Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Spring Has Sprung

The weather has been great! I finally felt comfortable in washing and putting away the winter coats and snow pants. Hooray. The daffodils are finally out, so it must be spring. We've been keeping busy with lots of outdoor activities.



Walker and Gage at the "lake." It's really just a big puddle of water caused by the melting of the snow and lots of rain in March. It's out on the power lines on our woods trail. They loved throwing things in. They were trying to make a bridge. Too bad the sticks they threw in just floated away.


Walker on the monkey rings at Stepping Stones Playground. He can still get across. He worked so hard on this last year. This year it was a breeze, even his first try. He's got very good upper body strength. More than me!


You know it's spring when Scott breaks out the yard vac. Why rake up the leaves when you can vacuum them up?! This is a great rig.


Walker on the tree swing. He'd been running through the sprinkler. Warm enough for him to do that, but not me. I don't really like super-cold water.


"Boogie Back to Texas" adult tap company from Steppin' Out. I'm middle row, 3rd from right. This was taken a few minutes before we went on stage at the Gotta Dance competition. Have I mentioned we took home a platinum award?

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Lost a Tooth!

Walker lost his very first tooth Saturday morning. He was so excited. It's been very loose for about a week and bothering him. Of course it came out while I wasn't home. I was at competition. But he told me all about it on the phone. We put it in a cup next to the bed with a big sign on it so the tooth fairy could find it. She came! She left a $2.00. Cool.


He looks so different now. Especially when he's not making a silly face.


A whole new smile. We've entered "big kid" world now.

Competition went well for our studio as a whole. My tap company (I refer to it as the "Go Mom" group) won platinum for our dance "Boogie Back to Texas." Unfortunately, a woman who dances with us, who is also a teacher at another studio, STOLE the choreography and put it on her own students who also competed in the same competition. What a looser! I don't know how she'll be able to show her face there on Thursday. We'll see what happens. Anyway, adult jazz company also got a platinum award for "Wizard of Odd." I'm a lion in that one. It was fun and now performing is over for a few weeks until recital time.

Lost a Tooth!

Thursday, April 03, 2008

2 Days Til Competition

The 1st dance competition for Steppin' Out will be held this Saturday. It's an exciting time at the studio. Are we all ready? Of course. If not, well, it'll be over in a few days. I'm always excited to hear what the judges have to say, so classes will be interesting next week with their comments. It'll be busy on Saturday for me. I'm teaching my first 4 classes at Andover. I got a sub for the last class, so I'll be able to get to the competition venue early. I want plenty of time to apply those false eyelashes.

In other dance news, Walker will be dancing the role of Toto in the "Wizard of Odd" in the May recitals. He's very excited about that. At first the thought was that we'd be using a stuffed dog. But a real, live kid is even better. Another child will be doing it this weekend in competition, though. But Walker will be in 3 or 4 shows in May. The dog costume is very cute.

I was excited to finally be able to make reservations at Whit's End Camping Area. Unfortunately, the sites we really, really wanted are booked for the entire summer. Darn. I thought calling at 8:30AM on the first day they are open for reservations would guarantee us what we want. What I didn't know is that people book a year in advance. So now I know. When we leave there this summer we'll reserve the best sites for next summer. Ah, planning 2009 already. Something to look forward to. We did get river sites, but they are a little "cliffy." We were there last year and enjoyed it, but still, I really wanted the nice, flat beach sites. Oh well. I guess as long as there is water nearby we'll be OK. Our favorite sites are waterfront, so we'll be happy. Early morning fishing, right off your front doorstep. This trip will begin on Wednesday, July 23. We've got 4 nights booked.

We still had snow on the ground on the first day of spring. Below are some pictures of Walker celebrating.

Daffodils popping up.


Still got snow.

We were excited when a few days after the first day of spring it snowed again. There was enough snow to cancel school last Friday. Here we are playing out in it. We really did get a lot of snow!
When you shake a tree, lots of snow falls down onto your head.

We finally used our new snowman kit (new, bought back in November).

Scott likes plowing so much he even plowed his old tractor. No seriously, he was pushing it into the garage to change it's tires. Walker and I thought it was a funny sight.