who knew there was a difference?

On the way out the door to Maryn's last ballet class of this semester, I grabbed my camera and some new batteries so I could take video and pictures. When I tried to use the camera, it was totally freaking out and I was convinced it was broken. So I didn't get any video and only a few pictures. I'm really upset about it. After I got home and read the camera manual and looked at the batteries, I realized that they were non-alkaline. I didn't realize that alkaline made a difference, I thought all household batteries were alkaline. Guess not.

So here are the few pictures I was able to take.

In this picture, the girls were practicing prancing around and picking up flowers with their thumb and forefingers. Maryn wasn't very dainty about it, she pretty much ran the whole time.

Those are not her ballet shoes, this was taken after class after she had put her crocs on.

This is Maryn and her teacher Mrs. Tobey. She is a very sweet person and Maryn has learned so much from her in the past 9 months. She starts every class reviewing ballet positions and practicing toe pointing. The rest of the class time she uses different games to teach turns, skipping, galloping, and probably a lot of other things about ballet that I don't recognize because I don't really know anything about dance. Her teacher told me that Maryn has gone from not being able to skip at all to being able to skip pretty well. She said she was impressed with her concentration when she was trying really hard to learn to skip. It is really an awesome class and I hope Maryn continues to enjoy it.

(As I was watching SYTYC Dance last night and hearing that a lot of the dancers started dancing at age 3, 4, 5- I couldn't help but hope that Maryn will want to stick with it so she can say that too!)

and so it begins

Yes folks, that's our back door...

See the water line?

Remember this post from last summer?  Our rainy summer season got started with a bang last Friday with 2+ inches of rain falling in about 60 minutes which lead to 3 inches of standing water in our basement.  We were very prepared this time and had minimal damage to our stuff (except for the bottom three inches of our bookshelves and piano- we'll have to see how that one turns out).  

Here's the video Jon took during the flood:

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We spent all day yesterday cleaning up our basement and it is pretty much back to normal, function-wise.  We're hoping that sandbags will minimize the damage next time.  Not that anything about this was humorous, but when we looked outside after the flood waters had receded, all of our outside toys were gone (floated away into other people's backyards) including our sandbox turtle!  We found it about twenty feet away and the sand inside was still dry as a bone.  The real question is, how are we going to get it back into our yard? :)

my kids....

unfortunately do a lot of this.....

The funny thing about this picture is- it shows how Maryn and Jonas pretty much copy exactly what Seth does. If Seth lays down on the floor, then Maryn does too (usually very close up next to him) followed by Jonas not long after.

what we've been up to

The last few weeks have turned out to be really really busy for our family. Jon is trying to finish up his semester, the rest of us had (in random order) book club, Primary meeting, enrichment, swim lessons, open house at school, father/son campout, ballet, English Dept. party, school half day, activity day girls, mother's day crafts in Seth's class and at church yesterday...phew. Thankfully I had an awesomely-relaxing Mother's Day (except for the afore mentioned Mother's Day craft in Primary that I was in charge of- that was crazy). Jon did a great job taking care of all my usual responsibilities so I could just chill. I wish every day was Mother's Day. (Plus, I got released from my calling yesterday- it was a great day!)

I made these rolls for enrichment and the school open house (they were on the same night). They were yummy and got eaten up quickly.

This is Maryn's new dress, thanks Aunt Wendy!

We were watching funny animal videos on You Tube. Maryn loves to snuggle Seth!