Dance Recital......a little late.

I know it's been a month since the girls' dance recital, but if you haven't read my last post I'll tell you now that we've been B.U.S.Y! But it was Kate's first dance recital and Lily's first time doing 2 dances so I couldn't NOT blog about it. Lily performed a tap and ballet dance this year. She has always been quite the dancer and has the best memory of anyone I know! She picks up things so quickly and always knows every single dance move. (WARNING: Get ready for LOTS of pictures!!)

Lily's first dance was a ballet dance to "A Dream Is A Wish." Here is my ballerina beauty:

Then it was her tap dance to "How Bad Can I Be" from the movie Lorax.

Next up was little sister and her ballet dance to "I Just Love Getting Dressed For Tea." It was a cute song that was VERY appropriate for 3 and 4 year old little girls to dance to.

 Poor thing does not have enough hair for a bun so she got to experience the fake hair. She loved every minute of it (little diva!)

 And this one kills me! I can't believe this is my little 3 year old!! (And I love the smear of lipstick on the corner of her lips)

Her "tea pose"

Sweet Sisters:

 For the finale they all came out on stage and free-style danced. The girls were moving and shaking it and then grabbed each other's hands and danced together. I'm so glad they are not only sisters, but friends.
 Here is a video from the finale:

 Me and my girls

Where has the summer gone?

Is it really about to be August? I can't believe our summer is almost over. Thankfully school doesn't start here until August 27th so we have one more month left, but man! Those last 2 months just flew by. Maybe it's because we've been so busy.

We've been enjoying the boat and taking lots of boat rides:

 

Date night on the boat:

 

 Swimming:

 I went for 4 days to Dallas for Nerium's National Conference and made some amazing, new friends, learned so much about Nerium International (which I am so thankful to be a part of) and learned a lot about myself and what I want for my future and how I'm going to get there:

Here we are with one of my teammate's $25,000 BONUS check!! Way to go Lindsey!!

 And we finished the weekend off with an all white party. It was pretty awesome!

Then last week we celebrated my niece's 3rd birthday at Chuck E Cheese. I am so happy they now live 10 minutes down the road from us and we get to celebrate these special occasions together!

Me and the birthday girl:

The boys had to get some play time in too!

 My Mom got stuck taking her picture with Chuck E because all of the kids bailed on her!

Then Matt and I had to have a nice, friendly competition at the Guitar Hero game 

(I won of course!! ha ha!)

 For my niece's birthday present I turned her room from a "baby room" to a BIG GIRL room:

 

The girls immediately jumped in it and tried it out:

 

We also took the girls to see Monster University. Cute movie!

 

Nothing like candy, popcorn and sprite at 10:30 in the morning!!

And then Thursday night I had a girls night and went to see the musical Wicked:

In the front row!! It was amazing!!

So that's a little of what we've been up to lately! Not to mention we've had my parents living with us for the last couple of weeks while they wait to close on their new house. It has been great having them with us and we are so thankful for all of the times they've watched the girls so Matt and I could run here or there. It's been a little crazy around here though! We're all running in circles it seems. They close on their house this week though and I can't believe they're going to be right down the road from us again! I love having my family all together again.

Happy Summer! Hope you enjoy the rest of yours. We're planning on packing the rest of ours with lots of fun stuff!!

The 4th with Family

I'm a little late, but we had a great 4th of July celebration this year. It was the first holiday we celebrated with my parents and sister and niece since they moved here. Our little family of four started our celebration on July 3rd when the hubby decided to get a hotel room on the water for 2 days. You would have thought we were driving 8 hours to stay a week with the way our car was loaded down, but nope we were driving about 10 miles for 2 nights! We came prepared though with drinks, snacks, burgers, s'mores and a grill. Oh yeah, and clothes and swimsuits!

We got to the hotel around 1 and immediately hit the pool. We stayed out there all day long! We were finally able to get the kids out of the pool, got cleaned up and headed to Tookies for burgers. Tookies is this dark, nothing special restaurant with THE best burger around. So yummy! After we ate we came back to the hotel and crashed. The girls were worn slap out!

 The next morning we were up and at 'em again! We ate breakfast and headed straight back out to the pool. We wanted to get out there early and get our "spot" before everyone else came. We swam for awhile and then later in the morning my parents, sister and niece came to the pool and swam with us the rest of the afternoon. I am loving having my family here, close by again. We use to all live within 10 minutes of each other and now after living 8 hours apart for 5 years we're back within 10 minutes of each other again. We missed my brother-in-law being there with us (he's been in Bahrain with the military for 14 months) but as of yesterday he is back in the good ol' US of A again! For good!
We had so much fun swimming, grilling and being silly all day.

 We took a break in the afternoon and took the kiddos up to the room to nap, but when they woke up they were ready to swim again. I don't know how they did it. I was worn out! At this point we busted out the grill and started getting our burgers, veggie kabobs and sides ready. My  hubby is the man and cooked all of this amazing food on a little fish fryer stand. He had it all set up and pieced together. I wish I would have taken a picture of our set up!
My sister and I ended up coordinating as the stars and strips! Just like old times when Mom would match our outfits.

We got the kids out of the pool and got ready to feast! We ended up eating picnic style and it was perfect! We were right there on the water and it was just the way you picture the 4th of July to be.

Then we had to have a photo shoot, of course!

 

My crazy crew!

 

 

 

My parents and the grandkids 

  

 My niece

 We ended the night watching the beautiful fireworks over the water. Nothing beats celebrating the USA than celebrating it with the family! I am so thankful to have them close again!