Playing Catch Up

I have been a bad blogger lately. We have been very busy lately with our normal day to day activities, end of school year stuff and field trips! I went with Cade's 1st grade class to the zoo on Monday, I substitute taught and went with 3rd grade to a play on Wednesday, I subbed for a kinder class and went to Blackberry Farm Thursday and then went with Maddi's 2nd grade to the zoo on Friday. I have had enough bus rides in the last week to last me for a long while! Here is Cade with Maverick and Landon who were in my group at the zoo. It was nice that I only had 3 kids and they were so good about staying with me. The little boy Landon was somewhat nervous because he had never been to that zoo before so he stuck to me like glue. I hear he's usually a handful and can get wild so that was good that he was staying close by. The boys were very into their maps and wanted to make sure we saw as much of the zoo as possible in our short time there.

This polar bear behind Cade was really funny. It was like it was dancing walking forward and backwards over and over. The bears that day were very active and so cute!

This is my group of girls at the zoo on Friday. Maddi, her friend Maddie and Julia. Omie, my mom, was in town and got to go with us on Friday. It was fun to have Omie with us. The girls were not into their maps like the boys I had Monday and they weren't so into seeing every animal possible. They had to do research projects on an animal they chose so that took most of our time finding the penguins, sea lions, and zebras and writing information about those animals.

This is Maddi and Maddie on the bus ride home. The kids were having a blast taking pictures of each other with their parents cameras. I have all kinds of random pictures of kids on my camera. It was so funny to watch them interact with each other. They were like very immature teenagers.

Saturday Maddi had a dance competition. There was this huge Paul Bunyon statue at the University where she was dancing. Look closely and you'll see Maddi and Cade by the feet. I have no idea why they had a Paul Bunyon statue. Is he from Illinois? I don't know....Maddi had two dances that day so we had the rest of the day to hang out. Maddi had a bday party and then we went to the pool.

Sunday Maddi had her solo and tap dance. Poor Maddi girl had a freak out moment during her solo and about 2/3 of the way through she forgot her dance and ran off stage. My heart broke for her. The judges saw enough of the dance to score her and she still got a high gold, which is very good, but she wasn't eligible to be in the top 5. She went back on stage and did the dance again and remembered it all but she wasn't judged again, it was just for performance sake. I love this picture of Daddy comforting his little girl.


Omie with her wind blown hair and Cade outside at the dance competition.

An attempt at a family pic.

Omie with her Maddi girl after her solo. The good thing about Maddi's forgetting her dance and doing it twice is that Omie got to see her dance twice instead of only once. We teased Maddi that she did it on purpose so Omie could see her on stage more. We didn't take any other pictures with Omie during her trip and I wish we would have. We had a great visit with her and as always we were sad to see her go. We will see her again soon in Texas when we visit this summer.