Ballet Folklorico

Michelle is part of a Ballet Folklorico at her school that practices weekly and performs Mexican and Central American dances. Their first performance was yesterday for her school. For this performance, the dance group provided costumes. (However each girl will need her own skirt for some performances. Michelle's was just finished this week and it is beautiful!)

Michelle was so excited. She talked about it for weeks and asked repeatedly if we would be able to come. She even decided to write us a note the night before to invite us. Too cute! Here are a few photos from the wonderful performance. Because this is Michelle's first year, she was only in one dance but she did a great job!


These are the beginners, including Michelle and several of her friends (Liliana, her best friend, and Chris, Jasmine,and others).

Besides Michelle's dance there were 4 other dances. Including the hilarious Old Man Dance of which her good friend Riley was a part. If you haven't seen the Old Man Dance, you've got to see it.




This is not a good shot, I realize, but these are the dance teachers (all U of U students) and the others that run the Adelante program, a partnership between the U and Jackson Elementary that encourages kids to go to college, provides field trips and volunteers and all kinds of other cool things.

Michelle had such a great day, although she said after school that so many people told her she did a good job that it made her head feel "a little crazy." :)

amazing resource

Just wanted to share an amazing site I found. It is a blog called FHE planner and includes tons of great lessons for young kids about the scriptures, obedience and many other topics. But best of all, they created a year's worth of FHE lessons that correspond with what is being taught in Primary Sharing times. And you can download these lessons for free. Amazing! What a great site. So if you want to check it out, head over to the Family Home Evening Planner blog! Awesome!

Duck, Duck, Goose

About a week ago, Gabrielle learned to play duck, duck, goose. It was so cute. We played on Sunday and almost immediately she caught on that you say duck, duck,duck, and touch (or hit!) on the head and then you run. But she wouldn't say goose. We played again on Tuesday and she would say "duck, duck, duck, duck, gooth" and then she would run and run and run in circles. We still haven't taught her to sit down...she just wanted to run and run. I'd eventually have to grab her so someone else could take a turn. It was so cute. (And a tad painful...she doesn't touch softly on the head...:)





Her language skills are just exploding right now. I'm hoping to record all the words (or most of them) that she says and do a post about them in a few days. This is a fun age.

Spoiled

I was listening to the radio as I drove to work the other day and heard a commercial for insurance. The first time I heard it I thought it was a little clever. It talked about having walletitis and not being able to afford what you wanted. It listed symptoms and then said the cure was to switch to their insurance company and save hundreds each year. But then I heard it again the next day. And I was annoyed. As I listened, they talked about not being able to afford stilettos or the best seats at the game or to eat out at restaurants. And I thought, wow, we are a spoiled country (as a whole) if we are complaining about such ridiculous things. I'd watched the news the night before about the devastation in Haiti. And I have read about so many other millions of people throughout the world that don't have enough food to eat or clean water to drink. And frankly, even in our country there are those without jobs who are struggling. And this commercial seemed so trivial and made us sound like such spoiled babies. Now I realize it was a commercial, and that obviously not everyone is that way. I don't own any stilettos (I probably couldn't walk in them!:)) and I don't go to games. I do like to eat out sometimes. But I am guilty of being a little spoiled myself... If I see a food item at the store that I want, I can buy it even if it's not on sale. My family and I don't ever go hungry, we have plenty of clothes to wear, 2 cars to drive, and so on and so on. Just got me thinking. I sometimes wish for things I don't have and I sometimes feel like money is tight. But there are so many people around the world...and right here too... that have much more difficult situations. I am a little...okay, probably a lot... spoiled. We as a nation are as well and it doesn't seem that this economic downturn has humbled as a whole. I've heard a few people compare it to the Depression, which to me seems quite a stretch. I know that it has been very difficult for some people. I'm not trying to trivialize that at all; in fact, I'm trying to say the opposite. But as a nation, I don't think we've suffered nearly as much as our predecessors did during the Great Depression. And I certainly hope we don't have to. I hope we all will be a little wiser in our financial decisions, be a little more generous with our time and money, be a little less selfish and spoiled, reuse and recycle and go without a bit more than we did in the past. I don't think it's a bad thing to have a little "walletitis" from time to time. It makes us more humble and more grateful. At least it does me...

Slumber Party

It was just us, but we pulled the girls' mattresses out of their bedroom and onto the family room floor on Friday night. We watched a movie and had rootbeer floats. Then we slept on the living room floor. I don't know if it was because I was next to them or what, but I had one of the best nights of sleep I've had...no one woke me up, no one crawled into my bed, no one had a bad dream, I slept like a rock.

And more importantly, the girls had a great time. They had been excited about it all week, and they were so happy that we had our own slumber party. We'll have to repeat this again soon. Next time with popcorn....I didn't plan ahead and was all out. :)

New Years Eve...

New Years Eve was fun, mostly. Alfredo called us from work, and we met him for lunch. Then both Alfredo and I had read an article about foods that bring good luck. (He emailed it to me within minutes of me reading it myself.) So I decided it would be fun to have a meal with several lucky foods.

We had pork ribs,(pork is lucky because they keep their feet firmly planted on the ground as they look for food and then push forward, so they will bring you progress), pomegranate juice (pomegranate brings good health), pineapple upside down cake and oranges (circular foods represent coming full circle, which means living a full life, plus oranges are healthy), and rolls. The rolls weren't mentioned as lucky, but we love them, so I made them. When Michelle asked why they are lucky, Ella said, "Well, bread reminds us of Jesus." I thought that was a great comment and decided our bread could remind us to keep Christ as the center of our lives this year. Maybe this lucky dinner will be a new tradition.




We got dressed up to visit Alfredo's family for their annual party. First we went to his aunt Jeannette's to see his cousin and his family, his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle. Then we headed to his uncle Oswaldo's for the party.


The bad part about this day was that probably 20 minutes after arriving at Oswaldo's, Michelle started feeling sick. She quickly felt worse and worse and so by ten o'clock, Alfredo took Michelle, Gabrielle and I home. Michelle threw up just minutes after getting home, but then quickly fell asleep and slept through the night. I stayed up until just after midnight reading. Ella and Alfredo stayed at the party until about 1, and Ella had a great time. She usually gets tired and grumpy, but she talked all the next day about how she was the only one of our kids to stay up and how much fun she had. :)

Fortunately, Michelle was fine the next day and the girls and I headed to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. Alfredo felt a little sick New Year's Eve also, but was mostly better by New Years Day. And so far, 2010 is off to a good start.

The Sweet, the Funny, the Innocent

Things Kids Say...

10/31: Church is way better than candy! --Michelle

11/5: One of my students (about a story he read with a set of twins, one boy and one girl): "They were identical twins, except they looked nothing alike."

11/6: One of my students during the spelling test: "Will you spell that for me?"

12/4: Ella: "I want to hear Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". Me: Sorry, it's not on the radio right now. (We were in the car...no way to put it on.) Thirty seconds later, Michelle: "Hey, isn't this Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?" And it was! It was like the radio read Ella's mind. They put it on right after she asked me for it.

12/4: Ella: "How can Santa be magic? He doesn't have a wand!"

12/6: Ella: "Mommy, when you were little was Jesus still alive?" (She said this AFTER asking me how long ago Jesus lived!)

1/6: Me to Michelle: "You are getting to be a good little reader." Michelle, indignantly: "No I'm not. I'm NOT little. I'm big. I'm six. I'm almost seven!"

1/10: Michelle put a card that says, "Thanks for the great gift!" into the cover of a photo album with photos of the girls, especially Gabrielle. She said to me, "Do you know why I did that? Because it says Thanks for the great gift, and Gabrielle is a gift to our family."