Memorial Day Fun

I hope you all are enjoying this lovely Memorial Day weekend. We've had many hot sunny days in a row and the girls have enjoyed many days of swimming.

This was on Friday...

By Saturday she was swimming around with no vest on at all! Can't believe we have two swimmers now. Another big milestone for us as parents :)

Matt and Ella swam up to the edge of the pool so I could get a picture (mostly to document Matt's hairiness)...

And then this guy joined them....

It was pretty hilarious because they weren't expecting it and the dog was right on the edge angling down towards the water. Matt was trying to stay really still so they didn't knock him off while also turning the tube so the dog was facing the deck and could jump off. Eventually he just climbed over Ella to get back to dry land. Imagine how much she enjoyed that!

We really had a wonderful weekend - plenty of time just the four of us and plenty of time with friends. Now it's Tuesday morning and back to the grind with school and work...but we're counting down the days until school's out!

Special Days

For a few days last week Blogger was down. You couldn't create posts or edit posts. I didn't know this because I had a blog full of pictures sitting on my desk top and hadn't gotten around to doing anything to them to know that I wouldn't have been able to anyway. When I went to close it down and realized it wasn't saving I realized "oh....that's why I've been seeing grumbling messages about blogger on facebook and twitter". I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few days later my post had been restored (seriously though, how hard would it be to add the pictures again....apparently for me it would have been tough!) and I didn't have to start over.

I just wanted to highlight a few special things from the past week (now two weeks ago). Note: This is not in chronological order. I know that's annoying but so is rearranging the pictures!

On Mother's Day I had the most wonderful gift of watching Ella and Catherine dance in church. They performed a beautiful dance, choreographed by Renee, to David Crowder's version of "How He Loves". It is such a beautiful song and watching my girls dance to it on Mother's Day definitely resulted in some tears! I love watching them grow as they get old and more comfortable performing. They are both so different on stage. Ella gets a little nervous and is very focused on getting the moves right. She loves it so much and I am so proud of her for doing it and not letting that little nervousness hold her back! Catherine doesn't mind being on stage at all - in fact she'll make eye contact with you if she can (if it's me, I'm usually mouthing back to her, watch Nay Nay, watch Nay Nay) and flash a big smile and just dance her heart out, even if she's not always going in the right direction!

Here are two sweet pictures of them waiting to perform....

A few days before I got to attend a Mother's Day Tea in Ella's classroom. Her teacher did an amazing job organizing this and the kids worked so hard preparing all the activities.
I love any chance I get to be in Ella's class (and man it's been a lot this year!). It's great to see how she's doing and have her show me all her "stuff". I love getting a sense of the class "dynamic".

The kids did a poem, a song, and a book. They made a little book about their moms and a card with their picture and handprint on it. We also did a little craft together and the teacher came around a took a picture of each kid and their mother (it's not the one above, but it's one of my favs of Ella and me. I'll have to scan it in and post it)

Then the kids served us tea, little sandwiches, fruit and chocolate. Pretty nice tea party if I say so myself!

Finally, but not really, because it too place earlier that day. That morning on the same day Catherine's class had an open house. She got to show us all around her class and point out all her favorite things.

I was glad Matt was able to zip over from work and join us.

Then we made a craft together (crafty day for me!) and the kids performed some of their favorite songs.

I love that picture because everyone is getting situated but Catherine saw Matt with the his phone up and went into camera mode! Love it :)

Then the kids all served us drinks, doughnut hole and other treats.

It was a busy day but such a special day to see both girls in their school environments and enjoy some extra time with them.