Aladdin Jr.

The kids have been involved in a children's production group and this weekend was their performance of Aladdin Jr. It was a cast of about 45 kids with two months of practice and rehearsals and the shows were awesome. I was so proud of those kids! This was especially a leap for Tyler who is generally shy but was brave and determined to stick to it. He fretted about things from "I have to wear make-up?!" to "I can't get my costume changed fast enough" but pulled it all together and had a great time. McKenna ended up lip-syncing most of the songs because she has a terrible cough and if she sang would end up coughing on stage. The production was wonderful and they are already looking forward to what is next. I am happy for a brief reprieve! I am so proud of them!

Mostly pictures

A quick update, Carter turns 9 months this week (I KNOW I KNOW!) and as you can tell he is as cute as ever. He's getting around now, not really crawling but rolling and scooching backwards. He's had a rough week of ear infections and pink eye but all is better now. The other kids are busy with an upcoming Aladdin performance they are in this weekend. Ellie isn't in it but she's the biggest fan and loves to watch rehearsals. I'll post pictures of that next week. There are also no pictures of McKenna but there will be soon. Please don't tell her, I don't want McKenna scorn! I've included a video clip just for the York relations, hope you enjoy!

Spring, play and dancing

Just a short blurb. Spring has sprung here and it's beautiful. We've had a few days of sun and a few days of rain and everything is blooming. The picture is flowers off our star magnolia tree in the front yard. It produces these incredible flowers that make me *sigh* when ever I see them.

McKenna finished yet another production. This one was through a drama group at her school and was so fun to watch. It was "Doo Wop Wed Widing Hood" with lots of singing and dancing and she loved it. Tyler and she are now rehearsing for "Aladdin Jr." which is going to be fantastic, but they (we) are ready for rehearsals to be over.

Tyler starts Little League tomorrow and he's excited for that, too. Dee gets to coach him this season so I'll keep you posted on how it all turns out.

Dee's birthday was this week and came and went without a lot of fanfare. We did get together with friends for dinner and cake and all had a good time.

Lastly, Carter started dancing today. Probably not a big thing to anybody but his mom, but I thought it was a kick in the pants so I've posted a little video. Eight months old and he rocks!

Finish...

It looks like I cut out the middle of the last post. I often do that when trying to include pictures in certain places. Do'h! Here's basically what got cut out.

I said we sampled some Southern cuisine (boiled peanuts, fried green tomatoes, etc.). We went to River Street and saw HUGE boats on the river, shopped and ate some more. We explored downtown Savannah, which I loved and would like to spend more time. The houses were amazing, Spanish Moss hung in the trees, everybody was friendly and it just has a feel about it. We played at the park and Jonas cracked me up all weekend. We attempted the beach but it was stinking cold that day. I'd like to try again when it's warmer! Mostly we just enjoyed being together and the trip went too fast.

To Georgia and beyond!

We decided to go visit James and Amber in Savannah over President's Day/Valentine's Day weekend. Sounded simple enough because I had a plan. Marybeth was coming in to watch the other kids (not Carter because he flies for free) and we'd be off. Boy do I owe her - her weekend was filled with chicken nuggets and sleeping on tents on the couch!

We had a small layover in Chicago on the way there and all would be smooth. The weather was supposed to be in the 70's in Georgia so I packed capris and sandals. Sounded lovely. Well as any good story goes, we had a couple hiccups getting there, such as our connecting flight through Chicago didn't connect and they couldn't get us any closer than Atlanta (4 hour drive) and that wasn't until the next morning. The "good" news was our luggage made it to Savannah... right.

We spent the night in Chicago which turned out to be fantastic because we were able to hook up with Dee's step-brother, Rocky, and our niece and nephew for dinner.


Then off again! We made it finally after lots of early morning hours and not much sleep. Once we were finally there we had a great time. We got to meet our beautiful niece, Savannah (who I think looks like her beautiful mom.)

Unfortunately our trip was over way too quickly and alas, the return trip was also filled with mis-haps including our flight not going because of a leak and spending 6 extra hours in Savannah after waking up at 12:45 our time we didn't make it home until 12:30 our time. A full 24 hours of partying in airports. Carter caught the flu somewhere along the way and the next day everyone here was puking which made me wish we had a vacation coming up...

Winter?

We've been having interesting weather as I'm sure most of you are. Here it's been beautiful (70-80's) and everyone insists on worrying about what is to come "Sure going to be a bad summer...". Now, don't get me wrong this may be very true. However I've come to the conclusion we can't change the weather so dang if I'm not going to enjoy it while it's here!

We celebrated last week by going to Whiskeytown Lake with our dear friends. We had a picnic and played in the sand pretty much all day. The kids were crazy enough to play in the water a bit but I just enjoyed the sun and kept saying things like IT'S JANUARY!

Christmas Fun

Christmas was magic this year. The kids are the perfect ages and it was absolutely fantastic. We started Christmas Eve with tracking Santa across the world on a NASA website. Man that guy can move! When he got to New York it was time for the kids to go to bed. We opened the Christmas jammies and read the story of Christ's birth from the bible and off they hopped to bed.

My favorite story was in his letter to Santa, Tyler asked for "a Nintendo DS or 3 king-sized Slim-jims". So Christmas morning at 5:30 on the dot the kids tip toe into our room and we all head to the living room. Ty could see Slim-jims poking out over the couch and started yelling, "I got the Slim-jims! He brought me Slim-Jims!" Didn't get a DS but I don't think he noticed. All three of the kids were so excited for Christmas and the whole day was magic.