Olivia's Christmas Orchestra Concert

Olivia's Orchestra Concert was Monday the 12th.  She had 4 pieces to learn this year and participated in 2 orchestras.  This is one of her pieces. 

This orchestra is formed of 6th and 7th graders.  She was required to try out and made the cut.  They call themselves 'Strings at Sunrise'.  The members of this orchestra meet on Tuesday and Thursday mornings before school starts. She is becoming quite the musician!

Olivia's 12!

 Olivia turned 12 on Friday!  Can you believe that she has officially graduated from the church Primary Program and is now in the Young Women's Program?  I can't!

 Olivia also decided against a regular birthday cake and chose chocolate chip cheese cake.  Could our years of surplus birthday cake in November finally be over?  I hope so, I loved making yummy desserts this year instead of buttery, crisco icing cakes!

Olivia is such a wonderful girl.  We love her so much!

Fall Play

Liberty Middle School put on 2 one-act plays this fall, Twinderella and Tenderfella.  Olivia was the movie director in Tenderfella and then was part of the crew for Twinderella.  She had a blast and had such a great time she is planning on trying out for the spring musical.  I think she was one of the best actors on stage, but I suppose I'm a little biased!

Liberty Fall Festival

 Liberty had their annual Fall Festival this weekend.  We had lots of fun walking up and down and all around the square looking at all of the fun things to see and buy.

 One vendor paid a face paint artist to paint faces for free all weekend.  How Fun!  She was great and the girls loved it... I think it was worth the wait in line (Remember, you can double click to get a closer look at the paint).

I think this is the funniest picture!  The girls specifically asked for a side shot of their faces, pretty cute huh!?!  We had tons of fun, but now we're all tired and grumpy. 

I think it'll be an early bed time tonight!

Back to School

 I know these are long overdue, but here they are.  Olivia started Middle School this year.  Now that is something!  She is loving every bit of it.  She was surprised that she was one of the only girls to actually wear a dress the first day.....oh Honey, I hope you stay who you are, dress the way you like and don't fall into the "everybody else is doing it" crowd.

 Emily started 4th grade, Audrey 3rd grade and my Marcella Bella finally became an official Kindergartener!

I was a little nervous for her to go straight into all day Kindergarten, but she loves it!  She's a tad cranky at night, but I hope that a little more time will fix that problem.  The thing that surprised her the most about Kindergarten is that your teacher doesn't eat lunch with you!  I guess no one ever mentioned that to her...

Birthday Week!

So it was birthday week at our home!  Emily turned 9 on the 3rd and Olivia turned 11 on the 4th!  It's hard to believe that I've got girls that old.  I wish they would stop growing up and stay in grade school forever.

Soooo, Marcella has started a new tradition in our home.  She asked for breakfast in bed for her birthday in March and the rest of the girls have thought that is the best present ever!  Emily got waffles and grapes.

Emily asked for a horse cake.... again.  I stole Kathryn's idea and put horse shoes on the side.

Olivia got oatmeal with rasins and toast on the side.  This breakfast really wasn't a punishment.  My girls all love oatmeal, and rasins is a treat we usually don't have (it's really that I don't remember).

Olivia asked for cheese cake!  Ahhh, truly a child of mine.  Give me cheese cake or pie any day over cake.  I made a scrumptious chocolate chip cheese cake.  

Silly Sisters.  They were just as excited to watch their sister's open the presents.

It was a fun week, but I must admit, I'm so glad it's over.  It's a lot of work to have to plan for two birthdays a day apart!

May Piano Recital

May 28th 2010

Olivia's piano recital!

Olivia and her piano teacher, Meggi

Olivia was so excited because she earned third place in the students practice minutes competition. Her teacher rewards the top 3 students with movie vouchers, and after coming in around 6th place last recital, she was bound and determined to place in the top 3 this time around. She truly practiced hours and hours and was still afraid that she wouldn't place in the top three. It was pretty stiff competition!

Requested by popular demand (Aunt Ashley's request, actually)... here is Olivia's piano recital piece. I thought she did a fabulous job.

George Philipp Telemann's Rigaudon, performed by Miss Olivia

American Girl Doll Paradise

Can I just say, $money$ can go very quickly in the American Girl Doll store!
Denver has the pleasure of being the next special city to claim an American Girl Store. I thought it appropriate that my 5 girls and I be some of the first to check it out on our very first day of Spring break. It was soooooo much fun!

Here we are, piled in the mini van, just itching to go!

Aren't they all so cute? I really should have taken a picture of myself... I'm sure I was glowing with excitement too!

I spent the first 15 minutes of our car ride doing doll hair. The girls all wanted to take their dolls to this new store looking fabulous, who can really blame them, certainly not me.
(I've taught them well, already!)

We ended up getting there waaaay too early. I misread the time. The store opened at 9 am for media and VIP, we had to come back at 10. But we passed a Krispy Kreme on the way, so off to eat donuts to burn some time. How much better can one day get?!
Well, Donuts didn't take as long as we thought, so we were back by 9:45. So all 5 girls were just hanging all over the big picture windows staring at all of the great things inside.
Our day got better...
An older woman waved me down from inside, then came strolling outside to us. She told me she was going to my mother and my girls grandmother today, and would we like to come into the store early and look around?! Heck, yeah!
So, to make a long story short, we got to be in the store a little earlier than most to gawk at the hundreds of doll things that little girls dream about and grown women, mothers and grandmothers still love to dream about.
Todd surprised me by wanting to tag along and was a great sport of helping to round up 5 (sometimes 6) girls, all trying to run in different directions in the store.

Here they are back at home with all their loot. We did limit how much they could spend, but honestly, it doesn't take long to empty your wallet with 5 girls in a store like that.

The rest of the day was spent playing dolls...sigh...really, truly, a perfect girl day!

Snow Day!

We had our first snow day of the year on Wednesday! Todd wasn't home, so I got to shovel some seriously wet, heavy spring snow. Thank goodness for my neighbor who took pity on me and helped me out! I was shocked at how long the girls spent playing in the snow. Usually it's a half hour and they're inside asking for hot chocolate. But this time, it was actually pretty warm outside and they played for a couple of hours before the hot chocolate party began.

Girl Pictures!

I spent last Saturday taking snapshots of my girls. This is the only one that sort of turned out cute. Why is it so hard to get 5 girls looking at a camera? Rylee truly was not diggin' it.

101 Dalmatians

This month has been such a busy month, as you can tell by all of my posts!

This fall Olivia decided to try out for a local childrens theatre instead of playing a sport. The production they presented was 101 Dalmatians. It was a one act play that was put on by children ages 7 to 14.

Olivia in the Green Room waiting to go on stage at the local high school auditorium.
How do you like those puppy ears!?!

Singing in her chorus line.

Striking her final pose in the last scene.

After the last show.
I must admit, I'm a little more than glad that it's over. It was a lot of time. But it really was so much fun!

Piano Recital

Thursday, November 19th, Olivia had her 2nd piano recital. She played Festive Sonatina by Nancy Faber. She really did a wonderful job, just one little stumble at the very end. Olivia has really loved learning to play and I have loved listening!

Olivia and her Piano teacher Meggi

Here's her performance, enjoy!

November Birthdays

I took Olivia and Emily to see the musical Wicked in October. After seeing that, Emily requested a Wicked cake. This is what I came up with!

Olivia turned 10, Double Digits! And Emily turned 8, another baptism!

Emily's favorite present by far was the doll Grandma sent her. Grandma also sent a dress for her and the doll that matches. Audrey was so jealous!!

Olivia's favorite present was a doll bed for her doll. Grandma scored this year on presents! Probably next favorite was all the books she got.

Halloween

Audrey started our Halloween with her first lost tooth! She was soooo excited to finally loose it. She couldn't wait to go to bed so that the tooth fairy could visit.

My girls looked so festive in their Halloween shirts!

Dressed up! Audrey wanted to be a GREEN witch, Emily was her black cat, Marcella finally decided on Sleeping Beauty for the second year in a row, Olivia was Susan from Narnia. She even carried a pretend bow and arrow. Rylee was a Chick-fil-a cow and their cousin Mikey was Yoda. Too cute!

Rylee was so stinkin' cute!
But her favorite part of Halloween was riding in the wagon with her cousin and being given candy!

Garden of the Gods

Todd had training in Colorado Springs this last week. So the girls and I decided to drive down Thursday after school, spend the night, (skip school on Friday) and visit the Garden of the Gods after Todd got out of training Friday, late morning. The Garden of the Gods was beautiful!

The girls all took turns climbing between these two rock formations.
Olivia above and Audrey below.

Just to give you a picture of the size of this formation, here's Emily climbing through.

Our five girls!

Here's Todd leading the way to a formation called the Cathedral rocks.

More beautiful views...

My girls wanted me to take a picture of this 'face' rock...do you see it?

Marcella climbing around and striking a pose.

Rylee eating a snack.

Todd tried to carry Rylee around on his shoulders. We didn't realize that most of the paths were actually paved, or we would've brought a stroller. Rylee actually preferred to walk, but it was slow going that way.

Climbing more and striking more poses for the camera. Emily liked it so much that she's told us she wants to come back for her birthday!

Emily showing off, she wants to send this picture to her rock climbing Uncle Michael.

We had so much fun!