Free Range Family

BIG things going on for me in 2015, big and exciting things! :D I had a wonderful weekend with some friends who were town, who are very well known choreographers in the dance world. And I had two super cool things happen to me at work as well. Yes! I am so happy and cannot wait for this year! After all the hard work and the rough year we had in 2013 and 2014, I know that wonderful things were bound to happen this year! I just hope that a new house for our family is ALSO in the cards this year. I will keep praying and keep spreading that good karma! So we will begin with the work news: I was offered to join the YMCA's annual campaign this year. Our annual campaign raises money to provide more memberships, scholarships and healthy lifestyle programs for our community. All of our annual campaign donations help with either our preschool or afterschool programs, our scholarships to families and senior members, our Livestrong program, our Get Started program, our aquatics...

Happy Holidays!  I am so excited that I can finally say that! I love December and the holiday season! I have been waiting for this all year! We have been applying for houses like crazy too, in hopes that we will have a place by Christmas. Wouldn't that be perfect? Its honestly all that I want for Christmas this year.   Pray for us to get lucky! :) I hope that everyone is having a great Christmas season, I know that we are! We went to the Festival of Trees last night with Grandma Melanie and Grandpa Kevin. Aunt April was performing with her dance studio. She did so awesome, as usual! They even did their new dances, like their Spice Girl song choreographed by Ade! Oh my goodness, it was all so awesome! Great job April! I could go on and on about how wonderful their performance was! Seriously! She even inspired one of my own dance students who was their with family! :D Aunt April and her crew after their performance <via>   After Diversity was done with the...

We ended up getting the car! Its perfect and I love it! It is a silver 1996 Mercedes-Benz with a sun roof. Oh I love it so much! The best part about the whole thing? I bought it 100% by myself. Yep! Paid $3000 in cash and felt like a BOSS! Whoop, whoop! It is so awesome being an adult sometimes. :D I know, its not an apartment… But we are taking baby steps to a better life for our family. First comes a new car, then more hours and more money, then a place to live. Lon and I have a plan made, it will just take some time. Which does suck on the hard days. But on days like today, days when all my hard work has finally paid off, days like today rock! I have yet to really settle into the car, I haven't even cleaned it up or taken a decent photo of it! I had Lon snap a quick one for me this morning (we have to wait until after work before we can get it registered) but I think that it doesn't even do it justice. It just looks so fancy and so nice! How did we get so lucky? Isn...

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween night! I know that we did! It was the perfect way to end one crazy week for me, I wouldn't have had it any other way! We never ended up going to the pumpkin patch or corn maze, we just didn't have the time. But Grandpa Kevin picked out two good pumpkins for Alan and Anna to carve up! Thanks Grandpa! Alan carved a "half Ninjago, half Captain America" pumpkin and Anna carved a silly pumpkin face. They both turned out pretty cute, even though we messed up on the top part of Anna's pumpkin lol! Tuesday morning, Anna had her Halloween party for her dance class. She wore her costume but was the only kid in her class that did for some reason. They still got a chance to dress up at the end of class, which Anna always loves. They also played with pompoms and did the obstacle course. Miss Rachel loves how good Anna is already at her gymnastics skills. I always have to remind her its only because I also teach dance a...

Its here, its finally here!  Miss Anna started her first day of dance class today. She is in the Parent/Child Creative Movement class at my old dance studio, Diversity Dance. Her teacher's name is Miss Rachel, she is so very nice. I have seriously been waiting for this day since we found out that we were having a girl, you know like two and a half years ago????? Lol, I am definitely NOT a dance mom… Wait isn't that exactly what I a dance mom is? I am just so excited for her to be starting dance! Anna in her leotard before class We started out class playing with some stuffed animals and going over the alphabet. We did "A" for Anna and for airplane, "J" for Jadelynn and Jack-in-the-box, and "I" for Isabelle and Inchworm. Each letter we did a different action, Anna loved it! Then we pulled out the musical instruments and danced to the Mouse-rcise song, a Mickey Mouse song that I have childhood memories stretching to! It was pretty cool dancing...

My summer classes are officially over! Yay! It was a wonderful summer, I loved all of my classes and my camps. But it is nice to have this upcoming week off of dance and gymnastics, so that I can prepare Alan for his last year of Preschool and get in some fun family time before he off and leaves us three days a week. He starts school September 3, so we have the whole week off next week to get in some summer fun! I plan on taking Alan and Anna to go swimming, to the library, to as many parks as we can fit in and somewhere else fun too, maybe the zoo or the art museum? Not sure yet! Saturday was my last showcase for the summer, it was my lovely hip hoppers performance! We performed three dances: a breakdancing dance to one of my favorite Incubus songs, a "follow the lyrics" type dance called Born to Move, and of course the YMCA for our finale dance. It was a wonderful performance, we had a decent turnout and all of my kids danced really well! Alan came along to watch his ...

I have been a total ball of stress this past month. In just August, I have had over six different performances, ranging from my gymnastics to cheer to theatre to hip hop. I had three gymnastics performances this week alone. It has been wild! To put it frankly, I am exhausted. So I will leave you all with some photos from our performances. These kids are beasts! They worked so hard, I am so proud of them! Tumble 1 6:30 class I forgot to take photos of my 5:30 class but here are my older kids. These kids worked so hard! I passed all five of them to Tumble 2! Great job guys! :D This session we did something different, instead of just doing a beam routine and a floor routine, we also did a vault routine too. It was a change, but I definitely like it. So I think we may keep it in our program showcase! Tumble 2  My Tumble 2 kids did wonderful as well. I made the executive decision to keep them in Tumble 2, to better perfect their skills. This level is much harder th...

I have quite a few book reviews to catch up on, this summer I have been reading about two books a week. Its been crazy, but I love that I can get back into the old things I used to love doing. I have always enjoyed getting lost in a book, so happy I can do that again now! Truth be told, it has been driving my hubby and family crazy though. Every chance I get, my nose is in a book lol! It has been a great source of stress relief for me, which is good. But here is my first of many  book reviews for this month lol. Enjoy! Life in Motion by Misty Copeland Life in Motion is a non-fictional autobiography by Misty Copeland, the first African-American female to perform as a American Ballet Company soloist in twenty years. She didn't come from a typical upbringing that a ballet dancer would have either, she and her siblings lived in a poverty stricken area with their mother. They experienced hunger, gang violence, domestic abuse, and homelessness as children. Misty also has anxie...

I know, I like never write on the weekends! What has gotten into me??????? Well, for those of you who know me personally know that I only don't write most weekends, because that is my family time. It is the time where all four members of our family are available, so we spend as much time as possible together, doing fun things. I am usually too busy to post during the weekend, I just recap everything from the weekend that following Monday. In fact, the year I started this blog, that was one of my personal rules: No posting on weekends.  But today, I woke up early before the children and I thought I would go online for a bit. Started checking my FB and then my blog and I decided, hey why not post today? If I have something to write, why shouldn't I write? So here I am, typing up a post for today. It will mostly be filled with random thoughts and musings from the weekend. I still want to save my Dirty Dash post for Monday. :) But I have like a billion and two little things I ...

This weekend was also full of dance recitals and birthday parties lol. Its funny how the month of May is usually always like that. :P But this time around it was Aunt April's Diversity Dance Studio recital and Alan's school friend Dominic's third birthday party. It was a lot of work for this mama lol, but a good Saturday for us overall! Dominic's party was actually at the YMCA. Dom's mom works with me there as well. I think I may be having Alan's party this year at the Y as well, but I haven't fully made up my mind yet. The party was a blast though! It was one of my tumble parties, the kids had a great time! Alan loved running all over with Dominic and his older brother. He always has so much energy lol. :) Anna tried to keep up with them, but after a bit she just started doing her own thing. Silly girl! Anna about to shoot a hoop Alan as the King of the World lol Alan and Anna went on the zipline maybe a billion times. Dang my monkey kids love ...

Miss Anna is only two months away from being two now and this past month she has grown up so much! She is now potty training, is off the binky during the daytime and is trying new things everyday! I honestly can believe that she is the age she is now, she acts like a darn two year old already! Happy 22 months Anna Ariel! We love you so much sweet girl! I don't know where we would be without you! Life definitely wouldn't be comlete without you brightening up our lives everyday! :) At 22 months, Anna Ariel: *weighs approximitely 24 1/2 pounds and is roughly 35 inches tall. I will get more accurate measurements soon. *is officially in 24M and 2T clothing. She is also now in size 4 diapers at NIGHT only and is in size 2T pullups for potty training during the day! :D She still wears size 6 for her shoes and I can't seem to get her to wear any other pairs of new shoes. Anna on the swing, she's so brave now! Anna at one of big brother's soccer games, trying...