8th Grade Promotion

Is it true?  Did Alexa really finish Jr. High and is now in High School?  Time has flown by.  This girl just amazes me.  She is so fun to have around and we just love her quirky sense of humor.  She is a good example to her little sisters and to all who come in contact with her.  Doing what is right seems to come natural to her. 

Alexa has always been a good student.  She has really done well with going to different schools.  She's had to keep up and still make new friends.  This year she went to Legacy Traditional School.  A charter school that actually is K-8.  Her 8th grade class consisted of 25 kids.  It was a small group and they became the best of friends.  She had excellent teachers also who held the bar high for their students but also knew how to enjoy them and let them be 8th graders.  The following are pictures from their promotion.  The only disappointment was that Tim came and had to leave right away after the event and so I didn't make sure to get a picture of all of us.  Oh well.  We can do that in 4 years.  YIKES!  4 years - that seems way too soon.

 

 Alexa and Mrs. Fitzsimmons (the Vice Principal.)

 Alexa's biggest fan - McKenna

 Daddy and daughter

 Mommy and Daughter

 Alexa, Kaylee Wallentine, JuliaWilson, Crystal Padilla

 

 Chad Roberts and Alexa (he played Daddy Warbucks in the school play.)

 Alexa and Jens Peterson

 Mr. Rassmussen and Alexa

Her history teacher.  He was one of her favorites.

 Alexa and Mrs. Spanier (English/Lit teacher)

She was one of my favorites.  She says it like it is and has high expectations of her students. 

No slacking in her class.

It was a great year and it's been a great 9 years.  Can't wait to see what's to come from this intelligent beautiful girl of ours.

Random Pictures

I have a problem.  I will admit, I am sometimes a little OCD.  I LOVE things in chronological order.  I pretty much organize everthing that way.  I tried once to file my pictures on my computer by child but I just couldn't.  They are back to months and years.  Tim's mom just gave me a whole box of letters that they wrote to him while on his mission.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself while I sat and put 2 years worth of letters in chronological order.  Today, I am stepping out and making a little change to this blog.  I forget about the pictures on my phone when I do my blog and I happened to remember that I hadn't looked at them for a while.  I just found a few pictures that my kids took that I didn't know about.  They were from the end of last school year.

 

Alexa and Olivia - I think they were modeling and the hallway was there runway.

 Someone caught McKenna red handed climbing up the pantry.

(Seeing this picture makes me really appreciate my new pantry.)

 A Self-photograph

 

 Who knows why this was taken.  But I know who did it.  (Check photo above.)

Maybe I'll download some more pictures from my phone and throw some more in - just randomly.  What a big step for me.

Preschool 2012

The High School in our area teaches a course on child development/preschool.  The second semester they students plan and teach a preschool class under the supervision of their teacher.  It's super cheap and I knew that McKenna would love it.  Since none of my girls ever went to preschool (we just did "mommy school" as they called it.) they were pretty jealous of her.  They wanted to know about everything she did.  At the end of the semester they had a little "graduation".

Here's McKenna's little friend that we carpooled with.  He's so darling, isn't he?

 McKenna

Singing the ABC's.  You can definitely hear McKenna singing.

 

 

Too cute.  Now off to Kindergarten.  Is that really true?  Can my youngest be going into kindergarten?  Wow, does time fly.

 

 

Camping in Mt. Lemmon

 We finally took a family trip.  We wanted to hurry and go before it got really hot.  The nice thing about Mt. Lemmon is that it's about 20 to 25 degrees cooler than here in Tucson.  We just went one night but it sure was fun.  Not like our last unforgettable camping trip.  We had foil dinners, s'mores, and of course, pancakes for breakfast.  Real camping food.  The girls love camping and I'm getting better about trying to enjoy it also.  I do love being together as a family with no distractions.  Just sitting around the campfire and relaxing.  So different from our regular every day life.  

 Tim in action.

McKenna was loving the crank radio and so we enjoyed lots of songs and a little dancing.

 

 

Can't wait to go again.

Annie - May 2012

I have really enjoyed the girls school.  They go to a Charter school in Tucson and I feel like they are getting a great education.  On top of that, the girls have been able to be involved in many things.  Every year they plan on putting on a musical.  The music teacher has a background in doing children's theater.  In May they performed Annie.  We all got involved.  Olivia and Maya were in the Chorus, Alexa helped backstage and I shopped for props, bought fabric, sewed and altered costumes, painted sets, helped backstage and had a great time getting to know some dedicated and wonderful moms.  It was quite an education for me also on how stressful and how much work just goes in to pulling something like this off.  Especially with such a tiny budget.  People really stepped up to help out.  It was an experience to say the least.  I was worn out by the end, I can't imagine how the teacher felt.  Here are some pictures and video clips of the performances.  The kids really did a great job.  This was a first for a lot of them.

I helped with these orphan costumes. 

Maya's little speaking part.

Miss Hannigan

This girl did great.  She has such a strong voice.

Grace, Annie and Daddy Warbucks

NYC.  Maya is in the red polka dot dress next to the clown and Olivia is in a green dress to the right of Annie.  She gave up a darling dress that we found so that Annie could wear it for one of the scenes.  That's just how she is - just goes with the flow.  Such a sweetheart.

Rooster is my favorite character.  Love that he used an accent and everything.

After the show!

Such a fun time for the girls.  I think they are looking forward to the next one.

No, it's not Easter but I'm finally posting about it.

So, I've really gotten bad about this whole blogging thing.  I really need to prioritize and make this more important.  The sad thing is that since I've decided to get caught up, my computer will not recognize my card and so I can't download any pictures.  So, it may be a while.  Luckily I have some on here already that I haven't blogged about.  Here goes:

We were lucky to have Tim's parents come and visit with us over Easter.  We tried to make sure and fit in the usual Easter stuff.  Which meant that they had to wake up early and dye the eggs.  Which is why they are in their jammies still.

 Then for the Easter Egg Hunt.  You might notice that we are in doors.  Not becuase the weather was bad but because we have no plants or trees to really have a good egg hunt out our rental.

 Luckily, we found a few places. 

 And, seeing that we are in AZ now, you can't hunt for Easter eggs without having a water fight around the pool.  They didn't want to swim because they thought the water was too cold so they opted to squirt each other.  Hmm.  Looks like they are just as wet as if they would have gone swimming.

Nice shot, Maya.

 Sunday morning the girls got up and checked out what the big E Bunny brought them.  They seemed to be pleased with it.

 Alexa really was pleased with her basket, just not with the picture taking.

 Cool Beanz!

 After church, we of course had to take the annual Easter photo.  No new dresses for us, we all wanted a new house instead.

 And yes, finally a picture with Abuela and Grumps.  They didn't get the memo that we were taking pictures in the backyard so they were speedy and had already gotten comfy.  Still such a nice picture, don't you think?

Wow, how time flies.  This seems so long ago.  I really need to catch up before I forget all the latest events in this house.