dance recital stills

this one is actually from madeleine's dress rehearsal, but the rest are all from the recital. randy was manning the video while i took stills. you can never over document a three year old's dance recital, right?

dance recital videos

here are the videos from the dance recital yesterday. hopefully they should work just fine. the first one is "limbo rock," and the second one is "you are my sunshine." this is probably the best i have ever seen madeleine perform either song, so good thing we caught it on film. madeleine is the second from the right in both videos.

 

 i can't believe how big she's getting. favorite parts of the second video are when she does the hand motion for spinning around that her teacher does instead of turning around at first. this has always been a problem in practice, but she doesn't usually spin at all. i love that it looks like she's just too tired to get her arms above her head for the very last, "please don't take my sunshine away." and the silly walk off the stage? priceless.

hose time

there is something magical about playing with a hose during the summer. i'm not sure what it is, but i remember the feeling as a child. we could play with nothing but the hose for hours. my children feel the same way.

yesterday, it was really hot and after naps, i took the girls out in the backyard and turned on the hose.

apparently diane's nap wasn't long enough because she went back and forth between blissfully happy and completely distraught the whole time.

blissfully happy.

completely distraught.

 

blissfully happy.

completely distraught (although with good reason in this one. she didn't want her hair combed).

canning season begins

my giant canning pot finally made an appearance this week. i realize that i'm a little behind schedule for strawberry jam, but i found some good looking strawberries and decided to go for it. i made strawberry freezer jam a couple weeks ago, but my freezer isn't as big as i would like and randy prefers canned jam, so i decided to make both kinds. 

i took my beautiful strawberries, 

hulled them, and then smashed them up with my potato masher. 

my adorable assistants.

they weren't sour, madeleine was just being goofy.

the finished product (can you see how bad our hard water is?).

i have to admit, i hate canning. it is a messy, long, hot process. but i love the fruits of my labors (get it?) for the rest of the year, so i will keep it up. planning on doing at least four dozen jars of marinara sauce once my sixteen tomato plants actually start producing fruit, at least the same amount of apples once allred's orchards start producing delicious apples, and some pears and peaches to go with those. oh, and don't forget the annual trip to pick raspberries and blackberries.

hopefully i can keep up with the harvest come end of august/september.

south fork

my friend, robynn, and i realized that neither of us had been up the canyon yet this summer. we both love spending time up there and it seems criminal not to go more often when i live right at the mouth of the canyon. so, we loaded the kids into the car, supplied ourselves with all of the necessary entertainment, and headed up to south fork.

even though we brought things for the kids to play with, the main attraction (of course), was the stream. the kids loved throwing rocks and sticks into the water.

 

i've realized that going up the canyon is not the same experience that it was when i was single and without children. i still enjoy it, but it is a little more stressful to watch the kids playing near the water. i could only handle it for so long before we decided to head back to the picnic blanket and hang out there. 

eli decided to take some pictures of the group.

madeleine knows how to relax. it was great to escape to the canyon for a little while and enjoy slightly cooler temperatures and beautiful scenery.

it's been a hard day's night

you know it's been a rough night/morning when your children are having naps at 7am...

and one of them collapsed into the nap while playing with her toys.

july the fourth

our sisters' weekend concluded with the husbands coming to meet us at my aunt and uncle's house for a fourth of july pool party. the weather was a little overcast, which i thought was perfect. we had a bbq and spent the rest of the time in or around the pool. mostly in.

my brother, ray

my dad is going to be doing some scuba diving soon, so he brought his gear to test out and randy decided to do a little scuba diving himself. he had a blast and swam around in the deep end for a long time. 

i have to admit that it made me a little nervous at first, seeing as he has never scuba dived before, but my family assured me he was doing just fine and he was moving around enough that i was finally put at ease.

 

audrey and matthew

austin jumping off the diving board

madeleine was such a fish the whole time we were there. she always likes the water, but usually gets out after an hour or so. this time though, she spent almost three hours in the pool, happy as a clam. she especially loved having my uncle, austin, throw her. 

diane spent plenty of time in the pool herself, but not as much as madeleine, which i'm okay with because she requires constant vigilance in the water. we called her greased lightening.

diane and diane

ray did some scuba diving himself. 

matthew

dad and elizabeth

 

about an hour before we left, madeleine discovered the diving board. the first couple times, my dad dropped her off, but after that, she did it all by herself. over and over. she would get on, run off the end without even hesitating, swim to the side, climb out, and go directly back to the diving board. no fear. 

if you scroll through these next ones fast enough, it's kind of like a stop motion film of her jumping in.

my brave little fish.

 

of course, diane decided she wanted to do it, too. even though she wanted to do it all by herself and kept trying to shove me away on the diving board, i dropped her in. she even did it a couple times.

stop motion #2:

we had a great time and after a long weekend by myself, i was very happy to be driving home with my family.