"Gym-nak-stiss"

Ellie has been taking "gym-nak-stiss" for over a year and still loves it. Her favorite is working on the bar and she loathes the "bean". She's also not a fan of the stretches and splits! I don't always get to watch her since her darling sister feels the need to explore, entertain, and climb the bleachers each week. You can only imagine how excited and optimistic I was to take the iPad with us the first week after Christmas. Wow, did it work! Sadie Kate drew, colored, sang songs, and generally stayed out of trouble the entire hour freeing up Momma to watch Ellie. I kid you not when I say she smiled the entire hour. She absolutely loves gym-nak-stiss!

Ellie's least favorite part of gymnastics...the "bean".



How Sadie Kate likes to spend her hour of gymnastics.



Ellie and I took Mark and Sadie Kate to their first UA gymnastics meet a few weeks ago and it was a hit! There was enough crowd participation to keep Mark entertained and enough popcorn and Sprite to keep Sadie Kate happy. Ellie, I should add, was quite pleased with the cotton candy. It was fun watching the events with Ellie since she is now familiar with each and they held her attention much more than in previous years.



Happy girls!



Daddy was trying to avoid a catastrophe!

Did I mention we went on the coldest night in January? Boy, was it cold, but thank goodness for the Tide Ride!

100 Days

Look who's 100 days smarter...

Today marked Ellie's 100th day in Kindergarten and she was so proud of her 100th day project. She worked so hard to draw, count out, and glue the 100 goldfish to her poster.

 Kindergarten has given her:

19 new friends,

over 100 new sight words,

3 reading awards,

2 field trips,

1 stomach virus,

97 happy faces,

super hula hoop skills,

a library card,

and

a favorite teacher for life!

Finally...one for Daddy!

Ellie LOVES to write letters and luckily, I am usually the recipient.

However, today she brought this treasure home for her daddy.

He will be over. the. moon!

What a Day!

It was a tough day on the Tumblebus!

The Best Intentions

Last January 1, I started this blog to document the girls' childhood experiences and memories with the hopes of creating a book version for each girl to keep. As the year's end approached, I had great intentions of writing a loving and poignant review of our year as a family.  However, life had other ideas. Ellie woke up New Year's Eve with a high fever and rash, which I immediately recognized as strep. After 3 hours at the doctor's office, we returned home with a prescription (and 2 stickers). Ellie slept throughout the day and periodically through the night as her fever spiked to over 103 degrees. New Year's Day hasn't been any better, as her fever is still over 102 degrees. She feels so absolutely horrible; it's pitiful. I am disappointed that I couldn't finish the first year with the touching glance through 2011 as I had envisioned, but I sure have enjoyed hearing "I just need my Momma"...maybe next year.