Vacation: Part 6

After Disneyland we headed to Newport Beach and Thursday morning to our nieces swim meet in California. Here are some pictures from the beach where we built a sand castle and made Brooklyn a mermaid tail out of sand.

Our Beach Beauty

Our Little Mermaid

The finished sand castle

We enjoyed our time at Mallory's swim meet on Thursday and our super proud of her. She just made the national swim team and we have never been able to see her swim yet so it was a great opportunity. We had a great time and Brooklyn cheered her on in a whisper.

Later Thursday afternoon we headed to Vegas and on Friday morning we headed up to Beaver, Utah for a camping trip with my dad and my brothers and sisters. We had a great time camping and enjoyed seeing all of our nieces and nephews unfortunately our camera battery died as soon as we got there so we have no pictures. We had a blast though and Brooklyn caught her first fish. She is so my girl.

On Sunday morning we packed up and headed back to Vegas. After Brad had a quick shower and repacked we headed to the airport and sent him home. Brooklyn and I spent the next week in Vegas visiting family. Her cousin Sydney gave her some swim lessons and we had a great 4th of July at Nellis Air Force base, but I will have more on that later.

It was a great vacation and awesome family time. We are super blessed and grateful we were able to spend all that time together.

Swimming Lessons

This is for you Brad!

I will post more from our trip later, but for now this is a video of Brooklyn in her swimming lessons with her awesome cousin Sydney.

More to Come...

So here is a quick update, with much more to come.

Drove to Phoenix
Visited with cousins and good friends
Drove to California
Disneyland - met all 8 princesses, and 3 fairies
The real beach
Mallory's Swim Meet
Camping in Utah
Vegas
Home next week

Hooray for Summer!

The last few weeks have been filled with lots of fun and things coming to a close.

Preschool has come to an end for the year, much to Brooklyn's disappointment and my relief. I loved teaching preschool this year! It has been lots of fun and I enjoyed seeing the kids get so excited about learning. Brooklyn now knows all of her capital ABCs and can recognize her numbers 1-12. She knows all kinds of information like to call 911 in an emergency, or that we need to take care of our hearts. It was however a lot of work. I can't do anything half way and I spent hours and I mean hours preparing for our 3 hours of preschool each week. I would love to do it again next year, but we shall see how everything goes with our family.

Dance for Brooklyn has also come to an end for the Summer and she had her show week this past week. She was absolutely adorable of course. We plan to enroll her again in the fall.

We have completed our foster care licensing so now we are just waiting for a baby. We will keep you posted.

We have also already started our Summer fun. On Memorial Day we went out to Landa Park as a family had a picnic, rented a paddleboat, kicked around a soccer ball and played frisbee. And last weekend we went to visit our good friends the Bertoldos in College Station.

We are so excited that Summer has finally arrived and we are looking to lots of fun!

If you want to keep reading about all the things we have done in the past few weeks. Read the posts that follow this.

Wicked!

Friday night we were lucky enough to go to Wicked. My sweet husband bought us tickets to Wicked for our anniversary and I have been so excited to go ever since. We went with our good friends the Barrs. Dinner was at Paesanos on the river and then off to the show. It was awesome! I totally recommend seeing it if you ever get the chance. It was a great night! Here we are in front of the Majestic before we headed into the show.

Show Week

Brooklyn has been in a dance/gymnastics class at the Little Gym since January and has loved every minute of it. She has had the best teacher who was very patient with her. The first few weeks Brooklyn did a lot more crying than dancing or gymnastics, but her teacher was great with her and finally there were no more tears and only smiles and lots of waves. Wednesday was her final class for the semester and they had their show week. I don't have any videos small enough to upload here so pictures will have to do. They did a tap routine, ballet routine, and then headed in the gym to do a balance beam routine. After they were all finished they were able to mount the medal platform and they all received medals for their hard work. Then the kids and parents just got to play in the gym together. On our way out, one of her cute friends from dance gave all the girls a lollipop bouquet. Brooklyn couldn't even jump when she started the class and has come a long way. She can't wait until she can start dance again in September.

Visit with the Bertoldos

This past weekend we went to visit our good friends the Bertoldos in College Station. They used to live in San Antonio and their son Ryan was probably Brooklyn's first friend, or their moms were friends and they were babies who were together a lot. We got their Friday night and headed to bed pretty quickly. Saturday was a fun filled day. Brad and Nate headed off golfing in the early morning, the kids played in the sprinkler, we all went to the pool, had naps, and later went to a fundraiser event in the park. We later grabbed some dinner and headed back to their place for a movie night. The kids watched the Little Mermaid on our portable DVD. We didn't start the movie until almost 9 and thought for sure they would be asleep quickly, but we underestimated the 3 year olds stamina for movie night when M&Ms and popcorn were involved. Cute little Ryan kept coming out and filling the popcorn bowls for both them.

I don't know how Brooklyn has little boys doing her bidding at such a young age, but fellas watch out. It seems that everytime she is around a little boy they do anything they can to make her happy. Ryan was no different. Brooklyn was "his girl" and he let everybody know it. Brooklyn was scared that the baby had touched her chair and he made sure that his brother knew that Brooklyn was his and he shouldn't scare her anymore. Whenever Brooklyn needed anything, Ryan would come and tell us so to make sure she was taken care of. It was too cute and I was glad that she was so well taken care of by such a sweet little boy.

Thanks again guys for a super fun weekend!