Bella's International Festival

Today Bella's school had their International Festival. She is in the Spanish Immersion program, also called SPLASH. I thought I had talked about this in a previous post but I cannot find a post where I did so... Basically a few schools in our county offer a Spanish Immersion program for Kindergarteners. You have to start your Kindergarten year and you stay in it throughout your school career. We learned about this last year shortly after we decided we would not be able to pull off sending B to Covenant Day. It cushioned our hearts a bit. It has been wonderful. The class is solely in Spanish and the only English they get is in their specials. She reads in Spanish and her homework is in Spanish (even though I know some Spanish, this is the biggest challenge for us). Anyway, her teachers are both from Colombia and the students learned and performed Colombian dances for the festival today. They were precious! Half of the class did the Cumbia and the other half did the Salsa. Bella was in the Cumbia group and they wore authentic dresses made by a former parent (also from Colombia). Ah! I teared up and I was so incredibly proud. They performed for the K-2 classes in the morning and the 3-5 classes in the afternoon and she was not a bit shy! So confident it blows my mind! Check out the pictures first and then move on to the videos...



Click here to see the Cumbia Dance!


See her friends doing the Salsa.

They also had the Kindergarten hall decorated like the Amazon Rain Forest which was just amazing. Check that out here and here!

When Bella got home she told us several of the "big kids" they performed for gave her a high five and a couple asked for an "oldagraph"! I said, "Oh really?!" And she said, "Yeah but I didn't say anything... I don't know what an oldagraph is!!" Hahaha!

First Egg Hunt

Today our church had an egg hunt at one of the member's homes. It was gorgeous! (The property I mean, the weather was a little chilly). It was the first egg hunt we've had with church. Most campuses are just too big for something like this but because our campus is still small, we have been able to do a few things like this since we launched in the fall. It was also Porter's first egg hunt. Of course he had no idea what was going on but the girls were sure to get him a fair share of eggs and he had fun just being outside and surrounded by action! Bella was ecstatic to find a "golden egg." Ava was in heaven with all the candy. It was a win for everyone.

Funny Ava

Lately, Ava has been cracking us up and I wanted to document some of it so that I won't ever forget her funny three-year-old shenanigans.

The other day I heard her talking to her Daddy and she said something about how she wanted him to say 'OK' and I heard him say, "You wanted me to say okay?" Ava said, "I wanted you to say, okay Cinderella!" and Randy responds (as he is told), "Ohhh, okay Cinderella." Of course she walked away with a huge smile on her face.

That same weekend she told me she wanted some breakfast but it was almost dinner time. I said, "You want some breakfast!?" and she said, "Yes" and I went on to explain that it was time for dinner. She went to Randy and said, "I want breakfast for dinner." Randy said, "What? You want breakfast for dinner?" And she said, "Yeah, I'm humfry. I want breakfast for dinner. Mommy said it is dinner" and then he tried to explain and said, "It's dinner time. How about we have dinner for dinner?" and she said, "No silly! Breakfast." (I guess it could have made since if she knew anything about "Breakfast for dinner" kind-of-meals but she has no idea.)

She looked up at our bathroom wall one day and said, "What happened to our home?" (very concerned) Ha! Randy and I have about three test colors on the wall in a spot right above the toilet. The really funny thing is they have been there oh two-three months she just noticed them!

And lastly, she had a virus a couple of weeks ago and the first morning I said, not sure how she would react, "Ava, I think we are going to have to stay home today and not go to school because I think you have a fever." To my surprise she said OK and after a long pause, "I don't want a fever in my ear. Yesterday I have two in my ears." I tried to explain that she was thinking about the ear infection she had a few weeks ago and that fevers were not in her ears and that fevers were high temperatures. She asked me to check and see what color the fever was in her ear (this is the way I get her to let me look in her ears but I don't call them fevers- I call them little birdies, lol). Anyway, a few minutes later, still not convinced about what a fever was she said, "Grandma's house has a BIIIIIG fever!" And at that point, I just started to play along. It was more fun that way. She talked about the fever in her ear all day long. She seemed to be back and forth feeling better at certain points in the day but at night her fever would spike, she would get really grumpy and she must have known it because she whimpered around bed time, "My fevers back."

How can it be?

Bella complained of her teeth hurting at dinner last night- something about biting down and hurting her bottom teeth. I reminded her that one day her teeth will get loose and she'll start to lose them. She was not interested (stories from her older friends have her worried!) Anyway, this morning when she complained again and asked me how she was going to eat her lunch at school I decided to check it out. How can it be?!! Sure enough, she has her first loose tooth. I didn't lose my first tooth until second grade so this was a big surprise. I cannot believe it and this is just more confirmation that she is getting too old! She is pretty excited now- we called Randy and told him on his way to work and then she told her bus driver :)

10 months just like that.

Getting over the flu and a little behind on life, but our little man was 10 months last week on the 9th. No check up this month but I know he is large and large. His thighs are unbelievable. This month he started eating yogurt, bananas and a little bit of what we have for dinner each night plus his regular meat & veggies (and cereal with fruit in the mornings). He figured out how to get into sitting position on his own and actually does a little bit of legit crawling as opposed to the army crawling he normally does. He also started pulling himself up to standing position and is real proud of himself.


He is waking up once most nights and the time is never really predictable- sometimes it is 3:30, one time it was 12:30 and other times it isn't until 6:30 and he wants to go back to sleep until about 8. He isn't nursing well at bedtime so I think he wakes up to do that. He hasn't really been that great at nursing at all these days because he is so BUSY! He wants to climb all over me or the chair I am sitting in or get down and explore rather than nurse. He still has eight teeth- two more have been on the verge of coming through for quite some time now. Thankfully he didn't get the flu but he did have a bug for a couple of days before I got the full-on flu. He loves his Daddy and says Da Da all. the. time. He wants him at all times and even cried for him last night before going to bed because I tucked him in for the first time in a few nights. He is all boy and all about his Daddy (not that I can blame him!!) and even has a little dance move I am sure we can attribute to his Daddy as well. He shakes his upper body and head back and forth until we join in! Ha! He is a handful.

Other recent pictures of him...
Lots of time outside when the weather is warm like it has been & tons of fun with Henry (Jennifer & Chris's second)


They followed each other all over the downstairs at Jennifer's house while we oohed and ahhed over the new baby girl, Emma. They shared lots of cheerios and gave the dog her fair share. I think Porter thought all of Henry's boy toys were the coolest- he is used to playing with princesses. Henry loved giving Porter his paci and Porter loved spitting it back out for him.

And how could I forget? This month his biggest sister taught him how to open and shut his hands for the little "Open Shut Them" Song. This is him with them shut. (He is pretty proud of himself.)


He also made it up the two stairs from our den. His Daddy left the room and that was enough to get him going I guess.

Cousins

Ava just turned three and Sophie just turned nine (cannot believe this!!) and both in February. They look a lot more like sisters than cousins!



And here are all three girls.

Bella's First Fun Run

Bella's school recently held a Boosterthon so Bella was responsible for getting pledges and participating in a "fun run." She was so excited and did a great job with it all. We noticed last summer she was pretty good at running and keeping a good pace. She ran almost 50 laps at the FunRun even though they really only had to do 30-35. Thank you to those who supported her school.

Porter and I were able to go watch her and cheer her on. We were both in heaven with all the music and the coffee and bagels they provided! Ha! Randy also surprised her and came to see her run. It was super cute. They divided the school by ages so the kindergarten and first grade ran first plus they divided even further letting the girls run first and "Tiger Tim" announced as they started, "Okay teachers, get ready... It is going to be like the cutest heard of buffalo you have ever seen!" (the teachers were in charge of marking their shirts with tallies each time they completed a lap) and it certainly was like a cute heard of buffalo!!



Our sweet neighbor and Bella's good friend, Lindsay, is in first grade so she ran at the same time...

Let it Snow!

Well, we got our wish. We woke up Tuesday morning to a 5:30am call from the school system letting us know we were on a delay because snow was falling in our area. We all went back to sleep and an hour later they called back with news that school would be closed. We were all surprised to see about an inch of snow! We weren't really expecting it. Then...they called for a bunch more Wednesday night and we saw some big flakes come down for a little while and then, sadly, the large amounts they called for never came to our area. Northern Charlotte got a bit more. Needless to say, Bella and Randy still had school but they had a delay. (We love delays! We don't have to make them up and we can all sleep in!) It wasn't quite what we were hoping for but it was still exciting for the girls and me.

The first picture was from Tuesday- like I said, we really didn't even know we were supposed to get snow. Bella said she preferred the ice because she liked eating the (clean) icicles. Ava just referred to it as "white" and talked about how the "white" was there or not there. That snow quickly melted...


The next few are from Wednesday night when the large flakes started to fall. We were all so excited that we got on all of our snow gear and went outside. It turned out for the best because by the next day everything had turned to rain and there was not much to see. Porter was quite a blob of snow pants and coat!