Pictures of Olivia!

Here are some pictures from Olivia's 9 year old photo shoot! It is my last year with her before she hits the double digits! She is growing up so beautifully! Happy birthday Olivia

This year Olivia is in year 3 (third grade).

Olivia does about 10 hours a week of dance (ballet, tap, jazz, classical etc...) She loves it but can get very tired by Friday.

Olivia is my very happy child, she is a hard worker and is very determined.

Olivia loves to try new things and is a very good sport 

The other day in the car Olivia and Mary were playing "truth or dare," the conversation went as follows:

Mary: Olivia truth or dare

Olivia: truth

Mary: have you ever kissed a boy?

Olivia: snorting and gagging sound simultaneously... Mary, that is not how you play the game...you have to ask me questions like "what is my favourite flavor of donut!" 

Olivia's favourite toy(s) are littlest pet shops (LPS). She has been playing with them for nearly 2 years straight now, and recently asked Santa for the $50.00 rare collector pet shops! She said she will know if Santa is real or not  if he delivers her request (as each rare pet shop is located in different parts of the world (China, America etc...) if he really goes around the world, he will have no problem picking them up!

In addition to dance Olivia also participates in voice lessons, swimming and Kumon (an intense Asian tutoring program designed to accelerate kids above their grade level in school).

Olivia is still the smallest kid in her grade and has the bone age of a 6 year old.

Aside from her delayed bone age Olivia is otherwise healthy and growing again!

After Olivia's kidney operation, Stan and I have both noticed how resilient and easy going Olivia is, she really does roll with the punches and does not get down very easily.

Olivia's BFF is Maddy...another little girl who loves pet shops maybe more than Olivia--the will spend hours, filming pet shop video's with their iPhones. Despite desperate please, we have not gotten Olivia a Utube account so she can upload her LPS films.

I am so proud of Olivia and never thought I would get a daughter as beautiful and determined as her!

Olivia turns nine!

This year Olivia Sue turned 9 years old! She had the usual birthday pancakes on the "you are special plate"  and lately, for some reason, any song Olivia hears is an invitation to dance...so here is Olivia dancing to "happy birthday" before she blows out the candles! :-)

This year for Olivia's birthday we had a fantastic opportunity to pull off a surprise party. Here in Australia, the school year goes from the end of January until mid December. The year is broken into four quarters and after each quarter the children get two week off for a school holiday.

Olivia's birthday was during the school holiday which meant I was able to text all the parents about the party and not have any of the kids leak the secret before the special day. We invited everyone from Olivia's  class and hired a DJ to run a "disco party"

Because Stan was overseas in America, I had a friend invite Olivia over for a play and then I was able to decorate the house and get the food set up. 

Stan and I were first introduced to "disco's" while the girls were in Kindergarten (or prep as they call it out here). The school would host a Christmas disco and all the kids would dress up and have a huge dance party. When I say dress up I am talking about glitter, glow sticks and dresses....something I wouldn't have seen until the 8th grade in America!

Anyway, in order to get Olivia in a dress we told her she was going out to dinner with Maddy's family. I purposely forgot to pack her shoes and then they had to swing by to pick them up. That way Olivia wouldn't be suspicious when maddy was putting on a dress :-)

Here is a video clip of me answering the door and Olivia asking me "how on earth I could forget to pack her shoes!" I think she was surprised!

I love her rock star pose when she gets picked up by her classmate! Hilarious!! 

The DJ was great, she did the usual, limbo, macarena, karaoke, train etc.... The party was two hours and after sticker tattoo's and breaking for birthday cake the party was over. 

Olivia was drooling over her gifts while at the same time was so grateful and happy. She even shared with Mary & Thomas!

The day before was her actual birthday. Olivia was SO EXCITED and it was just a regular day (with the exception of pancakes in the morning). At bed time she was sad and I told her we would make invitations for her birthday party and have the party once school was back in session.  She was completely set up for a surprise...which was fantastic! Who doesn't love a good surprise? 

Happy Birthday OLIVIA!

Pictures of Mary

Here are some pictures of Mary Adelle, now that she is 7 years old. I am loving these pictures because I am afraid this year she will loose her two front teeth and this will be the last time I get her beautiful smile with her baby teeth!

Mary is in year 1 (first grade) at school.

If I had to describe Mary with one word it would be loyal. She keeps to one friend and holds onto them dearly!

In the morning if we are running late, Mary will forfeit eating breakfast, doing her homework, getting dressed and brushing her teeth all for ensuring that her hair is combed and accessorized before going out the door. Messy hair IS the end of the world and will bring a flood gate of tears if we leave without doing it. 

Mary still loves her dad the best!

Mary is extremely affectionate

Mary's best friend is named Natalie

Mary is super smart, she can out spell Olivia and can do her math homework regularly without any help. She possibly takes for granted how easy school is for her.

Mary's least favorite job is to make her bed. She often sleeps on top of her bedding just so she won't have to make it in the morning.

Mary has recently started basketball lessons. She is tall for her age and we think with time she could be very good! Every sunday afternoon Dad and Mary shoot hoops!

In addition to basketball, Mary also participates in swimming lessons, and is starting little nippers (surf/lifesaving) this summer!

Mary told me her secret talent is surfing, so we will see how she goes at little nippers

Mary is all girl and loves barbies, littlest pet shops, friends, perfume, nail polish and skirts. Mary will avoid pants...with the exception of her basket ball uniform

Mary constantly leaves me love notes on my pillow. The other day I came across a thank you note (in October  to the Easter bunny for never forgetting her. Additional letters were for the tooth fairy, Santa's elves and their extra hard work and so on!

Mary is trying to grow her hair out like Rapunzel 

My favorite feature of Mary are her eyes!

Although more cautious than Olivia, Mary is fiercely competitive and will try anything Olivia can do!

Love you Mary- Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mary!

Mary turned 7 years old on September 29th!  We started off the big day with the usual birthday pancakes with 100's and 1,000's on the "you are special" plate...thanks Ben & Laura for your hand-me-down wedding present (our plate was lost in our move)!

 Here she is blowing out the candles!

 And opening gifts from family...thank you to all the grandparents and great grandparents for being so thoughtful to send a gift or a card for Mary!

For her party, Mary had a pajama party with a few girls from her class- It was charming. They really wanted to play games like musical chairs, musical statues, charades,  pass the parcel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_the_parcel) - which is a very popular game in England and Australia. We had a pizza party and then read bed time stories and watched a movie. The girls were so cute and I quickly realized (while watching Olivia) that this phase is very short.

Pictures to come!

 Happy birthday Mary! We love you very much!

Dance recital!

So last week was Olivia & Mary's annual dance recital. I don't even know where to begin, I have so many mixed thoughts about it...

We will start at the beginning. After Olivia auditioned for Annie we did a little homework and found a very hard core dance school to put her in. Since Olivia was starting dance at 8 years old (and not 3) she was a little bit behind. We put Mary and Olivia in together as Mary was also keen to dance.

There is no-nonsense at this dance school, in fact Mary was kicked out of several classes in less than 10 weeks and after this concert, she was officially pulled out from the entire school (they can tell at age 6 if you have enough potential- lol). During the dress rehearsal (all day Saturday) kids were getting kicked out of numbers just a few hours before the performance for not paying attention. The head teacher says if you don't want to dance professionally don't be here!

Because my girls aren't good enough yet, we have not been invited to participate in any competitions with the school. This evening was their first performance and I was a wreck!! The hair and makeup night for the school was hosted in June while I was in the USA for my little brother's wedding. Stan went on behalf of me and when I asked him what he learned he said "not much." 

The week before was spent reading over the 10 pages of things I needed to have and do for each number. Like getting a spray tan... I had never even had a spray tan! It was all starting to feel a bit much! I got almost everything done by the end of the week but I was still confused about the hair and makeup. Like, how to do these ringlet things?!? I woke up the morning of the recital really worried and Stan informed me that he knew how to do them from the makeup night and then we spent the next two hours winding these little pieces of shoe laces into my girls hair. When we got to the dressing rooms we saw the mothers pulling out these beautiful curls from these foam things-

Here is what I was pulling out...O- the horror!

From a distance I don't think it is that bad...but all the other moms went into "help this beauty challenged mom mode" and I immediately had 4-5 moms with curling irons and make up surrounding my kids chairs.

This was good because we finished about 5 minutes before curtain call and we were in the dressing room for 3 hours! I was looking around and I was the only one who didn't have a massive kaboodle suit case with wigs, fake eyelashes, bobby pins, safety pins, hairspray, curling irons (I actually did BUY one that week as I previously didn't own one), make-up...everyone was like where is your foundation...I was like- 'seriously do people still use that stuff?'- I use lotion and powder :-)- OK I WAS A HOPELESS CASE!

Here is Mary for her baby ballet number- not quite the curls of the other girls but an improvement! 

Olivia in a Tangled ballet number 

In between each number the parents could watch the show on a monitor in the dressing room and then the kids would come down and change just in time for the next number. It was chaos!

For this Olivia had to get a microphone, which meant I had to take her back behind the curtain once her costume was on. This was where all the big girls would change as they were in so many numbers they didn't have time to run to a dressing room. There were about three people around each girl helping them change: taping microphone cords on them, clipping hair accessories on them, all while being half naked- it was my first "real" encounter with show-business.

Mary's doggie in the window tap dance. I had to PAINT her shoes white!

There was a jazz number both girls were in but I didn't get a picture as the costume change was too quick! :-(

And the finally curtain call everyone was in their SLD uniforms. 

So my thoughts are...Olivia is a fanatic on stage (earlier that week she had a school dance concert and she was the star of the show- seriously random people for days afterwards were approaching her including someone who runs television programs for kids). She loves it BUT is this what I want for my daughter now that I have seen it in full force??

The Whitsundays- Hamilton Island

Last weekend Stan and I were able to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! We flew three hours north to a little conglomeration of islands called the "whitsundays". They are situated in the great barrier reef and are cool because you typically rent a boat and you go from one island to another every day. You sleep on the boat  and do activities or get supplies from different islands. Some islands are completely undeveloped while others have grocery stores where you can stop off at to get food.  I flew into Hamilton island (which is the main island).

 As soon as I got off the plane Stan and I walked a little ways and got onto a boat to visit white haven beach- ranked #5 in the world as a "best beach" and #1 in the world for whitest sand. The sand is like walking on flour and it is apparently 98% silica (so there are hardly any impurities /(like shells) in the sand) it is mostly glass...but soft!?! 

 These pictures are out of order but basically we spent three days on the islands Sat-Mon and had a fabulous time!

 Swimming up to the beach at white haven- the boat wouldn't go any further!

 First time EVER in a two piece- did it more as a goal after having three babies (one c-section); and just in time for my 10 year anniversary! This is the ONLY picture I am posting...because I am usually very modest- So glad we had the beach mostly to ourselves!

 hiking up to the look out point!

 you can see the refection in Stan's sunnies!

 baby whale breaching!

Dinner at the cafe-

 I loved the rainbow plant!

 Everyone would drive around these golf carts to get from the hotel to the water- the whitsundays is ranked in the top 10 for most eco-friendly vacations!

 Views from the hotel

Watching the sunset from our hotel window

 One of the islands was a golf course...and nothing else- check out the views!

 And the sunset again!

10 years and so much more to come! LOVE YOU Stan!