Kitty Lee Dance Recital

After 6 months of hard work and early Saturday mornings we finally got to see the fruits of Mayah's labors. We went to Burke High School in Omaha to watch Mayah and at least 100 other dancers from the Kitty Lee Dance Company perform. Upon arrival, the whole school was rigged to extract every last penny from would-be spectators. They had carnations, roses, purses, ribbons, hair bows, and miscellaneous other souvenirs that deserving little girls just couldn't resist. What better way to show support and recognition for their efforts than to spoil them with armfuls of the stuff when they finished?


Then we entered the auditorium to learn that all video taping and photography was banned. Of course they had their own "professional" version of the tape that you could buy for a mere $45, which of course wouldn't zoom in on your kid, and would include all of the other performances in the very lengthy recital. Needless to say, and as evidenced by the videos in this post, we are not the type to passively follow those kind of rules. The first video was a pretty shaky and the angle was a little too wide to see much of Mayah. At that point, Clint was still trying to hide the fact that he was video taping and didn't spend much time actually looking through the viewfinder... but we got braver on the second song, and ended up zooming in and following Mayah a little closer. If you can't tell, Mayah is the front girl on the far right for the tap dance, and the middle girl in the right column for the ballet number. Once again she was the shortest in the group...but living up to the award they gave her, she was by far the "most adorable dancer."


She said she was feeling some butterflies before the performance, and wasn't so sure about performing in front of about 500 people...but in the end she LOVED it, and said she didn't want to get off that stage. She loved having fancy hair and make-up, and I have a suspicion she'll be anxious to do it all over again in the fall.


We were sure proud of our little Mayah, and I couldn't help the tears from streaming as I watched her. How cute is my kid?

Happy Father's Day Clint!

Today Mayah, Ava and I woke up at 7:00 am, made cinnamon rolls & scrambled eggs, poured a glass of milk and went upstairs to surprise dad with breakfast in bed. Mayah and Ava also presented him with their Father's Day gifts. Ava colored a wonderful masterpiece for him and Mayah wanted to spend some of her birthday money to buy him a pair of swim trunks that she had overheard him say he liked. Here is a picture of the three of them this morning.


I just wanted to take a minute and express my appreciation for Clint and the kind father he has been to our girls, and the wonderful husband and friend he has been to me. He loves to play with both the girls and is good at spending quality time with them. He has a way of taking an every day thing and making it seem like something extremely exciting and out of the ordinary. For example one night Mayah was saying she was bored and wanted to go some where and do something. Clint told her that he had something planned for all of us... We were going to have a big sleep over in the living room with blankets and pillows on the floor, popcorn and a movie. Mayah was so excited and we weren't really doing anything different other than the fact that we had blankets and pillows on the floor. Clint is always willing to change a diaper, and get up with Ava in the middle of the night even though he has to be up early for work. I don't know too many guys that are willing to do those things, and he does it without complaint! He is generous and a hard worker. He sacrifices a lot and works hard just so that I can stay home with the girls, and that means more to me than I can ever express to him. Clint is so patient with me and that (I hate to admit) is not an easy thing to do. I can tend to have a short fuse. He is always there to rationalize and help me (in a nice way) see how ridiculous I really am! Clint is a good example and great leader in our home. I love you babe! Happy Fathers Day!!!

Clint the first time he met Ava

Clint the first time he met Mayah

Lemonade Stand

Today was the perfect day for an ice cold lemonade! Who better to get it from than my cute girls! You would think with those two girls sitting out at the edge of the driveway, business would be booming right....? I mean how could you resist!? Ava was so excited to just be a part of this with Mayah. She was all smiles, sitting in her chair like a big girl ready to sell.


Sadly, not all of us thought lemonade sounded ideal. Ava got a little restless and couldn't sit still any longer. She wasn't done being a part of it completely, but had to get a few wiggles out. Between her and Rhet we couldn't keep the dang lemonade sign up long enough to let people know how much it cost. Things got a little hectic for me. Cups were blowing over, Rhet was eating the sign, Ava was trying to climb on and off her chair, and if she wasn't doing that, she was busy trying to get some of the lemonade! I was ready to call it a day before we even had our first customer.

Luckily, Mayah has patience and was not going to give up. She sat out there with high hopes of earning a buck. She recently got a new iPod shuffle for her birthday and was content sitting out there with some tunes and her dog. She smiled and waved at every car that went by. 2 hours later Mayah was finally ready to come in. Not to worry... she'd earned $7.50! I admire Mayah's willingness to put the time in to get a few dollars. Ava, on the other hand, went in for a nap after about 25 min. In the end, Mayah was happy with how much she earned and I was proud of her for not giving up ... because if you wait, they will come... I'd say those girls did pretty good for their first time!

Tiniest artist...

Today was one of those days where Ava caught us totally by surprise. We had been out playing with Mayah's friends and Rhet, our puppy. I turned around to see Ava sitting quietly on the porch, drawing on the blackboard! I told Clint to hurry and get it on camera, so here it is. Honestly, what kid do you know at 11 months that gets the concept of holding chalk, not to eat, but to draw on a blackboard? I have no idea how long she's been doing this behind our back, when she's up in Mayah's room playing...but we did notice a couple of months ago that she could use the chalk eraser and was constantly erasing Mayah's pictures--much to her chagrin. It's bad enough that she's walking all over, and stumbling downstairs...now we have to worry about her coloring on the walls.

So on top of all the other crazy things that happened today over the course of Mayah's birthday, we now have another young artist to applaud!

The Golden Birthday

I think that's what they call it. Today, on June 7th, Mayah turned 7, and she'd also like me to add that she lost her 7th tooth the night before her birthday. Triple 7's!! I think that's a sign for good luck right? The good luck has already kicked in, too. She won a birthday party to the "Amazing Pizza Machine" (a $200 value) which was announced on Action 3 news, when they said the winner was "Mia R." Mayah was yelling at the T.V "IT'S MAYAH!" She wanted me to call the station and tell them to re-announce it correctly. I told her that anyone who knows how to read would have seen it on the T.V screen and known that they said it wrong. Too bad I didn't know she was going to win that before I planned the party we had today. It would have saved myself and my poor husband a lot of stress. Clint had to deal with all my freak outs for the last week during all the preparations. I am lucky to have such a good guy to put up with me.

Mayah had requested to have a cooking party. At the time I thought, oh it will be so fun to make all the little girls cute aprons with the sewing machine that I got for my birthday. For the first time I actually started something a few weeks before it needed to be done and it was a good thing, too. It was a good learning opportunity because of all the errors I had to re-do on those aprons. But in the end they turned out great, and were even finished on time.


Thanks to my husband (who has learned from the best how to be a great party host), the party was a hit and all of Mayah's little friends had a BLAST! We started out by having them decorate their own place mats and then roll out pizza dough and add their own toppings.

While the pizzas were in the oven, we played a few games and started on dessert. The first game was like a dry version of bobbing for apples, only with doughnuts on strings hanging from the ceiling. The next was a blind tasting contest where they had to identify raisins, m&m's, pickles and surprisingly the hardest of all--ketchup--just from taste. Apparently, they've only ever tasted ketchup on things like hamburgers, french fries and eggs...because they had guesses such as pickle juice, vinegar, etc... Then the girls made cupcakes that resembled flower pots, using ice cream cones, oreos, frosting and green coconut shavings. They also made "sherbet the frogs" using lime sherbet, gummy candies for legs, and junior mints for eyes. Before everyone left, we cut mayah's birthday apron cake and opened gifts.

They all took home lime green whisks stuffed with candy, chef hats, home-sewn aprons, miniature rolling pins, self-decorated place mats, and the cutest recipe books, which my sister-in-law Melissa helped design. On their way out, they all stopped to run around in the yard with our puppy Rhet and laugh at him licking Ava's face.

After all of the work, stress and money we spent on this party, I learned that I could actually pull something like this off, but I might not choose to do it again--at least not any time soon. I wonder if that hassle-free party at the Pizza Machine will still be usable for next year's birthday...??