Dance Recital 2009

Today was Chloe's dance recital, a fabulous way to wrap up a year of hard work. Chloe has been blessed with an extremely patient teacher who is willing to work with Chloe. Chloe loves dance. She looks forward to it each week and cannot wait for it to start up again in the fall. She has made some incredible friends through her dance classes as well.

This year Chloe took a Ballet/Jazz combination class. She loved the ballet, which is new this year. She has always just done ballet but never really enjoyed it until this year. She worked extremely hard this year getting her toes to turn out correctly and having correct posture during plies. She liked the jazz portion of the class as well and enjoyed being able to move a little faster to the music. She also took tap this year. Tap has been a struggle for her and at the beginning of the year she wanted to quit. She stuck with it though and is making huge progress.

Chloe was in four dances in this year's recital-She was a wildflower in the Ballet Story, a jazz dance--"You've Got the Beat", a tap dance to "I Love to Walk In the Rain," and the finale - "Hoedown Throwdown". She enjoyed each one but especially the last one since it is a Miley Cyrus song.

Here are some pictures of Chloe at the recital....










Chloe did her ballet and jazz dances in the same costume. The only difference was that she had a tutu under the skirt for ballet. This made her costume changes this year a breeze!!

Here she is dancing her tap routine....






I got Chloe a recital sweatshirt this year. It has the names of all the girls who danced in the recital. I thought it would be a fun way for her to remember this year at dance. They got to wear their sweatshirts during the finale. Which was great in theory until you had a bunch of sweaty girls putting on sweatshirts. You can imagine how warm they were.




This was Chloe's best dance recital ever! She did beautifully! She has grown so much this year. Every time I look at her I am reminded of how much our little girl is growing up. Chloe got two beautiful bouquets full of roses for her performance. She loves giving and receiving flowers so you can imagine how excited she was. It was a great night and she is already asking when she gets to go to dance again. =)

Teepee Time

Matt got an incredible deal on this fun teepee tent. The kids were ecstatic and couldn't wait for him to put it together. He first put it up outside but it now resides in Aidan's room (as you can imagine he is thrilled). So here are some fun pictures Matt took of the kids hanging out in their new teepee.

Oak Trees

We have been back from vacation for a few days but I still have a few more pictures to share with you. We went to a little local park one of the days we were in Angels Camp. The play area itself was not too exciting but all the giant oak trees in the park were awesome. Chloe climbed up the trees (which surprised me because she is usually too scared to do stuff like that). Aidan of course had no fear and was already to climb up the tree to get his picture taken. Here are some great pictures I took of the kids.

Columbia, CA--Cowboy Costumes

For quite a while now we have been wanting to get an "Old West" Family Picture done. There was a place in Columbia but the line was too long. At one of the museums they had a dress-up area for the kids. We decided to take advantage of the clothes and have our own impromptu "Old West Portrait Session".

Chloe, as a laundress, and Aidan as a gold miner.


As you can see Brenna was having more fun running around than sitting still for the picture!


This is a sweet picture of Chloe...


Brenna thought running around in the long dress was hilarious...


We finally got Brenna to sit still long enough to get a picture but she refused to wear the sun bonnet.


Aidan loved dressing up as a miner...


One of these days we will get all of us in an "Old West" picture together...Maybe we can put them in our Christmas Cards. =)

Columbia, CA--Exploring the Town!

Here are some pictures of Columbia...


Saw this in a store window and just had to take a picture. Talk about reading between the lines.

Here are some pictures of the main street. Yes, it is an asphalt street, cars were allowed to drive through at one point in time. There are board sidewalks and most of the stores have giant metal shutters that close over the doors at closing time. The town looks much like it did 150 years ago.



You should of see the look on Chloe's face when we told her what this building was used for in the "Old West". She cracks me up!


Johnson's Livery had different buggies and buckboards inside. Including a horse-drawn hearse. There were old buggies and wagons through out the town adding to the authenticity.




The shops and building have been kept in good repair over the years but you can tell the wood is getting worn out in a few places.


Here is an old Mining Store set up so you can get an idea of what a store in the 1850s would of looked like. They even had living quarters for the store owner set up in the back. There is a small stable in the back of the store and a chicken coop which the kids thought was great of course.



Here is the original schoolhouse which was quite a hike up a hill overlooking the town. It only has two classrooms, one on the first floor and one on the second floor. It was neat seeing Chloe's reaction to what school used to look like. Aidan had to be carried part way up the hill so he could keep up. We were careful to follow the trail, signs were everywhere warning us to stay on the trail to avoid running into rattle snakes. Nice.


Here are some more pictures of us walking down the boarded sidewalks and looking into the various shops and businesses. It was starting to get crowded so we didn't get to pan for gold but the kids had fun watching other people do it.







It was a fun day of stepping back into time...