JUMP Dance

This weekend was the JUMP dance convention and competition in downtown Phoenix.  The girls danced a ton and had such a great time.  On Fri night, Gigi competed all her numbers and they scored really well in all their dances.

Saturday morning at 8am the girls got their audition numbers and were ready for a long day of dance conventions.  Kam had Ballet, Contemporary Ballet, Musical Theatre, Jazz Funk, and auditions for scholorships.  After six hours of dancing, we had to hurry and get ready for competition that evening. I love having a 14yr old that can do her own makeup!

Owen had a date day with Daddy, while I got to hang out with this little monster.  She was a hot mess after dancing all day, so we grabbed a snack and waited for Kam's evening of competitions to begin.

I love hanging out with my pretty girl and waiting for her call time.  She is seriously so funny!  Yes, she is eating sour patch kids for a snack before going on stage. :) She and all the other teens danced beautifully and got great scores from the judges.   We met C and Owen for dinner on our way home... then in bed by 9pm.  It was a long day!

The alarm clock went off early Sunday morning, but we were back downtown by 8am.  Owen really wanted to check out this convention stuff since he missed his "favorite mommy" the day before.  He ran all around the convention center.. see the glass bridge behind him in the picture, he ran back and forth on that forever.  I kept trying to convince him to go home, but he wanted to explore downtown.  We walked around, admired the nudist statues at the Herberger, and grabbed a "hot mocha loca" at Starbucks.  It was a fun morning with my favorite little guy.

We are now at home relaxing and getting packed up for our trip to Stanford tomorrow.  Owen has a biopsy on Tuesday at LPCH.  I am hoping for good news because he has been doing so great, but preparing for anything.  Look at how fabulous he looks.. grown up, strong, healthy.. I am so grateful. 

It's been such a great weekend. :)

Everyday Life

This post is about as normal as it gets.  Owen and I love picking up Kam from school everyday and sometimes we even splurge on a little treat when we aren't rushing home to get ready for dance or school for Owen.  We visited Bahama Bucks last week and used a buy 1 get 1 free coupon.. couldn't let that go to waste. 

After Kam gets home from school, Owen's school begins.  Mr C comes over everyday for an hour from 4 to 5.  Owen has been doing fabulous and I'll have a post on this later, but he is exceeding all his goals!!  While his art skills are interesting, he makes up for it in creativity!   This little watercolor piece is "a Chinese prophecy that states that I, Owen, am going to show the sensei of China my awesome ninja moves.  If I get golden weapons, I can defeat him!" 

This one was done as part of his daily journal.  He read a book about theme parks and wanted to write his daily journal about the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.  "I am the guy running away from the giant brown boulder (large brown circle) and the scary spider is trying to attack me.  Those little blue things are booby traps and they are trapping me so I cannot escape...."  His story went on and on because if you ask Owen for a sentence, you are going to get a paragraph! 

The weather is warming up in the desert and we have been hitting the mid 80s most afternoons.  It's perfect!  Yesterday was 89 degrees!

Kam's violin had an accident at school on Fri so I had to drop it off for repair.  Gigi and Owen were chilling on the sofa while we waited for Andrew to tune her violin and fix it up for her.  Then we saw some really cool Cello cases for Gigi, until we saw the $600 price tag.. ouch.

We rushed to pick up Kam and stopped at Circle K to get an Icy to celebrate our first day of (almost) 90 degree temps.  I may be totally addicted to the $.79 polar pop... it's so bad for me.

Most nights, after school, Kam has dance.  We drop her off before Mr. C comes and pick her up after he leaves.  Then it's time for ME to hit the gym.  I am loving my weekly Hip Hop, Zumba, Tabata and Weight lifting classes.  One day I was a little late for class and didn't want to sneak in so I used the machines... it was torture.  I was so bored and watched the little clock on the treadmill creep for the entire hour.  I love my group classes and always get the best workout!  This is where I go for ME time. :)

On Saturday night, my dad took the girls on a date to see Divergent and we took Owie to the pool.  I could live in the water, but there is something about a night swim that is so relaxing!  Owen loved it too and it's official that this boy needs to get into swimming lessons, he is too stubborn to learn from me.

This morning after therapy, we hit up Dutch Bros in Tempe to try it out.   We are first timers and I picked the double chocolate mocha off the menu.. basically it's really chocolaty hot cocoa with a few shots of caffeine.  I could only drink a little bit of it and Owen guzzled down the rest... now he's wired!

These are my mid week random thoughts and I need to blog more often.  I am so good about blogging when it's serious and medical, but I want to remember all the good times too.  It's the everyday moments that I enjoy most! 

 

Coming up... dance convention/competition weekend and we leave for LPCH for Owen's next biopsy.. eek.

Family Pictures

C's family is not small and it's so hard to coordinate everyone's schedules, but last weekend, we finally got the majority of the family together for pictures.  Jennette took our pictures last year.. you can see those here and I like her natural lighting style.  My favorite pictures are the ones where everyone is natural and having fun.  It was a super windy day and Owen was complaining that his eyes were "burning off"... they still turned out great.

It's time for me to go order some prints for my walls.. I'm so bad about that!