Mid March Catch Up

March is half way through and I have to say that I am enjoying a couple of weeks of things being a little bit slower before the craziness of having 3 kiddos in baseball/softball begins in a few days.....along with all the other activities they have going on! 

We celebrated Matt's birthday in early march with dinner at Red Robin and cake & presents at home. We had hoped to get to go out for dinner by ourselves, but as crazy as it sounds we didn't have a night that we were free that entire week or the next! So we made do with a family dinner and it was tons of fun! The kids were super excited to give Matt his gifts -- I love how much thought they put into their cards and gifts. I'm trying to hard to teach them the joy of giving and taking the time to think about the other person. 

Harrison & Charlotte had well-visits. This was also Charlotte's kindergarten physical. Boohoohoo. I can't believe that we are already at this point. They are both doing great! Harrison is just 50% in everything height/weight, and Charlotte is destined to be short-- still sticking to 25% so she's gonna be tiny. :)

Charlotte had a birthday party for her friend Reece at a local bakery and they decorated cakes. So so fun! Charlotte came home with a cake that was loaded down with icing, which pretty much made her the most popular one in our family that night! I'm trying to talk Madeleine into doing this for her birthday this summer. :)

This girls lives and breathes gymnastics right now. I found her "teaching" her dolls some beam moves one day.

And, this is where we 2 days a week right now. The gym is locked and you have to have a code to get in so no parents allowed! This is my view from the top while she works most days.

We met up with our friends Sharon & Whitney for lunch at CFA on day and the girls sat at their own table and talked and talked for almost 2 hours just like "big" girls! They are so funny together!

And, more afternoon FaceTime with Cormac. He was showing us his balls. :) I'm so thankful that we have this technology to keep in touch and see him grow.

Weekend Fun

We had a great weekend! We started out with dinner at Outback which was fantastic! The kids loved it!

 After filling our bellies, we headed to see the last Razorback Gymnastic meet of the season. They were up against UCLA and those girls were amazing. The kids had a great time; it was '80s night and there were tons of '80 songs playing and we got free t-shirts.

 Charlotte sat like this most of the time. She kept asking me what the different moves were called and I kept telling her to ask her coach on Wednesday. Ha! We made the dance came several times -- both Madeleine & Charlotte were jammin' to that 80s music.

Saturday was a much needed catch up day around the house. We watched the basketball game, I went to the grocery store and made our Sunday Lunch. We were having chicken pot pie and I taught Harrison how to make cinnamon sticks with the leftover pie crust. Yum! 

 We ended the night by working on the kids Lads to Leaders song leading & scripture reading. We still have some work to do, but it's coming together. I am so excited to go to convention in a few weeks! They are learning so much and it's going to be exciting to see them put what they have learned into play.

In the middle of all that, we got a FaceTime call from Cormac. No better way to wrap up a Saturday that by seeing this sweet face!

February Wrap Up

Well now that we are clost to half way to March, I'm finally around to wrapping up the random February pics on my phone! 

This came home in Harrison's folder -- although I'd already seen it from being up in his classroom that day. :) His MAPS scores were awesome! These are his "goals" but his actual scores were 212 in BOTH reading & math. That puts him at an end of year 5th grade level. He is one smart kid! His teacher keeps telling me that he is blowing AR (which they started at the end of january) out of the water. He passed almost 70 test the first 6 weeks! And because his reading level is so high, he has to read chapter books or non fictions books for this to count! Granted, he started AR with quite a repertoire of books to test on and he had some frustration that even some chapter books he'd read were too "easy" and didn't count (ahem, Magic TreeHouse, Stink). She said his AR score is like 4 times higher than any other kid. Go Harrison! His AR level is 4th and 5th grade which means he is easily reading 2-3 grade levels ahead....and in his reading group they are tackling novels that Madeleine read in her reading group last year, like Shiloh and Charlotte's Web. I'm so thankful that my boy loves to read! 

Madeleine got glasses this month! She looks just gorgeous in them! They are only for reading far away and TV when she's not sitting close.

Harrison celebrated the 100 day of school. He was such a cutie!

This is my view most morning when I get out of bed. :) Charlotte goes through phases when she gets in bed with us almost every night and we are certainly in that phase now. But, it won't last forever and I know that the days of having a kiddo in our bed are numbered. 

Madeleine had her first school dance! She looked beautiful! She went with a bunch of her girlfriends and they had the best time! I'm so thankful for the sweet friends she's mad this year.

Well, we thought we were going to get through the winter without seeing any real snow on the ground, and then it came....and kept on coming. It snowed every week it seemed for most of February! We are ready for spring!

Madeleine had an incentive day in February. It was rescheduled because of snow, but she finally got to take it. We hit the library, lunch at Panda Express (her choice) and a trip to Southern Trend to look for a softball pig shirt. It was a great day! And, it turned out that the next 2 days we were out for snow, so she got to have a little mini-break.

I snapped these pics of my girls working one afternoon. Madeleine was doing her homework, and Charlotte had to to her "homework" too. She wants to be just like her big sis. I am so thankful that my girls love each other so much!

Making the Move

It's hard to spend more than 5 minutes with Charlotte without seeing her do some kind of tumbling move and she's really good at what she does -- probably because she practices it all the time! We've been thinking that at some point she might give gymnastics a try, but she was happy just tumbling so we didn't push it. Her tumbling coach always told us that Charlotte would let us know when/if she wanted to do more that tumble, but, honestly, I think we all thought that day would be months, if not years, from now. However, back in early January she started asking to learn bar and beam and vault, and after several weeks of putting her off, I finally made the call to a local gym to ask about classes. After talking to the girl on the phone and answering her questions about Charlotte's skill set, she decided we needed to come in for an eval. We came in the next day and one of the coaches evaluated Charlotte and we were immediately invited to be part of a special class. It's a class you have to be asked to join and Charlotte was so excited to start. The class was actually meeting that day and Charlotte wanted to start right away! 

She 

I knew that she'd be behind on bars and beam since she's never been around them, but I also knew that she'd be fine on the floor. Well, she was waaaaayyyy behind on the bars, and a little behind on beam, but her floor skills were super advanced. :) So it kinda all balanced out. She absolutely loves class and coach Katie! I'm very thankful that she has a coach that seems to fit with her perfectly! And, Charlotte works so hard for her. 

Charlotte's class meets 2 times each week and she has learned so much. It took her 3 weeks to learn how to do a pullover and back hip circle on the bars, which caught her up completely with her class -- now they are moving on to other things. She has caught up on beam and is still rocking out the floor. :) 

And, all this work has worn her out! This girl has napped more in the past 5 weeks than in the past 2 years. :) They are usually short naps, but still! The first couple of weeks she napped quite a bit, but the past few weeks I think her body has adjusted and she's not napping anymore. But those naps sure were sweet while they lasted!

I've said before, her tumble coach is wonderful and will always have a special place in our hearts. :) When I told him that we were moving her to Hopes & Dreams, for gymnastics, he assured us that she'd always have a home at his gym. And then he asked us if we'd like to get a beam for her -- he'd found on online. We got the beam and he drove to Kansas City to pick it up for us and delivered it to a very very excited little girl! We let Charlotte write her name on "her" beam.

Our gym is in the midst of tryouts for PreTeam for the coming year. Matt and I have talked a lot about what to do -- it's more hours and more work, but Charlotte is absolutely eat up with gymnastics. I finally decided to just ask her coach about it and Katie told me that Charlotte's class is actually already a PreTeam class and we don't even have to tryout. Woohoo! I'm still not sure what that mean for the coming year as far as practices, but I know that somehow we will make it work because she loves it so much. I feel like there is so much that I don't know about how all this works, but I have a feeling that we are in this for the long haul with Charlotte so I guess we will figure it all out at some point. :)