Don't want to meet these guys

 

Congrats to my hard working guys who do taekwondo. They just earned their green belts; most of them passed with Excellent! I wouldn't want to meet them in a dark ally!

Beach day

On Saturday my sister came down from Phelan (Victorville area) and spent the day with us. We went to the beach and then came home and visited. It was a ton of fun in the sun! Arya won't go too close to the water unless she is carried. She loves to sit on the sand and eat it. Weird. Alyssa, Nathan, and Savannah were all out riding the waves. Alanna thought she could 'surf,' but left it to the older kids when a wave knocked her off of her boggie board.

Sneaky kids

On Saturday Jared and I had a little disagreement. Well, it was actually a big disagreement, a little fight. :) We don't have big disagreements that often. Normally there is some miscommunication, apologies, and it is all better. Our kids aren't use to little fights that we have about twice a year. They kind of band together and plan how to help us resolve it. It is actually pretty cute. Well, Saturday at lunch time we were in the middle of a little rift. The kids all left the table after lunch, meet in their secret meeting place (I think it is Alyssa's room, but I'm not sure), and they came up with this note writing plan. I didn't find out all of the pieces of this puzzle until Sunday night. But later on Saturday Savannah came and told me that Jared left me a note on my desk. Nathan had told Jared that I left him a note on his desk. So, I got the note Sunday night, and this was it:

Isn't that the funniest thing! The part I like best is that the kids wrote Jared taking the blame for the disagreement. Hmmmm. Is that because it was his fault or because they think I can do no wrong???

Ballet Recital-Alanna

This was Alanna's second little recital. The first one was in December and she did one dance with her class. She did a great job. The photos above are her with her make up and her with her best friend Analeah.

This recital they did two dances. The first one was about "When I grow up, I'll be happy as can be, like a birdie in a tree," and Alanna sang the song over and over for the past few weeks. She did a great job at this dance, smiled, danced, had a great time! She is the one on the left side in this first photo and in the second photo she is second from left.

Isn't this the cutest! Look at those pigtails fly! Alanna is second from the left. Analeah is the one jumping the highest!

The second dance they did was to the Jungle Book and they all dressed like jungle animals. It was a cute tap dance and this is the dance they did at the December recital. Alanna wore her lion Halloween costume from two years ago! She loved getting the make up on, but when it was time to go out and preform, she stood there the whole time! My friend Amy has the practice videos posted on her blog at: http://familiaayala.blogspot.com/ It is really cute and you can hear the teacher trying to get Alanna to dance. In the blue skirt dance Alanna has curlers in her hair, but she is the third from the right. In the second dance she is the second from the left, the one who stands through most of it! Now this was the practice, but for the real one, she was as pictured in the photo below for the entire dance!

Ballet Recital-Alyssa

Alyssa has been in ballet for about 5 years now. She loves it and loves to preform. In the group photo above, she is the standing girl on the far right.

In this photo on the left, she is the furthest on the left side. In the photo below, she is right in the middle.

This was her first Spring recital when she had barely turned four years old, 6 years ago. (she is kneeling in the center of the photo.) I can't believe how fast time has gone. I love looking back at the photos from her first experiences of something, such as ballet, up to now.

Another trip with Savannah to the hospital

We just got back from the hospital with Savannah. We were swimming at a friend's pool today and we had been there for almost three hours. The older girls were preparing a 'jumping into the pool' show and it was just about ready. It always makes me nervous when they jump into the pool becuase they jump in so close to the edge rather than jumping out. All of a sudden I heard Savannah crying.
Ya know, when I heard her crying, I knew exactly what had happened. I knew with how close to the side she jumps in to the pool that busting her chin or her head was bound to happen. Well, she busted her chin. When I saw the cut it looked like a little paper cut; just straight across. But I knew it would open up. I put a towel over it right away to stop the bleeding and then looked at it again and it had split wide open. With the way the skin split it look like there was a chunk missing from her chin. When we left the pool, Savannah was crying the whole way home. She kept asking if she would get stitches. I told her that I thought she would because I wanted her to be prepared just in case. I came home, changed Savannah into clothes, we said a little prayer and Jared took her to the hospital. I left Alyssa, Nathan, and Arya home and I took Alanna to her doctor to have her TB test read and then I met Savannah and Jared at the hospital.

Savannah got taken right in and was seen pretty quickly. By the time I got there they had some blue goo on her chin to numb it. The doctor didn't think it was too bad, but wanted to do a staple just in case. Then he came in to do the procedure and he said, "Oh, this is worse than I thought." He ended up putting in three stitches. Savannah was a champ!

The nurses and doctor said that she did a great job; didn't cry at all or fuss and held so still as she was being stitched up. The doctor asked her a bunch of questions when he came in. He asked her if she smoked. She said, "No, I don't do any of that bad stuff." The doctor laughed. He was such an interesting guy. He said, "Savannah you are an excellent patient!" Then the nurse came in and told us how taken he was with Savannah. She said, "It's really funny because he normally doesn't like children!" So, my little charmer lived up to her reputation!
As we were leaving she asked if we could go back to the pool!! What a trooper. She can't go swimming until Monday.
Here is a slide show of the event. Jared, in true form, had his camera out the minute I got home from the pool with her, so he documented the whole event. What a character. As we were leaving the hospital a helicopter was taking off, so we got some photos of him waving to the girls. To get the full effect, watch this as a slide show with a full screen view!

Bike Rodeo

Nathan started scouts when he turened 8 in February. He has loved it. They have great weekly activities planned and he loves getting together with his friends. He is very motivated and follows me around daily asking what he can do each day with his scouting. They have a big pack meeting on June 24 where he will get some awards, so I want to wait until then to post all of the cool things he has done over these past five months, but this last Wednesday they did a bike rodeo and he had a ton of fun. Here are some photos.