines at Walgreens. She's very into collecting pin/buttons, so these were perfect!
Hope you have a great Valentine's Day!!

the pre-dance photos...

Saturday while Clara was still in ballet (and I still had some natural light), I decided to take some detail photographs before the dance.

I started with the shoes I had just picked up for her. As luck would have it, she outgrew her dressy shoes about two weeks ago. So, I, of course, waited until the last possible moment to get a replacement pair. I picked up two pairs for her to try right after we dropped her off for ballet (a marathon day of 4.5 straight hours). They were the only two left in her size. I hoped one pair would work.

Jeff and I looked at both pairs and determined this pair the winner....
We were sure this would be the pair that she would pick. I took lots of photos of that pair of shoes.

I took two photos of this pair...
Guess which pair she picked.... yup... the second pair :-)

Mango sat on the couch watching me photograph shoes...
I'm sure she thought I'd lost my mind.

Some dress details...
One of my favorite things about the Daddy Daughter Dance is the timing. It's right after the holidays and right after all of the holiday dresses go on clearance. Clara and I pick a day and camp out in the dressing room at Macy's and try on every single dress left in her size. She has so much fun! And also because the prices are fantastic... I let her have free reign to pick out whichever dress she wants.

Here's the one she picked (the jacket is a separate piece)...
I'm not sure I loved it at first and may have even tried to persuade her against it at one point. But I remembered my pledge to give her free reign with the decision and let her pick it.

I ended up LOVING it and I think by the attitude in this photo...
she loved it too!

The part that stresses me out the most, is hair and make-up. I can actually do age appropriate make-up okay... but I stink at hair. I even considered making her a hair appointment, but in the end, I just couldn't justify it.

However, I think things turned out just fine...With some guidance from the woman at Claire's, we decided to go with a side bun using one of those donut things....
The whole style went perfectly with her dress and it was really easy too!

Showing off her nails...
Basketball was cancelled on Friday night, so after school we went and had her nails done. A woman who was there for her appointment got so excited about Clara going to the dance, that she helped her pick out the perfect color and was the one who suggested the glitter top coat. Very fancy :-)

And finally, the happy daddy-daughter duo....
off to the dance!!

Way to go Alex!

Alex had a great day at ski club yesterday!!

First of all, he came home with this...
Third best time of all levels competing! He was so excited about this! He had managed to keep it a secret until he got off the bus. He had texted us about the race, but had kept all of his answers pretty cool, without letting on about his medal.

The other surprise he had for us, was that he got promoted up a level in lessons! He was very excited about this as well. He had thought that it was coming soon, but he didn't know if it would happen or not since we're so near the end of the season.

I have a bunch of photos to post from yesterday as it was Daddy Daughter Dance night! Clara and her friends went again and had a fabulous time! It's so much fun getting her all dolled up for this each year. I'm just sad that we discovered it so late. They don't have many years left of wanting to do this... but as long as they all want to do it together, I think they'll keep going at least a couple more years.

My friend and I took the "big kids" out to dinner. We had the worst service ever, but it didn't bother us a bit. It was nice to hang out and chat without someone hovering over us to vacate the table. It was a really good evening for all!

(today, my son has requested that I take him shopping so he can by a Valentine present for a girl at school... yikes!!)

I'm so over...

... the snowboarding photos. I still have another day and a half that I haven't posted... but I'm over them. Time to edit and post something else. Maybe I'll go back to them... but, then again, maybe not. :-)

Last month was Clara's ballet class's parent observation. I ended up going two of the three days, but took very few photos. First of all, her class is pretty big now and uses center barres. I was sitting in the "obstructed view" section for barre work and had very few opportunities for a clear shot of Clara. I took a couple of photos but, there are barres and the limbs of the students at those barres in all the photos. I took very little video as well for the same reason.

I did get a clear shot of her during pointe...
This was my first official time to see her in her pointe shoes (I had peeked through the window on a couple of occasions). I took a couple photos, but then mostly took video. She was having an off night, so it wasn't her best outing.

Her teacher thought she was doing well enough to do center for the first time though! Clara decided to stand right directly in front of me so I could see her (she was so proud to be doing center). However, I only brought one lens and she was too close for me to get any full body shots (and too close to video as well). So, I decided to take some snaps of her feet in her pretty pointe shoes :-)


She has a long way to go with pointe, but she is really off to a great start. She has really started to take the core strength that's needed seriously and does crunches everyday. Her teacher complimented her over the weekend about how much stronger she's gotten recently!

almost done...

I'm almost to the end of our winter break photos... I promise!

On Thursday, we woke up to a beautiful day...
(there's no one we know in the photo above, I just thought the sky was so gorgeous that I needed to snap a pic)

The kids had decided that they had had enough of lessons and they were ready to snowboard on their own.

So they got geared up...



And did a few runs in Totem Park...


Before heading over for the real deal...



They were so excited! They had the day planned, which included LOTS of snowboarding! Well... let's just say things didn't go as planned. It was the most painful thing I've ever seen, watching them try to snowboard down a green run. First of all... it took them FOREVER! I seriously could have crawled down the mountain faster than they came down on their snowboards. Clara gave up mid-run and just laid there in the snow, sobbing, hoping someone would just pick her up and carry her down. She was doing really well previously, but she totally lost her confidence and just didn't want to do it anymore... but mid-run was not the best time to decide this. She finally made her way down once she figured out that coming down on her own was her only option (unless she just wanted to spend the day up there). Needless to say, they were done after that run and we packed up and went back to the house... sigh.

2nd lesson...

The next day, the kids had a full day snowboarding lesson. While they were gone, I decided to try something new at the spa... a 80 minute pedicure with a hot stone foot massage... it was wonderful!

Anyway, when I went back to pick them up at 4:00, I did see progress!
Until Alex wiped out...
And what do you do when you wipe out and your little sister goes zooming by you? You do what any good brother would do....
.... you throw snow at her as she goes by!

Clara was actually doing quite well at this point...

But now she's down...
And Alex is back up...
They were doing well enough to try a green run, but no one else in their group was ready. Their fabulous instructor, Nate, told the kids that he would take just them down after the lesson was over. Here's what the end of that run looked like...



It was painful to watch! Nate must have the patience of a saint! They took FOREVER to come down the run. They fell so many times! But they had their first "real" run under their belts, and decided they were ready to go it alone the next day. But for right then, they were EXHAUSTED and were ready to go home! :-)

snowboard lessons

On Tuesday the kids were so excited to have their first snowboard lesson! We had only signed them up for a two hour lesson, because we weren't sure how well they would like snowboarding.















Turns out that they liked snowboarding a LOT, and two hours wasn't long enough for them to "get it". Thankfully there were two slots available in the all day lesson the next day! :-)

Crystal Mountain has such fabulous instructors! The kids have had lots of different instructors over the years and they've all been great. However, I think Nate may be one of their faves!