Happy 13th!

We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary yesterday. It's our tradition to have a movie night and watch our wedding video with the kids. There are SO many things I love about watching our wedding video, but one of them is seeing the video slideshow we showed before the processional. Every year I wish we could just watch the slideshow, not the wedding video version of it. So I decided to look around some of our computer files to see if I could find it, and I was surprised to find it really quickly! I'm posting it here for fun. Maybe I should make another slideshow highlighting what has taken place since that day. Well, maybe next year ...

Happy Anniversary, Stephen!

March 8 video from Stephen Blan on Vimeo.

Nate's 2nd Grade Class Dance

Nate's Advanced Dance Performance

Evie's 1st Grade Class Dance

Winter Performance

Nate and Evie go to a charter school that focuses on the arts. They attend dance, theater, music, and art in addition to their regular classes, and they spend the semester preparing for a performance. The teachers always do an excellent job putting it all together, and this year was no exception! Attending the performance is one of my favorite things.

This semester Nate was in advanced dance and Evie was in advanced theater, so they had those performances in addition to their others. Here are a few pictures and video to show off a little of their hard work.

I took this the morning of their performance. 

Nate and Evie were super excited to be spending the day doing dress rehearsal. 

Simon was happy to be spending the day with his recorder and saw. 

 Nate as Santa in his class's theater performance.

 Evie playing the "Little Girl" in her advanced theater performance.

 Evie as a penguin in her class's theater performance.

 Stephen went to get Evie from the stage and give her flowers at the
end of the performance. I was glad they looked in my direction for a second.

They were so proud!

My Semester

The end of my Library and Information Science degree program is in sight. I only have one online course to complete next semester, and then I'll complete my practicum next Fall. I pushed myself this semester with two classes. One was a beastly cataloging class that turned out to be way more challenging than I anticipated. The other was a Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults class that turned out to be even more enjoyable than I anticipated. I got to study literature from six different cultural groups within the United States. I learned A TON and can't wait to share it with my students some day!

For a sample of the work I did this semester, visit my blog Literature for Children and Young Adults.

50's Day

Nate and Evie love 50's Day at their school! It's how their school celebrates the 50th day of school for the year. Here are a couple pictures:

 Simon didn't participate in 50's Day. :)

Showing off their dance moves!

 This has nothing to do with 50's Day.
I just really love that these two still choose to share the chair! 

Simon is 3!

Sometimes we wonder where in the world Simon came from. He's so different than Nate and Evie. In many ways, Nate and Evie have always been very much alike, so we got in a really good parenting groove with them. Simon is completely throwing our parenting for a loop. Many days I just don't know how to correct his behavior in a way that he'll respond to.

But, he's by far our most sensitive child. He gives the best hugs! He's a fast learner. He wants to be anywhere and everywhere his older brother and sister are, and he wants to do everything they get to do. I definitely feel his pain as the third and youngest child!

He's our Simonster and we love him. He requested an oo-ah cake for his birthday. He still calls Curious George and all monkeys "oo-ah's." I hope that never changes!

Halloween 2015

So. Much. Candy. We live in an older neighborhood, which means trick-or-treating is hit or miss. This year it was mostly miss. But the pro was that the people who were giving out candy were giving it out by the handfuls! Our kids somehow came home with full buckets.

Evie was a ballerina. Nate was one of his favorite book characters - Dink from the A to Z Mysteries series, wearing a skeleton shirt. Simon was a disgruntled construction worker. He refused to be a happy, or even a content, one. :)

We've created a tradition of trick-or-treating with our neighbors and their little boy, Chet. Some of their friends joined this year, and it was great. There's nothing better for parents' nerves than a bunch of hyped up kids running down the middle of the street together!

We carved pumpkins a couple days before. Nate's was a scary face, Simon's was a rocket, and Evie's was a cat with the moon behind it (hers isn't pictured here.)

 A picture of the picture.

 Scary faces.

Here's the whole trick-or-treating crew.