Chloe gets chosen to be Clara in "The Nutcracker"

So pretty much Chloe's (and all of ours) dreams came true recently when she auditioned for "The Nutcracker" and she was chosen to play the part of Clara!   I will try and summarize since it's quite the story getting to that point.  

First of all, Chloe LOVES ballet!  We have taken her to see "The Nutcracker" since she was 5 years old.  After turning 8 she was able to start auditioning to be in the play and she's been in it each year since then.  It has been Chloe's dream to play the part of Clara which is a very big part.  Heather and I knew that this might be the last year that she could be chosen to get the part since she's growing out of that little girl look WAY too fast.  She had general auditions and received a call an hour or so later to come back yet again, along with 15 other girls, for Clara call backs!  We were so excited for her...and very nervous.  She danced her heart out and was told that the parts would be posted a few days later on the company's website.   Well, that time came and went and still there was no word about parts yet.   The parts were finally posted...but not until the middle of the night!  I admit, I could hardly sleep anyway waiting for them to be posted.  I would run upstairs and check every few hours after going to bed.  At 3 a.m. I popped the lights on in our bedroom and stuck the printed copy of the posted parts in Heather's face saying "look at this!"..."she made CLARA!!!"  Believe me, I was tempted to wake Chloe up to celebrate too but Heather had to hold me back since she probably wouldn't be able to sleep the rest of the night either.   We're so excited for the big performance coming up soon.  Here's some recent pix from picture day at the ballet studio:

Here's Clara and all of the "party girls" (that was Chloe's first part 4 years ago)

Here's Clara with Drosselmeyer's nephew and the little guy there is Clara's little brother- Fritz 

(Chloe loves that little kid)

 Here's the nightgown that she wears when she meets the Mouse King and the Nutcracker

I love this picture of Chloe

Here's one very proud mom...

Looking forward to November 17-19th Chloe!!!!

Kate's character convention...Kate becomes "Fancy Nancy"

So all 2nd graders have to participate in the annual "Character Convention" at the school.  This is where you pick your favorite character from a book, dress up like them and tell your classmates all about yourself.  Kate chose Fancy Nancy...it's fitting right?   She and Heather had a blast putting this ensemble together.  Fancy Nancy likes everything "fancy", even using fancy words like "exquisite" and "fuschia".  She even passed out "bon bons" to the class after she was done with her presentation.

Eli's birthday

Eli's birthday...you'll be able to tell by the pictures below that this was a very unique birthday on many levels.  The first pic shows his first gift and one that he's been requesting for quite a while...a new set of large scriptures.  Yeah, these are what I call the old man scriptures, you know the ones where the words are so big they jump off the page and they weigh about a 100 pounds?  He was so happy to get these...

and of course, Eli's in to music so much lately on his Ipod so he's requested an ihome 

Eli also wanted to decorate his own cake which you can see here....oh my,...not sure what happened but he seemed pretty pleased with it...

Here's about half of the kids that came to the party all jammed into the hot tub at Lori's house.  

The party was a lot of fun and quite memorable.  Happy 15th birthday Eli!!!

Piano Recital

The kids had their piano recital recently and did a fantastic job!  Kate played "Pop Goes the Weasel", Chloe played "Tribute" by John Schmidt and Eli wrapped it up by playing "The Entertainer" by...I forget his name.  I did get a video of their tunes but for some reason or another I'm not able to upload them.  After the recital I wanted to get a close up of each of the kids at the piano but Kate was the only one who would let me-go figure...teenagers.