Dance Recital Weekend

Emily has taken dance (ballet and tap in one class) this year for the first time.  She has LOVED it.  She has been so excited about going to each class and has probably asked "is the recital this weekend?" 132 times over the course of the year.

Both sets of grandparents arrived on Saturday evening for the recital weekend festivities.  The girls were excited to see them!  Pastor Paul was out of town that weekend so Bert preached on Sunday morning and did a great job!  Here are a few pictures with the grandparents and the girls after church.  

*As a side note, I could get used to having 4 extra sets of hands to help get the girls ready and out the door on Sunday morning!:)  

Mimi's birthday was Monday the 25th so we definitely had to do a little celebrating after we ate lunch on Sunday!!  I'm so thankful for my Mama...she is seriously the best.  Happy birthday Mom!!  

Grandmama read some books to Emily just before it was time to start getting her hair and make-up ready for the recital.  She's loving the Fancy Nancy books these days!

Well the recital finally arrived!  And it lived up to the hype.  She had FUN!  

Here is our sweet baby in her ballet costume.  

Her recital was at Furman University...such a beautiful campus.  

She was very excited about getting to wear makeup for the first time.  

Emily and a few of her friends before they danced.  

Here are a couple on-stage action shots.  There were nine of them in their class. Emily is on the front row, second from the left.  

They danced to Beauty and the Beast for their ballet routine. 

After her first dance we took the kids outside and let them eat a quick sandwich before we headed back in for more dancing/watching.  

One of the mom's let the girls borrow her phone and when I looked over at them this is what I saw.  They were all huddled around watching some show as the waited to be called back.  I thought it was cute.  

A week before the performance I decided it was finally time to learn how do a bun or find someone who could do it for me.  I watched a few tutorials online and talked to a few people, practiced several times that week and finally felt like it met my approval.  (Emily is the third from the left.)  Now I need to master the french braid.  I have a feeling that is going to be a little harder. #girlmomprobs :)

Almost time to go on stage...

Emily's friend Blakely (from school) also takes from the same studio but they were in different classes.  They saw each other backstage for just a few seconds as Blakely's class was walking on stage to do their last dance and they both got so excited!

They got in a quick hug before Blakely had to go.  Sweet girls.

A few on stage pictures of their tap routine...

I loved her concentration in the picture below.  

Flowers from grandparents and parents and sisters for our little dancer.

After the recital we had dinner at Atlanta Bread Company.  Yum-o.  Loves these babies in our arms.  

Since the recital, this costume has been the outfit of choice.  They have had many opportunities to work on taking turns.  Hopefully the "new" will wear off at some point in the near future.:)  

Thanks so much to our parents for being there to cheer on our girl.  

We had a great first recital and are excited about more in the years to come!

Friends

We had our friends Kristin and Matt and their daughter Charlotte over for dinner last week.  Claire and Charlotte hadn't seen each other in awhile so we decided it was definitely time.  Aren't they so cute!? 

Photo courtesy of Emily.  

We've started back up our regular play dates with a couple friends from church now that the big kids are out of school.  Becky has 3 boys, Dawnielle has 3 girls and  I have 3 girls.  9 kids 5 and under equals a fun morning!  In the picture below some of the kids were putting on a "show" for us.  Cuties!  

Thankful for friends!

Emily's Last Day of K-4

Emily had her last day of preschool last Friday.  She's had such a great year!

First day of K-4...

Last day of K-4...

I got to go to her end of the year picnic.  I loved being there with my girl!  

Emily asked for a picture with her friend Blakely.  They have been in the same class for the last two years and I'm sure they'll miss each other next year!

Mrs. Roach passed out class awards on their last day there.  This was the award Emily received.  

Mrs. Roach has been such a wonderful teacher.  She loves these kids and loves the Lord and you can tell.  

Emily, Mommy and Daddy are so proud of you!  We are thankful for your love for others.  We pray that God would continue to develop that in you.  We're praying that you have an awesome year in kindergarten. We are your biggest cheerleaders!

Spur of the Moment

Recently we had a weekend of spur of the moment outings.  On Friday we decided to take a quick trip to the zoo as our Family Pass is expiring at the end of the month.  We asked our friends, the Dodges, if they wanted to come too (just a couple hours before we left) and were so glad they were able to.  

They have 3 boys.  Their son Caiden and our Emily are 4 days apart and were in the same preschool class this year.  They also go to our church.  They have a son named Elijah who is about a year younger than Hannah, and their third little boy, Kyran, was born on May 7th.  He weighed 10 pounds and 9 ounces and is absolutely precious.  This picture was taken just 8 days after Kyran was born and Becky is already out and about, packing picnics and taking zoo trips.  Impressive, is all I have to say about that!

On Saturday morning Bert had the idea to all go eat breakfast at Stax.  It's a well known restaurant close by that everyone LOVES.  Bert has been many times but the kids and I hadn't ever been there.  The food was great and I am pleased to say that I have now been to Stax.:)  

Well, while we were being wild and crazy, eating our breakfast,  I got another wild and crazy idea.  I have been hearing people talk about "Pretty Place" since I was in college not too far from here at Clemson (10 + years ago).  Again, I've never been.  It was a beautiful Saturday morning so I suggested that maybe we drive up to Pretty Place and we could still make it back home for lunch.  Bert thought it sounded like a good plan. We were surprised to find out that it took a little over an hour to get there (we thought it was closer), but decided to still go.  We had diapers and wipes and a little pink potty for the big girls.  We were all set.  We headed up the curvy roads with beautiful scenery and chatted with the girls about all we were seeing.  I actually started to feel a smidge car sick (very unlike me, but it could have had something to do with the big breakfast I had just eaten), but I didn't mind because I was just excited to see this place that is actually named "Pretty Place."  I mean it must be pretty amazing if it is worthy of a name like that.  The big girls had complained of needing to go potty, but we told them we would be there soon and kept heading up.  

Finally we made it.  We saw a sign up ahead that said "Pretty Place", but along with that sign was a hand written sign that said something along the lines of "Pretty Place is closed today from 9:30am- 6pm for a wedding".  This was about 10:30 in the morning, so unfortunately we fell into that time.  The nice man standing in the road asked us if we were here for the wedding and when we told him "no" he had us turn around in the road.  Ugh.  I was soooo disappointed.  Who knew they shut down the place for weddings?!?!....Probably lots of people, but not me.  Anyway, The nice man also told us about a nice overlook at Caesar's Head State Park just a few miles back down the road, so we decided to stop there.  

It was beautiful....

While we were standing out on the overlook a bi-plane flew by (you can see it in the picture below).  The pilot was waving at us and kept flying back and forth in front of the overlook doing tricks.  It was really fun to watch and it felt like he was flying eye level with us...crazy!   

Life lesson for this planner:  It's fun to do spur of the moment things, but be ready to go with flow.  Actually, being ready to go with the flow is a good idea no matter what we are doing.  

It was a fun morning! 

Stan's Birthday Dinner

Stanley's birthday is May 15th.  We had our Watts family pictures taken with Suni on the afternoon of the 14th, so we had a birthday dinner for Stanley that same night.  

Hannah LOVES uncle Stan.  She kept wanting him to hold her.  

We were all there (Claire was on the other side of Bert and I was taking the picture).  I love it when we are all together.  We enjoyed just sitting around the table talking for awhile after we finished dinner.  It was a late night getting back to Greenville but we so enjoyed our time together!

Happiest of birthdays to the greatest brother ever.  I love you!  

Mother's Day 2015

I had a great Mother's Day thanks to these sweet babies and their Daddy!  We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and an evening trip to Falls Park downtown.  

I love being their Mommy!  So thankful!  

Day at the Lake

Last weekend we spent about 24 hours at the lake house.  It was a short trip, but well worth the effort to get there.  On Friday night we celebrated Mother's Day with a dinner with Mimi, Papa and all the Sanders. Stanley was at the beach, but we missed him.  

I did a terrible job taking pictures, but here are the few that I got.  

The sweet babies (my baby looks huge next to Ressie, but she's still my baby) in their strawberry pajamas just before Claire went to bed and the Sanders left for their house. 

When Bert went to check on the big girls at night this is how he found them.  Apparently sisters are good pillows. :)  

On Saturday morning the Sanders came back down to the lake for a couple hours so that the big kids could do a little fishing with their Daddies.  Katherine and I got to visit up at the house while Claire and Ressie napped.  Fun morning.  

Jacob was the only one that caught a fish that morning, but they had lots of fun.  His facial expression cracked me up.  He doesn't look overly excited in the picture below, but he was proud!! Sweet boy! 

Being at one of my favorite places on the planet was a great way to spend part of my Mother's Day weekend. So thankful that we got to go there!

Emily's Mother's Day Program

Emily had been talking about her Mother's Day program at her school for WEEKS.  She was SO excited about it!  Out of the blue she would say, "We're going to sing __________ during the Mother's Day program but it's a surprise so you're not supposed to know."  Or "Mama, did you know WE are going to serve YOU cookies at the mother's day program?!?!?!  But it's a surprise so you are not supposed to know, okay?" She was so excited about the whole thing she could hardly contain herself.  

When we got there they had name tags for us to put on with our child's picture on it, beautiful homemade corsages for the kids to tie onto our wrist, and a crown that said " The Best Mom."  The kids had made everything and it was so sweet.  

Here are a few pictures of them singing their sweet Mother's Day songs.  I think they sang 5 songs.  Sweet things.  

After their performance we sat down and the kids served us lemonade and cookies.  Emily was soooo excited about this part.  

On this place mat that she made for me, Emily wrote her name and started to write "Mom", but ran out of room. :)

It was a fun program!  It's also fun to see the other moms of the kids in Emily's class.  I always look forward to catching up with them!  

Awesome job, Emmy! And thanks for the sweet gifts!