Arrgh!

This year we decided to get a Thanksgiving Point membership. It has been lots of fun! I didn't realize how many activities they put on. There's story time at the Dino Museum and Children's garden every Tuesday and Wednesday. We've been going to their family nights every Monday, which have been really cool! These pictures are from a pirate party at the Dinosaur Museum. It was really cute. I've been having so much fun playing with my girls this summer!

Emma's 5th Birthday!

We had a fun little fairy party for Em at the Children's Discovery Garden (Thanksgiving Point). We didn't take too many pictures, but here you go!

Meet Lucy

Well we got ourselves another dog!

We went to a fun event at Thanksgiving Point called "Dog Days". You get to bring your dog and enter a fashion show, look-a-like contest, all sorts of fun things.

Eliska won second place by the way in the look-a-like contest, I have those pictures on my phone. She had a dog costume on that I made real quick before we left.

Anyway, they had a bunch of animal shelters at the event and we had been wanting a female beagle as a companion for Wilby (not for breeding) but we weren't planning on it anytime soon!

Anyway we walked by Little Lucy and just fell in love! She has these adorable brown spots all over her white fur, it's gorgeous! We found out she was female and the right age (11 months) and already trained a bit and spayed. So the girls and I begged and begged and begged Dan the rest of the day and we finally came home with her!

She is adorable and hilarious. She will cuddle and beg for you to pet her and scratch her belly. She is much calmer than Wilby and they have a lot of fun tiring each other out. She was found as a stray and then had a home for 2 months, but they couldn't keep her due to pregnancy complications of the owner.

She is a lot bigger than Wilby! She has never had any accidents and is a really sweet dog. She gets really anxious when we leave and howls like crazy when we come back. She can jump really high, which has been problematic if we have food left on the counter. And she is still in a bit of a chewing stage...But we love her!

She loves to lay in the sun

It's so funny how she lays down with her legs out!

Princess Festival

Emma got really sick the day we had tickets for the festival, so I had Eliska go with my mom and then Emma and I went by ourselves the next week. It was super cute and really nice to spend time with just Em.

Ballerinas

The girls started ballet in January. They are improving a lot! They had a lot of fun being Rowena's pets in the studio's production of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". We love their teacher, Miss Martha! Below is a little clip from their dress rehearsal.

End of the Year Festivities

Here is Eliska at Challenger's Merit assembly. She won first place in her class speech festival and then she earned a scholarship due to her high grades and Iowa test scores (99th %). I could not be more proud of her! After two days of tests, she has gotten approval to skip first grade, so she will be starting second grade at the public elementary school in our neighborhood. I just hope it goes well and that she is challenged enough.

Here is her art festival entry, "My dog, Wilby"

Here is the story she wrote for the Young Author's project. It's called, "Fairies".

Then we had Spring Programs for the girls (as well as my own class). They all turned out really well.

The bumblebees are my cute students! Then Emma is doing her hermit crab dance.

cleanin' out the phone