First dance class!

This day couldn't come soon enough!! Our baby girl started dance today!!

I found a great place and they said starting age was 3, but I wanted to see if they would let her squeeze by as her birthday was like 2 weeks away. They said as long as she was potty trained. sweet!

I made the mistake of telling her about dance LAST week. She has been so excited and every morning thought it was dance day. oops. sorry baby girl!

She sure kept right up!! The parents can watch through a one way window. Ireland caught on so quick and did so well. ( I wasn't surprised... this girl is a NATURAL!) She lives to dance, perform and move!! She did it and had no issues going in, staying or doing what she was told. That's my girl. *proud mama can you tell??*

I love that she can wear anything she wants. All she has to do is have black tap and black ballet shoes.

Here are the fun pics of the first day!

waiting patiently

making friends

They finish each class dancing with their dolls! So cute!

She LOVED IT!!

Fitness and such

Daniel, my sister Mekell, my cousin Carly and myself have started a journey together. A fitness journey. It is the Body For Life 12 week program. It is incredible and totally doable! I, on my own (before the 12 week program) have lost 17 lbs!! Mekell too has lost 17 lbs!! (well possibly more) We bought a treadmill and do work out videos regularly and attend the gym when we can. It is a blast and it feels SOOOO good to fit in all my old clothes again!! My goal was to be the weight I was at age 18. and I am one pound away from that. I say forget that pound. I am so proud of myself and I feel so good!

So with this 12 week challenge I am not looking to lose more weight I am looking to tone up. Get me some muscle!! Daniel's goal is to gain weight and lotsa muscle! (woohoo!!) Carly and Mekell each have their goals and together we kick butt!!

we are on either week 6 or 7.

I highly recommend the Body For life program!! We do the recommended workouts but also add in our own stuff and change it to fit our likes.

I feel so pumped and motivated! I am going back to my old dreams of wanted to be a personal fitness trainer. I want everyone to have this energy and positive self esteem. This is seriously a happy house over here!! It helps if you have someone to work out with you but I do know it is possible alone.

*** update: as of Sept. 24 my sister has lost 21 pounds and 15.5 inches!!!!!!! woooooo can you believe it?? So proud of her I can't stand it!!

The rest of June

Here are some more pics to finish off June. Even though I am about to post 25 pictures (that's not too many right? ha ha ha) I feel it is all crammed and I am missing stuff. I really hope to never get this behind again!

Here is a fun craft we did

peanut butter on pine cones

then roll it in some bird seed

and voila! The birds loved them! We had three of these total hanging in our tree

this was Leighton's birthday. She got this plastic pool and we had her sit in it and open her gifts. Here she is sitting amongst her loot

as I have mentioned several times before.. we always decorate for Birthdays. This one we went all out! First Birthday... heck yeah! we had balloons even stuck on the ceiling!

daddy showing the birthday girl all the animals

such a daddy's girl! She just adores him

yes we had an empty pool in our kitchen for the kids to play in for like a week! they climbed in it to sign a birthday card

ugh this is so funny and so gross! uh.. Leighton, how much banana is in there?!

well at least that much. she swallowed most of it. ha ha ha

these girls are full of smooches!

please don't take my spray bottle! my girls love to drink out of these.

this is Ireland's octopus

we went to Snow Bird Resort for Daniel's work party (yes he works from home but he does contract work for one company so "technically" he is an employee.) lucky us! :)

at first Lei went in the bounce house and Ireland wouldn't but then big kids came and the baby had to get out. :( so sadly we had to just watch

yay Ireland finally got in!

we took this tram up the mountain. OH MY HECK!! So scary. I was freaking out. We went up as a group and I couldn't be like " I am sorry I can't participate because I am a baby and TERRIFIED of heights." So I went up and tried not to look out the window

Dan went to take pictures. I kept the kids where it was safe :) See the bars Ireland was touching? not hot. see the metal diamond plate ground? VERY HOT I didn't realize what happened at first. Lei was walking back and forth and fell forward. She started crying but I kept saying "it's ok, just get up." she was waaay down at far end. When she wouldn't get up she started screaming so bad. I ran down to her and someone said they think the ground was hot. I barely touched it and it scalded me. :( My poor baby was so miserable. We still had to wait for the entire group to come back and wait for the tram and take it all the way back.

we got back to our room and gave Lei a can of pop to hold. I FINALLY found a first aid station and a wonderful man helped us

she got all bandaged up and had a numbing burn spray applied and was happy as could be



Should have ended on a happier note huh? :) well more pics coming soon

Ireland singing in church. take 2

Sorry I guess the video was not good :( let's try this again. here is the post with a youtube video imbedded on it. Now see if that's better!!!

CLICK HERE FOR THE POST... OR JUST SCROLL DOWN :)

Well the bad news is or should I say WAS is that I took a few thousand pictures this summer (nope not kidding) and had no computer to save them to or a way to get them on my blog

My amazing husband fixed my computer and I am back in business!! so now it is overwhelming picture blog post time!!!

Oh ps apparently the video of Ireland singing doesn't work :( :( weird it plays fine for me. huh. lame. So Dan is finding me a working link!

in the mean time let's work on just a tiny part of summer. Let's start with Middle of May to middle of June. No this isn't all the pics from that time... just a few. ha ha ha warning: TONS O' PICS!!! feel free to click and possibly double click any pic you want to see bigger

sorry if I have already used some of these. They all blend together after a bit. Also I am not going to put them in the correct order because I am lazy :) You can figure out same day stuff by outfits right??

Don't even get me started on hot dogs. That's all this girl will eat!! EWWW. ha ha oh well at least she WILL eat something!!

Leighton is such a curious little baby. Loves to explore every inch of the house. This is her just playing with her magnets but she has a look like "it wasn't me!"

Her friend brought over a costume to play with. look how strong she is!

if you ever can't find Lei... look where there are books! She will always find books and spread them around then pick a fave and get reading. And that's either before or after bringing you a few, hopping in your lap and wanting you to read to her. awwww

a daily thing... pulling out dvds

this was so funny. She sure was concentrating! putting all her cereal in the diaper drawer.

later that day she decided just to... well have fun of course!

pat it and roll it....

she got her hair straightened one day (uh I think I have done this pic already.....)

preschool in panties. The joys of having her mama be her preschool teacher! she doesn't even have to get dressed!

they were playing some game where they hit their heads on the floor and cracking up... uh..

super cute!! And yes I do dress them in matching clothes, quite often actually.

ahhhh these are the best two pics you may ever see!!! I wanted to catch Leighton's natural reaction to when her daddy came home!!! I actually think he was just out starting the bbq lol

the first one is me saying here comes daddy and he wiggles the door knob

and enter daddy.....

so cute huh??

here is something we had TONS of this summer!!!

my cute monkey says "mom, mom! look, I a sloth!"

having fun in her car

enjoying having her sissy out of the hospital!

and straight out of the pool in our yard!

many many many more pics to come!! and the link to the video... soon

question: ... how many exclamation points did I use in this post?? I won't apologize for being happy!!! :) :) :)