Yabba dabba dooooo..........

Faith's dance class performed at our town's Fiesta Days carnival this past Saturday so here is a sneak peek at her costume for this years dance recital.......................
They are performing a tap dance to the "Flintstones" theme song. I love their costumes! Faith loves it too because it is not a dress, but pants they wear. It really is adorable....reminds me of Pebbles. They have one boy in their class and he dresses like Fred Flintstone. He even has big feet to put over his tap shoes. Of course Faith is jealous and wants to wear big feet too!:0
I want to get some nice photos of Faith in her costume this year. She wants to take a break from dancing next year and take a karate class instead.
Is it really Thursday already!! Where did this week go!! The boys have been so busy with school projects and getting ready for the end of the school year. This has been a really busy school year. I know school projects are given as a conspiracy against parents!!! The things they expect them to come up with has to have parents involved. They have had projects one right after the other! Reed just finished up his country report on England this week and yesterday the class had an international buffet where all the students brought in a dish representing their country. Reed decided on "beans on toast" for his dish which was pretty easy. They had to have enough to serve about 100 people (parents and teachers were invited) so I was busy making toast all morning! His dish actually went over pretty well. Not sure how "beans on toast" would appeal to everyone, but there were only 3 pieces of toast left when it was all over. We

Reed got an "A" on his country project so we were all pretty happy about that!
Now one more project and 2 1/2 more weeks of school to go! I am soooooooo ready for summer break this year!!!

Favorite Photo Friday.............

Aloha!!!!

The kids school has "Hawaiian" dress theme today. It is an early dismissal day so Faith had to be up and dressed to be out of the house early. (She usually goes in her pjs in the morning to drop the boys off at school and enjoys her lazy mornings) When I woke her up this morning to get dressed she turned back over and said, "let me sleep just a little longer."
I snapped a few photos before we hurried off to school. This is her Hawaiian pose!
Dean has been off on a camping trip all week as part of school. He gets back today and we are so excited to have him back home! This was his first real trip away from us so I have been a little anxious all week. I know though that this has been a great experience for him.
We plan to stay home for the long week-end. Faith has a dance performance at our towns Fiesta days tomorrow. The only thing Reed wants to do this week-end is go see the movie "Star Trek." He has been talking about it non stop so Dale plans to take the boys to see it.
Hope everyone has a wonderful week-end!!!!!!!!!

My Almost 6 Year old......................

The other day I had someone come up to me and ask me how old Faith was. My normal reply is "5 Years old." (of course for the past 6 months Faith has to make sure and point out that she is 5 1/2, not 5. That extra 1/2 is very important!) Well, this time when asked her age I stopped for minute and said she will be 6 next month! Ohhhhhh, how I had to hold back tears from coming! My baby is growing up!! She will be turning 6 years old in just a couple of weeks!!!! And to top it off I just noticed one of her big teeth on the bottom is starting to break through which means we will have our first loose tooth soon!! How much more can I take! Can't I just make her stay 5 one more year!!!!!;)
It has really gotten tough taking photo of Faith these days. She really wants nothing to do with the camera. I really need to work on taking natural photos. She actually tolerated me today when I asked her if I could get some photos of her before going to school. I was able to get a few before she got too silly and ran off on me. So here are some of my "almost 6 Year old!!!!"
(i love how you can really see her eye brows in these photos. She has the prettiest eye brows.....one of the first things we noticed when we got her first baby photos)

I also wanted to make note and write this down so I do not forget (and have a Mommy brag moment!;) Today I had one of the Mom's from Faith's school come up to me (her daughter is in the morning class and there are some days that Faith's class is combined with hers) and she said to me, "I just love Faith." (She has been having some trouble with her daughter and her daughters friends being mean and sassy with one another and already leaving one another out of things) She went on to tell me that Faith just gets along with everyone and is always so happy and how she wishes they could all be like that. I beamed and thanked her and said, I hope that she will always stay that way. Faith can have her moments too, but for the most part she just enjoys life!

i heart faces...blurb photo book contest

This is a very exciting week at"i heart faces"!!! The challenge is to submit your very best face photo you have ever taken. I had a really tough time deciding what photo to enter. I still have so much to learn about photography and my camera. That is why I am enjoying these weekly challenges so much. It is a learning experience for me.
Normally you can not submit a photo that you have already entered, but they are making an exception this week. I am really glad because as I went back and forth on which photo to enter I kept going back to this photo of Faith that I entered several weeks ago. This is the face that just melts my heart and brightens each of my days..........

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites."

I'm looking forward to checking out all of the wonderful "faces" and wishing everyone lots of luck!!

Favorite Photo Friday.............

This is Reed in front of the Rainforest Cafe in Animal Kingdom Park before we went in for lunch.
He was hot so he decided to cool off......this is SOOOO Reed!

Faith's Pirate Hair

When we were in Disney World I noticed several little girls with their hair all done up like princesses and they had their big princess dresses on. The majority of them looked hot and miserable walking around and I couldn't help but wonder if with many of them if it was more for the parents than the child. Don't get me wrong, they all looked adorable and I'm sure if Faith was into dressing up like a princess I would have had her all dressed up too. But Faith is who she is and I just love that about her.
When we were in one of the shops looking around I noticed the hair salon where they were styling all the little girls hair. I wanted to make sure Faith did not feel she was missing out on something and asked her if that was something she would like to do? Her answer, "no way."
(With the cost alone I was thankful she said that!)
As we continued to shop I saw this adorable hair piece that I knew would look precious on her. Knowing it was princess hair I knew there was no way she would want it, but asked her anyway if this was something she would wear. "Sure" she said.......... " it can be my pirate hair."
Exactly, your pirate hair!!!
(i took a few photos of her this morning as she had her"pirate hair"on)

Getting caught up...........

or at least trying to after getting back from our week long whirl wind trip to Disney World!!! Of course Florida had record high temps while we were there! Not the best time to be walking around Disney!:0 We had a great time despite the heat. It did slow us down quite a bit and we maybe only got in half of what we wanted to do.
I did not take many photos as we took advantage of the Disney photo pass they offer. It was so nice not to be lugging my big camera around and not worrying about taking photos every minute. With the photo pass you can stop any where there is a Disney photographer and have them take your picture. Then you later look at your photos on the computer and can purchase only the ones you want.
We have lots of catching up to do from the trip! We took the kids out of school for a week on independent study and I'm really proud of them how well they did with keeping up with all of their school work. Not easy for kids to do while on a trip to Disney! For Dean this was very easy to do as organization comes easy for him. For Reed it was a struggle and I'm not sure that pulling him out of school for a week was the best thing to do.
Now off to empty another suitcase and put in another load of laundry before getting Faith off to school and help out in her class.
I look forward to getting caught up on all my favorite blogs this week .......I have missed everyone!!!

(this photo was taken after a long HOT (as you can tell by Reeds face) day spent at Magic Kingdom. One of the Disney photographers took a photo of the kids posed like this in front of the castle. I think he found the red rifle gun that Faith is holding very amusing.......this is what she HAD to have out of all the Disney souvenirs! lol Most of the girls were walking around with princess wands, but not my girl!!!! hee hee

i heart faces......laughter!!!

This weeks photo challenge at "i heart faces" is laughter!! I have lots of individual photos of my kids laughing in pictures, but was really wanting to enter one of the three of them together in honor of Mother's Day this week. I immediately thought of this photo that I took a couple years ago and have hanging on my wall. I just love this photo and it makes me smile each time I look at it. They each had a serious case of the giggles as I attempted to get this photo. At the time I was upset with them for not cooperating for the picture, but ended up loving that moment of pure laughter I captured.

Happy Mother's Day!!!!!
May your days be filled with laughter!!!!