PRIME TIME DANCE NATIONALS

Live and learn, I guess. This year's dance nationals was very different from last years. The one good thing, it was a lot cheaper because Palm Springs sucks and there just isn't a whole lot to do there. We did go shopping at the outlets and did go shopping in the LA Fashion District, but other than that we danced and went swimming.

The competition was lame. It was spaced out over 6 days and Emma basically did a dance one day, nothing the next, a day the next day, nothing and then all the dances again...or something like that. I felt like it was a lot of wasted time and we could have crammed the whole thing into 3 days. Emma decided to have a dry coughing attack each night as we were getting ready to go to sleep and then wake up again between 3-4 am and continue coughing. Cough drops and cough syrup did not help and she could careless and slept right through and so did the girl we shared a room with,  but me and Elsabe, well that was a different story. Jared and Elsabe like their sleep. You don't mess with it. I am actually surprised Elsabe didn't strangle Emma, she was that annoying with her cough. The last night I made Emma sleep in the bathtub at 4am to try and get her to be quieter. Elsabe and I decided to save a lot of money and stay in a different hotel that was not the host hotel. Yes, we saved money, but that was about it. We ended up driving back and forth to the host hotel every day, using their pool because ours was boring with just the 4 of us and we just felt out of the loop being away from everyone. We will not be doing that again, from now one, lesson learned, always stay their the dance competition is, even if you do end up paying more money!

I could go on about more of the negatives of this competition, but I wont. It is always fun to see Emma get up on stage and do what she loves to do, it is always fun to escape for a few days with her away from the boys in the family and it is nice to see what the other studios do so you can see how you can improve and see the things that we do that we like better.

This was the last time the girlies performed their trio, Footloose. At least they went out with a bang and it was the best I had ever seen it look! Great job girls!

Sunday happened to be Father's Day and we were bummed out we couldn't be home with Jared taking care of him, but since we didn't have dance that day, the next best thing to do was to drive into LA and shop in the fashion district. We went with Stacia who knew all the tricks of the trade. I had always wanted to go there so that was fun. Emma and Bella were so good shopping for 5 hours with us. They never complained once!  They loved buying their new purses and nerd glasses...

and even posed for some big 'ol booty pictures!

Each night we would end up at the host hotel and the girls would swim with all the other dancers. For some reason this year the big thing was making human totem poles...


The girls were a little excited to finally arrive at our hotel after driving 5 hours :)

The nationals this year was live on the web so Jared got to turn it on and see most of it live while Emma was dancing! (Emma is back point in this picture)

The girls and their "Roll It" trophy. This is the little dance that could. It was super hard and technical and it finally got the recognition it deserved! 
 
One of the things I love about being gone away from my boys is Jared will send me lots of pictures via text and they always make me smile :)
Eating Chicken Tortilla Soup...

Playing with water before they went swimming at Grandma Joyce's house

Eating ice cream cones...

They get bribed to eat a good dinner and then get dessert afterwards...

Sunday morning Jared had to go wake up the boys for church and this is how he found Tyson and Tyler

I had a great time with Emma and the Muriettas, but I was super excited to come home to my boys :)

DIAMONDBACKS/DODGERS BASEBALL GAME!

Jared won 4 tickets at work to go to the baseball game. Yes, just 4. Everyone assumed we would take the older two, that just makes sense, easy split up. Nope, not so much this time. Little Miss Emma gets to do A LOT, so this time it was someone else's turn. Eli had to go because he loves baseball and would get the most out of it. As for the other winner, well, since Jared didn't want to take all 3 boys himself we did a pros and cons list (out loud not on paper, does that make us less nerdy?). Tyler came out the big winner, but just so some day when Tyson reads this, he won because he would have thrown the biggest fit when we left him at home with Grandma and Grandpa, so thank you Tyson for always being so willing to do what is asked of you!

Grandma and Grandpa took Emma and Tyson out to Chick-fil-A for dinner (Tyson's favorite) so that they could do something fun too! When we were all leaving to go our separate ways, Tyson saw that the other 2 had baseball hats on and he wasn't about to be left out of that so he ran and grabbed one too! How stinking cute is he?!

 Since the Diamondbacks were playing the Dodgers and we have reasons for liking both, we decided to represent for both teams.

After we finished watching batting practice and when we finally got to our seats the boys were excited but mostly were excited to finally get a treat at the ballpark...

 First choice, snow cones, but since we couldn't find any, the next best thing was cotton candy!

 

 Tyler being my non-big-fan-of-sweets eater, only took a few bites and then he was done. He then requested to have some pizza! So pizza it was. He was so funny about having to carry his own pizza box down to his seat!

 

 

 After pizza it was back to cotton candy! But this time around both boys were saying how much they missed Tyson and wished he was there to eat it with them, ok melt my heart.

 

 Tyler made have gotten a little bored during a few parts....

 The boys loved doing the claps with the crowd and made sure we were all clapping. They loved standing up and cheering and watching the balls get hit way up high!

 

 

As soon as we got home, Tyson was so excited to tell us he got root beer and an ice cream cone from Chick-fil-A and Tyler had to quickly tell him he got cotton candy!  We had such a fun time with these boys and hope to go back again with all 3 of them!

 

 ps - Jared wishes that someday he can be so important that people are paid to vacuum up his spit out seeds :)

ELI'S FIRST SHOPPING TRIP!

Each year before school starts I take Emma out on a little mommy/daughter date and we do lunch and shop for new school clothes, she loves it, I love it, its a win/win really - except for Jared who has to pay for it all, ha ha :) This year I was most excited to take out Eli for his first back to school shopping trip, but even better than that - it was his first time shopping for his own clothes! Usually I just buy them when I am out and he has no say in it, this time I was going to let him  pick them, with my persuasion influencing him of course.

After we hit up 3 stores I could see he was fading quickly so we grabbed milkshakes to drink on our way to do more shopping in the mall. The milkshakes were a great pick me up. Shopping with Eli is not like shopping with Emma. She can go and go and go and loves it all. Eli on the other hand had more fun walking around all the racks and playing hot lava with the tiles on the ground through out the mall. As the old saying goes, "when you can't beat 'em, join 'em," so I joined in too. After we bought 6 new shirts and only 1 pair of new shorts, I told him we needed to go get some more shorts so we needed to go to another store, his response, "CRAP!"

This store was very successful and we found tons of shorts and while I was looking for more, he found it rather amusing to hang the shorts on my purse strap, whatever it takes to make him smile :) He did enjoy trying on all the shorts in the dressing room and he insisted that as soon as we got home, he was going to put on his new clothes and I had to announce to the family, "Here comes handsme (handsome) Eli, doo doo dooo (the trumpet noise)" So I did and he came running out modeling his new clothes. He is funny. I thoroughly enjoyed our shopping trip together and hope he will join me again next year.

12 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Every year on our anniversary would go stay at a resort somewhere in the valley overnight to celebrate together. Randi would always tell me how she loved that about us. Then in 2008 we did not stay at a hotel for obvious reasons - the twins were going to come any day and we didn't want to book a hotel and not get to stay there, then in 2010 we didn't either because in May we went on a cruise to celebrate our 10 yr anniversary, last year was to crazy with Jared just getting back from Oregon so this year...we HAD to go.

We booked it at Gainey Ranch, the last time we stayed there was in 2001. We enjoyed ourselves and went out to dinner, walked around the resort for a bit and then yes, at 10:30pm we crashed and went to sleep for the night. PATHETIC! Birthdays, recitals and baseball championships had worn us out!!!

To make it even more pathetic, we had my parents who kept our kids overnight, drop Emma off at dance the next morning and then bring all the boys to us at the hotel so we could swim and play with them. Sheesh. We have issues :)

The boys really enjoyed themselves and that made us happy! We did end up going out that night to dinner again for some more alone time :)

NRG CONVENTION!

My favorite dance convention so far out of 3 years of going to them. NRG (pronounced energy) gave our studio scholarships to take a bunch of kids for free since our owners are friends with them. The girls had such a great time and got to dance their bootys off. The classes were smaller and the instructors I felt like were more hands on. The convention was Saturday through Tuesday. She had so many great opportunities through them....

The second day part of their classes was learning a little dance routine to dance in a little video for a dance crew that was popular on America's Best Dance Crew, The ICONic Boys. The girls thought they were hot stuff!

Earlier in that day they were taught a contemporary piece by Lauren Gottlieb from SYTYCD. The dance was hard. But, as an exciting moment, she is in charge of this year's choreography piece for SYTYCD National Dance Day. She taught it to the girls and then had her camera crew come in and video tape all the girls doing it and she is going to give it to the show in hopes they air it...Emma is so excited!

On Monday they had their big ICONic Boys, MI5 and Code 5 concert.
 
 While the girls waited forever for the concert to start (they got free tickets, again because our owners are friends with them, otherwise people were paying $75 for them, no thanks!) they all sat in a circle and played the slap game
 
Electrolytes also made a quick appearance since they had just won ABDC...

The girls enjoyed the concert and really got into in the end, but mostly I think they were getting slap happy from being so tired!


Afterwards all the groups were signing autographs and our girls wanted to get some, but the lobby was packed and we would have been there for at least an hour and we just wanted to get home! As we were pulling out of the parking lot I spotted the groups walking around to enter the lobby...we stopped the car, I grabbed the girls and we ran up to them and I said to Rustin (the guy who is in charge of NRG and friends with Andrea and Stacia), "Hey! These girls are with SAS Dance Studio, can they get a quick picture with them before they go inside?" He was awesome! He stopped the group and they came back and posed for pictures with the girls, they were thrilled!

The last day was just a quick 2 hour day, but sadly I missed the best day. Tiffany was kind enough to take Emma for me so I could stay home with the boys since I hadn't been with them for the last few days. That day the entire faculty taught the girls all a dance that incorporated each of their different dance styles, the kids LOVED it! Then they had their final class with Lauren Froderman, also from SYTYCD. Emma had a class with her last year and loved her so she was excited to have her again. Emma was most excited though after she taught the kiddos the dance she said to everyone, "where is my orange munchie?" (she called all the kids, munchies and Emma was wearing an orange shirt) Emma raised her hand and she told everyone how Emma was giving her exactly what she was looking for as far as emotion, faces and dancing goes. So she had Emma come up to the front and then she had another 4 or 5 kids and then they danced it for everyone to watch. I got a few texts from different people telling me about how cute and exciting it was. I was sad to miss it, but so excited for Em! Way to go Emma!!

We loved this convention and hope we get to go back again.

FOURTH OF JULY!

Our 4th of July was just perfect for us this year. Low key, low stress and amazing weather! It rained in the morning so we went outside and threw the frisbee and football around in the greenbelt and took in the rain! After that we went inside and played games and colored and then we headed over to Grandma Joyce's house for some BBQ and swimming. Next it was on to Jared's favorite part, NAPS! Emma and I did our own thing while all the boys napped and then after dinner we headed over to our favorite spot to watch fireworks. We stopped and got drinks from Circle K - a fan favorite in our house. We played with glow in the dark necklaces and threw more balls around. The kiddos all loved the fireworks and pointed out things like, "that was Christmas colors!," "AWESOME!," etc. It was a great relaxing day had by all!


I kept Tyler's eyes red on purpose - gave more character to this pic, ha ha

2 MORE SILLY STORIES FOR THE FAMILY JOURNAL

Last night  Eli grabbed the twins, had them lay down on him then asked them if he's a nice big brother :) 

Today I overheard the boys playing with their superheros and Tyler asked, "why are you guys fighting?" and Eli said,  "we are saving the world!!"