Tiny Dancer

The weekend before we left for Hawaii I took Olive to a trial ballet class to see if she would like it. While she didn't follow all the instructions (to be expected) & was a little shy, she seemed to have a great time. I thought she did really well considering all the other little ballerinas were class regulars.

Of course, she really enjoyed the time picking out her outfit for "bal-way" and looking at herself in the mirror. Ha.



Playing with her tutus.


Checking herself out.


Surveying the other dancers.


Strike a pose.


And another...


Listening to the teacher (decided to take top tutu off for class.) each kid took a turn saying what color their butterfly was and where their butterfly was going. They then ran around the circle pretending to be the butterfly. Olive was the only one that was too shy to run around...but she also was the only one to proclaim her butterfly's flight destination "HAWAII!"



After our dancing we got to play with the parachute.


And different musical instruments.


And finally, we ended with a story about Cinderella.


Followed by a visit to Starbucks...naturally.


Haven't decided if ballet is in the budget for the Fall...we'll see after the double preschool tuition hits...

- Posted using BlogPress from my totally awesome iPad

Two Gladiators and a Princess

The first weekend of August we babysat Marco on Saturday while Sarah and Jeff spent the day wine tasting in Napa. The kids were thrilled that they got to hang out with Marco all day and they were excited and asking about Marco's arrival as soon as they got up.

We packed the day with fun - starting out with the end of the year picnic at Nikos' school. Taki had a shift at the bbq (which I can tell you was about a million times less stressful than my 1/2 hour shift at the jumpy house!)

Olive enjoyed some face painting (she picked to be a princess - who's shocked?)

Nikos picked a dinosaur.

Side note - don't I totally look like Mel in this pic??

Unfortunately (for me) Marco not only decided he wanted his face painted after the painters "on shift" already vacated, but he picked the same thing Nikos had...so it is quite easy to draw comparisons between my ghetto blue dinosaur and Nikos' legit one.
Nikos then decides he wants a shark as well - at least now they both have a ghetto one.

Did I mention the jumpy house? At least my shift was only a half hour (a half hour of letting 8 kids at a time take 3 minute shifts - eek!), so I got to enjoy the kids having fun in it.

Back at home we dabbled in some art projects.

Olive and I went on a field trip to get some pink in her hair - I was excited but Olive was super excited. To my surprise she went with a more purplish pink (fuschia) that she calls purple. She was so good for the short process of putting the extension in - sat super still!

I asked her if she wanted one or two purples and she said (all quiet and serious) "I want to princess purples please mama".

As soon as we got back in the car she said "hurry up, I wanna show Nikos and Marco my pretty princess hair!"

When we got back the boys were sword fighting - but they were gracious enough to stop mid-fight to admire Olive's hair. "So pretty Olive." "You look like a princess."

Sword fight observers.

Next up the kids play with a foam dart and get it stuck in our tree. I come up with the genius idea to throw the red ball into the tree to knock down the dart.

If you look in the top right of that picture you will realize this was obviously a brilliant move. I'll save you the pic of the Toy Story bat and the Cars ball that I then threw up after it. Luckily this then became a game with the kids to see how we could knock it down. (Winner = Taki. Obvs.)

Taki decides he's going to play Thunderdome with the kids - which basically involves him tossing various balls at the kids and trying to knock them over before they make it through the bat finish line on the other side.

Competitor: Nikos

Competitor: Marco

Competitor: Olive

And the tables are turned my friends...

Celebration after a long game in the Gladiator pit? Ice cream! Nikos and Marco were kind enough to share a chair - since Jack put out other one pretty much out of commission except for 25lb Baby O.

And after a long day - a little Cars can't hurt.

Yay to our friend Marco!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

A few weeks ago Nikos' class hosted a "Going on a Bear Hunt" party. The class has been very into bears the last few months (starting when they first read the book) and the teachers wanted to celebrate the kids enthusiasm. I had some momentary working mom guilt since I couldn't go to the party and I didn't want Nikos to be the only kid without a guest there. Luckily, Grandma saved the day and was able to attend the hunt - and she captured these great moments for us!


Bear Hunt in action.

Thanks Grandma!!

Our Little Duckling

In mid July we walked over to Nikos' preschool for the new family brunch to welcome Olive and all the other new kids.

Olive was right at home when she walked in and quickly marched over to the little kitchen and baby doll area in her classroom.

Another parent at the brunch asked Taki if Olive had an older sibling that was already at the school. When he said yes she said "I thought so, I recognize her tutus." Ha.

Nikos shows Olive the loft in her classroom.

Everyone enjoyed the nice weather out on the playground.

Nikos showed off his handprint in his classroom.

After a fun morning we walked home.

Lazy lazerson asked to ride home in the backpack. Good thing he is only 34lbs and still under the weight limit.

Celebrations in the OC

This July we drove down to LA to celebrate several different occasions - our 6th wedding anniversary, my 35th birthday (gulp!), Tyler Beck's 1st birthday and the 4th of July. Woohoo!

We packed the kids into the car for a roadtrip on Friday the 1st (Happy Anniversary to us!)

Thank goodness the kids are used to roadtrips (good lesson I learned from my parents!) so they didn't give us any trouble at all. Highway 5, however, gave us some freaking trouble. We left at 7pm and got in to Newport Beach at FOUR AM. YES. Miserable. We pull up, check into the Hyatt and then walk to our room - on the way in both kids manage to totally wake up from a dead sleep. And act like it is mid day. What? Thank goodness once we got settled in our room they went back to sleep until 8am. Yes, four great hours of sleep for us.

After a nice room service breakfast (happy birthday to me!) we headed to Tyler's 1st birthday party. Sadly, I took no pictures - but we did have a fabulous time and it was great to be there with Tyler on his big day. Thank you to Jayme for providing me a princess crown on my birthday - unfortunately Olive demanded it about 3.5 seconds after Jayme handed it to me.

After Tyler's birthday we headed back to the hotel and Olive and I took 4 hour naps while Taki and Nikos played in the pool. Later that night we headed over to Gus & Jen's house - the plan was for them to watch our kids while we went out for dinner but we talked them into letting us hang out with them for the night and order pizza. So fun! I was very happy with my birthday.

Sunday morning we enjoyed the hotel's Starbucks (love it!) and chilled on their beautiful patios for breakfast.

I told Nikos that Grammy & Pop-Pop had chairs (like the above chair) that they bought in Mexico about 10 (?) years ago but they hadn't hung them up yet. Nikos said we should just take them and hang them up at our house.

After breakfast we headed over to the beach - being a holiday weekend it was insanely busy, after driving around for a good 30 minutes (the last 10 of which I was ready to give up trying to find parking and drive back to the hotel) we finally found a spot. WOOHOO!

Eight blocks later we are on the beach when of course we realize Olive's bathing suit is in the car. Sweet. In order to save our reputations and not be immediately labeled as WT Super-Tyke went back to the car for Olive's suit.

We waited patiently for Daddy to come back...

And we're in business!

We rounded up the afternoon with lunch at Ruby's on the pier. I told Nikos that Jayme used to work there and he kept asking if she was going to be our waitress. (PS - at least once since we have been home we have been at a restaurant and Nikos has asked if Jayme was going to take our order. Ha.)

Back at the hotel we skipped naps and just enjoyed more pooltime.

Later that night Tyke and I ordered room service and pulled up a table from the pool and sat outside our room to enjoy dinner. Fun!

On our last day we enjoyed a 4th of July bbq at Gus & Jen's with the Villafana's and the Spriggs clan.

Connor Spriggs

Nico Villafana, Jen and Olive

Hot Kelli

The kids enjoyed some 4th of July cupcakes with some wicked colors. Taki swears Nikos pooped blue the next day.

Not sure how I missed getting pics of Kayla and Camryn (and Gus and Ted for that matter) but they were all there.

Here's to great friends and a great trip!