The Big Show

Dallen was able to perform with his dance school this last weekend, and it was quite the production. I knew about this show back in late November, but I had no idea how big it truly was going to be. The Hillcrest High School put on a Celtic Holiday musical show that was infused with the Irish dancing. It was a ton of work and a ton of rehearsing, but I enjoyed being able to see it all pay off on closing night. Dallen was outstanding, and I was so proud of him. After learning 3 new dances and only having a couple weeks to prepare, he held his own and impressed many. We are grateful to his many supporters, and to those who made an extra effort to come see him.

We Have Lift Off!

12/10/12 is marked as Rorey's first day of walking! Yay he finally at now almost 18 months decided to switch off the motor butt.

The Holidays

Yes, I will be throwing in Halloween with this post! It has been a couple months without updates, so I will just throw the bulk of it together. Halloween was an interesting night. Dave was good enough to take the kids trick or treating while I got lucky enough to attend Aly's infamous party. It was odd not having to take the kids all around the neighborhood, but Dave said they had a great time and even went to bed on time. We were able to spend an evening at Cornbellies again this year too. We had so much fun and Rorey had his first spook in "The Creature". We had a ton of fun, and there was hardly any planning to it. 

Thanksgiving was full of activities and food! We were able to spend time with the Smith side of the family and boy did we do a ton of stuff. We were able to fit going to the movies, the spa, temple square, trax, city creek mall, black friday shopping, texas roadhouse, kangaroo zoo, playing hours upon hours of texas hold'em, dominion, and christmas tree choppin' all into the celebrations. All in all we enjoyed catching up with the family, and the kids had endless fun with their cousins.

Now we are preparing for Christmas and the New Year. I feel a little more prepared this year, as I have my cards and cookies done and delivered. (Smith side pending addresses, they're coming!) We have some parties here and there, but nothing too hectic. It's going to be a breeze I think. Plus I already got a letter from Santa that the presents are fully stocked under my house and ready for delivery. Glad to have prepared early this year. 

I have so much to be thankful for this year, and I am grateful for those who have been there for me through it all.

Now all we need is a couple feet of snow!!

 

Live @ 5

Saturday we celebrated Dallen's 5th birthday! I know his real birthday isn't til the 30th, but it's not simple planning around All-Hallow's-Eve. Everyone had a blast at the pizza party, and afterwards we went next door to the theater to see Hotel Transylvania. The kids were so funny giggling and dancing to the movie. It was honestly one of the easiest, funnest parties I have ever planned and the best part was NO cleanup! Dallen was so excited to be with his friends and cousins. Thanks to everyone who came and joined in on the fun, to make this his special day. He will definitely remember it.

Party Hardy

 At about 5:30 David showed up at the feis Saturday night ready to head to the Spanish Fork Fairgrounds. We grabbed our winter gear and tired faces and headed to the year end Vivint Carnival. Apparently this new company is massive! I didn't realize that this little invite from earlier in the month was for such a grandiose event. Once we got down to the fairgrounds, we literally spent 20 minutes driving around trying to find parking. I thought, there is no way this is all Vivint peeps?! We walked a ways to finally get in, and then followed the heard to the stadium. Once we finally got to our seats, I asked Dave to pull up the event info on his phone and tell me what was all going on for this party. With the dance agenda filling my brain, I had no room for spare attention to details. We were pleased to find out that we were given 40 tickets in advance for free EVERYTHING! Literally everything you could think of to do fun with your kids it was there. I will list what I can remember.

JDawgs Hotdogs

Soda, Water, Hot Cocoa

Candy

Chocolate Bars

Popcorn

Cotton Candy

Carnival Rides (15)

Jumbo Bounce Slides

Carnival Games

Winning of games meant GEAR!

Nike Orange Running Shoes?!

Gym Bags

Hats

Snow Scrapers

Real Gold Fish

All you could attain as much as you wanted with as many tickets as you had. We were there until 10:30pm and we were only able to use half of our tickets. Before we did the rides and fun outside the arena, we watched the motocross on freezing seats. It was awesome watching these insane guys on dirt bikes flying everywhere. They also had a high ramp for skateboards and bikers to jump off. Guys with guts willing to chase greased pigs and put them in a bucket. A "fun" run for kids under 12, first kid got an ipad and the next 10 got $100. Last but not least they had a Razor race. They look like mini dune buggies. This was the big shabang! Everyone who was involved in these races are employees. The first place winner got $10,000! They announced to everyone that they had over $700,000 worth of giveaways for the event. Who honestly has that for their employees in this economy?! We finished the night with a massive fireworks show and of course they even through in massive orange V's somehow. It was an amazing experience, and we all had an awesome time. I am still in awe at the company Dave works for and appreciate the great lengths they went to in putting on a 100% family friendly event. Next year we will have to be physically prepared to keep up with the kiddos though! By the time we left I felt like the walking dead.

Crossroads Feis

This year's Crossroads Feis was a weekend of fun and excitement. Arielle and I volunteered to help out with various different jobs, so even though we weren't dancing we were able to still be apart of the fun. The feis started Friday evening, so naturally I waited until Friday morning to prepare...worst procrastinator! As I was preparing Dallen's costume, I had him get dressed to "try out" some of his new clothing. Like an idiot, I forgot that the last time he wore his pants they were on the verge of being too short. Dallen put them on, and suffice it to say the near 5 year old had definitely grown out of the 3T size pants. All the weeks of mental preparation fizzled into panic an hour before we were supposed to be at the venue for setup. Now those Moms who share the same stress of finding boys dress clothing will know, that it is very difficult to find black dress pants with belt loops anywhere. Most would say just grab the elastic band pants that come with every set of Sunday clothes, but mind you the child will be flailing around and they might fall off or worse his shirt will come un-tucked! (Enter Sarcasm!) Silly I know, but for a boy this could be like a wig falling off or not wearing your spanx on stage for a girl! Anyway, showering and changing into appropriate attire myself went out the window so we could drive 40 minutes out of the way to get a pair of slacks.

Once we got there and started the ball rolling on setup, I personally thought it went quite well. There were some things that seemed slightly disorganized, but there were many willing to step up to the task of helping so the competitions could run smoothly.

On a side note, Arielle and I chose to sing for the music side of the competition. We could have done two solos I suppose, but that's somewhat unlike us and we wanted to do something for old times' sake. We chose to sing a song named "Crinne Hill" (Crinna Hill) which was written by a distant cousin many years ago, about the small town where she lived. She wrote the poem as a lullaby to sing to her children. One of those children found the song handwritten in her desk after she had passed away. When my Mom traveled to Ireland a few years back, she was given a copy of it and that's how we attained it. I doubt more than a handful of people have ever read or heard of it, but we figured it suited the opportunity well. We spent a few days before hand writing our own harmonies and working on our rusty vocal chords. But when it came time to sing on stage at the very end of the evening, we were tired and compared to some a bit under dressed. We went out none the less and just sang, I felt like we did pretty well considering but not as well as I had hoped. In fact as they were reading off the winners for the categories, I was hiding on the floor between the auditorium chairs because I knew we hadn't won. As our name was called for first, we rushed to the front and were somewhat dumbfounded, I personally would have been fine with a second place. Neither of us knew that there was a cash prize of $120, we heard cash prize and I thought $25 was a high estimate. It was a cute unplanned moment that I won't forget. We merely wanted to just accept the opportunity to sing again publicly, and that would have been enough. Singing felt great, and with Air it was even better.

 Saturday we woke up early to again go help out at the feis. We spent all morning helping out, and around 10am I noticed that things on the gym stages were running fast. I ran home to grab Dave and the boys, when we returned I had 10 minutes to get him dressed and back stage. Yeah kinda killed myself on prep time again! He looked like a stud and he was rev'd up to dance. Backstage he heard the music and was dancing all over the place, it was so funny. They got all the kids out on stage and Dallen did a fabulous job. He has been working so hard all year going to 2 classes a week, and I think he is starting to finally get it. Come February I think this little guy will be first feis'n it up! I am a bit sad that this was his last Tir Na Nog, when he started dancing he was only 3. (Enter tear)

Silly Face

 

 

Post Most Wanted

For 5 whole weeks, Dallen had to wait for his new dance shoes to come. It was the longest 5 weeks of MY life! Holy mackerel I never knew someone could ask for something so many times. "Mom are my shoes coming today?!" Was the nail on my chalkboard. After calling the shoe shop in NY over and over again, his special ordered tiny feet shoes came today! These early birthday presents for his 5th birthday, are now his magical power. At least that's how he sees it. After shredding through 2 pairs of ballet shoes in the last 8 months, we decided to pony up and get him some "reel" Irish dance shoes.