Big.Sigh...

Sighing is all I can do over these recital pictures. My baby girl was beautiful as always but she was so (sniff, sniff) b.i.g. For some reason this year she just seemed like such a young lady. After her first dance a certain handsome daddy I know (I'm not naming names because I'm sure he'd be embarrassed if this info got out!) leaned over and whispered to me, "Did you tear up too?" I said I did because she looked so beautiful. At certain moments of the dance you could begin to glimpse the grown up ballerina she will become and reminded me of the older dancers. The unnamed dad said he was crying because she looked so happy. She was nonstop smiles.

That was a funny story because at rehearsal she was concentrating so hard she constantly had her tongue stuck out:

I've never seen her do that before and it was darling. I explained to her that if she would smile no one notice if she messed up at all. For once she took my advice and smiled throughout every dance which obviously worked on her daddy!
You look at her and see if you think she looks big!

So much of the joy of ballet comes from being with these sweet girls for Ashton and me getting to visit with the mommies!
Their tap dance was "Diamonds are a Girls' Best Friend". They wore huge diamonds on their fingers and waved them at the crowd at the end of their dance. It was precious. Of course, they rocked it with a little attitude.

We were digging the jazz outfits. I wish I could show you their dance. It involved some finger and hip shaking and was sassy.

As always, she had a lot of support including Granda.

You can imagine how happy I was that Jon allowed Jackson to wear his dirty baseball hat to a recital, backwards no less!

Nana gave her the sweetest Tinker Belle figurine which she loves. Pop got to attend his other granddaughter's recital a week ago. I'm pretty sure he'd never imagined watching any much less two ballet recitals :) I told him just to imagine if all 7 of his grandkids were girls. He'd probably have left the country by now (and I'd have gone with him if I had 4 girls under one roof!).

Donnie came bearing gifts of finger nail polish. On a related note, I'm hoping she'll give me a carpet cleaning for my birthday :<

This girl loves her some trophies and keeps count of how many she has which is going to make it really hard for me to secretly throw them away.

Not pictured are Gram and GranBobby who graciously volunteered to watch the twins and about 8:30 were wishing they were at a recital instead of being surrounded by screaming children- thanks mom!

Another year and it looks like many more to come. She's definitely lasted in ballet longer than I did. There's a very good reason for that. So, here's to my almost 7 year old girl- thanks for making Daddy and I so happy and proud!

Wordless Wednesday...

You Know You're in the Terrible Twos with Two If..." #24

there are times when you are able to step over toys and dirty clothes and skid through the puddle of water on your floor and tune out the screaming thoughts in your head that all that water is going to leak downstairs- you're able to stop, appreciate the moment for all the cuteness it holds and marvel again how awesome is your God that created and blessed you with these:

You Know You're in the Terrible Twos with Two If..." #23

you are often so busy taking care of 4 kids that some kids sometimes have to wait to have their needs met while I'm taking care of the others. It's so nice when one takes initiative and does something for another like wiping their nose:

Wordless Wednesday...

Flashback Friday...

Favorite Foto Friday...

You Know You're in the Terrible Twos with Two If..." #22

First, you hear 1 child screaming because he's been bitten.

Second, you take the culprit in the kitchen and apply tabasco sauce to his tongue.

Third, you see this face and hear the beautiful choir of both children crying.

Fourth, you pray the lesson takes and you don't have to "rinse and repeat"!

Wordless Wednesday...

9th Birthday Celebration #4...

Jackson really wanted to play laser tag for his birthday. He wanted to have his best peeps along and so did Jon and I, so we turned it into a Dodd versus Parrish challenge.

There may or may not have been a lot of trash texting on the way there. Yours truly may or may not have even come up with a cheer for our family to do. We even worked out our pose:

You see we may or may not be a very competitive family, but we may have met our match! These goofballs came all dressed in black (the better to hide in the dark laser tag). I was very impressed and completely bummed I didn't think of it! They even stole our pose:

It was so much fun. We all took a much needed rest before going in for round 2.

He may not have been dressed covertly, but my man had the highest score!

These two totally undermined the competition because they couldn't stand to be on different teams.

Doesn't he look menacing :)

Then we went home where Jackson and Maggie rocked the house.

Meanwhile, Jon furthered his Bromance with Ben who held the level so he could draw straight lines on the guitar cake (that would be eaten in 5 minutes) since I laughed at the idea and refused to enable his overperfectionism! Here's the Cake Man with another masterpiece!
It truly was a masterpiece (with straight strings to boot). It was even peanut free, an extra little challenge the Cake Man's able assistant handled. The neck was made of Swiss Cake Rolls topped by Hershey bars- my favorite part. Jackson had no idea what we were making and was surprised:
We all had a great time and can't wait for a rematch (just a little warning: we will be wearing war paint!).

9th Birthday Celebration #3...

We had great family celebration on Sunday afternoon. We opted for an easy pull apart cake. You gotta love baseballs! This boy never tires of blowing out his candles (or lighting them).
Our eldest member and our youngest had a little bonding time:
Jayden especially enjoyed his first of many birthday parties to come:

Jackson had a great time just playing with his cousins, not to mention playing with all his new Legos! It was definately a Lego kind of birthday.

9th Birthday Celebration #2...

We had a hard time scheduling a big party between baseball practices, groundings, and weekends away at grandparents for J's best peeps. We finally managed to get JoJo and Bay over just to hang out. I learned the hard way a couple of years ago (by my husband gently telling me :) that they are at the age now they just want to play. Which means no more fun games and craft planning by mom, boo hoo!

We let them loose on some ice cream and toppings although the trick candles about melted the ice cream by the time he blew them out! My son's a basic vanilla with chocolate sauce, but one friend chose every single topping (I'm not tattling on him, but it was the one in the hat). Luckily, it wasn't the one who was spending the night :)
Then they rocked out, and rocked out, and rocked out. I chose Tylenol as the topping for my ice cream.

Though it was very low key, Jackson was thrilled to be able to just hang out with his buddies.

My Twins...

I bet this wasn't who you were expecting to see! Jon and Will accidentally showed up at the ballgame looking like twins. I thought it was really funny. Apparently so did Will: