"Nutcracker"... again

Starring: Carly as a sugar-plum fairy

Saturday afternoon we attended Carly’s first dance recital. She started dance last month with two of her friends and has really enjoyed it. The girls looked adorable all dressed up in their ballet costumes before the performance and nobody seemed at all nervous.


It was a fun show to watch, especially some of the youngest little dancers. Carly did a fantastic job and was a beautiful ballerina.


Below is Carly’s ballet debut as a sugar-plum fairy in the Nutcracker. She’s the last (fourth) dancer in a pink tutu to enter the stage from the left)

Resemblance

Have you ever been told you looked like someone famous? Until recently I hadn’t, then a few weeks ago someone told me that I looked just like the actress from the movie Casper – she prefaced that by saying I “must get that all the time.” When I didn’t know who she was talking about she explained that Casper was a popular movie when she was a kid (I don’t think she realized there’s nearly a decade age difference between us). Anyhow, she told me the actress was “beautiful” so I took it as a compliment.

While the following my seem completely unrelated, stay with me…

Over the several months I’ve been playing around with the idea of cutting bangs. Due to a larger than average forehead, I’ve had bangs most of my life. In fact I’ve had bangs that have warranted the nickname “poodle bangs”. While that nickname sounds cruel now, I don’t think it was meant badly… big bangs were the style.

Me and a side shot of my “poodle bangs” - 7th Grade Recognition Night

I’ve been bangless now for about five years and I love having less hair to style and maintain. However, as my face (along with the rest of my body) is getting rounder and rounder these days I thought cutting bangs just might be the trick I needed.

So back to Casper… several days after I learned I had a famous face I remembered that conversation and out of curiosity googled “actress Casper movie” – and wouldn’t you know it… one of the very first results read, “What is the actresses name from Casper with the big forehead?” Seriously! I took it as a sign and made the big move yesterday.

"Nutcracker"

Starring: Abigail as a sugar-plum fairy

Tonight we attended Abigail’s school performance of the Nutcracker. Below is part of her performance as a sugar-plum fairy (she starts on the left in a purple tutu). Abigail also had a short narrator part.

After the sugar-plum dance Abigail had a quick wardrobe change into this cute Chinese costume.

“The Colors of Christmas”

Starring: Carly (and a few other fellow kindergarteners)

Tonight was Carly’s first-ever school program. The kindergartners spent just under a half hour singing various Christmas songs – this is one of my favorites. I love her stern little face.

What’s Happening

We’re still plenty busy here with lots of fun performances and programs to look forward to in the next few days. I woke up yesterday morning just looking for an excuse to stay home and get some things done so when Jason woke up too late for me to make my yoga class (and with a running nose and cough) – that was all I needed. To me it seemed like just a normal cold, but Jason felt that the only way he would pull through was to watch several Curious George episodes throughout the day. He’s still not feeling well today, but instead of wanting to watch TV he just wants to sleep and rest. The poor guy slept on the couch all morning, has only eaten a few crackers, and is now back asleep for his nap. While I was certainly productive yesterday, today has been more about taking care of my little guy. The only perk of having a sick baby is more cuddle time for Mom.

Here’s a few things we’ve been up to lately:

Last Friday Justin took the day off so he could help Carly make a gingerbread house in her kindergarten class. Carly was very excited to have her Dad spend part of the afternoon with her and really enjoyed all the extra candy she got to bring home.

When Justin got home, we decided to surprise the girls by moving their bed into the playroom so we can start getting Jason’s big boy room ready. They went to their cousin’s house right after school so they didn’t discover the switch until they were getting ready for bed… from all their excitement you’d think it was already Christmas morning.

Saturday Justin and the kids went swimming at the YMCA while I ran errands. Over the past month or so they’ve gone swimming at least four times and they all love it.

Our little water boy loves to jump into the pool and Justin just stands there while Jason surfaces and makes his way over to Justin. It’s a little unnerving for me to watch, but Jason does an amazing job.

Snowflake Lane

(click on image if you can't read text)

* Some of you may know I’m sort of a paper freak so only using the 6 or so papers the class provided was much to limiting so I found some cuter paper and revamped my earlier pages.

December

I am loving this month! Our calendar is full of fun festive activities and the class I’m doing is helping me stay focused on what is really important to me and my family. I’m taking more pictures and enjoying the opportunity to reflect on past memories and the memories we are making now.

Friday night Justin and I went to Seattle with two other couples to see the Christmas Carol. The play was wonderfully done and we had a great dinner at Benihana’s before the show. I asked Justin to take a picture of our dining experience with our old camera and I swear the guy can not for the life of him get a picture in focus, but it’s all I have.

Santa Clause

Yesterday morning we visited Santa at our neighborhood community center.

Abigail asked for a Nintendo DS (the same thing she requested last year and our family received from Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher, but now she wants another DS so she can play against Carly).

Carly also asked for the same thing as last year… that’s right, Icebreakers - $1.97, I think Santa may be able to handle this one

Jason’s reaction to Santa was much improved this year

He didn’t ask for a single thing, but was happy to accept a candy cane from Santa

Trip to the zoo

Although it’s been really cold this week, we’ve had very little rain and we’ve had sunshine everyday so we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go to the zoo yesterday after we ran a few errands. We only had about an hour, but we were able to see a lot. Jason is at the perfect age for the zoo. Just watching his reaction to seeing real live animals was awesome.

Friday at speech therapy, Jason impressed his therapist by saying “rilla” for gorilla so that was the first thing he wanted see at the zoo.

As soon as we were done with the gorillas, Jason was ready to move onto the elephants. This is his sign for “elephant”.


We saw several other animals on our way to the elephants including a tiger that kept growling – I know you’re thinking “so what, big deal, a growling tiger”, but seriously it was cool. The hippos were our last stop.

Not very often that you see a hippo up and walking around – do you see his two buddies in the water?

Last night Justin and I had yet another date – this time a Christmas party with the Stake Presidency and the Stake Relief Society Presidency (one of Justin’s high council assignments is over the RS thus explaining our being asked to rub shoulders with the big wigs.) It was actually a fun group of people and we had a great time.

The First

Recently I came across a free online photoshop/scrapbooking class centered around the holidays. When the class started, I quickly realized it wasn’t just a one day thing. It would actually be an everyday thing. The first assignment was to come up with a way to display prompt pages for each day of December.

Here’s mine:

Project 1 complete!

On each day this month there is a prompt for writing, photographing, doing, and making and then another prompt about a specific memory. Sounds overwhelming, right? Just wait, there’s more. After you get all that writing, doing, making, and photographing done you’re supposed to put those components together on a digital scrapbook page. I’ve decided to take on the challenge. I may not do every prompt every day, but this month is jam packed with events and moments I want to remember and this will help me accomplish that.

While I don’t plan on posting all the journaling, etc… for every day, I thought I’d share my very first-ever digital scrapbooking page. Being the complete novice that I am, I used the suggested layout and only the paper and accents provided – simple and easy. Only 30 more to go!

Good Laugh

So my Mom is getting married during Christmas break and we are very excited to be flying down to Utah to celebrate with her. My entire family will be there so of course we must take advantage of the opportunity and get a family picture taken. The girls are to wear pink dresses and the boys white shirts or dark suits. It’s been quite tricky finding pink dresses for the girls in the winter (especially difficult with sleeves), but I’ve ordered 6 online (actually only 2 styles in a variety of sizes) hopefully there will be one that works. Yes, I am the Queen of returns.

Anyhow, my sister sent me an email yesterday. She ordered a few dresses under the idea that either myself or our other sister would be able to wear one of them. It’s a cute dress…

But do you see where there might be a little problem?

I know there are many women who can still wear normal clothes at this point (I’m just shy of 20 weeks, not even halfway yet). I am not one of them. My body surrendered without a fight.

If anyone has a pink dress or cute shirt that would fit around my belly please let me know.

Surprise, surprise

Predictions?

(If you’re looking for pictures from our vacation, keep scrolling down – they are there, I promise)


Thursday is the BIG day – we have our ultrasound to find out if we will welcome another little boy or girl into our family. We are all very excited.

Have you ever asked someone about to have a baby if they want a boy or girl and they respond along the lines of “as long as the baby is healthy we don’t have any preference.” I have, many times, and I think that response is kind of annoying. I mean, really, you don’t have ANY preference, more than likely I think they just don’t want to say “we REALLY want a boy” only to find out it’s a girl and then they have to deal with people knowing to some degree they were disappointed in the gender. So, go ahead and ask me… do I want a boy or girl?

I most definitely wanted this baby to be a boy (did you notice I said ‘wanted’). I’m afraid I’ve become one of those lame people. As long as the baby is healthy, the gender doesn’t matter to me. But let me explain. It’s not because I’m trying to cover up any disappointment if the gender is not what I would choose (as if we have any choice in the matter). Instead my answer goes back to my inability to make a decision. This is my logic. Naturally you would assume I would like to have another boy. That gives Jason a playmate and evens out the numbers in our family. Two boys, Two girls… just makes sense, right? But, the thought of never having another baby girl makes me sad. I almost feel that while I’ll be happy if the ultrasoundist tells us we’re having a boy, I’d be more excited if she tells us it’s a girl. That’s not to say I prefer girls over boys – I adore my little man, but I suppose it has more to do with the fact that it’s been six years since I’ve had a baby girl. So there you have it, I’m on the fence. Either way I’ll be thrilled, but either way I’ll be a little disappointed too.

Here’s what the rest of the family thinks:

Justin: “I will be happy with either one, but I would probably prefer a boy.”

Girls: “What do you think it is?”

Justin: “I think it’s a girl”

Abigail: Boy

Carly: Wants it to be girl, but she thinks it will be a boy

Jason:

Me: “Jason do you want the baby to be a boy or a girl?”
Jason: “earl”

Honestly, I don’t think he has a clue what I was asking and just repeated the last word I said. To test my theory, we had the following conversation.

Me: “Jason, do you want the baby to be a girl or boy?”
Jason: “Bee”

I think it’s safe to say Jason would like a little brother

Any one else want to make any predictions?

Fall Fun

My brother called from Utah yesterday and mentioned that they woke up to snow. We’re just now adjusting to the fact that it’s already fall; it’s hard to believe winter is just around the corner. The girls were excited to go outside yesterday and rake up the leaves around the yard.

Carly kept getting frustrated that Jason was running through the leaves and messing up her pile.

Jason enjoyed having the leaves thrown up in the air and on top of his head.

Justin mentioned that 80% of the pictures I take are of Jason. I guess that might be true, but he’s just so darn cute.

The Fletchers go to the Caribbean

Almost every year the entire Fletcher family leaves the cold and rain of the northwest and goes on vacation. This year we were off to cruise the Caribbean.

Our family in Grand Cayman (with our ship in the distance)

After a leisurely breakfast in the dining room we spent most of our day at sea in the pools. The girls loved the waterslide and the kiddie pool was perfect for Jason. A major advantage of traveling on Carnival is that they include two year olds in their childcare programs (on most other cruise lines kids have to be at least three and potty-trained). It was nice to have the option of eating dinner or going to a show kid free. And since there was always fun activities for the kids to enjoy so I didn’t feel too guilty.

Here are the four youngest proudly wearing the crowns they had made in Camp Carnival.

Costa Maya, Mexico

Since none of us had ever heard of Costa Maya we weren’t sure what to expect. I think it’s a port created by the cruise lines. Shortly after we arrived we located a swimming pool by the beach and settled in for several hours of swimming.

Because the ship was so close we headed back onboard for lunch. I stayed back to give the two youngest kids naps while the rest of the family ventured of to a nearby beach where Justin took the girls on their first wave running experience. Carly was seated in the very front which ended up not being the best idea because she hit her face against the front of the wave runner, but I don’t think it was traumatic enough to keep her from trying again sometime.

Belize

We've been really excited about going cave tubing in Belize. Our tour guide was awesome and the experience was amazing - we would totally recommend it to anyone traveling there. Apparently this was the last week that kids under 48" were allowed in the caves so Jason was lucky to have been able to go with us. I was a little worried about how well Jason would hold up throughout the 8 hour excursion, but he loved every minute of it. We had an hour drive to the caves which gave us the opportunity to see areas of Belize far from the touristy parts. It definitely made us realize how blessed we are.

It seemed to take hours to hike with our tubes to the place we would get in the water, but our guide kept us entertained by showing us a plant that curled up when we touched it and luring a tarantula out of its tunnel. We also saw several bats in the caves. We all floated down the river together by linking our feet under the arms of the person in front of us, the kids tubes were attached to our tubes with extra lifejackets.

We each had a headlamp to use to look around the caves. It was fun for the girls to use their imaginations to create images out of all the rock formations. I wish we would have been able to take our camera with us because it really was beautiful. Near the end Carly fell off her tube, but she seemed completely unfazed by it and waited for the guide to scoop her up and take her back to her tube.

After cave tubing we ate a traditional meal of chicken, beans, and rice before heading back to the cruise ship… yum, yum.

Jason was beat on the tender back to the ship and just wanted to sit with his Grandpa.

Cozumel, Mexico

While Grandma and Grandpa took a day trip to explore Tulum, the rest of us took a taxi to Paradise beach.

We were only there about 30 minutes when the thunder and dark clouds rolled in.

Everyone took cover in the bar/restaurant area waiting for clear skies.

Carly and Jason kept entertained playing in the sand and rain

When we realized the rain was not going to let up Justin and the kids headed back out for more fun. They didn’t seem to mind the rain at all, for me however it was a bit disappointing to not get to lay out and enjoy some sunshine.

Notice Justin and Jason taking cover under the waterslide

Grand Cayman

We woke the kids up early on Friday only to find out that due to rough seas our arrival into Grand Cayman would be delayed over an hour and a half. We were disappointed we missed out on the extra sleep, but it gave us a chance to relax and catch up on a little homework. When we finally got ashore we headed out to stingray city on a fun catamaran.

The sunshine availed us again and the water was really choppy, but the stingrays were aplenty.

Justin and I were the only ones in our group that had been to stingray city before. There is a sandbar smack dab in the middle of the ocean so we were standing in water only 3-4 feet deep. The clouds didn’t keep the crowds away - look at how many people other excursions cram onto their boats.

The only thing that made me nervous was that the waves would lift you up off the ground and I always worried I would end up stepping on top of a stingray as I came back down.

After swimming with the stingrays we stopped near a reef for snorkeling. Our guide recommended that due to the rough water only experienced snorklers get in. Abigail had really been looking forward to snorkeling so Justin braved the waves and took her out. She thought it was awesome and I’m glad she got the opportunity to go out.

Jason however was CRUSHED that he couldn’t get back in the water and threw what may be the worst tantrum in my nearly eight years of parenting, but goes to show this kid LOVES the water.

Back to Miami, Florida

Our last day at sea was rough, rough, rough. The waves were so high in the swimming pool that they had to close it down for safety reasons. Thank goodness I was feeling better or it would have been a miserable trip for me. Luckily none of us got sea sick although we felt like we were still on the ship for several days after the cruise was over.

After the cruise we stayed in Miami for a few days with Justin’s parents. Months ago I told Justin that he was in charge of planning what we were going to do post-cruise. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised or disappointed when we were driving around Miami wondering what to do and where to stay. In the end everything working out fine and we always had a place to sleep and eat (in the three days we were there we ate at Chick-fil-a twice, I’m certain it would have been daily had it not been closed on Sunday).

We explored the Everglade National Park. We saw lots of alligators, birds, snakes, turtles, and a gigantic grasshopper. We also took a fun air boat ride through the marshes and watched a brave ranger feed a bunch of alligators.

The concierge at the hotel advised us against taking the family to South Beach or Miami Beach (too much nudity) so we spent a day at a beach in Biscayne Bay (we did go to South Beach for dinner one evening just to check it out). The kids could have played in the water all day.

Abigail spent most of the day bodysurfing.

Jason would not get out of the water and it was impossible to get him to stop moving long enough to get a decent picture.

There was also a really neat lighthouse along the beach.

Wow, so I think that about covers our trip - Thank you Grandma & Grandpa Fletcher for another awesome vacation!