Goofballs

Chapter Books!

We've been trying to encourage Paige to read some more challenging books because she's such an excellent reader! She gravitates toward graphic novels or anything with lots of pictures which is great...but also, we want her to challenge herself too! We had a conference with her teacher who mentioned that Paige had read a couple Whatever After books so we picked one up at the bookfair and Paige has loved it! Yay! 

Crew!

Owen's most recent soccer tournament got cancelled because of the ridiculously rainy weather (it had been raining hard for probably a week!) so Pat and Owen took a last minute trip to Columbus with some friends to watch the Crew compete in the playoffs! It was a cold night and I suggested they take some coats but they declined so they were freezing most of the time! Their friends were bundled up though:) Ha ha! They had a fun time though and the Crew won! 

Halloween Night

We had everyone arrive an hour before trick or treating so we would have time to eat pizza, fruit and veggies before heading out. The weather wasn't too cold but was miserably rainy so we were not as excited to go as we normally would have been. Luckily, the weather cleared up about 30 minutes in! The kids were a little slower than last year but they still got a ridiculous amount of candy and had fun!

Kiddos

Annual Halloween picture recreation of the original group!

Time to trade and see how much everyone has!

The loot!

The loot!

Annual Halloween selfie

Paige had a lot of Kit Kats this year

Owen had a ton of Snickers

Halloween Day

Halloween started with a very early morning run to the local doughnut shop! We've chosen to have the traditional doughnuts and cider for breakfast the past couple of years because there isn't much time after school before friends come over! I also made eggs to get some protein in there but both kids mentioned they had a little bit of a stomachache...we might have to move the doughnut eating to later in the day:) 

Owen's school doesn't have parties but I'm room captain for Paige's class this year so I (along with Tiffany) was in charge of organizing the party! The kids ate cookies, pretzels, oranges and juice boxes and we played a balloon stomp game. Paige was doing well but I guess she somehow stomped on her own balloon! We also had a photo booth set up. It was a lot of fun and went by very quickly!

Ballet Day

Time for Paige's third ever Ballet Day! Ballet Day comes a week or so before Cecchetti exams and gets the girls excited and ready to test. This year Paige was old enough to compete in scholarships but didn't place this time. She's amazing at ballet so hopefully next year! It was a long day that consisted of scholarship tryouts, cecchetti, ballet, jazz and hip hop. Paige said her favorite was jazz this year!

A little nervous waiting to go in!

Better with friends!

Exhausted waiting for awards and one more class

Level 1 participants

Above the Barre kids

Goofballs

Costume Party

We got invited to a Halloween party this year! Pat and I don't usually have a reason to dress up so it was fun putting together costumes. I decided on Mary Poppins pretty early on and Pat was going to be Mr Rogers but we couldn't find the right red cardigan:) As seen in the Daddy Daughter Dance pictures, he went as Bert this year. The kids had fun at the party eating, watching Halloween movies, and painting pumpkins. The adults mostly were outside hanging out around the fire. Such a fun night!

Daddy Daughter Dance

The Daddy Daughter Dance was a little different this year because it was a costume dance! No fancy clothes or corsages:( It was nice to get another use out of the costumes though! Pat said the dance was "spooktacular" and a lot of fun. They had lots of snacks and did a little bit of dancing.

Owen and I got some donuts and relaxed at home for our bonding time! The dance wasn't as long this year so we didn't have a lot of time to go anywhere but we made the most of our time and had a blast!

Parent Observation

Parent observation week at dance is always fun! Paige is at the studio for a lot of hours so I don't stay the whole time when she goes and some classes are in rooms without windows so you literally can't watch until observation week! I like getting into the classrooms because it's a great reminder of how much Paige loves dance and how much fun she's having. Even though there are days when she's tired or wants to just stay home and do nothing, she's always happy there!

Tap!

More tap- I love this dance!

Lyrical!

Ballet!

Trio!

I tried to get a picture during her aerial!

New Recipes

We've tried a couple new recipes recently and both of them were hits. The first one was super easy Pizza Roll-Ups. You basically buy pre-made dough, make a pizza, roll it and then slice. We didn't get too creative and just had pizza and cheese as toppings but I'd love to try something different next time.

Yum!

Owen insists on making this face to drive us crazy!

The second recipe was Cookies and Cream Popcorn. We had some stale popcorn that nobody was eating and I came across this easy recipe. You just mix together melted white chocolate (recipe calls for white vanilla almond bark), crushed Oreos and popcorn. Then lay it out until the chocolate hardens back up. We plowed through it so quickly and everyone liked it so much that I decided to make it again for a party we were attending. I don't know for sure what went wrong but when I tried to make a double batch, the chocolate kept seizing up. We could not get it right! It was still good but the popcorn wasn't coated as much as the first time. I won't give up completely on the recipe but I'd love to know what went wrong!